The 411 on Calories How much do we need?

The 411 on Calories

Find out how many calories you need to keep your body fueled and fit.

By Krisha McCoy, MS

Medically reviewed by Niya Jones, MD, MPH

If you're interested in nutrition or weight loss, you no doubt pay a lot of attention to calories. But do you know what exactly calories are, and how many you really need?

Calories: The Good, the Bad, and the Empty

There is really no such thing as "good" or "bad" calories. "Your body processes each calorie the same," says Kimberly Lummus, MS, RD, Texas Dietetic Association media representative and public relations coordinator for the Austin Dietetic Association in Austin, Texas. But Lummus adds that some foods are far more nutritious than others. "We strive to make our calories the most nutrient-dense that we can, meaning that we are packing in a lot of nutrition for a very small amount of calories. You are optimizing your calorie budget, so to speak."

While calories get a negative rap when it comes to weight control, calories are actually an important source of fuel you cannot live without. "Your body needs calories for energy," says Lummus. Calories are the force behind everything we do, including eating, sleeping, and breathing.

"Calories are how much energy your body gets from the food and beverages that it consumes," says Lummus. Most food sources are composed of some combination of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, and each of these nutrients contains calories. Yet it's important to stay away from "empty" calories in foods like sweets and soda, warns Lummus.

Calories: Finding Your Magic Number You must find the right balance of calories every day, depending on your overall goals. "Eating too many calories and not burning enough through physical activities would yield a weight gain, while not eating enough calories [to keep up with your calorie burn] would yield a weight loss," says Lummus.

The number of calories a person needs depends on many individual factors, including age, weight, height, and activity level. When dieticians counsel clients on calorie needs, they take all of these facts into consideration and come up with a suggestion for how many calories are needed to maintain, lose, or gain weight.

In general, men need between 2,000 to 2,400 calories and woman between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day. Consuming less than 1,200 calories per day can be harmful to your health, notes Lummus, since it may trigger your body to go into starvation mode, causing your body to actually hold onto calories.

Teenagers' caloric needs can vary considerably. For example, teenage boys may require up to 3,000 calories per day, while teenage girls usually need around 2,200 calories each day. "For children, calorie needs are going to change a lot more because they are growing so rapidly," Lummus continues. She says that infants 5 to 12 months of age need around 850 calories daily, 1- to 3-year-olds need roughly 1,300 calories daily, 4- to 6-year-olds need about 1,800 calories daily, and 7- to 10-year-olds require 2,000 calories daily.

"Counting calories is usually not necessary for children," says Lummus. "You just want to make sure that your child is getting all of the requirements from all of the food groups."

Both children and adults should get the bulk of their calories from a variety of healthful foods, including low-fat or fat-free dairy products, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein sources — the building blocks of a nutritious diet.

Breakfast for Kids Can Be Healthy and Fast

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Breakfast for Kids Can Be Healthy and Fast

Breakfast is the most important meal for kids. Get tips for making quick, healthy morning meals.

By Diana Rodriguez

Medically reviewed by Cynthia Haines, MD

Want to know a simple way to help your children do better in school? Feed them healthy meals, especially in the morning.

Kids and Breakfast: Food for Thought

"Children need breakfast everyday for a variety of reasons," says Roberta Anding, a registered dietitian at the Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. "Actively growing children need food at regular intervals to fuel their bodies and brains. Skipping breakfast gives as much as a 10- to 12-hour time frame with no food, and the potential for compromised school performance and irritability."

In addition, "for children who eat breakfast, there is better regulation of body weight," says Anding. Other benefits:

Eating breakfast increases the chances of an overall healthier diet.

Kids who start the day with a healthy meal are more likely to play sports and be more physically active.

Eating breakfast improves a child's ability to concentrate and perform in school.

Healthy Breakfast Ideas for Kids

Avoid giving children sweet foods for breakfast, like doughnuts or cereals high in sugar, because after the sugar high wears off, they are likely to get tired. "Healthy options include whole grain, low-sugar cereal with low-fat milk and fresh fruit, or a yogurt berry parfait with granola," says Anding. Or, you might offer your child a whole-grain English muffin with peanut butter or jelly and a glass of low-fat milk.

Other healthy meals for kids:

Scrambled eggs, toast with a little bit of butter, turkey bacon or sausage, and a side of fresh fruit.

Whole-grain bagel and cream cheese with a side of strawberries.

Low-fat cheese toast with a side of cantaloupe and blueberries.

Get creative, adds Anding, who recommends offering a breakfast burrito with scrambled egg and grated low-fat cheese and fresh fruit.

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"If time is a factor, make breakfast portable," she continues. "Try sandwiches, like peanut butter and jelly or ham and cheese leftover from dinner. Dry cereal in a sandwich baggie and a 100 percent real-juice juice box can make breakfast stress-free."

Planning breakfast the night before can also save you time. "This will allow you to plan ahead and know how much time you need in the morning," says Arlene Kaufman, a busy working mother and director of Temple Trager Preschool in Louisville, Ky. "That way everyone isn't saying: 'I don't know what I want,' or asking for something you don't have."

Healthy meals for kids don't have to be hard or time-consuming — or even homemade. There are plenty of prepared healthy breakfast foods that can go in the microwave. Check the freezer section at your local grocery store for pre-made meals like whole-wheat bagels and cream cheese, pancakes, waffles, and frozen turkey sausage. Yogurt and fruit, along with a whole-wheat bagel, is also a quick and easy breakfast for kids.

And, if you’re in a hurry like most families in the morning, Kaufman says, "grab a banana and Nutrigrain bar to eat in the car — it's still healthy, even though it's on the go!"

How to Reduce High Cholesterol With Exercise

The right exercise regimen can help you reduce high cholesterol, lose weight, and improve heart health.

By Diana Rodriguez

Medically reviewed by Pat F. Bass III, MD, MPH

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Exercise has a number of benefits for your entire body, especially your heart. If you have high cholesterol, one good way to manage it is through a comprehensive, consistent exercise program that will help you lose weight and lower your cholesterol level.

Exercise: Helping Reduce High Cholesterol

Exercise can help to lower LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, raise HDL, or "good" cholesterol, and reduce heart disease risk by:

• Burning calories to aid weight loss
• Controlling diabetes
• Reducing high blood pressure
• Raising your heart rate
• Increasing your breathing rate and getting more oxygen to your body

Exercise: The Best Choices

All exercise is good for you and will improve your health, even just working in your yard, dancing in your living room, and cleaning your house. As far as a fitness routine goes, a solid program that incorporates both cardiovascular exercise (the kind that gets your heart rate going) and strengthening exercises offers many benefits. If you're overweight and have high cholesterol, you can bring your weight down through good cardio exercise.

Try these exercise options to help shed pounds and manage high cholesterol:

• Walking
• Jogging or running
• Swimming
• Taking an aerobics class
• Biking
• Playing tennis, basketball, or other sports
• Using weight machines or lifting free weights to build muscle tone

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Exercise: Intensity, Duration, and Frequency

To truly lose weight and lower cholesterol, cardiovascular exercise is what's most important because it gets your heart rate up and burns the most calories. To get the most benefit out of exercise, be sure to:

• Start out slowly. If you're overweight and out of shape, this is especially important when you begin your exercise program. You want to strengthen your heart, not overextend it.
• Gradually increase the intensity and length of your workouts. To start a walking program, for instance, try going for a medium-paced walk, about 20 minutes long, about four days a week. Each week start pushing yourself a little more — walk a little longer and a little faster, and add an extra day. Eventually, you want to be walking for about an hour on almost every day of the week. You can challenge yourself more by doing some light jogging on your walk, or pushing yourself to walk up some big hills.
• Don't let weather be an excuse. Outdoor exercise is enjoyable, but you can't let rain, heat, or snow keep you from exercising. Join a gym or consider investing in some home gym equipment. A treadmill is a great choice if you like to walk or run. Elliptical machines, stationary bikes, and rowing machines are all great calorie-burning cardio exercise machines that can help keep you on track and consistent in your workouts.
• Keep it interesting. For exercise to be an effective treatment for high cholesterol, you have to stick with your program. If you’re the kind of person who gets bored easily, alternate between sports, outdoor activities, gym work on machines, and classes.
• Don’t overdo it. Remember that improving health and fitness with an exercise program should be a gradual change. It takes time for your body to be fit enough to keep up with strenuous exercise, and you're likely to be sore, burned out, and frustrated if you push yourself too fast. It's just too hard on your body to work at a level you’re not prepared for. So while it's great to be enthusiastic about losing weight, be smart and slow about it. Don't run five miles your first time out; build up to that pace. This approach will pay off with greater dividends in the long run.

A fitness routine at a health club or at home is a good way to track your progress and help control high cholesterol, but remember that every bit of extra activity helps. Being a more active person who parks farther away from the entrance of your workplace or the shopping mall, who takes the stairs instead of the elevator, and who chooses to go for a walk instead of watch TV makes it easier to shed pounds along with unhealthy high cholesterol.

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10 Foods You Should Eat

By Steve Edwards

We've all heard about superfoods—consumables with mystical powers to cure whatever it is that ails you that will help you live forever. This list will be different. Today, we'll look at some common items that should be on your menu, even though you probably haven't heard them touted as the next great miracle cure. In fact, some of these you probably thought were bad for you.

I begin this list with a caveat; we're all different. One person's superfood is another's trip to the emergency room (soy comes to mind here). There are some nutritional factors we all share, such as the need to eat a certain amount of calories that come from fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to keep our bodies functioning as they should. Beyond this, our exact dietary needs begin to diverge.

There are some obvious reasons for this. Lifestyle and activity level are pretty easy to understand. That someone who is pregnant or training for an Ironman^® needs more calories than a computer programmer who sits for 14 hours a day isn't difficult to fathom. Neither is the fact that a 90-pound ballerina uses less fuel than a 350-pound lineman. That we all eat a different number of calories and a different percentage of fats, proteins, and especially carbs is obvious, or at least should be, since the bigger you are and the harder you work, the more fuel your body needs to recharge itself.

What's more subtle are body type differences. These can be difficult to understand, and many people never figure them out. Blood type, heredity, and other factors come into play and make each of us unique individuals. When it comes to eating, most of us spend a fair portion of our lives figuring out just what we should be eating to maximize our life experience (which doesn't necessarily mean we choose the healthiest options). For this reason, there is no true "superfood." There are, however, helpful foods that are specific to each of us. By experimenting with our diets, we will all find a course of eating that makes us feel better than anything else.

To help you begin your self-experiment, here's a list of common foods that you'll want to try. Most of these are very healthy for almost everyone, even though some have been vilified by society. This doesn't mean that they'll transform you into an epitome of health, but they're certainly worth a try.

1. Peanut butter. I'm leading with this because I'm fairly certain peanut butter single-handedly kept me from getting chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) during the no-fat 1990s. In the early 1990s, the average amount of fat in our daily diets plummeted while the incidence of CFS skyrocketed (CFS is the colloquial veil for debilitating disorders marked by chronic mental and physical exhaustion.). This was particularly true among the otherwise healthy endurance sports sect. In the early 1990s, my body fat was once recorded at 2 percent. Sure, I was ripped. Healthy? Not so much. I'm pretty sure that only my adherence to peanut butter as a healthy fat source kept my athletic obsession intact.

   A bevy of modern studies now vindicates my opinion with science. Peanuts are high in both fat and calories, but their fat has been associated with decreased total cholesterol and lower LDL and triglyceride levels. It's also high on the satiation meter, meaning that a little can fill you up.

2. Cabbage. Every Asian culture, as well as European, eats more cabbage than we do, and it's time we thought about it more often than when we happen to splurge on P.F. Chang's^®. Cabbage is absurdly low in calories and very high in nutrients. Among these is sulforaphane, which a Stanford University study showed as boosting cancer-fighting enzymes more than any other plant chemical.
3. Quinoa. This "grain" isn't technically a grain at all. It just tastes like one. It's actually a relative of spinach, beets, and Swiss chard. All of these are extremely healthy from a nutrient point of view, but quinoa is the only one that can fool you into thinking you're eating a starch. It's high in protein, minerals, vitamins, and fiber.
4. Spelt. This one is actually a grain, but its origin is slightly mysterious. Some claim it comes from wheat while others say it's a different species. Regardless, it has a high nutritional profile and can be eaten by many people with gluten intolerance, making it a good alternative to wheat products. Spelt can be found in many products, but as it's still considered a "health food," it's off the major processing radar. Unlike wheat, if spelt is on the ingredients list, it's probably good for you.
5. Walnuts. All nuts, really, but walnuts seem to be the king of the nut family. Used in Chinese medicine for centuries, walnuts are becoming more associated with Western health than ever before. A 2006 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that eating walnuts after a meal high in bad fat could reduce the damaging effects of the meal.
6. Avocado. Another villain in the old no-fat movement, avocados are now thought to be one of the healthiest fat sources available. Beyond this, they have very high amounts of cancer-fighting antioxidants, and recent research seems to indicate that avocados' phytonutrients may also help with the absorption of nutrients from other sources.
7. Mushrooms. The more we learn about phytonutrients—those that come in a small enough quantity to be missed on a food label (this is a layman's definition only)—the more we should admire ancient cultures. These culinary delights have been feuded over for decades until, for some reason, we'd decided they were pretty much empty calories. The study of phytonutrients has taught us that warring over fungi may have held some rationale after all. Mushrooms are loaded with antioxidants and are thought to boost the immune system, help ward off some cancers, and have high amounts of potassium. Furthermore, researchers at Penn State University have found that mushrooms may be the only food to contain an antioxidant called L-ergothioneine.
8. Tea. Despite a ton of positive press over the last, oh, century, tea and coffee are still the devil's brew in some circles. Perhaps even worse is how many coffee and tea restaurants have bastardized these natural brews into sugar- and fat-filled dessert items. Both tea and coffee, in their basic states, have no calories and many healthy benefits. Between the two, coffee is arguably more popular, most likely due to its higher caffeine content. But tea is probably healthier. Both have a high amount of antioxidants but stats on tea are almost off the charts. A recent study on calcium supplementation in elderly women, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that bone mineral density at the hip was 2.8 percent greater in tea drinkers than in non-tea drinkers.
9. Cinnamon. Maybe the novel Dune was more prescient than we've given it credit for. After all, the plot revolves around an entire solar system at war over a cinnamon-like spice. Nowadays, we think of this as little but the flavoring in a 1,100-calorie gut bomb we find at the mall. But Frank Herbert knew a thing or two about history, and cinnamon has long been the prized possession of the spice world. It has a host of benefits, but perhaps none more important than this one: USDA researchers recently found that people with type 2 diabetes who consumed one gram of cinnamon a day for 6 weeks significantly reduced their blood sugar, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol. "He who controls the spice controls the universe!"
10. Natto. This is on the list because, for one, it's one of the few foods I've eaten that I truly don't like. But mainly, it's here because we've really messed up the way we eat soy. Natto is fermented soybeans and very popular in Japan, which is where I had it. It's becoming more popular here, and this is most likely due to its health benefits. Nearly all the soy options we're offered in the U.S. are non-fermented. The list of health benefits of fermented soy is a mile long. It's associated with reducing the risk of cancer, minimizing the likelihood of blood clotting, aiding digestion, increasing blood circulation, an improved immune system, improving bone density, lessening the likelihood of heart attacks, more vibrant skin, and reducing the chance of balding. It also has strong antibiotic properties, among other things. So you might want to ditch the soy crisps, soy ice cream, and your iced soy mochas, and add some natto to your diet.