Stop counting calories
Calorie counting is meant to be straightforward: if calories in are less than calories out, you lose weight. If, however, you’re eating more than you’re burning, you gain weight. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- Calorie counting is meant to be straightforward: if calories in are less than calories out, you lose weight. If, however, you’re eating more than you’re burning, you gain weight.
- The calorie theory of weight loss fails to take people’s metabolism (the process of turning food into energy) into account. People’s metabolisms vary considerably and most obese people have slower metabolisms than slim people.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a regulatory body in the US, is now going to require a calorie count on an increasing number of foods, including popcorn sold at movie theatres.
This is possibly to curb the obesity epidemic that America finds itself in the midst of. In my opinion, these new rules aren’t really going to change things – and that’s because the ‘science’, is all wrong.
Calorie counting is meant to be straightforward: if calories in are less than calories out, you lose weight. If, however, you’re eating more than you’re burning, you gain weight.
But while the reasoning appears simple, it is simplistic.
Let me give you an example. Imagine that you ate if you ate one less apple every day for a year. With an apple scoring about 100 calories, that means you’d lose 36, 500 calories over the course of the year.
Since a pound of body fat is equivalent to around 4, 000 calories, this means you would lose 10 pounds in the first year, 3 ½ stone by the fifth year, seven stone after 10 years and vanish completely after 15 years – all by eating one less apple a day!
Clearly, there is something very wrong with this rationale.
The calorie theory of weight loss fails to take people’s metabolism (the process of turning food into energy) into account. People’s metabolisms vary considerably and most obese people have slower metabolisms than slim people.
So, what does help shed those pounds?
Always eat breakfast.
Skipping breakfast sends the message to your body that you’re starving and as a protective mechanism, your metabolism slows down.
Never eat less than 1, 200 calories a day.
Less than 1, 200 is usually not enough to support your basal metabolism and thus will slow your body’s calorie-burning ability.
Drink enough water.
Without the eight glasses-a-day required to carry out your body’s general functions, your metabolism will be one of the first things to slow down.
Tone your muscles with weight training, three days a week.
Muscle burns more calories (which is why men, who have a higher muscle mass, annoyingly lose weight more quickly than women).
Do 30 minutes of low-intensity aerobic exercise, such as walking, every day.
This works better than a high-intensity cardiovascular workout, which can make you very hungry – and likely to eat exactly the wrong things!
