Calories: Why I’m not a fan of calorie counting

Calorie counting, is it always needed?

You may look at the headline for this blog post and presume that I’m going to totally eradicate calories, which I’m not. Personally I just don’t enjoy the whole recording and weighing food constantly part of counting calories.

Yes there is certain amounts of truth in the fact that if we are in a calorie deficit we will ‘lose wight’ but I feel sometimes people ignore the quality of food they consume to coincide with this deficit.

First let me give you a scenario, you choose to eat 1,000 calories per day, your diet consists of energy drinks, french fries, and chocolate. Or alternatively you decide to incorporate fresh vegetables, lean meats and fish. Ok you can probably tell where I’m going with this, but you would probably expect to feel lethargic and irritable on the junk food diet as opposed to the more nutrient rich diet. How about body composition? Well exercise and nutrition kind of go hand in hand and if you are incorporating good sources of protein into your diet this tends to aid muscular recovery which in turn will more than likely help aid build lean muscle mass. So not only will you probably feel more nourished with the nutrient rich 1,000 calorie diet you will hopefully feel more energised and recover better post-exercise.

Exchange time spent logging calories for a 20 minute HIIT session?

As a nation we’ve been fixated with counting calories, I myself have been there, done that. I use to log my food into one of those Apps everyday. For me it was tedious. In the time it took me to log my food I could have done a 20 minute HIIT session to help burn off the food I ate. For everyone it’s different, some people like to track what they eat. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but counting calories, macros and micros is just not for me.

Nutritional value of Lo Han Guo vs other Natural Sweeteners

Lo Han Guo has Zero calories but so do other sweeteners. The difference between Luo Han Guo and other sweeteners is the nutritional value and how these interact with your body. In a previous blog post I wrote about how other sweeteners affect your health (click to read here). In summary, most will cause gastrointestinal distress, overeating and chemical imbalances. Whereas Lo Han Guo has been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties to reduce the risk of certain diseases. This is the same for a whole host of other foods out there; some foods contain hardly any calories but an abundance of vitamins and minerals. On the flip side, certain foods are high in calories but contain little or no nutritional value whatsoever.

By no means become discouraged about counting calories, if it works for you in achieving your goals then keep going! The purpose of this blog is to help make us more aware of what foods we are all consuming. Is the food you are eating empty calories and by this I mean does it have any nutritional value, and by nutritional value I mean valuable properties to your health.