What is a Calorie and what does it have to do with gaining fat?

Question

You always hear health people saying to watch your calories or look how many calories this has and stuff like that. Also stuff like when exercising you have to burn so and so calories. What is a calorie? Is it a sugar or a fat? does it turn into fat? are calories bad for you? aren't calories what gives you strength and energy? what do you know about calories?

Answer 1

One calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of water one degree Celsius.

You body uses calories to exert energy, the more energy that is exerted the more energy is burned, when you intake excess calories than your body needs, they turn into fat.

From Wikipedia:

Fat contains about 4,000 kilocalories per pound (37 MJ/kg).

    * If you eat 4,000 kcal more than your body needs, you will put on 0.3 lb (0.14 kg) of fat (assuming 30% digestion efficiency, or less depending on food conversion inefficiency not included in the "body needs" category).

    * If you burn 4,000 kcal more than you eat, you will lose about 1 lb (0.45 kg) of fat (this is close to 100% since even the waste heat counts toward the 4,000 kcal).

Answer 2

hmmm

Answer 3

A calorie is a unit of measurement of the amount of energy that you get from the food that you eat.  If the number of calories that you eat each day is equal to the number of calories that your body burns each day your weight will stay the same.  If you eat a lot of food, and therefore a lot of calories, and you don't burn them off you will gain weight.  Calories themselves aren't good or bad, the sources of them are (eating a healthy meal vs. eating a fried super value meal from a fast food restaurant).  I hope this helps!