If you’re trying to get ripped lose weight, tracking the amount of food you eat or the total amount of calories is vital to your fat loss success.
Today, so many nutritionists frown upon tracking calories but the truth is that tracking your calorie intake is one of the only tried and true methods of successful weight loss.
In fact, every weight loss diet in existence is essentially a reduced calorie diet. The only difference lies in the composition of the diet in terms of actual foods eaten. For example the low carb diet only lets you eat low carb food but you are still eat less calories and the low fat diet only lets you eat low fat foods. But in the end, you’re still consuming less calories. It doesn’t matter where your foods come from if you’re aiming for weight loss, the only thing that matters is the amount of food you eat.
What you need to understand about weight loss is that it is a simple energy balance, meaning if you eat less than it takes to maintain your weight, then you’ll lose weight- simple as that.
Of course eating doughnuts all day isn’t a good idea either, since it lacks essential vitamins and nutrients.
So this means that even if you’re in the situation where you eat mostly healthy foods as in whole grains, nuts, and lean meats, you won’t be able to lose weight if you eat too many calories.
It’s not something people want to hear but calories do matter.
So how do you track calories? It’s quite simple. You can either keep track of it in your head or you can write it down.
But for the most accurate results, I suggest writing it down.
However, let’s address one of the greatest criticisms about calorie counting, which is that not all calories are created equal.
This is simply not true.
A calorie is a unit of measurement. So it is undeniably false when you say not all calories are equal.
What is true however is that not all macronutrients are equal. This means that macronutrients (fats, carbs, and protein) all carry different caloric values.
Lastly, let me tell you about one of my little calorie counting hacks -calorie banking.
What calorie banking is essentially is when you eat much lower calories leading up to a day of higher calories (e.g. a cheat day). This will deplete the glycogen stores in your body and will allow you eat a ton of food on your cheat without gaining any weight since you offset the extra calories with the lower calorie days. And for an added bonus, you could do a weight training and cardio session before you eat to further mitigate the fat loss.
So for example, if you plan to have a 4000 calorie day on Saturday night with some hot wings and pizza, then you would drastically reduce your calories 2-3 days leading up to Saturday. I suggest eating at least 1000 calories less than normal to ensure that you don’t gain any weight.
In conclusion, while counting calories is one the best ways to lose weight, I don’t want you to start getting obsessive about it. Being obsessive with anything in life is unhealthy so don’t let calorie counting be one of them.
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