{"id":19034,"date":"2020-11-26T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=19034"},"modified":"2020-12-09T10:09:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:09:46","slug":"understanding-calories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Calories: Irrelevant for Body Recomp?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What are calories? Why is understanding calories important and how does the <em>4-Hour Body <\/em>help? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Calories are often a focus for people who are dieting, but they may not be as important as you think for changing your body. Understanding calories is one of the preliminary steps to body recomposition in <em>The 4-Hour Body<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more about understanding calories and what that means for body recomposition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Understanding Calories<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The calorie was invented by Wilbur Olin Atwater in the nineteenth century. He measured calories by incinerating food. However, humans don\u2019t incinerate food when they eat; digestion is a far more complicated chemical process. (For example, eating a piece of firewood isn\u2019t going to release the same amount of energy into your body that would be released into the air if the log were burned.) As a result, <strong>the calorie isn\u2019t a particularly useful measure when it comes to body recomposition<\/strong> because it&#8217;s not an accurate measure of how much energy you\u2019re actually getting from digesting food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore, when understanding calories and your intake and outtake of them, it\u2019s important to keep the following in mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Anything you ingest needs to make it to your bloodstream to have an effect.<\/strong> If it goes through your body without being absorbed, your body doesn\u2019t change in any way. (Shortform note: Today\u2019s food calorie calculations are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcgill.ca\/oss\/article\/nutrition\/how-caloric-value-food-determined#:~:text=A%20food%20calorie%20is%20actually,was%20measured%20in%20a%20calorimeter.\">adjusted for absorption<\/a>.)<\/li><li><strong>The body responds differently to calories from fat, protein, and carbohydrates<\/strong>\u2014each produces a different hormonal response. For example, in a study of people on semistarvation diets:<ul><li>The people who ate 90% fat lost 0.9 pounds a day.<\/li><li>The people who ate 90% protein lost 0.6 pounds a day.<\/li><li>The people who ate 90% carbohydrates lost 0.24 pounds a day.<\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><strong>Exercise isn\u2019t the only (or best) way to burn calories<\/strong>. It\u2019s only the most commonly cited because it&#8217;s easy to measure and scientists, under pressure to constantly publish, choose easier studies, and then to justify them, inflate their importance. Drugs and changes in body temperature also burn calories.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What are calories? Why is understanding calories important and how does the 4-Hour Body help? Calories are often a focus for people who are dieting, but they may not be as important as you think for changing your body. Understanding calories is one of the preliminary steps to body recomposition in The 4-Hour Body. Read more about understanding calories and what that means for body recomposition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10726,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,160],"tags":[159],"class_list":["post-19034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-science","tag-the-4-hour-body","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Understanding Calories: Irrelevant for Body Recomp? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What is a calorie and does it even matter? Understanding calories and their impact on your body is important in The 4-Hour Body. See how.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Understanding Calories: Irrelevant for Body Recomp?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What is a calorie and does it even matter? Understanding calories and their impact on your body is important in The 4-Hour Body. See how.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-11-26T05:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-12-09T14:09:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/influence-reciprocity-principle-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rina Shah\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rina Shah\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Rina Shah\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d07435826f13a8f422d5d333dceac287\"},\"headline\":\"Understanding Calories: Irrelevant for Body Recomp?\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-11-26T05:01:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-12-09T14:09:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/\"},\"wordCount\":343,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/influence-reciprocity-principle-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The 4-Hour Body\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Health\",\"Science\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/\",\"name\":\"Understanding Calories: Irrelevant for Body Recomp? - Shortform Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/understanding-calories\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/influence-reciprocity-principle-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-11-26T05:01:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-12-09T14:09:46+00:00\",\"description\":\"What is a calorie and does it even matter? 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