Counting calories come to mind for many when the conversation turns to health and weight loss. But what are they really? And do we need to focus on them, or is worrying about calories a waste of time and energy? Read on to learn about counting calories, along with other weight loss methods.
My Calorie Counting Story
I’m standing in line with my mom at Caldor. This was the closest department store to us, and I’d have to characterize it as a bad Sears. The lighting was awful, it always seemed a bit grungy, and inevitably, I’d bump into the cutest guy at school, who was only there to buy the latest album, whereas I was there to get clothing, home goods and, well, a lot of the stuff we needed. And by the way, it was the ugliest and cheapest clothing; I had classmates who wouldn’t have been caught dead in Caldor socks. As a young teen, I was rarely excited to be seen with my mom, so often I’d go out to the parking lot to wait by the car once I knew I wasn’t getting the album I wanted – they ran about 5.99 at the time, and it was rare that I had enough money of my own to get one. And certainly, it wasn’t something I was going to be gifted for no good reason by my parents.
But this time, I was probably hoping that if I asked for candy that lined the checkout aisle, my mother would let me get some sugar free gum – with the food controlling thing that permeated my childhood, I did become an expert negotiator! But there, at the checkout, something else caught my eye that I thought could be better than gum (but not better than candy probably!). There were these tiny booklets – called Dell Purse Books -- at the Caldor cash register, and the topics of them ranged quite the gamut, from tiny word search puzzles to horoscopes to beauty tips to dream analyzing guides. It was quite a collection, but the one I had my eye on was the calorie counter booklet. It held promise with its cover which was an abacus where the tiles you’d move from side to side while counting were little colorful fruits and vegetables. It was this tiny book, and to me, it held the secret to happiness.
By this time, I’d gorged on all the food I’d been missing my whole life while at summer camp, and I was firmly in the overweight zone. I’d been on diets, and had only come out of them heavier than before I started. My weight was affecting my social life and my self-esteem. I looked at that little booklet, which was something like 35 cents – about the same as a pack of gum – and saw it as the potential pathway to being skinny and popular. This time, instead of asking for the candy to hopefully end up with some sugar-free gum, I asked my mom for the calorie counting booklet. And guess what? Since she clearly wasn’t happy I was overweight, I got something I asked for that day at Caldor! Yep, my own pocket calorie counter, so I could take it everywhere! Well, I don’t remember if I took it anywhere, and I probably didn’t for fear of it being noticed, but I read it at home in my bed like a novel. Or rather like a bible that needed to be memorized. And I pursued that mission to memorize it.
Did I continually track the calories? Only when it served me – like when I hit a new milestone on the scale and I felt motivated to do something to lose weight. My regular breakfast at school, which was handed to me by a cafeteria lady nicknamed Dearheart, was a large, greasy plain bagel dripping with butter, along with a fried egg, bacon and melted American cheese. Had I counted that breakfast, I would have had to face the facts that I was eating enough calories to last me until the next day’s dinner. So while I memorized many of the calorie facts in my little bible, I’m sure I only selectively put them to work. I’m proud to say now that I’ve freed up my brain cells, largely, by letting go of the calorie counts of many foods, though a few still stick. Happily, I never think of the calories in a hard boiled egg (1, large) or in an apple (1, medium) or in a slice of turkey (1 oz) when I enjoy them. Those calories are still there, but they’re not the most important thing – not by a longshot. So let’s get into where calories fit on our health journey.
Why Count Calories
I’ve read books and articles up the wazoo with titles alluding to whether calories “count” or “matter” or not. And well-respected thought leaders have staked their claims on both sides of the battle. I think the only time I hear calories come up are in terms of weight control – weight loss or weight maintenance. I’ve never heard clients or others talk about using calories to make sure that they are maximizing their health.
I find people often decide to count calories to lose weight. This is a problematic approach in my mind and that’s because this approach rests on the assumption that all calories are created equal. The assumptions go further, in that it’s felt that if we manage to balance the calories in and the calories out, that we’ll maintain our weight, and that if we create a deficit and the calories out exceed the calories in, we’ll lose weight. Well, these assumptions appear to be very flawed.
Assumptions About Calorie Counting
Let’s attack the first assumption that calorie-counting as an effort is based on – that which assumes all calories are created equal. Well, first of all, let’s go back a bit and examine what a calorie is. Basically it’s the energy potential of any substance. So if you had 100 calories worth of – I don’t know – butter – and 100 calories of, let’s say, a pear – if those were both burned in a laboratory, in a closed system called a calorIMeter -- both those bits of food would release the same amount of heat. So it’s a laboratory measure. From Scientific American,
Calories are simply units that measure energy. Specifically, one calorie on a menu is actually one kilocalorie, the amount of energy required to heat one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.
I’m sure that was stated somewhere in my handy dandy Dell pocket guide of calories, because I could rattle off that phrase – the amount of energy required to heat one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius – in my sleep.
Well, great for the lab scientists and calorimeter operators, but that’s not how our bodies work. We’re not closed systems where the only thing of value that we’re getting from our food is heat. Nope, not at all. And in fact in the process described in the Scientific American article, the scientists mentioned that we don’t necessarily absorb all the energy that the food generates in the lab, already rendering it somewhat useless information. Looking even further, even within the same macronutrient family, the effects of different KINDS of calories on the body are incredibly different.
Let’s take a minute to define macronutrients. They are the three main components of food – fat, protein and carbohydrates. They differ from micronutrients – minerals and vitamins – in the amounts required. MACRO nutrients are just what they sound like they are – the biggest components of our diets in sheer volume. The micronutrients – though we need relatively less of them in volume – are still vitally important components.
So, in terms of macronutrients – protein, fat and carbohydrate – we can imagine how they might have different effects on the body, right? We can imagine, like in the example I just mentioned, that 100 calories of butter – a fat – might react in the body differently than the pear – a carbohydrate. Even right there, we have to wonder about the assumption used when deciding counting calories is in some way valuable – are these two macronutrients, do they act the same way in the body such that they are totally interchangeable? A calorie is a calorie is a calorie? Seems hard to believe that’s true already.
And there are just a couple more issues with counting calories as part of a wellness journey. For one thing, it can make us gravitate to more processed foods, because it’s a lot easier to track calories when they’re figured out for us. But we know that the less processed our diets are, the better for our health it is, overall. The temptation toward eating more labeled foods because the calories are counted for us – that’s not a great situation. And add to that another issue – companies can be way off on the calorie count without getting fined. And they often are off - guess in which direction. So again, not the best vote in favor of relying on calorie counts.
Then there’s one more. When we want to eat something that doesn’t have a label on it, we can be pretty bad at guessing the size. Is that a 2x2 inch wedge of lasagna? Or 2.5X2.5 inch wedge (and by the way, there is a 3rd dimension – height – that doesn’t make it to the calorie databases at all!)? We’re remarkably bad at estimating sizes and servings, so if we’re plugging that lasagna or a bowl of macaroni and cheese or a slice of meatloaf into myfitnesspal or chronometer, how accurate are our inputs? When we report them, we tend to underestimate our daily calories by over 400 calories. Even registered dieticians – trained professionals – underestimate them by 200. So we could be making significant errors in counting.
To Count or Not to Count
I think it now makes sense that counting calories to lose weight might not be the best approach. If this is what you do and you’re healthy, by all means, you do you – we all need to know what works for us! But if you’re not already counting calories, I would urge you to think about if there’s another way to monitor your input – one that more closely aligns with how you’re trying to eat. Counting can be great for some, and awful for others. For some people, it might bring back feelings of being totally restricted in our eating. But for others – they like it. I’d simply ask counters to consider if they can do it for a while, to figure out what they’re consuming, but then try to taper off to another more holistic method.
Plate composition is more intuitive and aligns with most people’s goals of eating more vegetables. Eyeballing a plate is something more sustainable in the long-run, most people would find, but there’s still room for tracking and being curious, especially if you’re interested in making changes. Our bodies can be wonderful barometers of how our lifestyle is affecting them. It requires listening, and curiosity, and sometimes, a written record to highlight patterns. Some people do this regularly, others for short periods of time. Some folks might take photos of themselves or measurements to keep track – for others, they don’t find that necessary or it’s not a great idea for them personally. There is a plethora of ways to go about monitoring our food – calories might not be the very best way, especially if we never progress from calories to something more important.
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