I’ve used to be one of those people who would roll their eyes at someone when they ‘d tell me they are calorie counting (judge-y I know, I’m working in it.
But….
I have definitely changed my mind on it over the recent years.
I think its ridiculous because I’ve never viewed food that way however do see the value in the short term as it allows people to learn how to read nutritional information, understand macronutrients (protein/carbs/fats) and helps to identify individual pit falls in ones diet, which may be holding them back from reaching their goals.
Here’s what I’ve found to be the short term positive key identifiers that counting calories helps with:
– Not hitting sufficient daily protein.
– Over doing fat consumption.
– Understanding appropriate portion sizes.
But, however beneficial these positive key identifiers are calorie counting can have a dark side to it if you continue to do it long term. You can develop a bartering system with food, even low level eating disorders and head f*cks that come along with it are just not worth it.
So my question is..
What ever happened to smart simple decisions and some intuitive eating?
We know a pizza has shit loads of calories.
We know veggies don’t.
We know when we overate and feel really full.
We know when we haven’t eaten enough.
The main problem I see with calorie counting and using tracking apps is that people block what their body is telling them and live and die by the app.
For instance, it’s dinner time, you prepare a meal, eat that meal, feel satisfied but when you log that meal into into your calorie tracker app it tells you still have 350 calories left to consume to hit your ‘daily target’. So you load up on more calories.
But wait – your body is sending signals that it’s full?
What do you do?
Like I said… Most live and die by the app.
I know someone who tracked their calories for 365 and noticed no changed in their body!
You see, our body changes it’s energy burn daily, depending on a thousand different variables from the food we eat, the unplanned daily activity we do, changes in workload from the day and style/phase of training your are running.
If you are presenting to a large audience and are on the stage for two hours you are burning a shitload of energy from the effort put out from your brain – trust me! Does the app know that?
The only thing the tracking app knows is that it want’s you to consume 2000 calories a day, nothing else!
So although tracking helps to identify key factors such as low protein consumption, high fat consumption and portion sizing relying on it to reach long term goals vs learning how to eat intuitively and understanding your body cues is never going to be the best way forward.
Are you still tracking calories?