If counting calories were the only strategy to follow, I would now weigh 30 pounds. I don’t know if there is a calorie saved bank, but if it existed I would be rich . One of the things I have learned, and which unfortunately you discover only after reading a lot and hearing all the bells on nutrition, is that the discussion on calories is definitely the first to take into account to lose weight or stay in your weight, but alas it is not is the only variable to consider.

In fact, there is no study that can prove with scientific certainty that if I cut 3,500 or 4500 calories from my weekly diet I can lose half a kilo of weight.
Weight loss is subjective and one speaks of a trend: the body opposes the deficit in many ways, and individual calorie needs are also an estimate. There are those who eat for three thousand calories and are a nail, those who eat for a thousand and five and are fat. At the base of this difference there are a thousand others between individual and individual: from the respiratory capacity of cells to hormonal health to intestinal health, many things affect our energy balance and ensure that calories continue to be important, yes, but not the only thing to take into account

There are so many people, and perhaps it has happened to you too, who, despite drastically reducing their daily calories, do not lose weight. Are they cheating? Do they lie to themselves? We generally tend to think this. People tend to underestimate how much they eat. 

Says Jonathan Bailor,   a nutritionist who developed the SANE method to lose weight,  and then wrote a book entitled “The Calories Myth”, who when he was a fitness instructor personally followed a group of women on whom he imposed calorie restriction and gymnastics . A very small percentage of them have actually lost weight. The others do not. Jonathan himself stated that at the time he was on a 6,000-calorie-a-day diet to gain weight quickly . And while he did NOT get fat on a high calorie diet, his clients did not lose weight on a low calorie diet.

This is because our metabolism is an adaptive system.

Try to regulate yourself on the basis of what we give them.

But how is it possible that many people lose weight by counting calories? Simple. Ninety percent of them choose, given the calorie restriction that makes it impossible to eat certain foods, to prefer fruit and vegetables to lose weight, and lean proteins. This from a certain point of view improves their nutritional profile, since compared to their normal way of eating, paradoxically they introduce more nutrients. Too bad that calorie restriction is still a pain for our body. The metabolism slows down. The calorie restriction game isn’t sustainable in the long run, and worse, after the first few times it doesn’t work the same way anymore.
Also consider that the first studies on calories are between 1825 and the following century. The formulas that are used to calculate our daily calorie expenditure and our basal metabolic rate are from the 1950s or earlier. With some revisions, okay, but there we are.
In the meantime, we have discovered how hormones regulate our body weight, how the brain, through the hypothalamus, regulates our body weight and also thermogenesis, how digestive processes and the liver regulate our body weight.

So if counting calories isn’t effective, what is it?
Why do some people get fat and other people don’t? More than just talking about “caloricentric” we must also focus on the quality of the food we consume . We feed ourselves to nourish ourselves, to satisfy ourselves, to feel good.
If we let ourselves be “guided by calories”, we will never be able to listen to our body or to make a varied diet, in the fear of going overboard. The preferential shopping of a person who eats low-calorie is paradoxically very similar to the shopping of an obese: both of their carts lack entire categories of food.