tinyurl.com

tinyurl.com — People put on weight when they take in more calories than they burn. If you think of food as fuel, the energy content of the fuel is measured in calories. A slice of bread, for example, has about 100 food calories. If you were to add up all the calories you consumed in a day — breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks — that’s your energy input. Your body uses this energy for everything from breathing to moving around. Everyone is different, but over the course of a day, an “average” man expends something like 1800 calories and an “average” woman around 1500 calories. Jon Palfreman is the producer of “Diet Wars.” It turns out that even a slight energy imbalance will, over time, have consequences. Eating only 50 calories a day more than you burn will over time translate into about one pound a year, or 30 pounds over three decades. – Is it fair to blame low fat-dietary advice (such as that contained in the USDA food pyramid) for the obesity crisis? No. While the percentage of fat in the American diet dropped from 40 percent in 1990 to around 34 percent today, the absolute amount of fat actually increased. The true explanation for the obesity epidemic is much simpler: Americans are eating more total calories. In the 1990s, the bulk of those additional calories came from carbs — mostly refined starches and sugary drinks. – How do diets work? All diets work by restricting calories. Since simply telling people to eat smaller portions doesn’t sell books, most …