5 Reasons why calorie counting doesn’t work for weight loss

1. Our body is not a combustion engine. A calorie is a measurement of the energy we get from the food we eat and extra fat on our bodies is excess stored energy…so it would make sense that if we want to stop storing extra energy and use the already stored energy, we would need to take in less energy (calories) then our fat problem would be solved and weight loss would easy. Well, that would be true if we were combustion engines like the engine in a car, which only has a few factors that influence it’s use of energy, but we aren’t. Our bodies are way more complicated than that.  Our bodies are a universe of trillions of cells, where each cell is working together and separately to preform it’s task. And we have trillions of signals moving throughout our bodies keeping everything working correctly. And it’s these signals that tell our body whether or not to store extra energy as fat or use it all up. And because we all have different genetics and lifetime environment, our signaling, each of our bodies work differently. And so it’s not as easy as calories in vs calories out.  Let’s take insulin for a second, insulin is a hormone that we need to use the food we eat, but how insulin is used and released is different for each of us. And Insulin not only helps our bodies use the food we eat, it also tells our bodies what to store.  So if our insulin is high, we are storing more of what we eat.  So you can eat really low calories, but if your signaling is not working right, then you won’t lose weight. Weight loss is not a calorie balance, it is a hormonal imbalance. And if we want to lose weight we need to balance our hormones (our signals) and give our bodies all the building blocks it needs to work correctly.
2. You can eat junk and still stay under your calorie number – Ok, say you are trying to lose weight and you are on a 1500 calorie diet .  Well if all you are looking at is calories and weight loss,  you can eat all 1500 calories in donuts and still be on your “diet”. And all though donuts taste really good, they totally devoid of the nutrients that help your cells and signals function right and they are high in sugar and carbohydrates which will cause your insulin to be constantly high, which will cause you to store the 1500calories more easily (see point #1), than if your 1500calories as made up of a variety of high nutrient foods.
3. Not all calories are created equal – For example it takes more energy to digest 100 calories of protein, than it does to digest 100 calories carbohydrates. So when we compare  are counting calories we are comparing apples to oranges.
4. Our bodies are constantly changing– Let’s continue with the combustion engine analogy. Car engines burn the same amount of gas all the time, but because our bodies are little universes of trillions of working cells that are constantly changing, how we use the food we eat is constantly changing too. It changes depending on how much activity we have, how we are feeling (emotionally and physically) and how according to our cycles.   Our bodies actually function according to in cycles, daily cycles and monthly, and yearly cycles. Our metabolism varies depending on if it’s the midday or morning, if we are menstruating or not and if it’s wintertime or summer. And our metabolism changes depending how active we are, not only because we more energy while we are more active, but because the activity changes our hormone signaling.
5. You never learn to let your own signals guide you. – This probably the most important reason calorie counting doesn’t work,  because it doesn’t help you relearn your hunger and fullness cues, which is  what will really help you lose weight long term. Our bodies default setting  is healthy and when we allow our bodies to guide  our choices, we will  make choices that are more aligned with our goals. But this does take some unlearning and retraining, because many of us have lost connection and the ability to read our signals. We have gotten so used to following food rules, counting calories, and using food to make us feel good, that we have lost the ability to recognize our hunger cues and trust our bodies signals.

So these are the 5 reasons calorie counting doesn’t work to help you lose weight longterm, but  I hate it when people tell what doesn’t work and then don’t give me any solutions that do work. So I won’t do that to you,  here are two things that DO work to help you lose weight and feel rocking’ in your bod.

1. Reconnect with your body. Allow your body and intuition guide your eating and movement choices. Practice tapping into your hunger cues and fullness cues to help to decide when to start eating and stop eating. Our bodies default setting really is healthy, so relearning how to trust your body signals is a game changer. Also, notice your patterns. Do you have patterns of feeling really hungry or out of control around food, with cravings, binging or grazing? Don’t judge these times as “bad” it’s just good to understand our patterns so we can change them.  Now you recognize that every evening you get a gnarly sweet tooth, or always have a 4pm snack attack for something crunchy. Now, before you act upon that impulse, check in with your self and ask “Am I really hunger? How hungry am I? If you are not really hungry and you just want to eat, dig a little deeper and find out what would really make you feel better. Are you bored, tired, restless, worried, anxious, stressed…these are all common emotions we dull with food, but eating never  really makes us feel better it just distracts us for a while and then compounds our negative feelings because now on top of feeling out of control,  we have just “failed our diet” guilt to add to our list self-gripes.
2. Eat Real Food – Focus on the quality of your food, not the calories or grams. This is the 1^st thing I do with all my clients, I help them clean up their diet so they are eating whole, unprocessed foods that are full of fiber and nutrients so they can give their body what it needs to food correctly and feel awesome. We also take out all extra added sugars, like soda, sweet tea, cookies, candy cakes…this is huge for decreasing the release of insulin help, so they can begin losing weight. So many people jump 4 steps ahead to the hard stuff like intermittent fasting or paleo, but really most people get the results they are looking for, simply by nourishing their body with real, whole food and cutting out the sugar.

You got this!

XO,

Sally

P.S. Did you know we are average of the 5 people we spend the most time with…so if need some amazing, health focused fabulous mommas to hang with for inspiration and support, you should join my free Facebook Group The Vibrant Warrior. They are magic!