So I’m trying to get fit — I’m already fit but trying to optimize it, you know? But generally had never looked into food and stuff.
Most nights I make a concoction of rice and ground turkey. Today the ratio was 1.5 lbs of ground turkey to 2 cups of (unboiled) white rice, which obviously expands to about 3 times it’s volume, so equivalently was 6 cups of rice. I didn’t eat all of this in one sitting, but it’s good for about 2 dinners for me.
I was reading about calories, and the rice has a lot of calories while the turkey somehow has very little. But then the rice is also a carbohydrate? I know these things fundamentally, but now I’m at the point of trying to understand and apply that knowledge.
Can someone what these things are?
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Carbohydrates are sugars, starches, and dietary fiber.
Calories are a measure of how much energy is in food. We measure it by burning food and seeing how much heat is produced. Our bodies are burning food through chemistry.
Proteins are materials made of chains of amino acids (molecules that have 2 carbon atoms, 4 hydrogen atoms, 2 oxygen atoms and something else attached).
Rice is mostly starch. Carbohydrates are high in calories (lots of energy), except fiber, which we can’t digest and we poop it out.
Turkey is mostly water and protein with a bit of fat. Protein has less calories than carbohydrates.
If you eat more calories than your body can use, your body will tend to take the carbohydrates and convert them to body fat. Some of the protein will be converted into other stuff, but lots of it will end up in your pee and poo.
1.5 lbs of turkey has about 1300 calories, and 2 cups uncooked rice about 1500 calories. That’s roughly the suggested daily number of calories for an active male under age 35. When you get older, you will require fewer calories.
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