Calories or Kilojoules?

This topic contains 5 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by sylvestra 10 years, 4 months ago.

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Grae

10:34 pm
24 Nov 13
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the Fast Diet book refers to fast day 600 calories for a male. I’m confused when the book refers (at Pages 185-203) to “KCAlS” the right of serving size. The “K” in KCALS seems to be referring to Kilojoules yet throughout the book the references are to Calories. 100 calories converts to 420 kilojoules.

Your help appreciated.

Grae

TracyJ

3:13 pm
25 Nov 13
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Hi Grae – not sure where you hail from but ‘Kcals’ in the book, probably refers to the kind of calories you can easily track on all the food you buy (at least here in the UK). There is a difference between ‘true’ calories and Kcals (Kcals is actually Kilocalorie and is equivalent of 1000 actual calories) but Kcals is what you go by when calculating your intake.

Kilojoules are a totally different metric measurement and absolutely nothing to do with your calorie (Kcal) intake (if you’re going by the Fastdiet book – which was not written in the metric measurement).

That’s my understanding and the way I have been calculating my intake anyway.

ghostgirl

4:54 am
26 Nov 13
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For some strange reason people just generally tend to use kilocalories and calories as interchangeable terms for a kilocalorie. So don’t stress about it just people being people and being a bit lazy.

Kilojoules are another unit of measure altogether. 4.2 kilojoules is the equivalant of one Kcal. This makes it really annoying when you are trying to convert between the two.

lindaj

3:10 pm
15 Jan 14
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I am also confused with the book pages 185 onwards, a banana is 103 kcals for 100g but on page 157 it is listed as 95 calories for 100g, when I am planning a menu of my own, which measurement do I use.

Lindaj

TracyJ

3:16 pm
15 Jan 14
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To be fair, I expect there’s probably a big difference between a ripe banana (or any other fruit & veg) and an under ripe example. I don’t think you CAN be oober specific with calorie counting really and luckily you don’t really need to stress about it too much on 5:2 anyway. Just call 100g of banana roughly 100Kcal and call it good. A handfull of calories plus or minus, even on a fastday, isn’t going to make a massive difference.

sylvestra

3:20 pm
15 Jan 14
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I don’t have the book so can’t comment on the calorie values – but it seems a bit strange that one book is giving different values!

I use My Fitness Pal to look up calories when I need to – you can also record your daily intake on that which can be helpful for anyone starting 5:2 and trying to estimate portion sizes.

100g of peeled banana is 79 cals on My Fitness Pal. The whole calorie value thing is confusing as you can get half a dozen values for one item from different sources. I find the best way is to take an average value and work from that.

1 kilojoule = 240 calories
kcals and cals are the same when seen on food labels