Tracking Calories: Worth it?

Posted on December 3, 2014

Tracking calories...loaded topic! I've done it tons before (MyFitnessPal is my favorite app). IMO, there are pluses and minuses associated with it.

Advantages

Knowledge. It helps you understand your macronutrient ratios, if you're so inclined to care about such things (I think you should be!). You can also track the impact of how flunctuations on those variances feel within your body. You can also see how patterns in your eating impact other aspects of your life, like mood, sleep, energy, etc.
Accountability. Seeing the quantity of calories you're eating can be a real eye-opener! Particularly if you're new to understanding about food and how many calories are really in everything, I think it's a good tool to be come more self-aware about how you're really fueling yourself.
Social. Lots of these sites have a social component, so you can find buddies and go through everything together.

Disadvantages

It takes FOREVER! (at least, for me!) I have to create recipes since I cook mostly at home, find the right ingredients, evaluate if the thing I'm picking is a good representative of what I'm actually eating, etc. It's so time consuming.
I think it causes you to nit pick your macronutrients and work against what your body is telling you. Our bodies don't always think on a 24 hour clock - sometimes we borrow calories from yesterday to fuel today, and vice versa. I think a lot times it causes people to put themselves in starvation mode when really they should be eating, which is kind of my third point...
It's hard to get it right. If you're trying to create a specific calorie deficit every day, you want to be right on the money with calories in and calories out. That's really, really hard. REALLY hard. Everyone's metabolic rate is different and it can vary daily based on environmental factors. If you keep chasing a specific number on a daily basis, you're probably getting it wrong more than you're getting it right.

For me and where I'm at with my journey now, I'm not into the counting calories thing. I've done it before and have a good feel for how caloric certian foods are and how much I'm really burning during a day (I've had a Bod-Pod session done recently, too).

Instead, I'm trying to focus on eating whole, unprocessed, no or little sugar foods and eating mindfully. That's what they preach at Whole30. Eventually, my appetite should even out and I'll start eating what I really need (not what I really want!). For me, this approach is going to teach me the principles of good eating and let me get used to those, and then once I have a grip on that I can think about calorie restriction more (if needed).

Honestly though...I find that it's hard to overeat when you're eating good, whole foods like this (unless you go nutballs on natural pumpkin pie or something!). Without all the sugar, there's not that piece of your brain saying 'MORE!! MORE!!'. It's like your natural 'stop' button is back and actually works.

My food for today:

Breakfast: More Bulletproof coffee! This is my staple for the mornings.

Swim around 7 am.

Breakfast: Three egg muffins with spinach, mushrooms and sweet potatoes

Snackie: Coconut Almond no-bake ball

Lunch: Farmer's Market was today, and since I had to go the post office, I ran right into it. I got one chicken empanada and one chicken kabob with chimichurri sauce. YUMMO. I had that with a cup of my zucchini soup (I'm going to miss this soup when it's gone!).

Snackie: Packet of coconut butter. I keep a stash of those in my office for emergenies (like today!). I usually make my own, but I brought the jar home awhile ago.

Dinner: Turkey burger and a slice of tomato and homemade mayo, cranberry sauce and stuffing. I had some tea while I was chillaxing.

I probably need to eat more green vegetables. Maybe tomorrow. Not this weekend, as I'll be in Key West. I wil not be eating spinach and kale in Key West! :)

Comment Now!

Jessica W.

12/04/2014 12:25PM

I totally agree with you about using the experience to learn portions and increase your awareness of what you're eating. For me, since I've done that (a lot!), I feel confident that I know how many calories are in whatever's on my plate. I can usually guesstimate within a hundred calories or so. And...forget about eating out! It's hard to get out of a restaurant eating less than 1,000 calories! You really have to know what you're doing. Like I said, for where I'm at now, I feel like I'll get more reward out of becoming more aware of when I eat and what types of food I eat, versus counting every last calorie and gram of whatever it is. We'll see where it ends up!

Thanks for your input!

Deborah

12/03/2014 6:32PM

Accountability -- or, as I would term it, awareness -- is entirely why I have found tracking calories so helpful in my weight loss. If I'm not calorie-tracking, then I'm probably not going to bother measuring. Identifying a proper serving size and managing portion control are skills I'm going to have to practice for the rest of my life since for the first 30 years those issues weren't on my radar. I still gasp when I look up the nutrition information for chain restaurants and see meals I would once have ordered tallying 2000+ calories. Ouch.

But I think your point about our bodies not working on a 24-hour clock is well taken. Calorie counting will not in and of itself teach a person to eat intuitively. MFP scolds me if dip below 1200 (1150? Not good enough!) and tacitly shames me in the activity feed if I go over my daily limit, without taking into account how far over or under I might have been the previous day. I think a better assessment would be focused on weekly data.