Calorie Guide and Body Fat Scale

Millions of Americans today deal with weight issues, including many cases of obesity. Armed with the proper information, though, some individuals have discovered the road to better health. That road is paved with diet and exercise, and it features a few tools that help you plan your diet and monitor your progress. These tools include calorie guides and scales that measure body fat.

Body Fat Scales

• Body fat scales pose advantages to traditional scales because they measure not only weight but also percentage of body fat. This calculation is important, particularly if you are attempting to lose weight and increase your percentage of lean muscle. Scales help because they show the amount of fat you are losing through diet and exercise. Traditional scales only show weight loss, and that is not always associated with loss of fat. In some cases, a drop in weight reflects nothing more than a lack of proper hydration or an empty stomach.

  Body fat scales work by sending a small electric current through your body's tissue. It then measures your body's resistance to the current to determine your body's density, a measurement of how well it floats when submerged in water. The scales use a formula to calculate your percentage of body fat based on your density. While the accuracy of scales varies, using the same scale on a constant basis allows you to monitor your progress.

Calorie Guides

• Calorie guides come in two primary forms, printed guides and online guides. Printed calorie guides provide a transportable, easily referenced guide to the calories contained in the foods you eat. Online guides, though, offer some benefits. Many websites allow you to record your food choices in a food journal. They also allow you to calculate your calories more easily. With print guides, you do the math. With most online guides, such as one found at MyCalorieCounter.com, the website features software that calculates your nutrition. Enter the serving size to allow for adjustments in the number of calories you consume, and the software adds all the foods you eat in a day to provide you with detailed information on calories consumed and which nutrients your foods contained. MyCaloriecounter.com also allows you to set targets for calories and amounts of protein, carbohydrate, fat, saturated fat, sodium and sugar.

  Some calorie guides also allow you to input your weight and body fat percentage, which you can use to calculate the number of calories your body burns each day. The number of calories individuals must consume per day to maintain their weight varies from individual to individual based on gender, age, weight, level of physical activity and some other factors.

Using the Tools

• The body fat scale and calorie guide give you all the tools you need to help with healthful living. Use your calorie guide to monitor food consumption. Consider the foods you normally eat and see how the daily sum of their nutrients compares to federal standards for nutrition. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends that adults on a 2,000-calorie diet consume no more than 65 grams of fat and no more than 300 mg of cholesterol daily. The FDA recommends 25 grams of fiber per day, 300 grams of carbohydrates and 50 grams of protein. Your actual targets might vary based upon the number of calories you decide to eat. Most websites that feature food journals that allow you to adjust your targets for these substances based on your total calorie plan.

  While the calorie guides help you figure out what to eat, the body fat scale provides the true measure of whether your plan is working. Use your body fat scale to monitor your weight and your body fat percentage. If you plan is not bringing results, make adjustments. Consult a doctor to determine the best plan for your situation.