Why You Should Stop Counting Calories

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Counting Calories is stupid. Pretty blunt, right? But before I tell you why counting calories is stupid, we must first understand what a calorie is. A calorie is a unit of measurement that is used in areas of science like chemistry or physics to measure energy.  Specifically, a scientific calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius, but when the term calorie is used with food, someone decided to make it worth 1,000 scientific calories. So, it takes 1,000 scientific calories to equal 1 nutritional calorie. Maybe it is to make us feel better about the food we eat because eating a hamburger that is labeled 350,000 calories would just be ridiculous.

So why is it stupid to count calories? Well, it's because we are not machines. You see, we can measure the amount of fuel put into a car and get a pretty accurate calculation of how much energy output there will be, but the idea of "Calorie in, Calorie out" doesn't hold up in the human body. In case you haven't noticed, our bodies have a lot going on inside of them, and many factors go into whether or not we lose fat. Can creating a negative caloric flow cause you to lose weight? Yea, but for most people it is a slow version of starvation and creates malnutrition that can actually cause other health problems. I know this from personal experience from when I wrestled in college. I got really good at limiting food to make weight and I was skinny, but I often felt weak and malnourished because I wasn't getting the food I needed. That is also probably why I always got sick during wrestling season and why after I graduated from college and started eating normal I grew over an inch. Solely focusing on calories can lead to malnourishment.

We get calories from three types of macronutrients: fats, carbohydrates, and protein. The kicker is we do not absorb all the nutrients that we ingest. There are some factors that come into play when talking about actually absorbing the food we eat. First is how much did you eat in one sitting and how big of a variety? There are only so many cells that can absorb nutrients so if there is too much food in the digestive tract some of the nutrients just pass on through. Also, how well you chew can make a difference. The more you chew, the more you will absorb because it is easier for our stomach and small intestine to break food down into smaller particles for absorption. Lastly, the health of your gut plays a role in absorption. If your GI tract is damaged from things like medications, alcohol, and inflammatory foods, then you won't be able to absorb food as well. So if you eat a banana that has around 100 calories in it, you won't actually absorb 100 calories. You will absorb quite a bit of it, but some of the carbohydrates, fats, and protein will end up being flushed down the toilet.  So another reason that counting calories is futile is because it's not accurate.

What you eat is more important than how much you eat. When it comes to gaining and losing weight and being healthy, hormones play a huge role. Due to the high prevalence of diabetes, most people have heard of insulin, a hormone that is released by the pancreas. When you eat food, it is broken down into simple forms and is put into your blood stream. Our bodies like to keep blood sugar levels pretty consistent so if there is a lot of sugar in the blood, your pancreas will release insulin and that tells the body to pull sugar out of the blood and store it as fat for later. So the idea of not eating a bunch of sugar and simple carbohydrates does hold up when it comes to weight loss.

Now, insulin is not the only hormone involved in weight gain/loss. Certain hormones released by the thyroid play a role in metabolism; hormones released by the adrenal glands affect weight; sex hormones definitely play a role. So the internal environment of the body actually matters greatly in whether or not you will lose fat. There are even articles that claim different types of good bacteria in your gut could help you lose weight. If your hormones are imbalanced and your body is highly stressed, you will have a difficult time losing weight regardless of calories.

The last reason I believe counting calories is a waste of time is because food is not just fuel, it also contains essential non-energy nutrients the body needs to function properly. In the body, only fats, proteins, and carbohydrates can be turned into energy, but there are many other substances the body needs to be healthy that it gets from food. Think about it like this, you would not be able survive off of only eating sugar, even though sugar is the simplest form of energy for the body.

I know many people who have struggled with their weight for a long time and had little to no results counting calories, but when they started to eat real food and avoid processed foods and sugars, they started to lose weight regardless of how many calories they consumed. Instead of looking at food as a means of being skinny or fat, we should look at it for what it does for promoting proper function in our bodies. What it boils down to is that eating high quality foods that nourish the body will actually help you lose weight and gain health. After all, being skinny does not mean you are healthy.

*photo courtesy of G. Cochrane, FreeDigitalPhotos.net