Why I don’t count calories!
Coach Caroline
First, let me make the disclaimer that I am not trying to lose weight. I don’t actually believe in diets although I have definitely curbed my eating in the past to try and knock off a few kilograms. I have never completely restricted a type of food though, and never intend to (except maybe jelly, I can’t stand the texture). I am lucky, I have a pretty speedy metabolism and I do a lot of exercise, plus I have an active, busy job. But I certainly love to eat and I love to cook and bake. I counter this by being moderate. I have not always been this way, but the older and more educated I have become about nutrition, the less desire I feel to count my calories.
All food has calories, but not all food has nutritional value. The CSIRO Healthy Eating Pyramid which has been put together by medical experts and dieticians, dictates we should enjoy a variety of food with different vitamin and mineral content. We should be eating mostly vegetables, legumes and some fruit, followed by wholegrains for energy and to gut health, then protein sources such as milk, yoghurt and cheese or lean meat, with healthy fats as the smallest but equally important piece of the nutritional puzzle. Sounds easy right? Well, it actually is that easy, but the media, our peers and armchair experts have complicated this with a number of fad diets that promote high fat/low carb (keto, paleo, Atkins) and leave out whole macros, and therefore whole sources of important vitamins and minerals. A paleo diet equivalent to 2000 calories a day is going to look very different to a diet based on the CSIRO Healthy Eating Period. I don’t know about you, but I would rather take advice from a panel of experts who have been studying nutrition over several generations than celebrity Pete Evans.
I have clients who say to me, “I am tracking my food but I have leftover calories at the end of the day – should I add in another snack?” I tell them they should be guided by their level of hunger. At what point did we start relying on an app to tell us whether we are hungry or not?
Historically, humans would hunt and gather based on their activity, availability of food and hunger levels. It works in reverse: sometimes I have a huge day and have to add in another snack to get through until my next meal. I am not suggesting that people skip meals – I personally would NEVER skip a meal unless I was sick! If you skip meals you’re messing with your metabolism and it can have the reverse effect causing you to gain weight rather than lose it. I always tell my clients to have a drink of water as hunger can often be mistaken for dehydration. If after a short time, the hunger persists, you really are hungry and probably need something to get you through to the next meal.
People are different. I am a 42-year-old woman who exercises 6 days a week. How can you say that I should be on the same calorie count as a girl in her 20s who does one yoga session a week? It doesn’t take into consideration genetic factors, age, metabolism, level of activity. The one size fits all approach just doesn’t work.
A calorie deficit is when the energy or calories consumed are less than the energy output. If you restrict yourself to a calorie threshold so you can go into deficit what happens when you go back to your normal eating? You’ll regain the weight you lost. People need to learn healthy habits they can apply to their lives for the long term, rather than focusing on short term diet goals. Time and time again, I have seen people track their food and have great success only to find that once they stop tracking they are back where they started. A more mindful approach is what is required.
Finally, I do see the value in people recording what they eat and calorie trackers are a great way for people to become educated about the calorie content of food. I have had clients that simply don’t realise that their large full cream milk coffee with one sugar for morning tea is actually contributing to their calorie tally for the day, or ‘forgetting’ about that mini KitKat they had at 3pm. If it is written down, you can study the weak parts of your diet or the bad habits that have crept in. But not all calories are created equal, so trying to hit that target each and every day is not sustainable or wise. The best approach is to follow the CSIRO guidelines and get everything you need from the wonderful natural food sources available to us in Australia.
Supafit Coach Caroline
