Why I Don’t Promote Calorie Counting

I’m a certified health coach and personal trainer. 

I have speciality certifications in fitness nutrition and weight management. 

I have a master’s degree in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine.

I’ve completed courses on sports nutrition, which included how to calculate calorie and macronutrient requirements for athletes.

I worked at a weight loss center for four years, during which I was in the middle of my own weight loss and health journey. 

And yet, after all this education and experience in nutrition, the one thing I do NOT promote in my practice now is counting calories. 

Why not? 

Read on to find out!

DISCLAIMER: I want to note before getting into the reasons why I DON’T promote counting calories, that calorie counting CAN be very effective and helpful for many people. Athletes in particular, or other experienced fitness-focused people, can really benefit from calorie and/or macronutrient tracking in order to improve their body composition or performance for competition. If you have or are currently tracked/tracking calories without negatively impacting your mental health or relationship with food, that’s amazing and you should be very proud! This information probably won’t apply to you. This is not a blog post about how calorie counting doesn’t work (because it can), it’s a blog post about why I, in my nutrition coaching business, do not encourage it for my clients. 

Your calorie needs vary day-to-day

Below you actually start tracking calories for weight loss, you first need to determine how many calories you “should” eat each day to reach your goal. The problem is, your daily calorie “allowance” does not change day-to-day, but your physiological calorie needs DO change every day. Yes, you can factor in exercising calories while your calorie counting, but you don’t account for the varying amounts of calories burned from other activities throughout the day, called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT.

If you’re out shopping and running errands all day, you’ll burn more calories than the days you spend working at your desk and watching TV in the evening. Cleaning your house expends more calories than responding to emails. The calories you burn from living your life are different every day, and those variations, which can then impact your hunger levels that day or the next, are not accounted for when tracking calories. In addition, women experience different calorie needs based on what phase of their menstrual cycle they are in, requiring over 200 more calories in the later half of the cycle versus the first half. Bottom Line: eating the exact same amount of calories every day may not be beneficial if you’re not burning the exact same amount of calories every day.  

It takes the enjoyment out of food

This is from personal experience as well as second-hand stories from my clients. Tracking calories leads you to view food as the number of calories within them instead of the nutritional value or pleasurable experiences you get from eating them. Peanut butter has almost 200 calories for only 2 tablespoons?? (have you ever seen what 2 TBSP nut butter looks like…it’s quite disappointing) But you don’t take into account that peanut butter has healthy fats, protein, and fiber that would likely make your meal/snack more satiating and satisfying, which would likely lead to eating less food later. (Studies actually show that eating nuts do NOT increase weight because people eating them actually compensate calorically by eating less of other high calorie foods…but that’s a different topic for another day)

Rather than choosing foods based on what you actually want to eat, you choose based on what will fit into your calorie limits. More often than not, the lower calories options are less satisfying, either because they’re lacking in satiating nutrients or because they simply don’t taste that good. This can lead to a spiral of seeking satisfaction

You lose touch with your body’s hunger signals

This is a big one, which ties in with #1 above. As I mentioned, your calorie needs vary day to day based on a number of factors. Your daily activities (or lack of) and your menstrual cycle can affect your hunger levels throughout the day. If you haven’t done anything but work at your desk all day and you end up with 300 calories “left over” in your tracker, you might choose to eat an extra snack or dessert, even though you’re not hungry. Your body didn’t need the extra food, and you end up stuffed before bed. 

On the flip side, you might have had a business day running around doing errands or cleaning the house. You might feel really hungry a couple hours after your usual dinner, but you’ve used up all your calories for the day. You force yourself not to eat, go to bed really hungry, and have trouble sleeping the whole night. 

These are two situations in which you let your calorie “requirements” win out over your body’s natural signals. While doing this once or twice won’t cause much harm, repeatedly following this mindset and ignoring your body’s hunger and fullness cues will cause you to lose touch with them altogether. And let me put it this way: your body knows what it needs much more than any calorie app or equation. 

It’s tedious and time-consuming

If you’ve ever tracked your calories, you know what I’m talking about. Measuring out or weighing all of your food, finding that food in your app, making sure you have the right food selected and the right amount inputted. It’s a lot. I know there are shortcuts and easier ways to enter meals or recipes that you eat repeatedly. That may make it easier for people who like to prepare one recipe for each meal every day of the week. People who eat the same thing over and over and over again. Let me tell you…I am not one of those people. And from my experience, most people are not one of those people.

If you like variety in your food and meals, if you like cooking your meals and switching things up day-to-day, tracking your calories is mentally exhausting. And disappointing (remember the 2 TBSP of peanut butter?). And once again, takes the fun and enjoyment of eating, because “wait wait! Igot to enter all of these foods individually into my calorie tracking app before I can actually enjoy this meal and my time with you” 

Most people inaccurately track their calories

Because it is so tedious to do it correctly…most people get it wrong! It’s extremely easy to either over- or underestimate the amount of food you’re eating if you’re not careful about measuring or weighing. Being just a few grams or tablespoons off of some foods can lead to differences of hundreds of calories. If you’re not careful about the serving size of each individual food in your tracking app, that could lead to differences of hundreds of calories. If you forget to enter in snacks or “little bites” of things you eat throughout the day, that could lead to differences of hundreds of calories. The risk of inaccuracy, and therefore lack of results, is SO great, which could easily lead to frustrations and feeling like there’s something ‘wrong with you’, even though there’s not!

And those are the 5 reasons why I don’t promote calorie counting as a nutrition coach. 

As I mentioned above, calorie counting MAY work for you. If it does, more power to you! 

But if you’ve experienced any of the difficulties or mental health challenges associated with calorie counting that I described above, I promise you there’s a better way! I offer a few different coaching programs that will transform the way you think about food and nutrition, without counting calories ever again!