Debunking the Myth: Not All Calories are Equal

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Have you ever heard the phrase, "A calorie is a calorie?" I know I have, from friends and family to people like doctors and nutritionists. I'm here to tell you that they are dead wrong. Not only that, I'll tell you about a simple experiment you can do yourself to prove that they're wrong. Ready?

It was once commonly believed that all calories were essentially the same, and that controlling your weight was simply a matter of keeping the total number of calories in the right range. Many people still do believe this, even though it is clearly false.

The amount of calories in a serving of food tell you how much energy that serving can produce when you eat it. So at that level, it is true that all calories are the same. But that's a very simplistic view of the situation. Different kinds of food have wildly different effects on your body, even if you eat the same number of calories of each. …show more content…

So eating 100 calories worth of steak (protein) will have a different effect on your body than 100 calories worth of white bread (simple carbohydrate) will. And eating 100 calories of whole-grain bread (complex carbohydrate) will affect your body differently than the white bread too. 100 calories worth of salad dressing (fat) will have yet a different effect.

Clearly, when it comes to how they affect your body, not all calories are the same. Simple calorie counting accomplishes little if you don't control the types of calories you are consuming. Still don't believe me? Here's that experiment I was telling you about:

To prove to yourself that not all calories are the same when it comes to how they affect the human body, imagine this. Please don't actually try this experiment. You'll see why in a minute. Just think it through for

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