Below is a re-work of my seminal article “The Great Calorie Con”.
Substance-wise, nothing has changed.
However, I believe the stylistic changes I have made improve the clarity considerably and make it a more enjoyable read.
Enough preamble. Here is the revised article in full:
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Inconvenient Truth: Counting calories is pointless.
Of all the things I come out with, this gets me the most grief.
And, to be fair, I understand why.
Calorie counting is a sacred cow – beloved and vigorously defended by everyone from fitness and certain medical professionals to fat aunt Lisa who swears by it even though she’s gained at least a pound a month for the last twenty years.
It’s ubiquitous to the point that when someone asks how to lose weight, the answer is invariably, “Eat 500 fewer calories per day than you burn”.
But there’s a problem:
This “advice” is bollocks.
It is time for another mansplanation:
Most people base this “500 calorie deficit” on the person’s basal metabolic rate (henceforth called BMR).
The BMR is defined as, “the rate at which the body uses energy while at rest to maintain vital functions such as breathing and keeping warm”.
Note – the BMR does not account for any exercise whatsoever. It’s only the calories your body needs to move air in and out, pump blood round and round, process nutrients, produce cells, and so on.
So, to calculate the extra calories you expend through exercise, you have to multiply your BMR by an arbitrary number.
I say arbitrary because the figures are couched in nebulous terms like “lightly active” and “very active”.
We know that people – especially fat people – tend to overestimate how active they are, so, more often than not, people use, say, the “very active” modifier when, in reality, the “moderately active” or even the “lightly active” modifier would be appropriate. A classic example of this is people who lift weights and don’t do any cardio whatsoever (not even walking) who think their four hour-long weights sessions means they are very active when this is not the case; a fact reflected in the vast numbers of lifters who are very fat despite counting their calories religiously.
The madness doesn’t end there because you’ll need to do further calculations to account for your age, sex, height, and more besides.
For the sake of argument, let’s steelman the Calorie Counting Cultists’ position and say that not only is it possible, but it’s certain the number you generate using this process is perfectly accurate.
Now comes the part that, in my opinion, is equal parts harmful and ineffective:
Actually counting your calories.
To do this accurately, you must weigh every single morsel of food and drink you consume (if your drink contains calories, which most do), all day, every day, for the duration of your “calorie controlled diet” – which, as some advocate, will be forever.
I don’t believe it’s possible to do this without developing an eating disorder of some description, or at least some of the symptoms consistent with one.
It saddens me to think of all the people I’ve known over the years whose relationship with food has suffered greatly from all the weighing, measuring, and tracking. It sapped the joy out of simple pleasures like going for a restaurant meal or, in one notable case, spoiled a family holiday.
Then there are the problematic behaviours I witnessed develop as a direct result of their calorie counting, like swapping healthy and nutritious foods for ultra-processed garbage because “the calories are the same”.
And while it’s possibly true that whether you eat 200 calories of crisps or 200 calories of beef won’t make any difference to your weight loss (I say “possibly” because there’s evidence out there to suggest a calorie is not, in fact, always a calorie) – all but the most deluded would recognise that it’s a poor choice if you are serious about living a long, mostly disease-free life.
None of the people I’m thinking about are bodybuilders or even “athletes” of any description. They’re just regular men and women who wanted to cut some weight and bought into the idea that calorie counting was the way to go about it.
The worst part?
All the heartache was for naught because it’s impossible for anyone with some semblance of a life to get a perfectly accurate picture of their calorie intake.
So…
Why bother counting them at all?
My answer is that you shouldn’t because it’s a waste of time and energy that’s better invested elsewhere.
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“All right, smartarse – what’s the answer?”
Cometh the obvious question.
Glad you should ask, but I’m not going to answer it here because this is the sort of information I reserve for people who pay me money.
Like, for example, those who opt to purchase “Silver Era Secrets” which, although containing, if I remember rightly, not more than a few sentences on diet, comes with an entitlement to ask me for advice on this topic if it is something they believe they need help with.
Details here:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/programme
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman