The world’s obsession with calories and the abject failure of the energy balance model to benefit humankind are the reasons I urge you to stop using calories in your nutrition plan. Shifting from calories to managing the food you eat will blow your mind at how quickly you start to see progress toward your goals. As a society, we’ve had blinders on when it comes to nutrition, and somewhere along the way, we’ve started acting like our bodies are nothing more than gas tanks, rather than the highly complex and nuanced machines that they are.
I’m going to walk you through a single thought challenge you can pose to yourself or anyone who espouses calories as the foundation for achieving health and vitality through nutrition. If this doesn’t open your eyes, I don’t know what else will.
Before I give you that, here’s a bonus question to get your mind in the right place.
“In the over 100 years that we’ve been using calories as the foundation for determining nutrition guidelines, how many metabolic diseases have decreased in the population?”
Here is an excellent read on the topic. Public Health Nutrition Policies Should Focus on Healthy Eating, Not on Calorie Counting, Even to Decrease Obesity https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6628875
Some calorie-based facts:
- You can gain body fat by eating in a calorie deficit
- You can also gain muscle mass by eating in a calorie deficit
- You can lose body fat by eating in a calorie surplus
- You can also lose muscle by eating in a calorie surplus
Another good read on this topic. Energy balance myths: Why you can gain fat in a deficit
One more question.
“How does weight management reverse chronic illness caused by metabolic dysfunction?”
ANSWER: It doesn’t.
Weight loss gets you to a lower weight, but it doesn’t fix a broken metabolism. Think about that as you read the next part.
The Challenge
This thought exercise has two parts:
- Explain how calories impact your metabolic health (hormones, immune system, brain function, etc,…), muscle growth, and or fat loss.
- Do it without mentioning protein, fat, carbs, or electrolytes.
It can’t be done. What does that tell you about the amount of focus you should have on calories in your nutrition plan?
Metabolic health, sports performance, and your ability to have a healthy and thriving body are determined by the nutrition you get, not the amount of calories you consume.
- How does hitting your daily calorie goal prevent auto-immune disorders, insulin resistance, hypertension, or chronic gut issues?
- What’s more important for building muscles, protein or calories?
- What’s more important for sustained energy during workouts, fatty acids and glucose, or calories?
- What’s more important for central nervous system function, electrolytes or calories?
- What’s more important for hormone function, protein and fat, or calories?
There is not a single system or function in your body that calories have anything to do with. You don’t need calories. You need nutrition.
Start tracking the macro- and micronutrients you consume. That is the only way to figure out if you need more or less of any specific one. We are decades away from calories being the only tool we have to estimate what we’re eating. We now have the technology to track specific vitamins and minerals in our food. Ditch the calories and start hitting your goals.
Want to know how much nutrition you should be getting?? Check this out: https://ketodiet-getstarted.com
