Hi everyone, first post here. I'm working on cleaning up my eating habits - as soon as I feel comfortable cooking for myself, minimizing snacking and drinking water I'll move onto some decent exercising.
It's my second day eating while counting calories; my base calorie requirements is somewhere around 2800, so I'm going off of 2300 at the moment. I've quickly realized that what I was eating, while it wasn't healthy, most likely sat somewhere around 2800 calories a day; I simply gained and lost a KG here and there and have been doing so for the last 7 or so months.
As soon as I started cooking for myself I've noticed I could be eating more than I thought I could - the food and veg is so low in calories that it feels like I could eat a mountain of the stuff to make up 700 calories for a meal. Is this normal? Should I be supplementing low energy meals with higher energy foods like sweet potato? Some ideas around this would be nice.
That got me thinking; if I hit, say, 1800 calories in a day and decide to eat a chocolate bar, what would the consequences be? I understand it would bump up my energy intake, however beyond that..? As far as I can logically think:
Calorie intake goes up a high amount for a relatively small amount of food.
Food isn't filling - won't help hungry feelings.
Adds to sugar addiction.
Spike of sugar intake results in the body storing it as fat (insulin flood) rather than simply burning it casually like other foods (??? maybe ???)
Beyond those things I'm not sure what else there is to consider. This isn't my justifying consuming said foods - I'd just like to understand what happens when I do consume things like that.
My other question was simple. I live in New Zealand - Metric city. What are Kilojules to Calories? Is it the same as centimeters to inches - both measure the same thing but in a different way? I read that a single calorie is about 4.1 (or .2) kilojoules. Is this because they measure the same thing and use different 'scales' or is there some more complicated stuff going on? Reason I ask is because it would be so, so much easier to log the serving size on a packet (which is in kilojules) - convert my 2300 calories to about 9600 kilojoules and do the adding from there. Advice?
Thanks guys. This forum is gansta af
