In Why You Must Count Calories: Part 1 – The Argument Against Counting Calories, we reviewed a Time.com article titled “You Asked: Should I Count Calories?”
In a nutshell, while the article never actually answers the question in the title, it gives lots of reasons why you shouldn’t count calories, including:
- It’s difficult to count calories accurately
- The word ‘calorie’ carries damaging connotations
- All calories are not equal
In Part 1, we pointed out that, while the points above are valid, they have some flaws. In Part 2 below, we’ll look at why it is still important to count calories even considering the arguments against doing so.
The article does do a good job of pointing out that dieters are preoccupied with the quantity of calories in foods, versus the quality of calories in foods (though they really mean versus the quality of the foods delivering the calories).
Ultimately, it’s our misconception about what is a calorie, and the differences in the quality of the foods we eat, that is the basis for why we really must count them.
Among the ‘poor quality’ foods from which high levels of sugar get into our blood streams relatively quickly, simple carbohydrates (like those in snack foods and processed foods) are at the top of the list.
But, in addition to reshaping our understanding of what a calorie is, we must also rethink our understanding of what calories from poor quality foods do to our bodies.
They do not make you ‘fat’. As we said, they trigger your body’s insulin response, which tells your cells to store blood sugar. Over time, that process will increase the amount of fat in your body.
So try to think of calories from simple carbs as those that will cause your body to produce insulin. Instead of trying to lose weight, try to stop the spikes in insulin production that you get from simple carbs. If you spent as much time researching foods that keep your insulin production stable as you do looking for low-calorie foods, you would be more likely to reach your target weight faster and more healthily.
And that’s why you need to count calories and take into account where they come from, which should be a healthy, balanced diet (like you haven’t read that here before!!)
This is another time that the article really fails anyone looking for serious answers to important weight loss questions. It doesn’t point out the serious mistake of treating your weight management and overall health as a simple mathematical equation. Instead, it just vaguely hints that you should stop counting calories, which, as we’ve seen, is not necessarily true.
Even if the numbers of calories listed on food packages is inaccurate, and even if we eat more calories and burn fewer than we think, you must get an idea of how much food energy you’re consume and where it comes from.
Making the change starts with you. Of course we all want to lose weight as quickly and easily as we can. But using the straight-line ‘eat less, lose weight’ approach might not only actually make you gain weight, it could seriously damage your health.
The quickest and easiest way lose weight is to first understand that there’s no ‘quick and easy’ way to lose weight . Once you understand that, you’ll have taken the first and biggest step to healthily and sustainably losing weight. The nutrition specialists at your nearest Herbal One Centre can help you make the transformation.