Myth or reality: Do I need to count calories?
Text: Karina Sembe
LOOKING FOR SIMPLE AND NOT VERY WAYS TO IMPROVE LIFE AND EXPLAIN why they work. Today we understand why counting calories is not the wisest idea and how to ensure a balanced diet without chasing conventional numbers.
Striving for a healthy diet, many are eagerly trying to calculate the caloric content of everything they eat. It’s hard to resist when the VKontakte communities regularly publish menus for 1300 kcal, and the gloss doesn’t get tired of using the word “low-calorie” as a synonym for what is useful. And the prospect of going to a restaurant, where labels with energy value are not attached to the dishes, begins to cause panic, and it is not possible to try refreshments prepared by a friend with his own hands. A haphazard calorie counting occurs when, after two burgers filled with a liter of cola, a person for the rest of the day starves himself out of guilt for shamelessly exceeded the norm.
We confidently declare that it is inexpedient to establish a daily diet, starting only from the total number of calories. The numbers shown on the product packaging, in fact, are very far from the amount of energy that the body receives, digesting and assimilating this product. In addition, the energy value is determined only mathematically, without any chemical analysis, and therefore very conditional. Most often, the manufacturer takes the recipe of the product, calculates the amount of nutrients, and then summarizes the caloric content, starting from the basic setting: one gram of protein or carbohydrate contains 4 kcal, one gram of fat - 9 kcal, alcohol - 7 kcal.
Count calories - Sisyphean labor. You can never find out the exact amount in a chicken breast from a farm or a glass of beans of an unspecified grade. Moreover, as the author of the book for athletes and coaches "The Protein Book" Lil MacDonald notes, all organic substances are absorbed by the body in different ways: animal protein and protein shakes - by 95-97%, vegetable protein - by about 60%. Digestibility also depends on a number of individual characteristics of the digestive tract and even on how carefully we chew food.
If you gain daily calories, but you do not have enough protein, the body will not start building muscles
The formula for determining the norm of calories exists a few, but the main method of Harris - Benedict is almost a hundred years old, and it's time to doubt it. This formula determines the basic level of metabolism, after calculating which it is necessary to use a coefficient from 1.3 to 1.75, depending on the level of physical activity of a person. Thus, the accuracy of the formula is leveled by the very principle of the coefficient choice: by overestimating or underestimating your activity, you can add up to 30% of the error to the calculations.
It turns out that there is no point in counting the calories themselves, since these numbers are rather relative. Pay attention to the real composition of the product, that is, the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates (BJU). If you gain daily calories, but you do not have enough protein, the body will not start building muscles, but will "burn" existing ones. By reducing fat to a minimum and increasing the proportion of carbohydrates in the diet, you are likely to gain weight, even reducing your calorie intake by 20%. Professional bodybuilders and avid amateur athletes weigh the products before they are prepared and calculate the approximate daily balance of BJU, which in fact turns out to be very effective.
For those who can do without such restrictions, it’s enough to estimate a reasonable ratio of nutrients: having eaten oatmeal with honey and fruits for breakfast, and pilaf for lunch, you should limit the carbohydrates in the evening and put on proteins and green vegetables. In any case, the habit of overeating with a cake, so that all subsequent days of sitting on the water with lemon, is not just harmful - it inevitably leads to stress, and therefore, without any doubt, we are rejected.
Photo: 1, 2 via Shutterstock