Despite all the diet strategies out there, weight management still comes down to the calories you take in versus those you burn off. Fad diets may promise you that avoiding carbs or eating a mountain of grapefruit is the secret to weight loss, but it's really all about calories.

Calories: Fuel for your body

Calories are the energy in food. Your body has a constant demand for energy and uses the calories from food to keep functioning. Energy from calories fuels your every action, from fidgeting to marathon running.

Carbohydrates, fats and proteins are the types of nutrients that contain calories and are the main energy sources for your body. The amount of energy in each varies. Proteins and carbohydrates have about 4 calories a gram, and fats have about 9 calories a gram. Alcohol also is a source of calories, providing about 7 calories a gram.

Regardless of where they come from, the calories you eat are either converted to physical energy or stored within your body as fat. These stored calories will remain in your body as fat unless you use them up, either by reducing calorie intake so that your body must draw on reserves for energy, or by increasing physical activity so that you burn more calories.

Tipping the scale: Cutting calories

Your weight is a balancing act, but the equation is simple: If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight.

Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound. So if you cut 500 calories from your typical diet each day, you'd lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories). It isn't quite this simple, however, and you usually lose a combination of fat, lean tissue and water. Also, because of changes that occur in the body as a result of weight loss, you may need to decrease calories further to continue weight loss or even increase if you have very high activity level.

Cutting calories

• Cutting calories doesn't have to be difficult. In fact, it can be as simple as:
• Skipping high-calorie, low-nutrition items
• Swapping high-calorie foods for lower calorie options

Reducing portion sizes

Try these tips to control portion sizes and cut calories:

• Start small. At the beginning of a meal, take slightly less than what you think you'll eat. You can have seconds later if you're truly still hungry.
• Eat from plates, not packages. Eating directly from a container gives you no sense of how much you're eating. Seeing food on a plate or in a bowl keeps you aware of how much you're eating. Consider using a smaller plate or bowl.
• Check food labels. Be sure to check the Nutrition Facts panel and other nutrient information for the serving size and number of calories a serving. You may find that the small bag of chips you eat with lunch every day, for example, is two servings not one, which means you're eating double the calories listed on the label.
• Use a calorie counter. Check out reputable resources that offer tools to count calories, such as websites or smartphone applications. A good one to try is the www.caloriecount.about.com OR http://www.myfitnesspal.com/recipe/calculator .

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Stay Healthy!!!!!

Love,
The Delaterre Team.

Article was culled from the "www.mayoclinic.com"