The best way to understand food is as fuel for your body, which functions as a machine. If you don’t have enough fuel in your machine to get you through the activities of the day, you get hungry. Your body tells you that you need food. However, if you put too much fuel into the machine, it gets stored for later use. Your body is smart enough to convert the excess into fuel for later, but the problem is that your body converts this excess food into fat. It’s trying to help you to survive, but you end up overweight and unhealthy. You need to get the balance between fuel intake (food) and burning (exercise) correct, so that your body functions as well as it can.

 

You may have heard health experts talk about calorie consumption. A calorie is a unit of energy that your body uses as fuel to get through the day. Every day, whether you are awake, sleeping, walking, running, or even eating, your body is burning up energy. The thing is that many unhealthy, popular foods are very high in calories, and your body doesn’t get a chance to burn all this energy off. SO you end up taking in significantly more fuel than you can burn fat faster, and you end up gaining wait. The average person requires between 1800 and 2400 calories per day. If you want to lose weight at a rate of approximately 1kg per week, you need to cut your daily calorie intake by about 500 a day.

 

It seems logical that if you have to drop your calorie intake, then you can simply eat less, but this isn’t the case. You have to eat foods that keep you feeling full, and release energy slowly throughout the day so that you always have just enough fuel to get you through the day. Foods that are high in sugars and carbohydrates give you energy immediately, so your body feels full when you eat, but the machine burns it quickly and you need to refuel again soon. In this manner you end up taking in extra calories. You need a healthy diet with foods that release energy all day, and leave you feeling full all the time. The rate at which your body burns up food is called the foods’ glyceamic index. The lower, the better. Aim at foods that are low on the glyceamic index, and you will lose weight, feel full, and always have the energy you need.

 

This guest post was written by freelance writer Victoria. She is currently learning about small business website builder