Today I bring you a testimony of a reader of Dcomedieta, Valentina Fassone, who I found very relevant, on the problem of calculating macros and calories in the diet.

Is it necessary to stay fit?

Valentina, who today practices the intuitive diet and who is overcoming her eating problems, had already told the story of her orthorexia in this article .

This time he proposes a very important reflection, which I fully agree with.

And that is that if the calculation of macros, that is carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and calories, is a good strategy for losing weight and keeping fit, it is also true that it is a double-edged sword.

That is, it risks changing our relationship with food, compromising it.
Because? She explains it to you.

CALCULATION OF MACROS AND CALORIES: VALENTINA’S EXPERIENCE

Hi, I’m Valentina and I had previously written a small article to tell my story. I have suffered from eating disorders for many years and am only now finding the strength to get out of it completely.

Just when you take the road to recovery you realize what was happening to you, first everything is very hazy.

The topic that leads me to write this article today is the following.
The difference between eating and taking.

When starting a diet we have patterns to follow, weights not to exceed, more or less rigid rules to follow.
Other diet modalities, although it is called “flexible”, is the macronutrient diet.

In this diet you have a predetermined number of grams of proteins, fats and carbohydrates as well as a certain amount of calories to be respected every day, and through a calorie counter app on your mobile or PC you keep everything you eat under control.

The main point, however, is that all this leads you to be a “slave” to numbers, grams, patterns, and you completely lose the ability to listen to your body and its needs.
In this way, more than eating, we can say that you take a certain food, as if it were a supplement.
You hardly eat out of hunger anymore but because you have to do it in certain ways.
And all the recipes you want to make, all the foods you want to cook, must necessarily be controlled and prepared according to these rules.

If you have a day off the diet, where you don’t have to follow any patterns or applications, then yes, you eat what you want, but many times you end up doing it without restraints and without the real taste of eating.

I remember that in the past talking to friends and relatives I always said: “Today I took 150 g of chicken and 80 g of rice with 10 g of extra virgin olive oil”, as if I had taken a cough syrup, a medicine to fight the flu .

Now, however, things have changed, in nutrition, no longer following patterns or applications, I went back to saying like “normal” people that I simply ate a plate of pasta with meat sauce, without knowing exactly how much, but indulging the sense of hunger .

If you try even for a moment to think about this point, you will understand that you are losing your life in mathematical calculations and rigid rules , while you could live in peace, go out to dinner without having to calculate what you ate before or after. .

Simply because that panna cotta, the piece of cheese, etc. made you happy. It was your instinct to ask because even if overwhelmed by anxieties and fears this instinct of the body exists and is there to be heard.

Better than your body no one will be able to tell you how to feed yourself, no one will ever be able to replace yourself.

Note by Dcomedieta.

Although she no longer counts calories and macronutrients, Valentina realized that by eating according to her sense of hunger, not only did she remove a great stress that heavily influenced her food choices, but she did not gain weight as she feared.

An important result, which at the beginning cost her a lot of effort because it meant freeing herself from years of conditioning.

But that has given her back the pleasure of a diet without deprivation and has taken away all worries about her weight, allowing her to make peace with food again.

So is macro calculation or calorie counting wrong?

No, if we use it as a short-term tool, to get an idea of ​​how much we eat and correct some habits.

Yes, if this control becomes obsessive, it lasts over time and makes us think that, if we do not control everything we eat with the head and the stones, the body will not be able to regulate itself.

As I explained in this intuitive diet video series , the body is very good at self-regulating.
We can help him, but manipulating our biological sense of hunger is a trap that risks forever compromising the relationship with food and with our body.