How Many Calories In a Banana
75This page is dedicated to helping you figure out how many calories are in a banana and all the other things you need to know about bananas, including their health benefits.
Not only do you have to know how many calories in a banana, you should also understand how the nutrients of bananas can help maintain or better our health and prevent many diseases, illnesses, and health risks.
Health benefits of bananas
Bananas is a good source of potassium, vitamin C, Vitamin B6, and dietary fiber.
One banana contains:
- 400 milligrams of Potassium, which is 10% of daily recommended value.
- 10.3 milligrams of Vitamin C, which is 17% of daily recommended value.
- 0.4 milligrams of Vitamin B6, which is 22% of daily recommended value.
- 3.1 grams of Dietary Fiber, which is 13% of daily recommended value.
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other benefits of bananas:
1. Bananas can make you smarter! Studies have shown and proved that eating a banana can help you stay more focused and alert! So next time, eat a banana before you take an exam or before you study.
2. Bananas are good for your heart and nerves. The high amount of potassium in bananas play an important role in keeping your heart and nervous system in good shape. Potassium is also important for activities like the pumping of the heart, muscular movements, and digestion. And let me tell you something scary. There are studies that have shown that if you do not have enough potassium in your diet, you are increasing the chance of youself getting high blood pressure and stroke.
3. Bananas are beneficial for your kidneys and bones. All the potassium in bananas help minimize the amount of calcium you lose in the urine and also minimizes the risk of getting kidney stones, which are extremely painful!
4. Bananas cure constipation! Since bananas are high in fiber, they are great for preventing and curing constipation problems such as hard stools. Eat one or two bananas a day to get smooth bowel movements!
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Calories In a Banana
Like most fruits such as apples, oranges, and grapes, bananas are also pretty high in sugar and most of a banana's calories come from sugar and starch, which are carbohydrates.
However, unlike most of the other fruits, bananas contain a bit more calories per ounce because they have less water content than these other fruits.
According to the official data from the National Nutrient Database, an extra small banana that is less than 6 inches long has 70 calories, 0.25 grams of fat, 19 grams of carbohydrate, and 0.87 grams of protein.
A small banana that is about 6 to 6.87 inches has 90 calories, 0.34 grams of fat, 23 grams of carbohydrate, and 1 gram of protein.
A medium banana that is about 7 to 7.87 inches long has 105 calories, 0.40 grams of fat, 27 grams of carbohydrate, and 1.29 grams of protein.
A large banana that is about 8 to 8.87 inches long has 120 calories, 0.45 grams of fat, 31 grams of carbohydrate, and 1.50 grams of protein.
An extra large banana that is longer than 9 inches has almost 140 calories, 0.50 grams of fat, 35 grams of carbohydrate, and 1.70 grams of protein.
Oveall, there is 95 calories in 100 grams of banana. And per 100 grams of banana, there are 1.5 grams of protein, 0.3 grams of fat, and 18 grams of carbohydrates.
And on average, a banana weighs about about 120 grams and this means that an average banana contains about 115 calories.
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Importance of counting calories
Counting calories is important when it comes to maintaining a healthy diet and losing weight. In order to lose one pound of fat, you have to burn 3500 calories. An ideal way to lose weight is to burn 500 calories a day and after a week, one pound of fat should be lost. You do not want to burn too many calories at once because it is not healthy; burning too many calories at once can result in muscle loss.
Therefore, you should never try to burn too many calories by starving yourself or forcing yourself to exercise day and night, and at the same time, you shouldn't be lazy and burn too little calories because you will see little to no results. Burning 500 calories a day should be ideal for most of you.
Get yourself a calorie counter and try your best to figure out exactly how many calories you are taking in and how many calories you are burning everyday. This is essential for effective weight loss.
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Carbohydrates of bananas
Unlike many other fruits out there, bananas contain both complex and simple carbohydrate. That is, a banana can help you replenish energy very quickly with its simple carbohydrates and at the same time, its complex carbohydrates require digestive enzymes to work much harder to break. How does this benefit you?
Since digestion of complex carbohydrates takes longer, this slow absorption of nutrients and sugars is able to provide us with a steady supply of energy. This would then prevent a lot of the sugar and carbohydrates from being converted into fat and stored in your body.
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Can banana make you fat?
Most people are scared of bananas because they think bananas can make them gain fat due to the fact that bananas do contain a high amount of sugar and starch.
Being a person that has always been dedicated to a healthy diet and a healthy active lifestyle with a good amount of exercise, I have to be honest with you and say that in MOST cases, bananas should be avoided if your goal is to lose weight.
Putting that aside, I want to remind you that fruits like apples and oranges should be avoided a lot more than bananas because bananas contain both simple and complex carbohydrates while apples and oranges contain simple carbohydrates only.
Whether you should include or exclude bananas from your diet is highly dependent on how active you are or how intense you exercise. If you are trying to lose weight with diet alone, then I do not recommend bananas in your diet. And if you like bananas so much and you really want to eat one, I suggest you to eat only half a banana and save the other half for later. Do not eat the whole banana at once because you do not want too much sugar to enter your body that fast; some of it will turn into fat!
But if you are willing or planning to use both diet and exercise for weight loss, then I would HIGHLY recommend you to eat a banana before you exercise everytime because it would help to provide you with more stamina, which means you will be able to exercise much harder and longer. This in turn would force our body to burn more calories. And let's not forget that bananas are known for being high in potassium. This makes a banana a perfect fruit to replace the potassium we lose during exercise.
All in all, the truth is, if the exercises you do are rigorous enough, your weight and body fat will just melt off regardless of what you eat.
Below is a link to my other article that teaches you how many calories you should eat a day:
How Many Calories Should You Eat a Day
