The calorie. Many of us know that our weight is related to calories in vs calories out. Having a general understanding of calories and caloric needs can be incredibly empowering and useful when you are trying to understand what is between you and your fitness/body/health goal. However, relying on calorie counting as a long-term health and fitness solution is only necessary for people with highly specific body goals (bodybuilders, models, etc). Even then there are limitations with calorie counting.
Sure, you can achieve an aesthetic body goal by meticulously tracking everything you consume and restricting yourself, but who wants to live that way? Not me. And you don't have to in order to be hot as fuck, at peace with yourself, and feel amazing.
The most important aspect of a health and fitness journey is developing a healthy relationship to food, exercise, and your body. Calorie counting can easily hinder your relationship with food if it is not done in an empowered way.
The point of calculating caloric needs is not to set a daily amount of calories that you're "allowed" and call that the solution to your problem. That is a short-term answer that does not address the underlying cause.
The point of calculating your caloric needs, and noticing what your caloric intake currently is, is to get a deeper understanding of what may be going on. Then you can address the root causes of your habits, and get to a place where you naturally and easily meet your caloric needs. Over and under eating are both signs of something else going on either mentally or physically.
That being said, it is important to understand the limitations of calorie tracking, and why you cannot listen to a calorie tracker over your own body's cues.
PROBLEMS WITH CALORIE COUNTING
- Food labels are allowed a 20% margin of error: (something listed as 300 calories could be anywhere from 360-240 calories)
- Step Counters and other Calorie Trackers have HUGE margins of error: The University of British Columbia found step countering devices to literally have a margin error of 50%. The Journal of Personalized Medicine found The Apple Watch to have as much as a 93% margin of error when counting calories burned.
- Everyone Metabolizes Food and Burns Calories Differently: An article on the Huffington Post interviewed Dr Zhaoping Li, director at the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. She stated: “If a professional athlete walked at 3 miles per hour speed for a half hour, they’d burn [calories] totally differently than someone even at the same weight."
The message here is that calorie counting, no matter what, is only an estimate. It's something you can use to learn more about your body, but it is not the answer to your health goal.
Deeply listening to your body's cues is significantly more important than following a tracker of any kind.
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