Calculating calories, 6 reasons why you shouldn’t pay attention to it (too much)

SAMSUNG I am an ex-addict to calculating calories, I admit (you can read the old posts), and like me many people who have believed (and in their case maybe still believe it) that our body responds to the laws of thermodynamics full stop , so that a calorie surplus corresponds to weight gain and a deficit to weight loss. Unfortunately, this statement, which seems indisputable, does not correspond to what really happens in the body when we eat more than we consume or eat less. If in general such a statement may seem true to us, it is not scientifically true , otherwise we could establish fixed parameters and always expect the same results: every time I eat moreI should get fat TOT , every time I eat less I should lose TOT weight. Do you eat 3,500 more calories? Get half a kilo. Do you eat 3,500 fewer calories? You lose half a kilo. The fact that this does NOT happen to everyone but only to some does not mean that others are cheating with the calculation of calories, but that the human body cannot be reduced only to the calculation of calories, but to a series of mechanisms that are created. whenever: 1) we eat more, 2) we eat less, 3) we eat certain foods instead of others.
All the people who have struggled with extra pounds and calorie counts know that on a low-calorie diet where they lost 500 calories a day, after 7 days they hadn’t lost half a pound – sometimes more, sometimes less. In fact, there is no scientific study stating that a TOT loss of calories will result in a TOT loss of body weight. This is based on mathematical estimates: if it is true that one kilo of fat equals 9000 calories, then if I remove 9000 calories from a human body it should lose a kilo of fat. This is an imprecise logic, which predicts a leap on an abstract and mathematical condition to the application of this mathematics on the human body

Here are six reasons why you shouldn’t count the calories of what you eat:
1) The trivialization of food, reduced to calories: for those who are fond of calculating calories, there is no difference between 100 calories of salad and 100 calories of chicken roast, with the risk that if breakfast and lunch have been abundant, those who calculate the calories will prefer to eat a plain salad at dinner instead of a protein dish. In short, those who calculate calories tend to think that all foods are the same, while they do not think that they eat to nourish their body and keep them healthy.
2) The exclusion of certain foods: when we think according to the calculation of calories, even our shopping will be low-calorie; lots of fruit and vegetables but maybe no bananas. Fruit yes, dried fruit no. Low-fat cheeses yes, fatty cheeses no. And so on. Instead our bodies HAVE a damn need for that cheese fat, it needs butter, it needs bananas, it needs a fatty cut of red meat instead of chicken breast, it needs avocado. This way of thinking creates a state of malnutrition that invalidates any effort to lose weight.
3) The calculation of calories allows us to eat less, but makes us eat worse: precisely for reasons one and two.
4) Calculating calories puts stress on us:once you think about calculating the calories of everything, you live with incredible stress. Certain foods will appear forbidden to us, if we go even short of 100 calories we will think that inside our body there is a miniature accountant who shakes his head and determines our weight change. The body doesn’t want this stress. This stress not only makes us unhappy, it makes us fat.

5) Eating becomes unnatural with calorie counting: if we are comfortable only when what we have on our plate satisfies the calorie count, then we have a problem and this step results in additional stress. Eating should give us satisfaction, pleasure, and it should be natural and automatic. The more structured and thought out, the more we will find ourselves thinking about food 24/7, further stressing our body.
6) The calculation of calories does not allow us to listen to our body: craving for baked potatoes? Oh, I can’t, I wouldn’t be in the calories .Still hungry? I have to stop eating, I have finished my quota of calories for lunch or breakfast. These two things result for the body in continuous abstinence and deprivation, to which it reacts by progressively slowing down the metabolism and making us increase hunger thanks to the role of cortisol.
Those who calculate calories as a consequence are more prone to binges, nervous hunger, weight stalls, overweight due to continuous diets, slow metabolism, hormonal imbalance. For this reason, even if the calculation of calories could be a useful tool, if taken in a softer way (having a vaguely idea of how much we eat), it often becomes a deadly weapon if we consider it our only parameter in the diet.. Much more important is the health we get through the right nutrition and the idea that the body needs macro and micronutrients to stay healthy.
Only in this way will we have a high metabolism and our weight problems will gradually disappear.