Many people today say calories are irrelevant when it comes to fat loss while others say they are all and everything. I have been both sides of the fence over my 12 years of helping people get in shape but have now found a compromise which includes the good and the bad points.
The good of calories are –
- Over a longer term period (1 week plus) your daily calorie intake will reliably predict what will happen with your body fat.
- Calorie intake removes the guesswork and can deliver predictable and accurate results.
- It allows you to optimise your health if you increase calorie intake to the fat gaining threshold. Without calorie counting it is difficult to identify this threshold.
- People eat less when they count calories through the awareness it brings.
The bad side of calories are –
- Calorie counting long term is not realistic, practical or desirable by most people.
- To count calories for simplicity reasons you will often have to move away from natural foods as they are much harder to measure.
- People who count calories are usually way off as they forget to note down times when they eat or they only count calories on good days. Many people also guess the quantity of food eaten instead of weighing and thus underestimate the portion.
- The calorie intake measures are variable. This is based on what reference tables you use, which are also estimates of calorie in a lab verses their calorific effect in the actual human body.
- Assuming your calorie expenditure levels are set in stone or that you need a specific number from an expert’s daily recommendations etc. Your calorie levels change based on what you are doing, while movement affects your needed calorie intake, the majority of calories expended are simply the body looking after itself. In times of famine it shuts these processes down and reduces your calorie needs while in times of surplus it speeds it up thereby increasing your calorie expenditure. This is independent of movement/exercise.
While more bad points for calorie counting exist the benefits of predictable and reliable results in both fat loss and optimal health is persuasive. The key though is not should you count calories or not. It is whether you have enough calorie awareness to get results?
Calorie awareness is knowing roughly how much to eat to lose fat and how much to eat to maximise health. These are two different amounts and strategies.
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