CICO Diet: Count Your Calories To Lose Your Kilos

Category: Health

Fitmist If you were looking for ways to keep your weight intact, you must have come across the idea of the CICO diet. This is quite an interesting diet as it allows to have optimal amounts of food and without even gaining any weight. What is the CICO diet? The CICO diet plan stands for calorie in calorie out. The idea or motive of this diet plan to maintain one’s stable weight. Here, the number of calories you eat should be equal to the number of calories you spend….Learn more The three main ways in which our body processes the calories are: 1. Basic metabolism Our body uses most of the calories that we get from eating food, to carry on with basic body functions. To name one and most importantly, our heartbeat. This phase is medically referred to as our basal metabolic rate (BMR). 2. Digestion When we take in calories through food, we also need the energy to break that food. The energy is provided by calories. About 10 to 15 percent of the calories in-take is used as fuel by the body to digest food….Learn more Physical activity After the body has burned the calories for doing basic functioning, the leftover calories are used by the body for doing physical activities. Even simple activities such as reading, brushing or even walking. So, now you know why food is considered to be the human’s fuel. So, when the calories we gather from food match the calories we spend on doing the physical activities, digesting food, and basic metabolism, our weight remains stable. Thus, the idea of “calories in calories out” holds true. To lose weight, one needs to stay on a calorie deficit. How does CICO affect our health? CICO will indeed help you maintain a stable weight. But not all the calories are treated in the same way when it comes to health. This is because all our bodies are different, so it reacts to different food in various manners. 1. Hormones and our health How we achieve calories has different effects on our health and our hormones. Let’s expel glucose and fructose. Both simple sugars have different effects on our hormones. These both also provide the same number of calories per gram. But, how our body processes it is completely different. When the food you eat is high in fructose, it is linked to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance increases the blood sugar levels, thus resulting in raising amounts of triglycerides and the bad cholesterol “LDL”. The same would not happen if you take a diet rich in glucose, though both glucose and fructose are of the same calories….Learn more 2. The type of food will affect your appetite The nutrients that provide the meals you eat affect your feeling of fullness and your hunger. For example, when you eat a serving of rice that is 100 calories, it will reduce your hunger and give you a feeling of fullness. When you eat 100 calories of a chocolate bar, it would not have the same impact. The reason behind this is that when foods are rich in fiber or protein, they are more filling than the foods which have lower nutrients in them…Continue Reading