What is a Calorie Anyway? A Simple Definition

According to a study done in 2004 by Booth Research Services, Inc., one third of all adults in the United States consider themselves to be on a diet. That's a big number.

A dieter's focus is usually on the number of calories they are taking into their body. Though the word calorie is thrown about quite often, how many people really understand what a calorie is?

According to Google, one calorie equals 4.18400 joules. That's really not a big help. If you look up the word joule in Wikipedia on the Internet, you get the following explanation: "1 joule is the absolute minimum amount of energy required (on the surface of Earth) to lift a one kilogram object up by a height of 10 centimeters."

That explanation makes a little sense, but it's still a bit confusing. A simpler definition is that a calorie is the amount of energy required to warm one gram of water one degree Celsius. Though this still isn't a clear definition, it's a little easier to understand.

Calories by the very simplest definition are units of energy. Every food has a number of calories. If a serving of Jell-O has 80 calories, it contains enough energy to raise the temperature of water by one degree Celsius 80 times.

Your body uses calories for energy. The truth about dieting is simple. If you burn more calories than you take in, you will then have to burn calories you have stored in your body. These calories are stored as fat and are considered energy in reserve. Once you start burning your reserve calories, you being to lose weight.

How do you get rid of those pesky fat calories? You must exercise. The great thing about exercise is that everything you do is a form of exercise. Even the simple act of breathing burns calories. Walking up the steps, doing the dishes and loading the dryer all burn calories.

These are usually not enough though. Our lives have become easier in recent decades. We have machines to do everything for us. We have a machine to answer the phone, one to wash dishes, and one to help dry our clothes. Escalators move us from one floor to another and cars eliminate a lot of the walking in our lives.

A simple answer would be to park in the back of the lot and walk to the store, or skip the car completely, but that's not always an answer. Most of our modern conveniences have come about because we are busier than we have ever been. If you are racing to the store for something you forgot right before dinner, you may not have the time to walk that extra length.

If you really want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to squeeze exercise into your day. When you make exercise a priority, you will magically find time to do it. Get up a little earlier each day or walk on your lunch break. The more you do, the more of those pesky calories you burn.

What many dieters find discouraging are the charts that explain how many calories you may burn doing a certain type of exercise. If you weight 125 pounds, you may burn off 95 calories in 10 minutes doing aerobics. If you weight 200 pounds, that number goes up to around 150 calories. Considering you may be eating 1500-2000 calories a day, it may seem impossible to burn off those calories.

Exercise raises your metabolism as it burns calories. Metabolism is the rate of speed your body will turn your calories into energy. One session of exercise a day will help keep your metabolism rate up, so you burn off more calories no matter what you are doing. Exercise helps burn off more than just the number calories that chart is showing you.

Understanding what a calorie is may help you make better food choices if you are trying to lose weight. If you keep track of these calories, you can better see what you are taking into your body and what you are burning off. Imagining the amount of work it may take to burn off that 500 calorie brown sundae may help you to say, "No thanks!"