To Count or Not To Count

You can normally break weight-loss down into a pretty damn simple equation. To lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you take in. Seems easy enough, right?

Well, yes and no.

It can be incredibly hard to accurately track your caloric intake versus outtake. Yay for apps and #science and all that, but human beings are not robots that always have a standardized caloric burn rate set at the factory. There are averages, and they can be generally calculated by your height & weight, but those are still estimations. Think about those friends you know that can eat WTFever they want and still are skinny as a rail. Unless they have a stomach worm (ew) they probably have a higher metabolism, meaning they are naturally burning calories faster than you. Lucky bitches.

Before we start yelling at all the skinny people though, the point is actually that not only does caloric burn vary by person; it also varies for the same individual over the course of their life. Basically, it’s inconsistent.

Even if you can narrow down your daily caloric burn to a fairly accurate estimate, there are still external factors. What food you eat can rev or slow your metabolism. You can also burn additional calories through exercise or really any sort of activity that gets your heart rate up.

But let’s pretend that you figure that shit out pretty well too, and you start counting calories to make sure you’re falling under that caloric burn each day. You can eat whatever you want, right? A calorie is a calorie is a calorie.

If your only goal is to lose weight this actually isn’t false logic. That’s why people can do ridiculous things like only eat Chipotle for a year or go on the Twinkie diet and not gain all the weight in the world. I really think it should go without saying that this doesn’t mean it’s actually doing your body good. Most apps that offer caloric tracking also show you the macro calculations, so that you can make sure your calories aren’t all falling under the FAT portion of the chart. Different diets suggest different combinations of fat, protein, and carbs, but it’s pretty easy to edit your goals to stick to the diet you’re following.

So having said all that, assuming you have the knowledge and approach your caloric tracking the right way, I should be in favor of it. And hell, if it works for you, woot! Congrats! You do the thing!

But I don’t think it works for me.

What’s weird about this is again, if your only goal is weight-loss, I have to say tracking my food works in the sense that I LOSE WEIGHT LIKE A SONNABITCH! I first noticed then when I added food tracking to my jazzercise routine, and the pounds FLEW off. It was miraculous! It was justification! I looked great!

I felt awful. My perfectionist crazy went, well, crazy.

Here’s why I find calorie tracking problematic:

•  It’s a fun sucker. There is nothing better at killing the joy in life than to realize that your favorite macaroni and cheese is LITERALLY MORE CALORIES THAN YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO EAT IN A DAY. #TearsForYears
• It’s hard to be accurate, which makes it frustrating. Especially when you’re eating out. While restaurants are generally getting better at including calorie counts, you need to read the fine print. They rarely include the calories for additional parts of the meal. If you prefer to eat at local restaurants, good luck! And figuring out the calorie count for home-made meals is enough to ruin* the fun of cooking (I assume, I don’t actually find it fun in the first place so it’s really a shitty situation all around). In desperation you may turn to pre-prepared meals that gleefully announce their calories and nutrients on the package.  Your heart dies a little each day from the excess sodium. 
• It’s addictive. If you like lists (which clearly I do), tracking things, or are a little competitive, please do me a favor and don’t start counting calories. Staying under that daily goal becomes the new purpose of your life. Every time someone offers you food, all you think about is what it’s going to do to your count. In a few weeks of tracking I got to the point where the app I was using would give me alerts for eating too FEW calories in a day (oops).  

It’s all well and good to want to lose weight, and I think the best way to do so is an effective lifestyle change, but you should still be having a LIFE. Eat the delicious goodies occasionally. Have some wine. Enjoy your friend’s birthday without being *that* person asking to switch restaurants so you can get a certain salad with lean protein.

If you can do that while counting calories, as I said, more power to you! For me though, it’s a little too all-consuming. Really, this post is mainly a reminder to myself of why it would be a bad idea to bust out my app again and knock off those 10 pounds I want gone for the summer. General healthy eating and exercise when possible is the way to go!

Probably. I mean at the end of the day I’m not a nutritionist, just a gal that really likes to read fitness articles and post diet memes.