Calorie Counter

By HarperCollins UK

With over 700,000 copies sold, Collins Gem Calorie Counter is the UK’s top-selling calorie counter. This new improved edition optimised for e-readers and tablet devices is perfect for those following the Fast Diet (5:2 Diet), Dukan Diet, Atkins Diet or other weight-loss diets and takes in new areas: Kids’ food, Fast Food and Family Favourites.

Controlling calorie intake is one of the most effective ways of dieting. The Gem Calorie Counter, by detailing information on thousands of foods and food products, provides the most comprehensive coverage for a book of this size.

In addition to calorie content for each entry, details are also given of the amount of protein, carbohydrate, fat and dietary fibre, helping you to plan a balanced diet.

Rather than the single alphabetical listing used in previous editions, the contents are now organised by types of food – for example Fish, Flour and Baking, Fruit and Vegetables and Jams. This makes it easier to find what you are looking for and to compare similar food and products. Gem Calorie Counter is the ideal companion for the weight-conscious shopper.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jun 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9780007445257

Book preview

Introduction

Calorie-counting has sometimes had a bad press, dismissed as being out of date and boring. Some diets have even gone so far as to announce that ‘calories don’t count’.

One of the reasons for the poor reputation of old-fashioned calorie counting is that there was an emphasis on obsessive calculating, on using low-calorie processed food and ready meals, and on sticking to the assigned calorie limits no matter what. This combination of factors made calorie counting almost impossible to stick to and proved to be impractical in the long term. There was no emphasis on enjoying a healthy diet – you could eat your allocated calories in chocolate if you wished – and an almost complete lack of flexibility. Other, newer, apparently more user-friendly ways of losing weight seemed much more interesting but, in the long term, most of these have proved to be every bit as unsustainable.

Calories, however, always do count. They are just a measure of energy. Take in more calories than your body uses and the weight goes on as the excess is stored as fat; use more calories than you take in and the weight comes off as the body uses the energy it has stored. Reducing calorie intake is how all effective diets work, and there’s no magic solution that involves anything else.

To make sure that you can reduce your calorie intake reasonably accurately, you will have to count the calories in the food you eat and the liquids you drink. That doesn’t have to be depressing; nor does it mean that you will have to walk around for the rest of your life with a notebook under your arm, this book in one hand and a calculator in the other. Successful dieters become ‘calorie aware’, able to spot the low calorie, nutritionally sound option at a glance, and also have a mental library of quick calorie shortcuts (you’ll find some at the end of this Introduction). Small changes can make a significant difference; for instance, weaning yourself off three cappuccinos a day and swapping to black coffee instead could save hundreds of calories. This book will help you to learn the values for all your favourites and serve as a quick reference in which to look up new foods. But successful calorie counting isn’t just about adding up the figures and keeping them to a certain limit; it’s about being healthy as well. Then it really can be the start of a process of sustainable change.

What’s a calorie?

Calories are a simple measurement of available energy: not fat, just energy. When food is metabolised it produces heat, and that energy is measured in kilocalories (kCal). A single scientific calorie is a very small measurement of energy, and scientists use the 1000-calorie measure – the kilocalorie – instead. Outside scientific circles, kilocalories have become known as calories and in this book, as in most other contexts, ‘calorie’ is used instead of ‘kilocalorie’.

All food contains calories and all calories are the same regardless of their origin, apart from exceptional circumstances. The real difference comes in the nutritional benefits food has and not in the calories it contains; energy is not the body’s only requirement, which is why a healthy diet is critical. Like all living things, the human body requires chemical building blocks, the nutrients which enable it to grow, develop normally, maintain itself, repair damage, manufacture hormones and perform many other functions. An apple and a boiled sweet may well make the same number of calories of energy available to the body – about 50 – but they won’t bring the same health benefits. Calorie counting does bring freedom as you are not tied to any particular diet plan, but freedom brings responsibility and you need to ensure that you are as healthy as possible.

Fad diets

Diets suggesting you omit an entire category of food, eat a lot of any particular food or any alleged ‘miracle food’ should ring alarm bells. So should any diets that promise rapid weight loss or that don’t advise you to increase exercise – especially in the maintenance phase – as well as cut your food intake.

Assessing weight

It’s important to be realistic when looking at what you want to weigh and at how long it will take to get there, and the first thing to do is gather some information. Measure your height and weight before you start but do so in metric units – metres and kilograms – as this makes assumptions less likely.

WAIST MEASUREMENTS

Check this first. Doctors take waist measurements seriously because people who carry excess fat round the waist are in the highest-risk category for high blood pressure, heart disease and strokes. If your waist measurement rises above 94cm (for men) and 80cm (for women) you are putting your health at risk. If it’s above 102cm for men and above 88cm for women, your health is at serious risk and you should start a weight-loss programme as soon as possible. A related risk indicator is the waist-to-hip ratio. The waist is measured at the narrowest point and that figure is divided by the hip measurement at the widest point. A high figure is more than 1.0 in men and 0.85 in women; a healthy value is anything below these.

THE BMI – BODY MASS INDEX

The most common place to begin a more detailed assessment is likely to be the BMI or Body Mass Index, which doctors and health professionals often use to calculate whether you are over- or underweight; it’s a height to weight formula. There is a BMI table on pages 20–21, but if you want to get a more precise figure, or if you fall outside the range of the table, you can calculate it yourself. Divide your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in metres, i.e., weight ÷ height × 2.

For example, if you are 1.70m tall and weigh 68kg, then 1.70 x 1.70 = 2.89, and 68 ÷ 2.89 = 23.52. That’s your BMI.

Find your height in metres and your weight in kilograms, and trace a line from each. Your BMI figure is where the two lines intersect.

Now that you have your BMI figure, you can apply the BMI scale:

If your BMI is in the emaciated or obese range, you should visit your doctor for advice as you could be seriously endangering your health. There are different BMI scales for children and adolescents, and some ethnic groups have different BMI ratings – for example, the WHO states that a BMI of 27.5 for someone of Asian origin carries the same health risks as a BMI of 30 for a Caucasian.

The BMI is a useful tool, although it doesn’t give any indication of where fat is stored, which will affect the health risks you face – if your BMI is in the healthy band but your waist measurement is not, your health is still potentially at risk. There are also several groups for whom the formula doesn’t apply. Pregnant women or heavily muscled athletes could appear overweight on the BMI scale; it doesn’t allow for muscle mass. Nor does it differentiate by sex or build, but, as a broad generalisation, women and those of a slighter build should ideally be at the lower end of the healthy band, while men and those who have a larger frame should be towards the top.

Children

Children go through growth spurts, so if you are concerned about your child’s weight talk to your GP first. Improving activity levels is a better place to start than counting a child’s precise calorie intake, but you could begin by restricting obviously unhealthy items such as fizzy drinks, fatty snacks and sweets.

Setting a target

You can also use the BMI to give yourself a realistic target. Ideally, you want to be in the healthy band, with a BMI between 19 and 24.9. Here’s an example of how it works in practice. If you are 1.64m tall and weigh 78kg, your BMI is 29. To fall into the healthy band, you would need to weigh between 52 and 66kg. That’s quite a drop, even at the minimum 12kg, let alone the 26kg it would take to get down to 52kg. A realistic weight-loss target is between 5 and 10 per cent of your starting body weight over six months to a year. Any more than that, any quicker than that, and you will struggle to keep the lost weight off in the long term and may damage your health on the way. In this case, losing 10 per cent would mean getting to about 70 kilograms – a more sensible aim, and close to the healthy BMI band. On achieving that, the next step would be to stop and stay at 70kg for a while before gently trying to lose some more.

When it comes to more precise timing, you should not try and lose more than 0.5kg a week; anything else is unsustainable and trying to lose weight more quickly than this is counter-productive. You do need to bear in mind that not all weeks are the same, either, and that losing anything on some weeks – holidays, for example – might be almost impossible. If that is the case, aim for staying the same; try not to put weight on!

Warning

Anyone who is considering trying to lose a lot of weight should consult their doctor first. You should also see your doctor before starting a diet if you have been overweight for years, have any long-term health problems or take medication for chronic conditions such as diabetes, angina, epilepsy or osteoporosis. It’s especially important to check with your doctor if you have not done much exercise and are considering doing more. Make sure you are up to it, and don’t be over-ambitious.

How many calories?

Given that there’s an apparently simple principle at work – take in more calories than your body uses and the weight goes on; use more calories than you take in and the weight comes off – you might think that calculating a precise calorie intake figure for weight loss would be easy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Human bodies are not machines and they do not work like them; there are too many variables.

It’s possible to come up with a basic general guideline, however. Ideally, you need to eat between 500 and 600 calories less a day than your body uses in order to lose 0.5kg a week. Most women will lose that amount on 1,500 calories a day, most men on 1,900. It’s dangerous to drop much below these figures, except under medical supervision. Spread the calories throughout the day – for example, on 1,500 calories, allow 300 for breakfast, 400 for lunch and 550 for dinner, with the remaining 250 for snacks, drinks including milk in tea or coffee, etc. Stick to three meals and two (healthy) snacks per day; it is very important not to skip meals or allow yourself to get hungry.

If you keep dieting and exercising without achieving your target, it may be that you are being unrealistic and trying to reach a weight that is unhealthy for you, so go back and check your targets again (check your intake, too, by keeping an accurate food diary – see Calorie counting in practice – including measuring and as few estimates as possible; portion sizes have a tendency to creep upwards).

Don’t be tempted into trying crash diets, which often take calories below safe levels and promise to help you lose weight in a short period of time. They can pose a serious risk to health:

• Your metabolism will slow down as your body tries to protect itself by hanging onto its fat stores and dropping its RMR (see Calories out – using energy), making it more difficult to shed weight. Once you stop actually dieting you are likely to pile the weight back on as your body is now using less energy – only you put on more than before. This leads to another crash diet, another gain in weight, and the overall effect is of weight gain over time rather than weight loss. Yo-yo dieting like this can have a significant impact on the heart.

• Deprivation dieting or skipping meals can cause a drop in blood sugar levels, which leads to sugar cravings and an urge to binge, and upsets the delicate insulin balance (see CARBOHYDRATES). It also has an effect on the brain, which means that you will crave high-energy (and therefore high-calorie) food to compensate.

• Your body will use muscle tissue for energy rather than fat. Muscle tissue uses more calories than fat tissue, so your rate of weight loss is likely to slow down.

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The more extreme the diet, the greater the likelihood that you will not be able to stick to it, leading to a cycle of self-recrimination, trying another diet and failing again.

Calorie counting in practice

Keeping a daily food diary is one of the most useful things you can do when you are dieting (you could do this on paper, using the templates at the back of the book, or electronically, whichever you prefer). People who keep an accurate record are more likely to be successful. This may be because seeing the food and calories in black and white has a salutary effect or because the process of making a note helps people stop and think.

Note down everything you eat as soon as you can; don’t try to remember later what you have eaten, as you will inevitably forget some items and make mistakes about portion size. Most people do forget things, so be aware of that and try to ensure that you don’t; the things you omit could make a big difference (some studies have shown under-recording by as much as 60 per cent, with the main omissions being drinks,