Count calories, count portions, or calories don't
count?
'Burn the Fat'
FAQ by Tom Venuto
Do
calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods and that
will guarantee you'll lose weight? Should you count calories or can you
just count "portions?" Is it necessary to keep a food diary? Is it
unrealistic to count calories for the rest of your life or is that just
part of the price you pay for a better body?
You're
about to learn the answers to these questions and discover a simple
solution for keeping track of your food intake without having to crunch
numbers every day or become a fanatic about your food.
In
many popular diet books, "Calories don't count" is a frequently
repeated theme. Other popular programs, such as Bill Phillip's "Body
For Life," allude to the importance of energy intake versus energy
output, but recommend that you count "portions" rather than
calories&
Phillips wrote,
"There
aren't many people who can keep track of their calorie intake for an
extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting
'portions.' A portion of food is roughly equal to the size of your
clenched fist or the palm of your hand. Each portion of protein or
carbohydrate typically contains between 100 and 150 calories. For
example, one chicken breast is approximately one portion of protein,
and one medium-sized baked potato is approximately one portion of
carbohydrate."
Phillips
makes a good point that trying to count every single calorie - in the
literal sense - can drive you crazy and is probably not realistic as a
lifestyle for the long term. It's one
thing to
count portions instead of calories - that is at least acknowledging the
importance of energy balance. However, it's another altogether to deny
that calories matter.
Yes,
calories do count! Any diet program that tells you, "calories don't
count" or you can "eat all you want and still lose weight" is a diet
you should avoid. The truth is, that line is a bunch of baloney
designed to make a diet sound easier to follow. Anything that sounds
like work - such as counting calories, eating less or exercising,
tends
to scare away potential customers! But the law of calorie balance is an
unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates
whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.
I
believe that it's very important to develop an understanding of and a
respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance I also
believe it's an important part of nutrition education to learn how many
calories are in the foods you eat on a regular basis - including
(and
perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when
you dine at restaurants.
The law of calorie balance says:
To
maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you
burn. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn. To
lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
If
you only count portions or if you haven't the slightest clue how many
calories you're eating, it's a lot more likely that you'll eat more
than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer calories than you should,
which triggers your body's "starvation mode" and causes your metabolism
to shut down).
So
how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a
nutrition program that gets results? Here's a solution that's a happy
medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:
Create
a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software.
Crunch all the numbers including calories, protein, carbs and fats.
Once you have your daily menu, print it, stick it on your refrigerator
(and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating "goal" for
the day, including a caloric target.
That
is my definition of "counting calories" -- creating a menu plan you can
use as a daily guide, not necessarily writing down every morsel of food
you eat for the rest of your life. If you're really ambitious, keeping
a nutrition journal for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an
incredible learning experience, but all you really need to get started
on the road to a better body is one good menu on paper. If you get
bored eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus,
or just exchange foods using your one menu as a template.
Using this method, you really only need to
count calories once when you create your menus. After
you've got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu
planning, then you can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty
good (and more educated) ballpark figure.
So
what's the bottom line? Is it really necessary to count every calorie
to lose weight? No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer calories then you
burn. Whether you count calories and eat less than you burn, or you
don't count calories and eat less than you burn, the end result is the
same - you lose weight. Which would you rather do: Take a wild
guess,
or increase your chance for success with some simple menu planning? I
think the right choice is obvious.
Tom
Venuto is a certified personal trainer, natural bodybuilder and author
of the #1 best selling diet e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle. For
more information on Tom's e-book, visit the Burn The Fat home page
here: www.burnthefat.com
|
