How To Go Low On Calories

High calorie diets may work for you if you have a weight training program to draw those calories out of the fat storage danger zone. But if you're leading a life of average or even slightly above average activity, then high calorie diet and foods will cause you to gain weight. If your struggling weight problems already, a high calorie diet will wreck havoc on your health. Let's see how you can lose weight and improve your health by cutting back on calories.

A calorie is basically a unit of energy. A food calorie is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree. The more of this energy that your body produces, the more it will have to raise its activity levels to consume it. In case you have low activity levels and hence, don't consume all the energy, the excess or left over gets stored as fat. In case you your activity levels are not high or even average, but your caloric intake is, the body stores the unused energy as fat. You even if you raise your activity levels to burn this fat, you will still have to lower the calories to compliment the exercise, otherwise newer calories will be burnt while the stored fat will stay put. Drastically lowering the calories is also not a good idea as it puts the body in a state of starvation where instead of fat being burnt, it is stored and the body begins to feed off of muscle tissue for energy. The right to lose weight or maintain weight loss is to have a healthy, low calorie diet and a calorie burning exercise regime as well.

Cutting Back on the Calories:

One of the best ways to cut back on calories while still getting nutritional value out of your food is to make healthy switches between high calorie foods to lower calorie ones. For example, in dairy products, you can have skimmed milk or fat-reduced milk instead of whole cream milk. If you love ice cream, try substituting it with sorbet, sherbet, low fat or fat free frozen yogurt. Imitation cream is available as an alternative whipped cream. Plain low fat yogurt is another choice for those of you who love yogurt. Cheese also has lower calorie alternatives. Instead of the usual cheeses like cheddar, Swiss, jack, American, mozzarella, cottage, etc, you can base your favorite cheese recipes on fat-free cheese, reduced calorie cheese, Part-skim milk, low-moisture mozzarella cheese or Part-skim milk ricotta cheese. Cream cheese has a fat-free version too and so does coffee cream.

Another food component that really packs on heavy calories is carbohydrate containing food. Among these, we have cereals, grains and pastas that make up the tastiest meals, but also the most calorie containing ones. You can substitute ramen or wheat noodles for rice noodles. When choosing between sauces for your pasta, don't go for white sauce or cheese sauce. Try red sauce or vegetables instead. In cereals, go for crispy rice, bran flakes, cooked grits or oatmeal. Reduced granola is better than simple granola.

Among meats, go for white meats and lean muscle meat portions when you have to take red meat. Egg whites have lower calories than whole eggs. In fats, go for the unsaturated kind found in olives, avocadoes, diet margarine, etc.

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