Home | Fitness | Weight Loss
If a calorie falls into your mouth, does it make a difference? A bite of a mini candy bar here, and a taste there of a sample at the grocery store may not seem like much when you are eating, but do it enough and it adds up. You want to be careful not to taste test your way to weight gain, and consuming enough "empty" calories can contribute to that. Contrary to the term, an empty calorie does not refer to a food that is low in calories, but a caloric food with very little nutritional value. For example, a breakfast fruit bar and a candy bar may have the same number of calories, but where the fruit bar contains fiber and some vitamins and minerals essential to good nutrition, the candy bar may be completely sugar. You could consume one or the other for the same amount of calories to burn, but in the end which is healthier for you? Which food will provide you with more energy and health benefits throughout the day? Which food will be processed better to feed your body valuable nutrients, and which food will be processed immediately into fat? Some calories may be empty, but be assured they can be full of trouble. Foods high in empty calories may include some daily staple, but often they are classified as "junk" foods: Candy - Chocolate bars, hard candies, mints and gums Soft drinks - Sodas, flavored drinks with a low percentage of juice as opposed to sugar content White bread - Made with white flour, this starchy food has to be fortified to give the appearance of a healthy food White rice - High in starch and natural sugars Olios - Margarine, butter, shortening, and other spreads Alcohol - Beer, wine, and hard liquors Fast foods - Staples like hot dogs and burgers, French fries, fried chicken and other foods traditionally fried in fattening oils and olios For a proper, nutritious diet, foods such as the ones listed above should be avoided or severely limited. To improve eating habits and consume calories that will prove beneficial to your body, make thoughtful replacements. For a sweet snack, enjoy some fruit instead of candy. Try a whole grain bread for your sandwich, long grain rice or a green vegetable as a side instead of white rice, and water instead of soda. But what about spreads for your toast? Most jams and jellies could be considered empty calories as well for their high sugar contents. If you must have a spread, check labels to see what you are eating. A homemade apple butter may have more nutritional value than the squeezable bottle of grape jelly. Such substitutions add up in the long run, and you just may find that as the empty calories go away, so will the fat.
Information and Articles: http://www.mastersmba.com
Providing Information on various topics, please browse our other Articles for more informative resources, we house information on every topic imaginable so regardless of your needs you can be assured to find the answer here. If you wish to reprint this on your own website, simply click the "Web Version" in the right menu, and you are presented with a pre-formatted document to use.
A lot of the information is written by the Master Article team, and published exclusively on the MastersMBA.com website, and we do our best to research all information to ensure it's as accurate as possible. However at times we also publish documents given to us by other sources, we do examine these documents to ensure they are as accurate and correct as possible however at times they discuss highly specialized fields making it hard to authenticate the validity of every fact in the document. These are written by specialists in their respective fields, and we do trust their integrity and judgment however it's always a good idea when doing any research to consult a number of sources and form your own conclusion based on a number of view points.
