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Home » Lose Weight Safely » Why counting calories is pointless for weight loss – but you shouldn’t ignore them completely – Yahoo News

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Some experts argue that calories are misleading because they can be tricky to calculate.

Calories can be unhelpful because they don't measure the nutritional quality of foods.

However, advocates say calories are one tool for building a healthy relationship with food.

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If you're looking to lose weight, conventional wisdom for decades has been to eat less calories and to move more. But experts question this approach.

Increased high rates of chronic illness and obesity, which haven't budged despite efforts to help people eat less calories, suggests there is more to weight loss and health than caloric intake.

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist and author of "Metabolical," a new book on the health risks of our industrialized food system, told Insider the calorie is an outdated and misleading concept for healthy eating.

Other nutrition experts, however, say it's a powerful tool for some people to take control of their health and to strengthen their relationship with food. While calories are a limited, sometimes inaccurate metric for assessing food, the tool can help people to understand what, and how much, they're eating.

Relying on calorie counts to manage weight and health is misleading, because it doesn't account for the damaging effect processed foods has on our bodies, according to Lustig.

"The entire disaster that we're dealing with is built on this notion that a calorie is a calorie. It's just not true," he told Insider.

Processed foods, particularly refined sugar, can damage cells and cause inflammation, which can to a whole host of potential health issues, Lustig said.

In contrast, whole foods like produce contain compounds that reduce inflammation and stave off oxidation and stress.

Both types of food may have the same number of calories, but dramatically different effects, making the concept of calories an unhelpful way to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy foods, according to Lustig.

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Lustig argues that conventional science miscalculates how much energy we absorb from foods. During digestion, our bodies rely on beneficial bacteria, known as the gut microbiome, to help process nutrients. A portion of what we eat feeds these microscopic critters, helping them to thrive and keep us healthy.

"How do you know whether any individual molecule of nutrients is going to you or the bacteria?" Lustig said.

He compared it to "eating for two" while pregnant - except in this case, each of us is eating for 100 trillion friendly bacteria in our gut.

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While not all calories are equal from a health perspective, that's not a reason to scrap the whole system, according to Layne Norton, a nutrition and fitness coach, bodybuilder, and power lifter with a PhD in nutrition.

"Calories are the same because calories are a unit of measurement. What is different is that sources of calories are not equal in how they affect energy intake and energy expenditure," he said.

For instance, a dieter might find that snacking on chips leaves them feeling hungry and tired, while the same amount of calories from chicken and broccoli is more filling and energizing. They can then change their habits accordingly.

One of the major advantages of calories, according to Norton, is that it offers a neutral way for people to measure and assess their food. Labeling foods as "good" or "bad" may be well intentioned, but it can backfire into excessive restriction and ultimately bingeing behavior, he said.

Calorie data, combined with other information about food, can help people make a more informed decision about what works best for their unique lifestyle and goals.

"This is the advice that no one wants to hear because it's not sexy: you should choose the diet that's easiest for you to sustain in the long term, and that depends on the individual," Norton said.

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Why counting calories is pointless for weight loss - but you shouldn't ignore them completely - Yahoo News

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Home » Lose Weight Safely » Why counting calories is pointless for weight loss – but you shouldn’t ignore them completely – Yahoo News