1. Counting Calories Encourages You to Eat Junk.
With thousands of different diets to choose from, one of the few things they all have in common is where to shop in the grocery store. It’s no secret that buying fresh and natural foods around the outside of the store is the healthiest choice, but the sad part is almost none of these foods list their calorie content on the label.
In contrast, all packaged food is required by the FDA to list the nutrition facts. Unfortunately, this makes it easier to eat packaged food while counting calories. This is especially true for youth and those who are new to clean eating.
2. A “Calorie” isn’t a “Calorie”
Counting calories doesn’t ensure you’re getting the nutrients your body needs. As with most of life, getting the quantity right doesn’t mean the quality is also where it should be. I always use the following exaggerated example because it’s so simple everyone can understand it.
If I put you on a 1,800 calorie a day diet and didn’t specify which foods to eat, then in theory you could eat 2 cartons of Haagen Daz ice cream per day. How long do you think you’d survive on Haagen Daz ice cream?
3. Even Weight Watchers Stopped Believing
The president of Weight Watchers, David Kirchoff, recently said on their website: “Calorie counting has become unhelpful. When we have a 100-calorie apple in one hand and a 100-calorie pack of cookies in the other, and we view them as being ‘the same’ because the calories are the same, it says everything that needs to be said about the limitations of just using calories in guiding food choices.”
That means a lot coming from a company whose entire business was based on calorie counting. Weight Watchers has eliminated the company’s popular “Points” system, which instructed dieters to lose weight by eating any foods as long as they kept the portions small. The revamped system teaches dieters to consume more natural and unprocessed foods.
4. The Worst Calories
Calories from beverages containing sugar not only contain little to no nutritional value, but also leave us unsatisfied and craving more. One study found that fructose filled drinks increase intra-abdominal fat, promote abnormal lipids, and decrease insulin sensitivity.
Another study focused specifically on young people ages 12-18, concluded that high fructose corn syrup led to increased belly fat, inflammation, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and even pre-diabetes. I recently wrote about how sugar affects the brain.
5. How Food Affects Satiety
The worst part of dieting can be that empty feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. You know the one where you feel like you could eat anything? To avoid this feeling it’s important to eat foods that are high in protein because they make us feel more satisfied. The result is a reduced appetite which makes us eat less.
One study found that when subjects increased their protein intake to 30 percent of their daily nutrition, they ate 441 calories less each day, and experienced greater feelings of satiety. Satiety is defined as the absence of hunger.
While counting calories isn’t totally useless, it must be combined with eating natural foods that are high in nutrients. The best diets leave your body nourished with the right ratio of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. For some help on how lose weight without counting calories, check out our free Guide to Losing Fat, Vegetarian Weight Loss Diet, or Vegan Weight Loss Diet.
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