Do you want to lose weight or eat healthier? Then counting calories is a method to gain more insight into the amount of energy you eat and drink and use for exercise and sports. In this article, you will read the advantages and disadvantages of counting calories and you will get some useful tips.
The ratio between how much you eat and move is also called the energy balance. We speak of an energy balance when there is a balance between the amount of energy from the diet and the amount of energy that your body uses.
Do you want to lose weight? Then you have to consume more energy than you get. If you want to arrive, you have to eat more energy than you use. If you use the same amount as you need, the weight remains stable and you do not get on.
You can estimate the amount of energy that you use by using multiple calculations. Here comes a certain energy requirement and you can adjust your nutritional plan and diet accordingly.
If you make a feeding schedule, it is useful to have insight into your energy intake. Counting calories helps you to find out, for example, why you arrived. Was this, for example, a miscalculation of your energy needs, did you move too little or did you eat too much unconsciously?
Counting calories with an app
An app is a handy way to log your calorie intake. Suitable apps are for example My Eat Meter and the FIT Method app. In addition to calorie intake, you also get feedback on how much protein, carbohydrate and fat your diet contains. This way you get a better picture of whether you take more or less than you need.What are the benefits of counting calories?
By counting calories, you get insight into your diet. Insight into your energy intake can be useful for evaluating your diet. You know better if you get more or less than you need.Knowledge in the number of calories from different foods can prevent unforeseen energy intake.
Keeping track of your diet can act as a stick to keep you better at night if you have eaten too much. ("I'm already over my calories today, so I do not take that cookie"). But there are also disadvantages. I will explain what these are.
What are the disadvantages of counting calories?
Counting calories is not a blessing in any case. Below you can read the main disadvantages when using calorie counting to lose weight:
Logging your food can provide a lot of support and structure.
For some, it can be difficult if this falls away and there must be thought about what useful products are. The stick behind the door disappears as it were. In addition, some people who are very busy with calories have not learned to listen carefully to their body. How do you know if you have eaten enough without logging your food? And how do you ensure that you keep a healthy balance?Counting calories can turn into an obsession and can make you very rigid.
Not only the calories are important, but also the ratio of macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats) and the intake of micronutrients. If you are staring at calories, your intake of macro and micronutrients may not be ideal.
Counting takes time.
You do not always have the ability to count calories and will sometimes have to gamble.Do you have to count all calories to lose weight?
An important question that many people often ask me is whether they have to count all the calories to lose weight.
Counting calories can certainly help you to gain more insight into your diet, but counting all calories is probably not the solution to losing weight successfully.
How?
We are in favor of using an app as a tool to gain insight into the nutritional values of products, but do not skip through them and do not stare blindly at counting all the calories. When counting all the calories becomes an end in itself, you are busy with it all the time. For example, you think "I eat an apple flap this afternoon and then I skip the rice tonight". This often does not work in the longer term.Fortunately, it can also be different. In intuitive eating, you eat on the basis of hunger and satiety. You do not exclude any food products. Research shows that intuitive eating is connected with a positive self-image, self-compassion, eating pleasure, body acceptance, life satisfaction, and positive feelings
The following aspects play a role in intuitive eating:
You do not exclude any food products.
- Which obviously does not mean that you eat a lot of unhealthy things.
- You make food choices for health reasons and to enjoy them.
- You do not share food products as good/bad or safe/unsafe, but look more at nutrition in terms such as nutritious / less nutritious, healthy/unhealthy or tasteful/less tasteful.
- You do not use food to avoid negative emotions or to suppress feelings with food.
- You respect your body, regardless of the weight and how it looks.
- You move and sport mainly for health reasons or for pleasure.
- You can eat based on physical signals such as hunger and satiety.
- If you have eaten too much once, you eat the next meal a bit less. This will make you flexible and adapt to the circumstances.
- You especially choose the products that fill the most, such as protein-rich and fiber-rich foods.
- How does intuitive eating work in practice?
Many people over- or underestimate their caloric intake, so that intuitive eating does not just happen automatically. Learning to eat on the basis of hunger and satiety can take some time. The following 7 tips can help you with this.
Tip 1: the less distraction, the more attention you can keep with eating
Keep your focus when eating. Do not do other things during the meal. Put your phone away and do not eat in front of the TV. By focusing completely on the food you can register better when you become full.
Tip 2: scoop up in the kitchen
By not putting the pan on the table, you reduce the chances that you will be extra. So first create a portion of food in the kitchen and pay attention to it.
Tip 3: Eat quietly and chew more often
The body takes about 20 minutes to indicate how satisfied you are with the food. Eating too fast, therefore, increases the chance that you eat too much.
You can eat more quietly by:
to arrange your specifications regularly
a sip of water in between
more likely to chew on one bite.
Tip 4: research your needs
Find out which feelings, situations, and thoughts precede the need to eat. The following questions will help you:
What do you really need at that moment? Do you really need candy? Or do you have more need for comfort, company or conviviality? Do you really hungry; is your stomach rattling? Or is it a habit to eat because it is a certain time?
Examining your needs gives insight into yourself. This allows you to make an informed choice whether or not to act on it.
Tip 5: Accept your feelings
You can gain more control over something by accepting the situation. Get your fancy in something tasty, just notice it. Just as you would notice that it is raining. Allow the trek to be there, let it be there. Stay fasting and say to yourself: "Funny, I like licorice" and continue with what you were doing.
Tip 6: express your desires
If you notice a need for something tasty, first clear up any snacking. For example, ask yourself half an hour later if that need is still so strong. Often the desire drops again. Does the draft remain strong? Then take a small snack, enjoy it and put the rest away.
Tip 7: Do not wait too long for food when you are hungry
Do not wait too long for food if you are really hungry. It is good to listen to your body. In addition, not listening to hunger increases the risk of overeating.
Learning healthy (eating) habits
Besides intuitive eating, it is good to investigate which behaviors cause you to become overweight. Do you, for example, often serve twice during the evening meal? Or do you eat too many snacks during the day?
It is much more convenient to focus your attention on unlearning these unhealthy eating habits instead of completely eliminating delicacies and obsessively blindly staring at calories. Once an apple turnover is no problem, because you will not get tired of it. You will often find that if you unlearn your unhealthy eating habits, the weight loss often follows. The advantage of this method is that you do not have to be obsessive about counting calories.
Monitor eating behavior
It is possible that you do not get enough healthy nutrients and your diet does not match your current objective.
For example, you get too little protein, vegetables, and fiber. An app, such as My Eat Meter from the Nutrition Center or the FIT Method app is a useful way to gain insight into your eating habits.
The next step is to compare your eating behavior against healthy diet guidelines. Do you, for example, eat too little vegetables and proteins? Then create concrete goals to work on these points. Read more about setting up a goal-oriented and realistic plan here.
Another way to monitor your behavior is to write down your goals. One goal could be: "from now on I will not take sugar in my coffee".
Little steps help
Sometimes it helps to make small adjustments. For example, take 30+ cheese on bread instead of 48+ cheese, so that you get fewer calories and saturated fat. You do not always have to calculate everything completely. If you have some knowledge of the number of calories in your diet, you can easily adjust your eating habits based on your current diet.Do not forget to move sufficiently
Besides a healthy diet, it is just as important to exercise enough. Choose something that you can keep full so that you minimize the chance of a relapse.
Want to know more about how you can lose weight successfully? Then read this extensive article about losing weight, where all questions are dealt with.
Counting 7 statements about calories
There are quite a few statements about calories on the internet. Below you can read the 7 most important ones. Every claim is critically reviewed.Claim 1: "the number of calories in a product says nothing about how healthy it is"
It is true that you do not yet know how healthy a product is by how many calories it contains. That is why we also advise not only to look at individual food products but especially whether the product fits within a healthy diet.Certain food products can be said to have a positive effect on health. You can think of vegetables, fruit and unsalted nuts. But here too, of course, there must be a certain balance. Of just eating apples you will of course not become healthy.
Claim 2: "Carbohydrates make you fat faster"
Particularly supporters of the low- carbohydrate diet believe that a "calorie is not a calorie". The idea is that a low-carbohydrate diet makes you lose weight much faster because it ensures a more stable level of insulin.Without the well-known peaks of blood sugar levels, you would burn fatter and store less fat. The theory sounds very good, but does it really work so well to scrap the carbohydrates from your diet?
Is this correct?
It is true that if the insulin level rises due to the intake of carbohydrates, fat burning will temporarily be inhibited. But this process is recovering over a period of 24 hours. In other words, over a period of 24 hours, fat burning is virtually the same for a diet with higher carbohydrate intake and the same calorie intake as for the low-carbohydrate diet. In addition, a low-carbohydrate diet is often unsuccessful in the long term to lose weight.
A carbohydrate intake of between 45 and 55 percent of your total calorie intake is preferred because this percentage is associated with the lowest chance of death. Important here is that someone gets enough protein. Otherwise, you lose muscle mass.
If you want to know more about the advantages and disadvantages of the low-carbohydrate diet, read the following article.
Claim 3: "low-calorie products, such as light products, are dangerous"
The third claim states that light products make you fat and cause cancer. To what extent are these statements correct?What are light products?
For light products, some of the sugars can be replaced by a sweetener. Or the food product contains less fat than the regular variant. Another option is that the product in question contains at least 30 percent fewer calories than the normal product.Light products do not make you fatter For information: light products do not make you fatter. There is no dust in light products so you suddenly save fat much faster.
It can happen that you eat more of light products and as a result, you get too many calories. It is therefore important to pay attention to this.
Light products with aspartame are not carcinogenic
Based on hundreds of studies it has been concluded that healthy people can use aspartame safely and that it is not the cause of MS, lupus, cancer and epileptic seizures. It is important that you keep to the recommended daily amount.
Claim 4: "the number of calories you eat says nothing about how many calories your body absorbs"
The fourth frequently heard claim states that it costs more energy to digest proteins than fats and carbohydrates. In other words, the thermogenic effect of proteins is higher. This effect is not included in the logging of food.
It is true that it costs more energy to absorb proteins than fats. Only this difference is not that big. Logging your food is certainly useful.
Claim 5: "Some foods are addictive"
"Sugar is addictive" is another statement that you often encounter on the Internet. However, this statement is not supported by science. The substance sugar is not addictive.In the case of substance addiction, such as with heroin, the dopamine discharge is blocked. Because of this, dopamine can no longer go away. The flood causes a euphoric effect. This ensures that the body reduces the production of dopamine. Because of this, you want more and more of the substance. This process does not take place with sugar.
Learn more about this subject? Then read the next article about whether there is such a thing as sugar addiction.
Claim 6: "counting calories undermines pleasure in eating"
Counting calories can undermine pleasure in eating. This is especially true if counting calories become an end in itself and you can not let go of it properly.We are therefore primarily in favor of learning healthy eating habits and learning to eat on your feelings. Counting calories is a useful tool, but not an end in itself.
