Why You Should Stop Counting Calories
You have to count calories when you’re on a diet, right? If you want to lose weight you’re told you have to eat fewer calories than you burn, which means you have to count every last calorie that you consume throughout the day. Not exactly. Below we’ve listed four evidence-based reasons why you should stop counting calories. These reasons will explain why forgetting this dieting approach will help you to lose weight as well as look and feel your best. So ditch that calculator and read why calorie counting is a thing of the past!
Quality vs. Quantity
While traditional diets hammered into our heads that it’s the quantity of calories that matters, experts now agree that the quality of calories is what matters most for staying healthy, losing weight, and maintaining those results.
David Ludwig, MD, an endocrinologist, researcher, and professor at Harvard Medical School, tells Health.com, “When you eat the right quality and balance of foods, your body can do the rest on its own. You don’t have to count calories or go by the numbers.”
The problem with foods that cause weight gain isn’t that they have too many calories. Rather, it’s that they lead to a chain of reactions in the body that lead to fat storage and overeating. Processed carbohydrates (i.e. chips, cookies, soda, etc.) are quickly digested into sugar, which causes a spike in insulin levels. “Insulin is like Miracle-Gro for your fat cells,” explains Dr. Ludwig.
It’s easy to see why many people have a difficult time letting go of the counting calories mentality. “After hearing for 40 years how eating fat makes you fat and how we have to count calories to control our weight, people are afraid of foods that humans have enjoyed and viewed as healthy for hundreds of years, like olive oil, nuts, avocado, fatty fish, even dark chocolate,” says Dr. Ludwig. “These foods are among the most healthful foods in existence, even though they are loaded with calories.”
Calorie restrictive diets raise cortisol levels
A 2010 study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine formed a hypothesis based on data from prior research that demonstrated how calorie restriction does not lead to long-term weight loss. Their hypothesis was that dieting is ineffective because it increases chronic psychological stress and cortisol production – two factors that are known to cause weight gain. Further, this study examined the respective roles of the two main behaviors that comprise dieting – monitoring one’s caloric intake and restricting one’s caloric intake – on psychological and biological stress indicators.
The fully crossed, controlled experiment randomly assigned 121 females to one of four dietary interventions (monitoring calories, restricting calories, monitoring and restricting calories, or none of the above) for three weeks. The researchers found that restricting calories increased the total output of cortisol, and monitoring calories increased perceived stress. They concluded that dieting may be deleterious to psychological well-being and biological functioning, and changes in clinical recommendations may be in order.
You’ll be less likely to stray from your diet
As we have learned from the study on cortisol and stress levels associated with counting calories, calorie restrictive diets have a major psychological impact. People often have feelings of fear, anxiety, and frustration with these types of diets when they eat more calories than they had allotted themselves.
The registered dietitian nutritionists at The Real Food Dieticians admit that looking back on the times that they fell into the trap of counting calories “we see that calorie counting always dictated our food choices and our feelings of self-worth.” Furthermore, they concluded that this way of dieting did not help them to lose weight: “Counting calories didn’t make us thinner it just drove each of us to our respective edges of sanity.”
The stress and negative feelings that come with calorie restrictive diets can often cause people to stray from a diet. While a cheat day every once in awhile is perfectly fine, straying from such a stressful diet approach can cause feelings of guilt. “There is so much power in enjoying your meal without guilt,” says Alexandra Caspero, R.D., owner of weight-management and sports-nutrition service DelishKnowledge.com. She continues by saying, “Ironically, the more guilt we feel about eating decadent food, the more likely we are to overeat.”
You’ll lose weight
Diets that require you to count calories can be exhausting. You have to count every single piece of food that you consume throughout the day, weigh everything you use in a recipe, and track these numbers somewhere. Lily Nichols, RDN, tells Prevention that all of the effort required to count calories causes most of her clients to turn to precalculated packaged foods and stray away from home-cooked meals.
Although packaged foods make it easier to track calories, they have multiple drawbacks. In addition to often being almost nutritionally worthless, packaged foods actually have more absorbable calories than whole foods do. Nichols says, “You don’t absorb all of the calories found in whole foods, thanks to the fact that your body has to break them down.”
For example, studies have shown that you only absorb about 20 percent of the calories in nuts. However, people who count calories often avoid nuts because of their high calorie content. Instead, they’ll choose a highly refined breakfast cereal because of the lower calorie content. While the label on the cereal box may show fewer calories, your body will actually absorb more calories from the refined carbs in the cereal than it would have if you went with the nuts. You’ll also miss out on the fiber and healthy fats in the nuts that can help you slim down.
This ties back into our first reason why you should stop counting calories: quality vs. quantity. By choosing quality foods that are whole, real, and full of nutrients, you’ll be more likely to lose weight because these foods satisfy appetite and boost metabolism.
Stop counting calories
Hopefully learning the reasons why you should stop counting calories gives you a sense of relief! This method of dieting can be a major cause of stress and has been proven not to be effective when it comes to long-term weight loss. When you stop counting calories and start focusing on the quality of your food, you’ll be more likely to lose weight and maintain your results.
