Why are calorie counting approaches so dominant in weight loss discussions?

[Lemonthyme]

An honest question. Why is everyone SO obsessed with counting every calorie on here?

I ask because there is a lot of evidence that it isn't an accurate thing. I work in the food industry so some of this comes from knowledge you might not have got wind of.

• Calories can be up to 20% out (either way) and be legal. Even if calories are more than 20% out, the product will not be recalled by anyone. Even if there's a howler on packaging, it normally takes a BIG issue to be recalled and, say 25%-30% more calories than it says? Nah, I could talk any retailer into letting that stay on the market.
• And if you think processed foods are hard to count, natural ones are too with seasonal variability, ripeness, storage, if something has been frozen or deep chilled all makes a difference. And those apps which work it out from photos? They can be wildly wrong.
• Takeaway calories where given are known to be even worse. They won't even be testing their products but relying on calculation models. Which are often crazily wrong.
• There is some fairly recent research that calories are not all absorbed depending on how it's consumed. The way calories are calculated is pretty blunt. It treats the body as though it's a furnace, it's not. Google this yourself but if you eat whole nuts vs. ground nuts, the pack calories will say the same thing. But in reality, you will not absorb all of the calories from whole nuts. Your body isn't good enough at breaking it down. Same goes for starches. Amylose particularly when cooked and cooled will convert in part to resistant starch which your body will treat like fibre but cooked potatoes eaten hot and cold will have the same calories on them but the body won't treat them that way.
• Our body adapts "calories out" when calories in are reduced. Sad but true. One of the reasons exercise is so important.
• Different macronutrients take more energy to process. Protein is particularly high. Carbs low.
• The foods you eat have impacts on your gut microbiome which impact the foods you crave, your mood and your appetite.
• And that's before you get into how differently our hormones react to x number of calories from sugary foods vs something with a higher satiety index.

I get that people want a number but calories seems like such a blunt tool. For those who use it, have you ever tried focusing on nutrition and more mindful eating or does that just not work for you? I'm not saying it doesn't work, because I did follow a calorie controlled diet in my 20s which did work, but I've also followed more intuitive approaches as I am now. I've just never encountered so many people evangelical about how calories must be counted. Every thread about 2-3 people will be stating with HUGE certainty that you MUST calculate your TDEE and be in a deficit of x amount.

Every time I shrug and think "well I'm not and I'm not prepared to do anything now to lose weight that I won't be doing in a year's time to maintain because otherwise I'll gain it all back."

I agree there is no perfect way to count calories in and out. However, calorie counting is the best approximation we have. Most people have to track what they eat in order to lose weight. You can't intuitively eat less than your body needs - it goes against biology, the body fights weight loss as protection from starvation. Intuitive eating might work for some people for maintenence but not for weight loss.

I'm a big fan of intuitive eating and I followed this approach for 20 years. It gave me a good relationship with food but also caused me to gain weight at a slow and steady pace of around 2lb per year. Not noticeable in the short or even medium term, but over decades i ended up obese. So now I'm counting calories and losing weight.

BMI, TDEE, calories are unarguably all blunt tools, but surely “followed more intuitive approaches” is the bluntest tool of all?

At least the metrics attempt to quantify something, even if imperfectly. “Intuition” without structure is guesswork shaped by habits, biases, and environment.

The goal is to use the metrics as starting points, alongside knowledge of nutrition, macros, body signals etc and adapt depending on results which all takes time.

Advice about calorie counting is usually accompanied by the need to eat a varued. balanced, mostly unprocessed diet. Which would negate most of those points.

Then are whole nuts significantly different to ground ones once they've been chewed?

How else can you vaguely measure how much food you're meant to eat though? It doesn't need to be bang on accurate.

Yep they are different. Your mouth and gut cannot break them into as small pieces as they are industrially.

It could be as much as 30% out over a day depending on what kinds of foods you're choosing.

I get that levels of intuitive eating are fallible as well. But I was just curious by HOW SURE so many people are on here that it's the ONLY WAY to lose weight. It's not.

While I fast 1 day per week which will reduce my intake overall, I don't count calories on my refeed meal nor on other days but focus on the nutritional quality. I'm losing weight. But read posts on here and you'd think that would be an impossible thing to do.

You’re losing weight by reducing your calorific intake. In a sense you are counting calories, just so happens the count is 0.

edited to add - all weight loss is by calorie reduction/restriction. That could be achieved by direct calorie counting, fasting, SW principles, cabbage diets, milk diets etc….

But if you eat too many calories you will put on weight? The only other way is through exercise but most people do a combo of both.
I know keto/low carb you sometimes don't count. But other than that it's true it's one of the main ways to control it. You don't need to be really rigid. Just have a rough idea.

I am one of the people that you are commenting on, that will post and tell people to work out their TDEE and calorie count. But that’s in the context of people posting about how they are not losing weight and they don’t know why. They think they are eating in a calorie deficit intuitively as you call it, but they are clearly not losing weight. So you need some way of approximating what they’re eating compared to what they need, and suggesting using TDEE and calorie counting as a guide doesn’t seem like an insane idea.

I don’t post for advice about how to lose weight, because I have successfully been losing weight for the last 20 months. I don’t count calories, usually, and in general have found it possible to lose a consistent amount each week. When I find I’m losing less or have stayed the same for a while, I will count my calories and check my TDEE for a while and see where I might be losing focus. So people, including me, can lose weight without calorie counting but if someone is wondering why they are not losing weight then suggesting some simple measures to try to track what’s happening is very reasonable.

I finally found the solution to my life long weight problem ….counting my carbs not calories!
I counted calories for years when dieting , those I ate and those I used up-short term weight losses followed by a return to old habits so many times.

Finally at 46 I found that low carbing works for me ..lost 6.5stone and have maintained for 5 years since losing it all.

I have occasional carb binges eg xmas day, but on the whole just have low carb treats when I want something‘special ’ .

It's not a perfect method but it's good enough for lots of people to get results. It encourages you to be more mindful because you're logging everything, you learn more about portion size and you have to make choices about what to eat to hit your nutrition goals while staying within your calories.

Nobody tracks exactly the same but I know that if I track x number of calories I will lose at a certain rate and I can adjust up and down from there. I take the "I have to drop to x calories to lose" with a pinch of salt because we all track with different degrees of accuracy but I know what I have to hit for myself.

Long story short it's not perfect but it works well enough.

Eating more intuitively only works if you are eating in a caloric deficit. It's extremely useful to check the calories of what you are eating for a week, to make sure you are actually in a deficit, and that your idea of portion size is in the right ballpark. You can then continue your intuitive eating confident that you are going to lose weight.

I would never recommend to anyone trying to lose weight that they eat ready meals or UPFs. Both because you probably do absorb more calories from overprocessed food, and because the calorie total can be 20% out. Whole foods are always the way to go.

Whilst whole foods can vary in exact calories based on ripeness etc, the total variance in eg a potato is not enough to sabotage a whole food diet. With a decent (400cal +) deficit you will still lose weight, even if your red pepper was extra ripe.

Because it works, well it does for most of us that attempt it so then when we see posts of those who are struggling to lose we give advice of what has worked for us. I've lost over 4st by tracking my calories, from a bmi 32.8 to 22.0, size 16 to size 8-10, I have done zero exercise because of my 12hr working days and commute 5 days a week and i have a sedentary job, so I know its the calorie deficit that has led to the loss.

I've also lost weight by counting calories and not lost it by counting calories.

It's just the absolute certainty around it from some people who post on here which intrigues me when so much research is starting to point to directions that it's definitely inaccurate and also isn't a good model for how our body deals with food. I also worry it pushes people to foods which are easier to calculate (assuming accuracy and everything I've said above) and to eat foods because they're low calorie rather than what their body needs or even if you're actually hungry.

IME of working with intuitive eating, when things have gone wrong, it's more because you realise you've been eating for other reasons. Boredom, loneliness, sadness etc. There's some really good research about the links between childhood trauma and obesity for example and the simple act of asking about trauma (so people were able to verbalise it) caused weight loss.

Our bodies are a weird but complex mishmash of everything but our bodies don't exist in isolation from our minds. Which is another reason why I find the CICO approach so bizarre. I read some research once about how people fed exactly the same food but told in one group it was low calorie and in the other it was high calorie, the result was it led to overeating in the low calorie group. They felt less satiated just because they'd been told something was lower in calories.

Ah there's loads of stuff out there if you want to look. Just a curiosity. I don't see any of this certainty apart from on this board. You obviously do you. Your weight loss journey is yours and yours alone. I only thought I'd share some research on it all but also why sometimes you might eat, say, 1200 calories and feel full and at others you might want to gnaw your arm off. With the huge inaccuracies in measurement, nature and how your body treats food, on day 1 you might really have had 1560, on day 2, 840.

I don’t disagree with you. None of what you’ve said is new information to me, and I’m sure many others on this board. Humans are not machines and weight loss in the wild is complex, not least because of the underlying psychology, hormonal changes etc etc BUT ultimately weight loss is achieved by a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit can be achieved in a number of ways including “intuitive eating” but the most basic and straightforward way is simply to count calories. I find your inability/unwillingness to understand this quite baffling.

because it’s the best and most reliable option ?

yes there is no point eating junk food or tons of sugar or low quality food and expecting calorie counting to work

and there is no point in adding calories from celery

I have seen too many people say “but it’s all healthy “ as they pile on the food

once you learn what your level is you shouldn’t need to be weighing everything but people who need to count don’t have a good level of understanding of their dietary needs

It's human nature to simplify and want certainty. Similarly, the much quoted figure that if you eat 3500 more calories you'll gain a pound (and vice versa) is an average, not a rigid rule that applies to every individual.

Presumably the calorie count in a meal is as likely to vary by 20% in one direction as the other, so it probably works out over the course of an average week?

"Our body adapts "calories out" when calories in are reduced. Sad but true. One of the reasons exercise is so important."

I've seen this elsewhere (and it probably explains why my cunning plan to lose 1lb a month by cutting 100-200 calories per day was a total failure). But it can't be entirely true, as the research seems pretty clear that eating fewer calories is 80%+ of weight loss.

If it was true , survivors of the holocaust must never eat or be as big as houses neither of which is true

wishful thinking

Kind of sick to raise but you went there.

So here's some research. People who went through that experience were more likely to go on and exhibit binge eating behaviours.

Binge eating and eating attitudes among Nazi concentration camp survivors | Psychological Medicine | Cambridge Core

I don’t see why this matters very much- if you think you’re eating 1400 calories but you’re really eating 1700 you won’t lose weight, or not as much. So you’ll reduce to 1300 to achieve your goal

plus, in the long term you’re highly unlikely to be consistently over estimating calories by 30% daily- there will be ups and downs and with the above point, they’ll approximately even out over time.

I totally agree OP. It seems so so soulless updating every calorie. I couldn’t do it. I’m 1.5 stone down now just eating more intuitively. Women are OBSESSED with calories. There’s more to life.

There’s a difference between calorie counting and being in a calorie deficit. You do need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. You don’t need to count calories by detailed tracking to work out how to be in a deficit. There are many other ways, as already has been said, to get to a calorie deficit. But calorie counting and being aware of your approximate TDEE is one obvious way to work out how to be in a calorie deficit.

If you aren’t losing weight and you think you’re in a significant calorie deficit, then it is certainly sensible to check, as best you can.

I'm nearly 50, so have many decades of dieting behind me.

Brutal calorie restriction is the only kind that has ever resulted in weight loss for me.

It doesn't need to be an exact science to work. As long as you are restricting the amount of calories you put into your body, you will start to lose weight.

Calorie restriction also allows people to eat whatever they want, as long as they eat less of it. That's another reason it appeals, over diets which make certain foods completely verboten. People like what they like, and want their lives to contain some pleasure.