Should you count calories?
Ever considered counting your calories? Never really understood why it might be useful? Calorie counting can be a powerful tool in keeping you on track, whether your goal is to build muscle, lose fat, improve performance or just develop a better understanding about nutrition.
Why do calories matter?
Before we discuss counting them, why are calories important?
Calories determine whether or not we gain weight, or lose weight (or, change body composition). To be precise, calorie balance is a mechanism of two inputs: calories burned and calories consumed.
Consuming more calories than you burn over time will cause weight gain:
Consuming less calories than you burn over time will result in weight loss:
Consuming a similar number of calories to what you burn over time will result in weight maintenance:
Whether you count calories or not, every single diet ever invented that alters body weight successfully does so because it manipulates calorie balance.
However, be careful not to categorise all calorie balance alterations in the same bracket. Generally the more extreme an alteration, the faster the change to body weight. The faster the change, the less sustainable it is. The less sustainable, the less likely it is any body composition change will last.
Those eye dropping 4 week weight loss transformations? It’s almost certain the changes made were unsustainable.
Let’s use a practical example.
Bob wants to lose a bit of weight. Bob appreciates he needs to reduce his calorie intake. Bob cuts 1,000 calories per day by avoiding all the higher calorie foods he enjoys. In 2 weeks, Bob sees a significant change in bodyweight (remember, weight loss doesn’t equal fat loss). After 3 weeks Bob feels weak and low on energy and by week number 4, Bob has started eating his favourite foods again.
Bob’s predicament is all too common. Changing body composition does likely mean altering the foods you currently consume. However, avoiding higher calorie foods you enjoy altogether isn’t sustainable.
How can counting calories make a difference?
Great question.
The majority of us are generally pretty bad at self-assessing the caloric value of what we eat. These are two possible reasons:
1 - More so than ever before, we live in a world where incredibly tasty, high calorie foods are available in abundance. This means it’s easier to over consume calories than ever before, too.
2 - As a species we’re hardwired for survival. It sounds a bit primitive in today's society, but most of us love to eat because eating is what keeps us alive.
Whilst counting calories isn’t 100% accurate, it does increase the awareness of the calorie content in the foods we eat and how they add up on a daily and weekly basis.
Having an awareness of calories means you can incorporate higher calorie foods into your diet with an appreciation for the trade offs you’ll have to make to keep progressing. Jordan Syatt showed this with his big mac diet, here:
Dubbed ‘IIFYM’ (If It Fits Your Macros), calorie counting allows you to make choices about the foods you eat and the trade-offs associated with them.
Where people get counting calories wrong
You may have heard friends mention ‘counting calories didn’t work for me’. Here are a few mistakes that are easy to make:
1 - Focusing on the exact number
No matter which equation you use to calculate calorie intake, you’ll like get it wrong unless you’ve got access to a scientific lab. Not to mention, daily energy expenditure is almost never the same day-day. Instead of stressing about an exact number, spend one to two weeks monitoring calorie intake and bodyweight. If weight stabilises within a couple of kilos, you know you’ve found your maintenance.
2 - Playing a numbers game
Calorie counting isn't a competition whereby success is measured on if you beat your score or not. Driving your calories lower and lower will very quickly leave you feeling very hungry, very quickly, which only increases the likelihood of you stopping altogether.
3 - Not having enough patience
Change takes time. Calorie counting can feel tedious but after a couple of weeks it becomes a routine. Focus on consistency and don’t expect perfection of yourself. There will be days where it isn’t possible to count every single calorie and that’s ok.
Do you have to count calories?
Of course not. Whilst calorie balance is the principle, there are many ways to make the principle work. Granted calorie counting is the least inaccurate but is by no means the only method.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I really appreciate your time. If you think someone else might benefit from reading this article, why not send it on to them?
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