Are You A Calorie Counter? Know The Hard Truth About Counting Calories
Do You Need To Count Calories?
Do You Want To Be A Calorie Counter?
We All Want To Lose Weight.
Counting Calories Might Be The Wrong Way To Do It.
It’s very important to develop an understanding of and respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance.
If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest idea how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll eat more than you realize.
Is it Necessary?
Calorie Count Tips, Tricks & Techniques
- Calories do count!
- The law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose, or maintain your weight.
- It’s very important to develop an understanding of and respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance.
- An important part of nutrition education is to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat regularly – including (and perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.
- To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you burn.
- To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn.
- To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
- If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest idea how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll eat more than you realize.
- You might take in fewer calories than you should, which triggers your body’s “starvation mode” and causes your metabolism to shut down.
- If you’re ambitious, keep a nutrition journal at least one time in your life for at least 4-12 weeks.
- Create a menu plan you can use as a daily goal and guideline.
- All you need to get started on the road to a better body is one good menu on paper.
- You only need to “count calories” once when you create your menus.
- It’s not necessary to count every calorie to lose weight.
- Increase your chance for success with some simple menu planning.
‘To Be’ or ‘Not To Be’ a Calorie Counter!
The Truth About Counting Calories And Weight Loss
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.burnthefat.com
Do calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods that will guarantee you’ll lose weight?
Should you count calories or can you just count “portions?”
Is it necessary to keep a food diary?
Is it unrealistic to count calories for the rest of your life or is that just part of the price you pay for a better body?
You’re about to learn the answers to these questions and discover a simple solution for keeping track of your food intake without having to crunch numbers every day or become a fanatic about it.
In many popular diet books, “Calories don’t count” is a frequently repeated theme.
Other popular programs, such as Bill Phillip’s “Body For Life,” stress the importance of energy intake versus energy output, but recommend that you count “portions” rather than calories…
Phillips wrote,
“There aren’t many people who can keep track of their calorie intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting ‘portions.’
A portion of food is roughly equal to the size of your clenched fist or the palm of your hand. Each portion of protein or carbohydrate typically contains between 100 and 150 calories.
For example, one chicken breast is approximately one portion of protein, and one medium-sized baked potato is approximately one portion of carbohydrate”.
Phillips makes a good point that trying to count every single calorie – in the literal sense – can drive you crazy and is probably not realistic as a lifestyle for the long term.
It’s one thing to count portions instead of calories – that is at least acknowledge the importance of portion control.
However, it’s another altogether to deny that calories matter.
Calories do count!
Any diet program that tells you, “calories don’t count” or you can “eat all you want and still lose weight” is a diet you should avoid because you are being lied to.
The truth is, that line is a bunch of baloney designed to make a diet sound easier to follow.
Anything that sounds like work – such as counting calories, eating less, or exercising, tends to scare away potential customers!
The law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose, or maintain your weight. Period.
I believe that it’s very important to develop an understanding of and respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance.
I also believe it’s an important part of nutrition education to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat on a regular basis – including (and perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.
The law of calorie balance says:
To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you burn.
To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn.
To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest idea how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll eat more than you realize.
(Or you might take in fewer calories than you should, which triggers your body’s “starvation mode” and causes your metabolism to shut down).
So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a nutrition program that gets results?
Here’s a solution that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:
Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software.
Crunch all the numbers including calories, protein, carbs, and fats.
Once you have your daily menu, print it, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating “goal” for the day, including a caloric target.
Rather than writing down every calorie one by one from every morsel of food you eat for the rest of your life, create a menu plan you can use as a daily goal and guideline.
If you’re ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal at least one time in your life for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning experience, but all you need to get started on the road to a better body is one good menu on paper.
If you get bored eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus, or just exchange foods using your primary menu as a template.
Using this meal planning method, you only need to “count calories” once when you create your menus, not every day, ad infinitum.
After you’ve got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty good (and more educated) ballpark figure.
So what’s the bottom line? Is it really necessary to count every calorie to lose weight?
No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer calories than you burn.
Whether you count calories and eat less than you burn, or you don’t count calories and eat less than you burn, the result is the same – you lose weight.
Which would you rather do: Take a wild guess, or increase your chance for success with some simple menu planning?
I think the right choice is obvious.
For more information on calories (including how to calculate precisely how many you should eat based on your age, activity, and personal goals, and for even more practical, proven fat loss techniques to help you lose body fat safely, healthfully and permanently, check out my e-book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle at www.burnthefat.com.
About the Author:
Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling e-book, “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle.” Tom has written more than 200 articles and has been featured in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men, and Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide. For information on Tom’s Fat Loss program, visit www.burnthefat.com.