SHOULD YOU BE COUNTING CALORIES?
This totally depends on your goals. If you strictly want to be strong and healthy then just eat real foods, get a good amount of protein (1g per pound of bodyweight) and workout. Give it 1-2 years and your body will adapt accordingly.
If you're bulking or losing weight, counting calories can be useful to give you an idea of how much you should be eating everyday. It will give you a better understanding of the types and amounts of foods you need to consume. In today's processed garbage world it can be a real eye-opener. There's a lot of seemingly healthy foods like smoothies that are loaded with calories and sugar. By tracking your intake, you can quickly identify areas where you may be consuming more or less than you realise and make adjustments accordingly.
Counting calories is probably more of a short term rather than long term strategy. I counted calories for over 2 years and after a few weeks you realise that you eat a lot of the same things over and over again. I more or less eat the same 3-4 meals with the same ingredients. Once the meals are set up in your food tracking app it takes minutes to input whatever meals you ate at the end of each day. After a year the habit of eating healthy meals will become fully ingrained in you and you'll have no reason to track anymore. I eat around 3000 calories daily, hit a min. 150gr of protein and only eat foods that come from plants, animals or the ground. Those are the only metrics I care about now.
Counting calories is not something anyone needs to be doing for the next several decades, it serves a purpose in better understanding how fat junk food makes you compared to veggies on a numerical level. Outside of that, not much else.
WHY A CALORIE IS NOT A CALORIE
Nutrition research has uncovered a new understanding of the relationship between food and weight gain. The old idea that all calories are created equal does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. While in a lab, calories from all foods release the same amount of energy when burned, in the body, foods have very different effects on hormones, brain chemistry, and metabolism.
For instance, fat calories and sugar calories behave differently. Fat calories speed up metabolism and do not spike insulin, a hormone responsible for fat storage. In fact, fat also works on the brain to reduce appetite and help control overall daily food intake. However, sugar and carb calories have the opposite effect, spiking insulin, promoting fat storage, and leading to increased hunger and cravings.
These insights into the hormonal and metabolic mechanisms of weight gain highlight the importance of food composition and quality. It is not the quantity of calories that matters, but what you eat, and the hormones and biochemistry they trigger.
You could have 400 calories of kale or 400 calories of crisps, but your body is going to process those two foods in completely different ways. One of the main aims of this guide is to shift your focus onto the quality of the foods you're consuming and how your body processes them.
For example, if you consume an avocado and some scrambled eggs, you'll not only be getting healthy fats and protein to build lean muscle and help burn fat, but you're also helping to keep yourself full and energised much longer. These foods won't cause a blood sugar spike, which can lead to cravings and calories being stored as fat.
Now lets take a big mac meal with fries and a drink which is about 1,000 calories. You can have one of those and a Pepperoni Pizza at 1,000 calories, and you're at 2,000 calories for the day. On the other hand, you could have 2,000 calories worth of eggs, chicken, fruits and vegetables.
Do you think those 2 days of eating 2000 calories are going to impact your body in the same way? I think it is obvious that your body would have completely opposite reactions to each meal plan, despite the calories being exactly the same. So, if you want to control your metabolic switches and achieve weight loss, focus on choosing high-quality foods that optimise your body's hormone and metabolic responses.
THE TRUTH ABOUT FAT LOSS
Most of us have been led to believe that the only way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more. If you're having a hard time losing weight, you just need to get this "energy balance" corrected. But... The science shows that it doesn't work that way.
The science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one—specifically. Insulin is a hormone that regulates your blood sugar levels, but it also tells your body to store fat.
Imagine you just ate a big bowl of pasta, garlic bread, and a sugary dessert. Your body digests all that food and turns it into glucose, which raises your blood sugar levels. In response, your pancreas releases insulin to bring your blood sugar back down to a healthy level.
Now, the problem is, when you eat too many carbs or sugar, your body releases too much insulin, which can cause your blood sugar levels to drop too low. This can make you feel hungry, tired, and sluggish, and can even lead to more cravings for carb-rich foods.
To make matters worse, when there's too much insulin in your bloodstream, your body starts storing the excess glucose as glycogen in your liver and muscles. But if there's still more glucose left over, your body stores it as fat. And if you keep eating too many carbs and sugar, your body keeps making and storing fat, which can lead to weight gain and other health problems.
When we want to spot the culprits responsible for metabolic disease, we have to point the finger at the highly processed, sugary foods and sweetened drinks. These are the foods and drinks most associated with compulsive eating because they light up the reward system in your brain. They are almost immediately absorbed into the blood, and the way the body processes these foods mean the brain finds it difficult to register when it's satiated. Resulting in us over eating these foods.
As explained above all nutrients don't have similar effects on weight and metabolism, a calorie is not a calorie. Simply reducing sugars, even if you eat the same number of calories, can lead to metabolic improvements. Garbage foods wreak more havoc on metabolism and control over appetite than other types of foods. If you want to get fat out of your cells in any biologically efficient way, you have to keep the insulin levels in your circulation low.
So, the key is to be mindful of your garbage food and sugar intake, and try to balance it with protein, healthy fats, and fibre-rich foods. This can help keep your blood sugar levels stable, prevent cravings, and help your body burn fat for fuel instead of storing it.
THE ROLE HUNGER PLAYS
Common diet culture says you should eat healthy meals and snacks every 2-3 hours if you want to keep your blood sugar stable and keep hunger at bay. Common diet culture is also part of the reason so many people are fat. If you do whats common, you'll get common results and what is common is people with poor health. You shouldn't have to feed your body every 3 hours to do either of those things. You also shouldn't fear hunger. We've all been led to believe that hunger is bad — that it's the one thing that stands between you and your weight loss goals. Lets be real, if you live in a first world country you've probably never gone more than 24 hours without eating. Most people don't actually know what hunger is.
The only reason you'd need to starve yourself in the first place is if you're counting calories whilst eating a diet full of low quality garbage foods, which tend to be high in calories and low in making you feel full. If you eat plenty of protein, and focus on nutrient density—you probably won't even be very hungry. You'll also become more fat-adapted, which lets you coast effortlessly for hours between meals. Being fat-adapted means your body burns fat instead of carbs. This also means instead of snacking on whatever garbage they put out in the office, you snack on your adipose tissue. More on this later.
Here's the deal. Hunger is simply how your body makes sure you're fuelled sufficiently so that you can function properly. If you're like me in my youth and you claim to feel hungry or starving "all the time", you're probably out of touch with your body. Humans evolved to last days without any food, that's starving. Going multiple hours in between meals should be the norm.
This disconnection with hunger could be a result of consuming too much ultra-processed foods which mess with our hormones. As discussed above, certain foods disrupt your ability to recognise when you're full — they literally confuse your brain into thinking you need to eat more. Sugar-free or "diet" foods aren't any better. Sugar substitutes, although calorie-free, adversely affect your metabolism, causing you to eat more. I used to have this same exact issue, eating full packets of chocolate digestives in one sitting. Mindlessly bingeing on snacks and not realising I overate until I felt physically sick. Since I began focusing on nutrition first and creating meals based on the quality of ingredients, I stopped having issues with hunger management. My eating became much more intuitive and I could better recognise when I was full.
Actions: Step one- ditch any processed or diet foods. Foods labeled "healthy" or "low carb" or "low fat." are all red flags. Foods that are actually healthy don't need to be labelled healthy.
Step two- sit with your "hunger" next time you feel it in between meals and know that you're okay. You're most probably dehydrated so drink a glass of water instead. I promise you that you won't starve in the time you wait until your next meal. Even if you had zero pounds to lose, you'd still have access to thousands of calories in fat stored as energy. This is where you want to train your body to get energy rather than in a packet of crisps.
Always remember, you were born to be the hero of your story.
Free you outlaw.