Your body can store a very limited amount of sugar, maybe a few hundred calories. Anything left after that has to get stored as fat. And your body can store virtually unlimited amounts of fat.

Scientists have measured the number of calories in a pound of fat. There are 3500 calories in one pound of fat. So if you take in 3500 calories more than you use, you will gain one pound of fat. It doesn’t matter where the calories come from, whether protein or fat or carbohydrate, those 3500 extra calories will be turned into one pound of fat.

So beware of diets which claim that calories don’t count. Or that claim that you can eat all you want of certain types of food, and that if you avoid other types of food you cannot get fat. That just defies the laws of physics. It is just not true, and the people that claim that are either fooling themselves or trying to fool you. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, whether it is fat or protein or carbohydrate.

Take in fewer calories than you use, and you will lose weight. Take in more than you use and you will gain weight. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to count calories. You don’t have to count calories, but somehow you have to come into proper balance.

Diets that don’t count calories accomplish the same goal somehow. Whether you use a point system, eat prepackaged meals, measure food by the ounce or gram, or control portion sizes, the effect is the same. Somehow you must take in less than your body uses and you lose weight. If you do not take in less than your body uses you will not lose weight.

If you are 20 pounds overweight you have eaten 70,000 calories more than you needed, and you stored it as fat. If you are 50 pounds overweight you ate 175,000 calories more than you needed. Fifty pounds is equivalent to 1,166 cans of soda, and now you are carrying it around with you. Think about that the next time you reach for a sugary snack.

There is really no magic to eating one type of food over another. Many scientific studies have proven that the weight loss from low carbohydrate diets is due to calorie restriction and not from the amount of fat or carbohydrate. While you should avoid excessive sugary snacks, you also need complex carbohydrates as part of a healthy diet.

It is very hard to lose weight and keep it off if you do not know what is in the food that you eat. The more you understand about food and what it is made of the easier it will be for you to lose weight and keep it off.

Whether you count them or not, calories are the key to permanent weight loss. Food is made of protein and carbohydrate and fat, and these have calories. Knowing this and using it can be your key to finally taking off that extra weight and keeping it off forever.

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