Calories, fat, carbs UGH!!!

[carleyjt]

I want to know what i should be controlling to lose weight. I have restricted my intake to 30grams or less of fat a day but a lot of items have sugar and calories but no fat so where does this fit in? Does anyone know where i can find out how many calories i should be taking in for my weight and height? Also how are kilajoules converted to calories or vice a versa? Any help would be great, thanx

[Groovychic]

Hi Carleyjt. Even if something has minimal fat it normally has sugar to make it taste great. Sugar is then converted to fat! So you will find the calories or kilojoules are still fairly high in the product. The thing to do when considering buying that product is to look at the nutrition label and see how many cal/kj are in that product compared to another product that you think may be better. I was checking out the bread the other day and the kj difference between white and multigrain was not that much difference. I found the Burgen bread was the lowest in kjs so purchased that one. Try to go for diet products as these have less sugar than other products.....such as yogurt, soft drink etc. And the more food you eat that you have made yourself the better. You are controlling how much fat/oil/sugar you use when you cook. So try to eat as much unprocessed food as possible. I usually make a large tossed salad for lunch most days and it is great. Lots of vegies and a few pieces of fruit each day. Nuts are great as a snack on the run. Just grab a handful. My mother has a small tub in the car as she drives a lot for her work and sometimes you just need a quick nibble to get you thru until lunch time etc. So just check the labels when purchasing items. There is normally going to be something in the line that you are purchasing that is lower in cal/kjs.

[Butterfly_Dawn]

I'm not really an expert on this, I barely understand it well enough to be happy about what I am doing, but what i have done is to change the ratio of fresh or whole foods to processed foods and got to know precisely how much fat is in the things I was eating. I have also cut down on sugar and highly processed white foods as far as I can as this is the type of simple high GI carbohydrate that needs to be either immediately used or ends up on my bum.

When choosing foods (say canned foods or yoghurt etc) I'll pick based on calories because I think that already has all the fat and carbohydrate accounted for and gives me a standard to compare by. Not quite sure what the diff is between calories and kilojules. I may have everything ass about, but I'm sure someone will correct me if I have. And I try to buy as close to natural as possible (eg fat free natural yoghurt with no flavours etc)

[carleyjt]

Thanx for trying to help. I just found a website that explains based on my stats how many calories, fat, protein and carbs i should have each day. I just have to now find calorie content in fresh food and veges (most other things have it written on it) and find out what excercise burns how many calories Wish me luck!

[Butterfly_Dawn]

The home page of this stite has links to both calories and other nutritional info in food and also thre is a table somewhere on here showing how many calories you burn in each exercise.
Here's the links

http://www.weightloss.com.au/food-tables.html
http://www.weightloss.com.au/weight-los ... charts.htm

[Angel]

Carleyjt,

This should help you.

http://www.calorieking.com.au/

You could also buy Allan Borushek's Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter book, it's $9 and can be found in newsagency and book shops - its a tiny book that you could carry around in your hand bag.

Good luck