Why Calorie Counting is a Bad Way to Lose Weight
by Vin Miller
Almost everyone knows that doing more exercise and reducing calorie consumption will promote weight loss. But if weight loss is this simple, then why are so many people failing miserably despite their desperate efforts? While it may be a result of laziness for some, it’s more often a result of calorie restriction and exercise being used inappropriately.
Despite how many people make drastic but temporary changes to lose weight, long term success is highly dependent on making less drastic changes that are permanent. It’s common for people to be overzealous with calorie restriction or exercise, and although it may initially be effective, these practices are eventually likely to lead to fatigue, a raging appetite that can no longer be resisted, compromised health, and an eventual return to old habits. This is why so many people regain the weight they’ve worked so hard to lose and continue to repeat this cycle until they eventually give up and choose to accept being overweight.
Would You Do This to Your Car?
Imagine a hypothetical scenario where you compromise on the quality of gas that you put into your car. You need to drive the car an extra 200 miles each week to prevent the impurities in the low quality gas from settling and causing buildup that can damage the engine. The extra mileage would accumulate to more than 10,000 miles per year and put a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the car. The car would probably be ready for the junk yard much sooner than normal, and choosing to use lesser quality gasoline would obviously be a tremendous mistake. In addition, driving the additional 200 miles each week would waste a lot of time, even if you enjoy driving.
This scenario sounds ridiculous in regard to a car, but yet it’s exactly what most people do to lose weight. They regularly eat lesser quality food and end up trying to compensate by exercising frantically to burn calories. In the process, they put a lot of unnecessary burden on their bodies and waste a lot of time.
Frequent exercise causes the breakdown of body tissue which then needs to be rebuilt. This requires good nutrition and adequate rest. Most people who exercise for weight loss will also restrict their calories, but will do so without paying much attention to food quality. Between the calorie restriction, lesser quality food, and frequent exercise that is usually coupled with inadequate rest, full recovery will never happen and the body will gradually continue to break down. Eventually, the compromised health that this can cause may manifest as tiredness, irritability, poor concentration, and weakened immunity, all of which are symptoms of adrenal fatigue. Like the car that accumulates many unnecessary miles each year, your body will be ready for the junk yard well before its time. Although the human body is extremely resilient and can withstand a lot of abuse, there are much better ways to lose weight without testing this limit.
Not All Calories are Created Equal
Even dietitians and nutritionists are known to oversimplify weight loss to being a matter of “calories in vs. calories out” which basically means to consume fewer calories than you burn. However, this relies on the flawed assumption that all calories are the same regardless of the type of food that they come from. Fat, protein, and carbohydrates are each used for different physiological purposes, and although each of these macronutrients can often be broken down and reassembled as needed, this isn’t always the case and sometimes has negative consequences. Furthermore, how these macronutrients are processed can vary based on the individuality of one’s metabolism. In other words, 100 calories worth of protein will not be digested and utilized the same way 100 calories of carbohydrates would be, and the differences can vary by individual.
It’s absurd to think that eating 2,000 calories of carbohydrate per day would have the same physiological influence as eating 2,000 calories of all protein. Clearly, this is an extreme exaggeration, but so is the overstated simplicity of losing weight by creating a calorie deficit. Furthermore, many people are excessive with calorie restriction and it’s difficult to maintain consistent weight loss by doing this because the body will adjust to the decreased intake of nutrients and reduce metabolism to conserve resources. It’s also difficult to overcome the increased appetite that results, and when excessive calorie restriction is combined with excessive exercise, which is often the case, appetite will increase even more.
Although carbohydrates are our primary source of energy, fat is also important for energy production and is actually used by the body for long term energy storage. When necessary, protein can be used as a source of energy as well. As such, all of the three primary macronutrients can be used for energy, but carbohydrates can’t satisfy all of the needs that protein and fat do for the repair and development of body tissue. Clearly, our diets need to provide a balance of these macronutrients, and this balance should be based more so on optimal health and metabolic individuality than weight loss. Unless health issues are involved, weight loss tends to result naturally from a diet that promotes optimal health. However, partly as a result of deceptive advertising and food labels, many people are confused by the misconceptions of what a truly healthy diet really is.
Why Low Fat Diets are a Bad Idea
A gram of fat contains more the twice as many calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate. As such, it’s one of the first things to be removed from the diet by someone looking to cut calories, especially given the popularity of low fat diets for both health and weight loss. Despite this, fat is very important to our health, and this has been made obvious in part by the increasing awareness of the benefits of essential fatty acids. Even saturated fat is necessary for good health despite the misconception that dietary fat causes heart disease. Furthermore, as shown by the important work of Dr. Weston A. Price, dietary animal fat is an important source of the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K which are critical to good health and proper development.
Another important consideration regarding fat consumption is its role in energy production. People who eat less carbohydrate tend to rely more on fat as a source of energy which decreases the likeliness of it being stored as body fat. Ironically, most people who follow a low fat diet eat an excessive amount of carbohydrates to compensate, and as a result, can be much more likely to gain weight. While an excess of either carbohydrate or fat can cause weight gain, most people would be better served by reducing their consumption of carbohydrates rather than fat.
A Better Perspective on Losing Weight
As I mentioned earlier, it’s much better to lose weight by eating healthy than to compensate for poor eating habits with excessive exercise and calorie restriction. The first approach will allow you to lose weight while also improving your health and overall quality of life, but the latter approach is much more likely to improve your appearance at the cost of your health. Exercise can indeed accelerate weight loss, but it shouldn’t be necessary to do much more than what’s required to maintain good health. Calorie restriction can promote weight loss as well, but done in excess, it can also cause nutritional deficiencies and even prevent weight loss. Besides, even if calorie counting were a good idea, the calorie information on nutrition labels is often inaccurate.
As you can hopefully see, the ideal situation is for optimal health to be the primary goal and to allow weight loss to naturally occur as a secondary benefit. This applies in regard to both diet and exercise. In fact, this is exactly how I lost 30 pounds in 3 months. I had no intentions of losing weight, and at the time, didn’t even know I had 30 pounds to lose. In addition, because I was at my worst stage of chronic fatigue, I wasn’t exercising much at all because I simply couldn’t do so without making myself feel worse.
A Healthier and More Simple Way of Eating to Lose Weight
Following a truly healthy diet can require a lot of dedication, but fortunately, it can also be very simple. The key is eliminating sugar and processed foods as much as possible which can automatically be accomplished by eating a diet based on natural whole foods. If necessary, this approach can be taken a step further by eliminating grain based foods, avoiding vegetables such as potatoes that are high in starch, and even being judicious with fruit consumption. After all, the sugar that our prehistoric ancestors obtained from fruit during the summer was one of the things that allowed them to gain the body fat needed to survive winter.
While this approach may sound like a low carb diet or a primal diet, I consider it to be nothing more than a common sense diet that promotes weight loss and good health at the same time. While this type of diet is low in carbohydrates relative to the typical modern diet, excessive avoidance of carbohydrates isn’t necessary and is even counterproductive for some people. What’s important to realize is that it’s difficult to consume too much carbohydrate from fruit and vegetables, and it’s also difficult to overeat in general when eating mostly natural whole foods. These are both factors that greatly contribute to healthy weight loss.
A great resource for more information on a rational and healthy perspective on weight loss is The Slow Down Diet by Marc David. Another great resource is The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson which is a detailed overview of a healthy lifestyle based on our evolution, much of which is geared towards weight loss.
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This is exactly the kind of information I’d like to see hit the presses more often… but since the diet/eat-less/exercise-more industry is so prevalant I don’t see that happening any time soon. Even in some of the most respected health and nutrition blogs I frequently see weight loss oversimplified into a calories-in/calories-out formula, although this method has really been proven wrong – not only in practice by millions of real people but even in some of the overfeeding studies where the math just doesn’t add up (Good Calories, Bad Calories does a good job of summing those up). It’s just interesting to see that, in practice, calorie counting does not work in the way that most experts theorize. The body’s natural function obviously cannot be reduced to an oversimplified equation.
In my opinion if you focus mostly on being genuinely healthy, your diet and lifestyle will naturally prime your body to maintain a more healthy weight. Of course, it may not be the super-skinny/ripped-from-head-to-toe look a lot of us covet, but many people can achieve a healthy normal weight simply by altering their lifestyle in a healthy way (i.e. plenty of real food, good sleep, stress management, sensible exercise, etc.). I think dieting and over-exercising contributes to the so-called obesity epidemic just as much as processed foods like sugar.
Hi Elizabeth, thanks for your comment!
I would like to see this type of information become more available as well. In regard to being “ripped”, following a diet that’s focused on optimal health can bring someone closer to such a goal than most people realize or are willing to believe.
Great article Vin!
I think the best use of calorie counting is when you first decide it’s time to change the way you treat your body. Taking a week to count how many calories you normally eat can be quite an eye opener, especially to those who insist they are doing just fine eating crap all day and can’t understand why they are overweight. But it’s easy to get obsessed with “numbers” rather than quality when you make calorie counting a central part of a weight loss plan.
The proof of your point is all the people I know who are trying to lose weight by eating all those special low cal/low fat bars and drinks and cereals and frozen dinners etc. Mmmm, chemicals. Then when they can’t take it anymore they pig out on junk food!
The only way focusing on calories works is by cutting out all the empty calories and replacing them with nutritious, real calories…
Thanks, Kim!
That’s a great point. Although it’s pretty hard to overeat when eating natural whole foods, occasionally counting calorie consumption for an entire day can reveal some useful information. Likewise, it can be worthwhile to determine how much of each macronutrient is consumed during a typical day, especially carbohydrates.
In keeping with the “long term success is highly dependent on making less drastic changes that are permanent” many people are having lasting success with the NoS Diet (www.nosdiet.com). In fact, the creator sometimes refers to it as ‘extreme moderation’.
Less of a diet (it has no lists of ‘allowed/forbidden’ ) and more of a framework for habit building, it is built on the idea that massive amounts of sugar and constant snacking are modern developments and we would be better served by eating two or three meals a day without snacks and reframing desserts and sweets as special occasion treats. The emphasis on habit building means that after a time, little thought or effort is required – and no ‘willpower’. It works well with traditional food and as history demonstrates, (not to mention other cultures where sweets and snacks are uncommon) is sustainable over a lifetime.
Hi Ivy, thanks for your comment!
Although I haven’t read The No S Diet, based on what I can see from the website, I like it’s simple approach. However, this diet seems to be mostly about avoiding obvious junk and not overeating. I think it’s important to also pay attention to food quality. Not only is this important for health, but the nutritional quality of food can also influence whether or not one’s appetite is satisfied. This diet also seems to underestimate how easy it can be to consume excessive amounts of carbohydrates, even if eating just three meals per day without snacks. You mention that this diet works well with traditional foods which I think is a very important factor because it resolves these issues.
The clean fuel analogy is a clever way to approach the way of weight loss- I first heard of it from my yoga teacher.
Great read, thank you.
Thanks, Jin! I think the analogy is especially appropriate since some people take better care of their cars than themselves!
I am a 57 year old woman in pretty good health – only main complaints are general fatigue and I have about 10 – 15 pounds I’d like to lose.
The last several months I’ve cut out practically all sugar and absolutely all vegetable oils (except for some olive oil). Eliminated all refined carbs. Then I cut down on carbs to approx 100 g a day (I cannot go lower, as I get very depressed and cranky).
I just got back from the dr, and my cholesterol is high (above 300), higher than a year ago.
I am confused. Doctor told me to stop eating eggs and eat oatmeal instead. She’d really lecture me if she knew I was cooking with real butter!
This is very depressing. I try really hard (get teased by family and friends) and then this, (and the weight will not come off either). Oh well…………..
Hi Peg,
I think you’ve made some important progress with your food choices and it’s great that you’re figuring out what type of diet works best for you (not doing well with less than 100 grams of carbohydrates).
It’s important to realize that there’s much more to weight loss than diet. Stress is one of the bigger obstacles for weight loss. Your metabolic individuality and how you spread your meals throughout the day can be important as well. Adrenal fatigue and impaired thyroid function can contribute too, and so can food sensitivities. These are more great examples of why health should be a higher priority goal than weight loss.
Another consideration is that after menopause, women are more reliant on fat cells for estrogen production, and from this perspective, having a few extra pounds can be advantageous.
A good book that might give you some additional guidance is The Slow Down Diet by Marc David. Here’s an article I wrote based on some of the information in it. This book promotes a health oriented approach to weight loss with some great ideas that go way beyond most oversimplified mainstream approaches.
Cholesterol is a repair substance and high levels of it are a likely indication that something is causing damage. Oxidized vegetable oils are believed to be one of the most common causes of this, so it’s good that you’re avoiding them. Cholesterol is also a precursor to hormones which mean the endocrine system could also be a contributing factor. Either way, I suggest reading The Cholesterol Myths by Dr. Uffe Ravnskov, $29 Billion Reasons to Lie About Cholesterol by Justin Smith, or The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr. Malcom Kendrick to help you evaluate the advice your doctor gives you. All of these books show that the existing research on heart disease really doesn’t show any correlation between dietary cholesterol intake and blood cholesterol levels.
Most importantly, don’t be depressed! Things could be much worse, and being depressed certainly isn’t going to help matters. I get teased too, but I rarely let it bother me because I know how much I value my health and that the people doing the teasing are typically uninformed and locked into mainstream beliefs. Regarding the frustration, I tried many things during my fight with chronic fatigue that didn’t help and sometimes did more harm than good. You just have to keep at it and do your best to not let it cause you too much stress.
I hope that helps!
I too really like the engine vs. body connection – many people are so removed from what their physical body truly needs that they require this car imagery to “get it.” Marc David’s books and work are brilliant…so many thought provoking ideas and questions that allow the reader tune into their body at a whole new level. Cheers to saturated fat!
Hi Alison, thanks for your comment!
I’m glad to hear that you like Marc David’s book. I think it provides such a different but yet common sense perspective that many could benefit from. Yes, cheers to saturated fat!
Vin, thank you for taking the time to write an in depth reply to me. I will certainly look at some of these books, maybe bring 1 or 2 to my next doctor appointment!
Hi Vin,
I’ve just read the first lesson of your 7 simple steps course and I’m really looking forward to getting my health back on track! I don’t have terribly unhealthy habits, but I know I’m not feeling as well as I should be, mainly because of tiredness. I’m seeing a sleep specialist in March so hopefully that will solve many problems for me, but I’m determined to steer clear from medication as much as possible, I prefer to treat the cause rather than the symptom.
Aside from that I guess I can be just plain lazy, which is going to stop now. There’s no way I will end up like my boyfriends dad who we’ve decided will die with the salt shaker in one hand, a cigarette in the other and a glass of scotch in front of him! Or like my best friends mother who unfortunately left it too late to quit smoking.
Thank you for your inspiration!
Jennaya
Hi Jennaya,
I’m glad to hear that you signed up for the course and I hope you find it to be helpful. It sounds like you have a great perspective in regard to improving your health and I hope that seeing the sleep specialist will help you out.
Here’s an article I wrote about improving your sleep habits that you might find useful.
Nice one Vin! You said it best – Get healthy first and then the weight loss will follow.
Interesting point about the quality of the food.
Many people are overweight but still hungry all the time. In part it is related to foods that are high in calories but low in essential nutrients like vitamins and trace minerals. The body then will demand more food intake in the futile effort to get the nutrients it needs.
You are much better off eating real food — even eggs and butter — than low quality “diet food.”
Hi Dan, thanks for your comment!
I completely agree. The more one deprives themselves of food, the more hungry they’ll be and the more their metabolism will slow down. Doing more exercise to burn calories will increase appetite even more. I think focusing on the quality of food more so than quantity is a much more effective and pleasant approach, and this even means eating fat!
Your “better” perspective on losing weight is so simple and has so much common sense… it’s a shame people just don’t apply it.
I often find so many people complaining about losing weight yet all they do is search for a quick fix solution. They turn to a supplement for some outlandish exercise routine. I feel many people will benefit the most by simply spending some time in the kitchen and just tweak their diets a bit.
By cutting a few bad foods from the diet, some people can really produce good results. Taking a further step and preparing very clean and nutritious meals and eating 4 or 5 times a day will increase their healthy lifestyle. And finally adding exercise is the icing on the cake.
Extreme measures are not always the best approaches for people.
Hi Tyler, thanks for your comment!
I completely agree that many people could benefit tremendously from simple changes. One that comes to mind is eliminating or at least reducing the consumption of grain based foods such as bread, pasta, cereal, and bagels. Not only do these foods tend to be high in refined carbohydrates which is a major cause of weight gain, but they also tend to cause a number of problems for the many people who don’t know that they’re sensitive to gluten. As simple and effective as such a change is, it requires dedication, and as you said, many people prefer to pursue a quick fix.
You are right, but the calorie counters are also right.
Because in the end calorie in – calorie out is still true. Even if people use that fact to do things that are not good for them.
You can eat healthy and still eat too many calories for to lose weight. If you’re very very obese, then yes just cutting out junk food will work because you had so much excess to begin with, but when you just have 5 or 10 pounds to lose, counting calories is actually a very good idea, since the difference between the amount of calories that will cause you to lose weight at a decent rate and the amount that will make you stay the same size is like 300-500, which means basically that one sandwich you ate before going to bed.
What I usually do when i’m trying to lose weight, is to eat healthy, as always. I don’t try to eat mostly fat or mostly protein or any sillyness. I eat the same as always, but cut out a certain amount calories every day until I get to the weight I want to be. I keep track of EVERYTHING I eat to do this. Once I lose the weight, I gradually raise the calories until I find the point of equilibrium where I neither gain or lose weight.
This usually works great until I find myself without money and am forced to eat fast food everyday for a few months, and gain 5-10 pounds.
Calorie counting is especially helpful when you don’t have access to healthy foods all the time. Or when you are forced to eat out, or eat a food you’re not familiar with. If i’m choosing between 2 unhealthy meals I may as well choose the one with fewer calories. A lot of people can’t afford to, or don’t have the time to, eat a perfect diet ALL the time.
Now you might say “why not just be satisfied with whatever weight you are at as long as you are heallthy”. However, the thing about it is that a lot of people eat more food than they need to. They eat until they are stuffed, not until they are satisfied. America seems to like huge servings. Calorie counting can help give you perspective about how much food your body actually needs every day.
Like I never realized how many calories was in oil until I started counting calories. Or that you can make a salad go from 100 calories to 500 calories easy by drenching it in salad dressing. A lot of people eat a salad thinking they are eating healthy, not realizing how much fat they are taking in.
It’s the same with other things. I was shocked to find out a cookie smaller than an oreo I was eating has 70 calories in it. If I wasn’t counting calories I would have eating like a cup of 10 thinking I was having a small harmless “snack”. (700 calories!)
I think the average dieter can actually learn a lot by counting calories. If they use it responsibly.
Basically, like everything, it’s not 100% evil, it’s just another useful piece of information that can be used for either good or bad.
Hi Nicky, thanks for your comment.
Protein and fat can be used for energy production along with carbohydrate. However, protein is generally only used for energy production as a last resort. At rest and during low intensity exercise, fat tends to be used more for energy than carbohydrate, but this tendency can be altered by how much of each of these nutrients are consumed on a regular basis and is probably also altered by genetics and other aspects of individuality. In contrast, protein and fat are used for tissue synthesis and repair while carbohydrate typically is not. Based on all of this, there are a number of factors that can influence how macronutrients are metabolized, and this leads me to believe that the calories in vs calories out line of thinking is oversimplified.
In addition, calculating one’s daily calorie requirement is a rough approximation, and given the significant dependency on activity level, it can be very subjective. Even if someone were able to accurately determine their daily requirement, the calorie listings for specific foods are often inaccurate, and without using a scale, it’s difficult to accurately estimate portion sizes. For someone who’s counting calories to lose weight, a couple hundred calories is a big deal, and the variance described above can easily exceed this amount.
I agree that counting calories is useful to occasionally get a rough estimate of food intake, or as you said, to become more aware of the approximate calorie content of various foods, but I stand by my opinion that as a daily habit it’s much more stress and hassle than it’s worth.