You may be wondering how is it possible to lose weight without counting calories? I mean, what if you over eat without knowing, right? I’m sure all those that have struggled to lose weight on a restricted calorie diet can will be intrigued by the fact the you don’t have to count calories to lose weight. In this blog I will put forward the myths surrounding calories.

Here goes..

Calorie mythology and weight loss

For any person, whether a competitive athlete striving to make weight for competition, or just an average Joe wanting to lose weight, most believe that they must count calories in order to lose weight. Furthermore, just about anywhere you look on the internet regarding such matters, will inform that weight loss/gain is a matter of energy balance; calories in vs. calories out. Now let me point out that “weight loss” is rather generic, this can include losing any of the following; water, fat, muscle and glycogen. Targeted weight loss specifically reduces excess body fat stores; rather than losing weight from other tissues/areas. In order to try and burn body fat, most people reduce calorific intake, and/or supplement with thermogenic fat burners. While the use of fat burning supplements can be effective, counting calories is not specific enough to target the right kind of weight loss.

A commonly used example of calorie counting for weight loss;

For an individual whose energy balance, and thus body weight is maintained, consuming three thousand calories daily, reducing daily calorific intake by five hundred calories will lead to a weekly deficit of three thousand five hundred calories.

1 gram of fat = 9 calories
3500 (calorific deficit) / 9 = 388 grams of pure fat.

Three hundred and eighty eight grams of dehydrated fat would equate to around one pound of actual body fat; body fat is around fifteen percent water. Therefore reducing daily calorific intake by five hundred calories will lead to almost one pound of fat loss per week. While on paper this may look good, in practise science shows this to be simply untrue.

What exactly is a calorie?

A calorie is purely and simply a measure of heat energy, the actual word, calorie is derived from the Latin word – Calor; meaning heat. The unfaithful calorie was first defined by French chemist Professor Nicolas Clément in 1824. Professor Clement who at that time was heavily involved in industrial chemistry research for powering steam engines, wanted to calculate the maximum amount of energy that one kilogram of coal could provide. Clement’s research led him onto the path to becoming the first person to actually creating a standard definition of a calorie; the heat energy required to increase one kilogram of water by one degree C. Since then different standards have been defined, such as the joule-calorie.

Outdated calorie science

Since 1824 this outdated and inaccurate calorie science has worked its way into our food labelling, food science and even our educational system. We are constantly taught that obesity is a cause of eating too much and exercising too little. Eat the right calorific energy balance and you will lose weight. It is bamboozling how we are still using knowledge and information from science that is almost two hundred years old, despite having newer more accurate science which quite clearly disproves that it is impossible, at this time anyway, to calculate calories and “energy balance”.

For example, studies show that food labels displaying calorie metrics are at best ninety percent accurate, thus assuming for a ten percent error margin, an average person eating around a million calories per year could possibly over eat one hundred thousand calories per year! The average person does not gain thirty pounds or so of weight each year.

Is calorie counting necessary – should i count calories to lose weight?

Current and modern science teaches us that counting calories is not important and that we don’t really need to actively count our daily calorific intake nor try to manage our energy balance in order to lose weight. If counting calories were necessary it would also logically follow that we should monitor our consumption of other such nutrients that are essential to life.

For example humans would need systems in place to measure and monitor input and output of essential minerals and vitamins. When was the last time you measured your intake of vitamin C vs. your output of vitamin C? The human body has a series of complex inbuilt mechanisms and feedback systems for managing itself, including its intake of calories and other essential nutrients.

Society has moved with the economy

Over time society has changed and so have our traditions, gone are the days of housewives who cook and prepare the households food from scratch. Around fifty years ago it was common place for people to grow their own food and freshly prepare everything they ate.

In current times this is very uncommon, we now live in a twenty four hour world of money, commerce and consumerism. With continued inflation and other economic factors families and households are increasingly finding themselves in a financial situation that dictates both parties have to go out to work in order to pay the bills. More time at work and less time at home society has become ever more dependent on pre-packaged and processed foods. The handful of major corporations that supply and control the world’s pre-packaged foods industry have made this very lucrative by employing highly paid food scientists to develop compounds such as flavour enhancers, emulsifiers and other synthetic chemicals to turn food into a commodity that has a ridiculously long shelf life and tastes so good that people want to eat more and more of it yet have paid little consideration to the actual nutrition. The net effect is that the overall quality of today’s food is not what it ought to be; it is no wonder why the rise in incidence of cancer has gradually crept up to one in every three people as well as obesity being at an all time high.

A calorie is not a calorie

It at first may seem somewhat of a paradox to be told that a calorie is not a calorie; however it will not take long to scientifically explain and justify this statement. Human beings are not bomb calorimeters; a large metal drum that foodstuffs are combusted in, the heat released from combustion is then measured as calories. The human body on the other hand is in complete polarity from a bomb calorimeter as it readily recognises where calories come from; different calories have different metabolic effects. Calories from a protein, a carbohydrate or fat each affect the metabolism in a different manner. Some calories cause disease more than others, trans fats for example have a very detrimental effect on our metabolism and have been directly linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

Digesting food requires energy (thermic effect of food)

The thermic effect of food is defined as the energy required to digest food stuffs, this is typically estimated at around ten percent of total caloric intake. Certain foods such a green cruciferous vegetables are so calorie rare, that the energy required to digest them vs. the energy they provide is negligable.

Suger and Diabetes

Studies performed by EPIC-interact, a European community funded scientific project that researches and investigates how genes and lifestyle interact to lead to diabetes, show a direct correlation between diabetes and sugar consumption. The data from their studies indicated that for every extra one hundred and fifty calories a person consumed only increased diabetes prevalence by 0.1%, but if those one hundred and fifty calories were from a can of soda (a sugar sweetened beverage), diabetes prevalence increased eleven-fold, by 1.1%.

An overview of a calorie

A calorie is purely and simply a measure of how much heat energy a foodstuff contains; it does not provide any information or metrics regarding its effects on metabolism, nutrient absorbtion or how a calorie is likely to affect overall health. Ergo all calories are not equal.

Quality over quantity

As a rule of thumb it is more important to eat a balanced variety of nutrient dense foods rather than counting generic calories. Try to include organic non-gmo plant based foods such as, root vegetables and regular vegetables, fresh fruits, nuts and seeds, in particular try to include the holy trinity of fruits and vegetables; Avocado, Spinach and Kale.

Foods from these groups are all nutrient dense and contain a variety of essential minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and other beneficial phytonutrients. Eating this way will not only keep you in good health but will also help support a healthy body fat level including lower visceral fat. Further steps can be taken to stimulate metabolic rate to such as using high quality thermogenic fat burning supplements.

Want to get lean? make macronutrients count

Athletes and people who need to actively monitor and manipulate their body weight and composition will reap far more benefit from measuring macronutrient intake and nutrient quality rather than squandering their time and energy trying to count calories. Eating frequently is also of high importance; regular meals increase metabolic rate and function while eating less often and sporadically slows metabolic rate and function. A higher metabolic rate burns more calories and energy, and as you would expect, a slower metabolic rate burns fewer calories and energy.

Restricting calories can restrict healthy nutrients

Some foods are more nutrient and calorie dense than others, for example, per gram Almonds are highly calorific and typically contain around 600 calories per one hundred grams. Calorie restricted diets that focus only on total daily calorific intake will often skip such nutrient dense and calorific foods. This type of approach does not take into consideration the healthy benefits of different foods and the essential nutrients they may contain that are vital to maintaining optimal health. Almonds for example, while being calorie packed, are a great source of essential fats, protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Not all calories are absorbed

There are various factors that can affect nutrient and calorie absorbtion; digestion being one of them. Digestion is a continual cyclic mechansim of catabolic processes to enable nutrient absorbtion while eliminating left over waste product. Some nutrients work in synergy and thereby enhance the absorbtion of other nutrients. However this is also true in the opposite; some nutrients prevent other nutrients from being utilised and thus become unused left over as waste product.

A prime example of this is is cheese; although high in calcium, due to its acidic nature most of its calcium goes unused. Gut health can also affect calorie and nutrient absorbtion. A digestive tract in optimal health can readily absorb foodstuffs and nutrients. Anyone who suffers from leaky gut syndrome, coeliac disease, or just has below optimal gut health will not absorb nutrients no where near as readily and as efficiently.

A steak is not a steak

There are many factors that affect nutrient content and overall food quality. These variables give rise to a vast difference between foods of the same type. Factors such as time of season, soil quailty and other environmental variables all contribute to the nutrient content of foods; thus all foods are not equal and foods, even of the same type may have a higher nutritional value than others.

For example it is now a well known scientific fact that beef from a cow fed on grains is by far nutritionally inferior to grass fed beef.

Another good example of nutrient varience would be wild salmon vs. farmed salmon. Salmon is a well known oily fish, however this is only due to its natural diet; wild salmon feed on shrimp and krill which are naturally high in omega three oils. These shrimp and krill not only provide the salmon with a high count of omega three oils; they also contain a compound called astaxanthin which gives them their orangey colour. Farmed salmon on the other hand are fed on man made food pellets made from a mish mash of feed including a mixture of smaller fish such as whitebait and herring, GMO soy beans, yeast and chicken feathers. Artificial colourings are then further added to these food pellets in an effort to replicate the natural orangey colour of wild salmon. Thus a wild salmon is nutritionaly superior to a farmed salmon; eating a farmed salmon thinking you have your nutrition on point would be naive.

To summarise here are seven key points why you do not need to count calories:

• The Human body does not work on heat exchange (calories)
• All calories are not equal
• Some calories cause disease more than others
• Quality rules over quantity
• Restricting calories can lead to a shortfall of essential nutrients
• Not all calories are utilised
• Not all foods are equal

This article was republished from DNA Lean's blog.