Copyright 2005 Tom Venuto
Do calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods
and that will guarantee you’ll lose weight? Should you count
calories or can you just count “portions?” Is it necessary to
keep a food diary? Is it unrealistic to count calories for the
rest of your life or is that just part of the price you pay for
a better body?
You’re about to learn the answers to these questions and
discover a simple solution for keeping track of your food intake
without having to crunch numbers every day or become a fanatic
about your food.
In many popular diet books, “Calories don’t count” is a
frequently repeated theme. Other popular programs, such as Bill
Phillip’s “Body For Life,” allude to the importance of energy
intake versus energy output, but recommend that you count
“portions” rather than calories…
Phillips wrote,
“There aren’t many people who can keep track of their calorie
intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I
recommend counting ‘portions.’ A portion of food is roughly
equal to the size of your clenched fist or the palm of your
hand. Each portion of protein or carbohydrate typically contains
between 100 and 150 calories. For example, one chicken breast is
approximately one portion of protein, and one medium-sized baked
potato is approximately one portion of carbohydrate.”
Phillips makes a good point that trying to count every single
calorie - in the literal sense - can drive you crazy and is
probably not realistic as a lifestyle for the long term. It’s
one thing to count portions instead of calories - that is at
least acknowledging the importance of portion control. However,
it’s another altogether to deny that calories matter.
Yes, calories do count! Any diet program that tells you,
“calories don’t count” or you can “eat all you want and still
lose weight” is a diet you should avoid. The truth is, that line
is a bunch of baloney designed to make a diet sound easier to
follow. Anything that sounds like work - such as counting
calories, eating less or exercising, tends to scare away
potential customers! But the law of calorie balance is an
unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates
whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.
I believe that it’s very important to develop an understanding
of and a respect for portion control and the law of calorie
balance I also believe it’s an important part of nutrition
education to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat on
a regular basis - including (and perhaps, especially) how many
calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.
The law of calorie balance says:
To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of
calories you burn. To gain weight, you must consume more
calories than you burn. To lose weight, you must consume fewer
calories than you burn.
If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest clue
how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that
you’ll eat more than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer
calories than you should, which triggers your body’s “starvation
mode” and causes your metabolism to shut down).
So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations
with a nutrition program that gets results? Here’s a solution
that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just
guessing:
Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite
nutrition software. Crunch all the numbers including calories,
protein, carbs and fats. Once you have your daily menu, print
it, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner)
and you now have an eating “goal” for the day, including a
caloric target.
That is my definition of “counting calories” — creating a menu
plan you can use as a daily guide, not necessarily writing down
every morsel of food you eat for the rest of your life. If
you’re really ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal for at
least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning
experience, but all you really need to get started on the road
to a better body is one good menu on paper. If you get bored
eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus,
or just exchange foods using your one menu as a template.
Using this method, you really only need to count calories once
when you create your menus. After you’ve got a knack for
calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you
can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty good (and
more educated) ballpark figure.
So what’s the bottom line? Is it really necessary to count every
calorie to lose weight? No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer
calories then you burn. Whether you count calories and eat less
than you burn, or you don’t count calories and eat less than you
burn, the end result is the same - you lose weight. Which would
you rather do: Take a wild guess, or increase your chance for
success with some simple menu planning? I think the right choice
is obvious.
