Counting calories is part of many people's daily lives today. These calculate and record these calories to the nearest gram of what was eaten during the day to meet the standards of restrictive diets. Calorie charts are available on the internet or in small books in any bookstore.

What is a calorie?

A calorie that would normally be called a kilocalorie is a unit of measurement of the energy value of food. They make it possible to calculate the energy provided by the consumption of such or such food.

A 100gr piece of dark chocolate is equivalent to 546 calories. Very easily then, you can estimate your 10 gram square of chocolate at 54.6 calories. Notice then how quickly the count can go up when you get too excited about doing these calculations.

A simple Google search "number of calories per day" allows us to find the total to reach whether you are a man or a woman. The daily needs of a woman are around 1500-2000 calories per day while those of a man can reach up to 3000 calories depending on his status. Unfortunately, these figures do not take into account a considerable number of parameters: age, health status, vitality level, probable diseases, etc.

Keeping track of the number of women in order not to exceed the quota is nowadays a very common attitude, it has become almost the norm and nobody is shocked anymore. However, for all those who want to lose weight intelligently, this technique is really the one to avoid at all costs. Indeed, calories are not everything, they correspond to nothing when we look a little further in the nutritional field.

Let's take the example of two different people's snacks

• The first will enjoy an apple, a square of dark chocolate and an unsweetened green tea.

1 apple contains 110 calories but also 29 grams of carbohydrates and a series of vitamins such as the B group, vitamins A, C and E and trace elements such as potassium, phosphorus, zinc, copper and manganese.

A square of dark chocolate contains more or less 55 calories but also magnesium, antioxidants, zinc, iron and a series of other minerals of interest for the body.

Unsweetened green tea contains no calories.

• The second will eat a small package of M&M's and a sugar-free soda.

Do you think you will find the same number of nutrients for a similar balance of calories? Of course not.... Industrial chocolate sweets are often rich in various sugars such as glucose syrup, starch, dextrin but also a lot of saturated fats that are harmful to your health. Add to this the food additives such as dyes, preservatives and the endless list of E... that are found in the list of ingredients and which, moreover, are obesogenic. Of course, don't expect to find any vitamins, minerals or trace elements in such a snack. In addition, soda - in addition to its acidifying nature - if sweetened with aspartame, can also have very negative consequences on your body and in particular the brain.

Nutritionally, this snack is not interesting at all. Let's also add that this type of meal will bring fast sugars into your bloodstream much too quickly, playing with your insulin and risking a new hunger in a short time.

So let's conclude that eating this way will promote your weight gain and lead you to an imbalance in terms of health.

What is absolutely important to understand today is that calories are not everything, they are absolutely not representative of what we really eat. Understand that the person who opts for the second snack is more likely to gain weight and become obese if he or she continues to choose this type of food that will not really nourish the body. These empty calories are very harmful in a search for body balance.