What You Must Understand About Calorie Counting

By Flavia Del Monte – R.N., C.P.T., Precision Nutrition Certified

Can you get away with just “eating healthy” or do counting calories really make a difference in losing fat?  Is calorie counting better than counting “portions”  Should you be relying on a food journal?  Is calorie counting the price you must pay to get the body you always wanted?  Here’s what you must understand about calorie counting and the good news is that you won’t need to become a number-crunching food fanatic in your quest for a useful women fitness plan!

Calorie counting had been around for as long as we can all remember.  Today a lot of diet programs recommend “portions” because counting every single calorie in the literal sense will drive you insane and it’s not a long-term lifestyle solution.

I have no problem with people counting portions because it recognizes the importance of portion control and affirms that calories do matter.  On the other hand, be careful of anybody who tells you that “calories don’t matter” and you can “eat whatever you want as long it’s healthy” and still lose fat.

I’m living proof that this logic is flawed.  Marketers will continue to tell you what you wish to hear in hopes that you pull out your credit card and buy their new gimmick.

The Reasons Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work Are
Quite Detailed So Lets Look At It As Simple As Possible…

A Calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kg of water by one degree.

The only way to truly test this measurement is by measuring the combustion of food. How many food products are in the grocery store?  And how many of them do you believe determine the exact Caloric count?  Not many.

Therefore it can be assumed the food labels on products are a mere estimates.

Bottom line: calorie counting and meal plans are simply an educated guess. They are simply a starting point to assess what changes must take place next.

Let’s add the factors of digestion and adsorption loses with food ingestion and you have a very difficult Caloric equation to figure out.

On the other end of things, determining how many calories the body needs is also a difficult task. Sure there are estimated equations but those do not take into account basal metabolic rate, resting metabolic rate, thermogenesis effect, purposeful exercise and our daily exercise expenditure from activities of daily living (ADL).

Although I do believe calorie counting is useful, it is an estimate and focusing on calories, instead of quality of our food is usually the problem. Learning to replace old habits with better ones should be our focus.