Do you count calories to help you reach your fitness goals? Calories have their place, but they can be more of a distraction than a help. It’s more important to understand the broader implications of the food you eat or the physical activity you engage in.
Calories Are An Inexact Science
Calories are difficult to actually count. To get an accurate number for a certain food, for example, you have to know the exact amounts of each ingredient. If the food is packaged this may not be a problem, but if it is something made from scratch you are left guessing. Since it only takes a small number of calories to make a difference, this estimating does not provide you with much useful guidance.
Exercise is even more difficult. While a piece of food has a fixed caloric value, your body is a dynamic system whose metabolism is affected by a host factors such as age, weight, sex, fitness level, and genetics. The number of calories that your body burns throughout the day or during exercise is very difficult to pin down with any real level of accuracy.
2,000 Calories
2,000 calories is the standard that we are all familiar with and the basis for the nutrition facts we commonly look at. However, this is a rough number that was chosen for ease of use more than for accuracy. The FDA settled on it after conducting surveys and gathering feedback from consumers about what they thought would be most helpful.1It is not a value that specifically applies to you as an individual.
Calories Don’t Account For Chemistry
Foods deliver more than just energy. They also deliver nutrients which affect blood chemistry. The same number of calories will affect you differently depending on whether it is delivered as fat, protein, or carbohydrate.
Focus On The Big Picture
You can make big improvements to your health and fitness by focusing on the big trends in your life that are simpler to follow. For example, how often do you eat out versus cooking at home? A healthy home cooked meal will almost always be less caloric than the equivalent in a restaurant. Where do you do most of your shopping? Supermarkets are filled with tempting products. If you do your shopping at a farmers’ market or CSA, there will be far fewer chances for you to buy something you shouldn’t. How do you commute to work? If you can walk or bike, rather than take a car, you will automatically build physical activity into your day.
These big trends are much easier to track, and you can know about them with 100% accuracy because they either happened or they didn’t. Try it out for a week and see how you feel!
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