Tuesday and Calories in your food!

Today we looked at how many calories you need to complete different activities and how to calculate this. Why do we care about needed calories? What does this have to do with our question of the term? What keeps me alive and healthy?

 From your lab:

"You expend energy no matter what you're doing, even when sleeping. Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the number of calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day - a tempting idea for some of you.  The resting metabolic rate uses the variables of height, weight, age and gender.  This is more accurate than calculating calorie needs based on body weight alone. It omits lean body mass and the ratio of muscle-to-fat a body has.  Of course, you use more energy than your RMR so there are three primary components that make up your body's energy expenditure. Adding these three components together, resting metabolic rate, energy expended during physical activity, and the thermic effect of food is an accurate way of determining how many calories your body requires each day."

Here is the government website on what your 'plate' should look like:

Choosemyplate.gov

We also started looking how to read food labels. What do you need to look for? What is important to note? Here is another great site on how to look at labels and calories.

Homework for Thursday: Finish part D and F of your lab (check VC)