Ep 18 - How to Stop Obsessively Counting Calories

June 06,2024

Are you a calorie or macro counter?

Do you find yourself mentally adding up the days calories, fearing going out to eat, or obsessing over numbers?

Feeling addicted to My Fitness Pal, weight watchers, or just the numbers in general?

I’ve been there.

Today I cover…

• My experience counting calories

• Why you should leave behind calorie counting for good

• Where 1200 and 2000 calories came from

• Exactly how you can stop counting calories

  Hello, confident eater. Happy Thursday. Today, we're talking about how to stop obsessively, counting calories. I was a big calorie counter when I first started dieting. That was kind of my main diet per se. And I just want you to know first I am not anti calories because calories are just a unit of energy that you don't mean anything, they're not good, they're not bad. They are literally just the measure of energy in certain foods. And I do think it can be useful to have a general idea of the calories in our food and like have this general education around them. But a lot of people, we get to the point where we get obsessive over it and it starts to impact our life and mental health.

So that is what we're going to talk about overcoming today.

So a little bit about where I came from. I started calorie counting probably back in like 2015. Like I started a while ago. And I first started because I wanted to lose weight. This was the first thing I did when I Googled the best way to lose weight. It told me calories in calories out so I started tracking my calories.

I started around like 1400 calories, I think, which is already pretty low. But as I started doing it and sticking with it and starting to see the weight fall off, I kept lowering it because I wanted to see results faster so that I lowered it to 1200 and then I'd have days where all I was only eating 1,002. 1100 calories because I thought that would make me more successful and get results faster right? A very innocent way of thinking in the beginning.

Now, of course, that is not what w what happened over time. I started developing binge eating because I was away under eating and my body was doing what healthy bodies do. And it started asking for more food. Now when I was at the height of my calorie obsession. I didn't really think there was a problem with it.

And I think that's how most of us start is this isn't really a problem. It's not a big deal. I'm just keeping track of what I'm eating. And then over time, I started to realize. I can not eat anything unless I am measuring it. I always had measuring cups with me and it was always pulling them out. And then there was this one moment in particular that everything changed for me. And it was when I was going out to red Robin with my family. And at red Robin, they have options for bottomless sides.

So I had the choice between bottomless broccoli. Or bottomless French fries was what I was trying to decide between and I have, like, I don't know, a little bit of calories last left for the day. So I thought I could probably have a few French fries and that's what I really wanted, but I kept thinking, well, I should do the broccoli. I don't want to feel out of control around these French fries and they're bottomless. Like what if they keep bringing me more?

So I was so indecisive that when the server came around and asked me what I wanted for my side. I literally just like looked at him and stared at him and I couldn't make a decision. And I started to feel my heart beating faster and I just left the table, ran to the bathroom and I told my mom just decide for me.

Like, I don't care. Just make a choice. I went to the bathroom. I was breathing heavily, like was literally on the verge of a panic attack over whether I was going to have broccoli or French fries at red Robin. And that was the moment where I was like, I do not want to live like this anymore. This is insane.

I do not trust my body at all. I can not even make a decision off of a menu and I want to be the person who can just effortlessly go out to eat where going out to eat is fun. It's not stressful where I'm able to be this intuitive eater who doesn't need to look at my fitness pal to tell me how many calories I have for the day.

So I started to get the point to where I was like, this is such a pain in the butt having to log every single morsel of food in my mouth.

Like anytime someone would cook for me. I would always like slyly asked them, Hey, like, what'd you use in this recipe? Not because I cared what recipe they were using, but because I wanted to know what I was entering into my fitness pal.

So after this occasion at red Robin, I made the declaration that I was going to cut back on. Counting calories.

I was going to try and learn how to trust my body. And I kind of kept going on and off for a few years. Even when I cut back, sometimes I would go back to calorie counting because I was just so scared of gaining weight. And honestly, I was gaining weight because I hadn't learned any of the tools that I know now around how to stop binge-eating I was trying to willpower my way through.

I would just try to tell myself, don't eat a lot, like take your best guess. And hopefully it all works out. And that isn't a very strategy backed approach.

Now why is it so important to stop calorie counting in the first place?

When you're using calories, you are not listening to your body. Some people will ask me, like, can you intuitively count calories? And I guess, but ultimately at the end of the day, it's you staring down at your phone, looking at my fitness pal or lose it or whatever, happy to use. And asking yourself. Am I within my calorie range.

Am I going over? And that is so hard to listen to your body in those moments. I often would have times where I was really hungry at the end of the day. But I saw that I was done with eating. And so I would try to find like the craziest low calorie things I can make. Like literally out of sugar-free syrup and sugar-free jello.

So I could try to feel full while staying within my calories or there were other times where I was like, I'm just hungry and I have the most intense cravings right now. And so I'm just going to say, screw it and eat. And then I'd lean into a full binge where I wouldn't even know how much I eat because I would just like when even one a log, it I'm like, I do not want to see how many calories I just hate because I knew it was a lot.

But then there was other times where, as I learned that I should probably be eating more than 1100 calories a day. I increased my calorie count, but I still would see, okay, I have a hundred calories left for the day.

Let me see what else I can fit in for a hundred calories. And then I didn't have like the a hundred calorie brownies and things like that. So I would eat, even though I wasn't hungry, just because I was allowed to.

The other thing is calories are not focusing on how you feel. And that is a big thing I teach people to focus on now is how is this food making you feel in your body? Do you like how it makes you feel? Do you feel energized? You feel tired and sluggish. Even when you're looking at the macros of the protein and the carbs and the fats. You're not really focusing on what matters which is what is in the foods and how those foods are reacting in your body.

When you're calorie counting, you tend to be less mindful because you're thinking about. What you're adding into my fitness pal or you're mentally counting at like, even after I stopped counting calories, I was still like, okay. And my morning oatmeal, this is going to be 150 calories, and I've been at 30 calories for this.

And then this is gonna be 90 calories and then want a tablespoon of this and that's me 30. And so I was doing all this mental, math and gymnastics of how much food I was eating, and I was not really paying attention to my experience of the food.

Another big thing I see when people come to me after a lots of calorie counting is they have this really zoned out habit of finishing all the food on their plates. They're part of the clean plate club. Because they're used to saying, okay, here's my 400 calorie meal now I just get to eat it all. And that's not teaching you how to tune in your body and ask you yourself.

If you actually need that 400 calorie meal, maybe only need 200 calories. Like, I don't know, or maybe you need so much more than that. So you need to pay attention to that and like check in throughout that eating experience.

What I was calorie counting I was thinking about food 24/7. If you're someone who says, I just think about food all the time. Probably if you were calorie counting, that is why. Because you're constantly thinking about how much is left, how much is going to be next?

What am I going to eat? If I was going to go out to eat, I was having to plan for that. And really the whole going out to eat experience was just miserable. Nowadays, there are more calorie counts on the menus, which I have mixed opinions about. But even if you can see the calorie counts on the menu, it's those, like you have to decide. Which one of those things you want to pick.

And it's like so hard if you're like, well, I really want. The broccoli and. And the chicken and the rice, but the rice has 400 calories and I don't want the rice anymore now because it says that. So like, it just totally takes you out of that experience.

Oftentimes, when you're doing calorie counting, you're eating way too low of calories. So, I don't know where this idea came from, but somewhere in the world, Someone has said. 1200 calories is how much a woman who wants to lose weight should be eating. Have you heard that before?

Did you know that 1200 calories a day is what a toddler needs to eat. Yes a toddler and you are a grown human who is moving around in the world and sure. You're not growing like a toddler, but you are still doing things. And being high requires energy. Like life is hard. Sometimes we're thinking we're moving, we're doing. So 1200 calories is often way too low.

When you're in this extreme deficit. All these biological mechanisms will activate and kick in. That are going to increase your desire for food.

Slow down your metabolism, make you crave more carbs and decrease your satiety even after eating. So no wonder it's hard to stick to these low calories.

You might've also heard the guideline of 2000 calories a day. I mean who has it? That is like on every package, like the American standard diet or the standard diet for the world, whoever decided it is 2000 calories. Now, this was actually determined in 1968, right. Quite a few years ago and a public survey was done to ask like how many calories people were consuming and using and needing in a day. And the FDA decided that through this research, a diet of 2,350 calories was the correct amount for all people, four years of age and older, except pregnant or lactating woman.

So if you were between the ages of four and however old they are. Did two. You need a 2,350 calories, which, okay. First of all, like a general calorie recommendation, like how silly is that? How could we ever all need the same amount of calories? But what's really interesting is the FDA actually rounded down. To say, let's just make the general recommendation 2000 calories a day, just because it's a nice square round.

Even number, no scientific reasoning to bring it down to 2000 calories a day. It just looked better than 2350 then that they had found.

So also take in consideration that like even the numbers that we really take for like science. Not really true science and we're also different, which brings me to my next point, which is counting calories is not even accurate.

It doesn't even tell you the truth. Because one, it is really hard to know. How many calories you actually need and use in the day. And two, how many calories are actually in our food? So first, our bodies are really complex beings. We have thousands of thousands of processes going around all at once in our body.

Like they truly are amazing. And how much we are burning is complicated. Lots of processes involved in that. And how could we think that a calorie counter that asks us what, like my fitness pal asked you like five questions. How would that know yourself better than you do those five questions can only tell you so much. Even if you ate the exact same calories as someone else, your bodies would process it probably completely differently. Right.

And according to the FDA, Nutritional labels can have up to a 20% inaccuracy. So every single food you are eating could have up to 20% more or less than what the packaging says. So even if you're like, okay, this is my hundred calorie snack pack. Maybe it's your 119 calorie snack pack, or maybe it's your 79 calorie snack pack. We don't really know. And if you're eating foods that aren't in packages. It can still be hard. Think about like a banana. I know in my fitness pal, they have like a small banana, medium banana, large banana, and you can like choose which one you want, but how do you know what's a large banana. That's so, you know, subjective. And even if you're weighing your food to like, get a true, accurate weighing of a banana, you'd have to take off the skin and put it on the scale.

Maybe mash it up and then when you're scraping out the food, like, you know, you're mixing something up with that banana. Then there's stuff left in the bowl, then it's still not accurate. Like it's so complicated. Not to mention that all calories are not digested evenly. So take this example where if you think of protein, Versus carbs and fat protein takes the most energy for yoUr body to digest.

Protein takes the most energy for your body to digest where 20 to 30% of the calories that you're consuming from protein. Get used up just in the digestive process. So you might only have like 70% of those calories actually available for your body to use. And carbs and fat are a little bit lower in the Mount of energy that your body used to digest them.

So like even the type of food that's going into your body is going to determine how much you're actually getting or not.

So with all this in mind. Calorie counting is really ineffective. It can have a big impact on your mental health. It is complicated. It is no fine. And I am so glad that I do not count calories anymore.

Know that your body is actually the best calorie counter you'll ever have. It is made to keep you at your natural body weight. There are plenty of people around the world who don't know the calories in a single thing. They never have and they listen to their body and maintain their weight. It is no big deal for them. People maintain their weight before my fitness pal ever existed. So what is 100% possible for you to get back to that to.

So some helpful tips for you as you're starting to move away from calorie counting. How I did, it was, I was actually in therapy at this time.

And this is something that my therapist told me that I found was super helpful that she had me deal. I stopped tracking one thing at a time. So, for example, I stopped tracking my vegetables first. And this made it. So I still had a general idea of like the calories I was having in a day, but it felt safe for me to let go of the vegetables.

And then maybe I did fruit next. And then maybe you choose a meal to stop tracking. So I stopped tracking dinner first. Because I felt like, okay, once I know what else I have in the rest of the day, I can kind of make an estimate at dinner. So again, it felt safe for me. You want to feel what feels doable to you? What feels comfortable? Push yourself a bit, but you want to do it in a slow process. So you can start to build this trust with your body.

So after you slowly start to track less and less. Then I want you to challenge yourself to eat some foods that other people make or challenge yourself to have a meal in a restaurant, or make a fun new recipe that you have no idea.

The calories. And allow yourself to be mindful for those experiences and see what you can notice. Getting curious.

Finally, I want you to delete that app. My fitness pal lose it. Choose your favorite calorie, counting up. Deleted off your phone that will remove the trigger of seeing it so often. So that way you don't have to ask yourself. Do I want to do it? Do I not want to do it? Just delete it off your phone. You can trust your body.

This is what you were learning to practice.

Now from here, you may be wanting to learn a little bit more about how to listen to your body.

And for that, I actually have another podcast, episode, episode, 12, all about listening to your body. So I would recommend going to listen to that one next and also know that you have a professional who you can work with.

That is me. I haven't been there and I can give you customized special coaching for whatever unique situation you're in with food and guide you through any and all questions you are having on this confident eater journey. So you can go to my website, the confident eater.org. And you can learn more about how you can work with me and my six month confident eater program that is going to help you stop eating and overeating for good.

So the question I want to leave you with today. Is what type of life do you want to live? How do you want to be in five years, 10 years when you're 80 years old. Do you want to be the 80 year old who is stressing about every single calorie they put in their mouth. Because trust me, I have met my grandma and some of her friends, and they can still be like that because they never worked on the relationship with food who you are being today is creating your future results.

So if counting calories is not something you want to do, today is the best day for you to change that. So that way you can go out through your life, you can enjoy having restaurant meals with your friends and family. You can enjoy just pouring cereal from the box and not needing to measure it with the milk. Being able to just tune into your body and use your signal no matter where you go into the world, where you travel. You are always able to know how much to eat.