Why Calories Don’t Matter as Much as You Think

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 Hello, and happy Monday! Today I want to chat about why calories don't matter as much as you think they do.

It's been ingrained in all of our minds to immediately look at calorie counts when we're trying to decide how healthy something is. And over the years, I feel like we have expanded our horizons a little bit and now some people may check the grams of protein or how much added sugar - I mean, that's a new one added to nutrition labels just in the past few years. So we're getting somewhere.

But I wanted to spend today talking about calories mostly, and why they really don't matter. The quality of the food and what the calories are actually coming from matters so much more than just the number of calories. Like the calories don’t really tell us anything about how healthy a food is for you.

That said, here's even more reasons why calories don't matter just in case you need them.

So a calorie or kilocalorie - that's what we call a calorie - is just a measure of the amount of energy stored within a food. They're not an accurate measurement of how much energy we're actually getting from eating the food. It's just how much energy is stored in the food on its own.

So, if I'm going to eat a, let's say a 100-calorie cookie or a 100-calorie scoop of almond butter, my body is not going to extract the same amount of calories from those things.

There's a nerdy phrase called the thermic effect of food and really all it means is that it costs our bodies energy in order to get energy out of foods. So we actually burn calories when we eat.

There was like a headline a long time ago that was like, “if you eat celery, you actually burn more calories than you consume and you can lose weight eating celery.” And it's like, what a silly headline, but anyway, I guess it's technically true. If all you did was celery, you would eventually lose a ton of weight.

But, anyway. Back to what I was saying. You actually burn calories when you eat. And protein, for example, has a higher thermic effect than fat or carbohydrates, meaning it takes more energy to break it down and use it for energy. Fiber also plays a role in how many calories we're able to extract from food - calories and carbohydrates. So that's one reason for you.

The next reason is most calorie counts are wrong. When a bag of chips or a menu item at a restaurant is tested for its actual calorie count it's almost never accurate. In fact, the FDA allows calorie counts to be off by as much as 20% on labels! That's a lot of calories if you're using an app like MyFitnessPal or you're one of those people that refers to calories like religiously to determine what they're able to eat during a day. Being off by 20% is a big deal!

The next reason is there's really no good way to know how many calories you need. Sure, there's fancy ways to measure your metabolic rate, but honestly, most people don't even have access to that technology. The most advanced technology is only really available at universities or teaching hospitals. And even those come with a margin of error.

And your metabolism changes daily, especially if you're a woman. It depends on your sleep, the weather, your cycle, whether you're menstruating, whether you're sick, whether you're healing from an injury, you get the picture. The number of calories you burn varies day to day.

So, long story short. No one can tell you how many calories you need to eat. There's no real way way to know how many calories you're eating anyway. So there's no point in stressing over or counting calories.

So hopefully that allows you to take a deep breath, eat the foods that you know are good for you. Don't worry about how many calories are in foods. Don't track them. Please do not track them. And just listen to your body.

And if you ever need help learning how to listen to your body, or you're a little nervous moving away from counting calories, reach out to me. You can find me on Instagram at @lianicolenutrition or you can reach out to me on my website, www.lianicole.com.

I'd love to chat with you. I've been there. I've counted calories. I've counted literally everything you could possibly count. And I'm telling you, it's no way to live.

And now with this information, you know that there's really no point. It's not helping you get to your goals, the information you're tracking is probably not even accurate. So, hopefully this helps you mentally detach from calorie counting and encourages you to move toward a more mindful way of eating.