Online Food Delivery in Toronto Calorie Planned Meals: Taking the pain out of diet | Page 3

Calories: our body’s essential source of energy
Our daily calorie intake is essential in providing us with the energy to perform physical activity and in part in
maintaining or changing our body weight. Ideally we only want to take in a daily amount that provides us
with all our energy requirements plus a healthy reserve. However, that was not always the case and our bodies
have evolved over thousands of years to enable us to survive in a feast or famine world. As a result our bodies
store calories as fat reserves during times of plenty to ensure we have sufficient reserves to call upon in times
when food was scarce. However in modern times this has become a problem as there are for many of us no
longer enforced natural periods of fasting such as during winter when food is very scarce. This has resulted in
us in modern times building up energy reserves as fat that never gets used leading to obesity and all the
negative health issues associated with the condition. Consequently, for most of us there is a time when change
to our diet is required such as when we have become overweight due to excessive calorie intake or have failed
to burn of excessive calories through exercise or physical activity. The latter point is important because
calories are the essential fuel for human activity and as such will be burned during exercise or hard physical
effort. Therefore it is not just when wishing to lose weight that we must be mindful of our calorie intake we
must also pay attention when in athletic pursuits or activities that require large amounts of energy to be
expended. This is simply because if we do not consume enough calories to meet the demands of exercise we
will start losing body weight as a direct consequence of our bodies using up its reserves. As a result, in order
to maintain a healthy weight at all times we must we conscious of our calorie intake and balance our intake to
our body’s daily requirements.