Calorie counting is one of the many counterproductive things to have come out of our obsessions with weight loss. The time-consuming and soul-sucking practice has somehow managed to seep into our everyday ideas about food and health as well.
To live a healthy and full life, you need to throw out all the messages about calorie counting and refocus on what actually matters: the nutrients your body is getting from the food you’re eating.
This article will explain why the calorie counting games need to end and how to switch to a more nutrient-based approach to food instead.
The Calorie Counting Game
Healthy diets are not just about weight loss and looking dazzling in dresses; they’re about nourishing your body, preventing health problems, having more energy, and boosting your mood.
They’re not about being unrealistically skin and micromanaging calories to the last zero, but about being comfortable in your own skin no matter what it looks like.
The problem with calorie counting is:
Not All Calories Are Equal
A hundred calories of donuts and apples are not the same – apples are much more filling, nutritious and energizing. In terms of losing weight, calories are the same no matter where you get them from. That’s because you have to create a calorie deficit to lose weight, and there is no difference between walking off an extra 100 calories of apples or 100 calories of donuts. However, when it comes to your health, the quality of the calories matters. Foods with the same calorie count can have different effects on your health, metabolism, hormones, and appetite.
There’s No Way to Measure How Many Calories You Need
Our body uses calories to breathe, think, maintain a heartbeat – all of them vary on a day-to-day basis depending on your lifestyle. You’re mainly playing with estimated numbers because it’s nearly impossible to calculate precisely how many calories one person needs.
People Underestimate Their Calorie Count When They Measure It
While it is already tough to measure calorie count, whenever we do try, we’re likelier to be off by about 2000 calories, according to studies. Even dieticians are unable to report a proper calorie intake.
It’s crucial to think of food as nourishment and to focus on the quality of the calories you’re consuming. It’s a futile exercise to break it down into chunks and measure the amount of fat. Thinking of food beyond calories is an effective weight loss routine because you’re not juggling arbitrary numbers but making concrete and healthy lifestyle choices instead.
The Fundamentals of Nutrients of Healthy Diets
A nutritious diet doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, once you have some basic information about nutrients, quality, and quantity, it’s actually pretty fun to mix and match the food and exercises that are best for your body type.
There are a few things you should know before you start.
How Much Fat Is Healthy?
In healthy diets, energy expenditure is higher than energy intake: you lose more calories than you eat. This keeps you from gaining unhealthy weight.
When tracking your energy intake, make sure that the total fat consumption is less than 30%. Additionally, saturated fats should be less than 10%, and trans-fats should be less than 1% of your diet. Most of the fat in your diet should be unsaturated.
- Saturated fats are found in butter, fatty meat, cream, cheese, and ghee.
- Trans-fats are found in bakery items and fried food, and sometimes even in meat and dairy products.
- Unsaturated fats are naturally occurring fats like those present in fish, nuts, and in different varieties of oils of canola, olive, and sunflower
If you’re consuming more than the percentages we mentioned, slowly shift your fat consumption from saturated and trans-fats to unsaturated fats, and remove industrially-produced trans-fats from your diet entirely.
How Much Salt Is Healthy?
According to the World Health Organization, a diet with less than 5g of salt or 2g of sodium intake (the equivalent of 1 teaspoon) is healthy enough to prevent heart diseases in adults.
You can reduce your salt intake by:
- Reducing the amount of salty snacks
- Checking the labels for lower sodium content
- Removing salt and high-sodium condiments like soy sauce or fish sauce when preparing your food or from the dining table
To counter the adverse effects of salt that’s already stored in your body, increase your potassium intake. Potassium counters the negative effect of salt like increased blood pressure and is found in fresh fruit and vegetables.
How Many Carbs Are Healthy?
The kinds of carbohydrates you consume are much more important than their quantity. The carbs in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans are far healthier than those found in fried food.
How Much Sugar is Healthy?
Free sugars should make up less than 10% of a healthy diet and even less than 5% if you want additional health benefits like weight loss. This is less than 12 teaspoons daily and includes the sugars added to the drinks we consume and the sugar found in honey and fruits.
Sugar intake of higher than 10% increases the risk of tooth decay, unhealthy weight gain, and cardiovascular diseases and influences blood pressure and serum lipids.
You can reduce your sugar consumption by:
- Eating fruits and vegetables as snacks instead of sweetened food
- Reducing your intake of candies and sweetened beverages – this includes carbonated and noncarbonated soft drinks, energy or sports drinks, instant-coffee or instant-tea, fruity shakes, and flavored water or milk.
How Many Vegetables Should I Have?
You should have at least five portions or 400g of fruits and vegetables per day – and this excludes starchy vegetables like potatoes and sweet potatoes. You can improve your vegetable intake by:
- Adding vegetables to every meal you take
- Eating vegetables and fruits as snacks
- Consuming a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables
Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and whole grains should make up a significant chunk of your diet because they help reduce the risk of diabetes, cancer, and hypertension and ensure a steady intake of dietary fiber.
How Much Protein is Healthy?
Proteins are building blocks for the body. They give you the energy to get up and keep going; plus, they grow and repair your body
About 30% of your plate should be proteins from vegan sources like pulses, cereals, and lean beans. Proteins are more nutritious and healthy when taken from plant sources, but animal sources like meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products are excellent sources as well.
What Does A Healthy Eating Plate Look Like?
A healthy portion looks like
- 8 glasses of water
- 50% vegetables and fruits of all colors and varieties
- 30% healthy proteins like fish, poultry, beans, and nuts
- 20% whole grains like whole-wheat bread and brown rice
When incorporating healthy proteins in your diet, make sure to limit red meat, cheese, bacon, and other varieties of processed meat. Also, avoid white rice and white bread when adding whole grains.
When drinking tea or coffee, leave out the sugar and reduce your milk intake to one to servings per day. Avoid sugary drinks altogether. When cooking the food, make sure to use healthy oils of canola and olive instead of trans-fat oils and butter.
Thinking Beyond Calories
The quality of the nutrients isn’t the only thing that matters. A couple of other factors like preparing your own meals, reading the labels, being mindful of what you eat can go a long way when it comes to your health. Here’s why.
Prepare Your Own Meals
When you take charge of what you’re eating, you’ll be more mindful of what goes into the food and in what amount. You’ll also have the choice to add fewer calories, additives, sugar, and unhealthy fats. Plus, prolonging the eating process by cooking your own food makes you feel more fuller as well.
Be Mindful When You Eat
Focus on how you feel before and after your meal. Take in all sensations – the smell of the food, the sound of the cutlery, the way the food tastes, and how it feels after you swallow it. What do you feel before you eat your food – is it hunger? Anxiety? Stress? Boredom? When you’re done, notice the sensations you’re getting – if you feel fuller, nauseated, energized, or drowsy?
This is called mindful eating, and it’s important because it alerts you of the nutrients that your body is craving and tells you if you’re emotionally eating. Plus, scientifically speaking, it takes a few minutes for your brain to register that it has enough food. So eat slowly and stop to breathe after every bite; you’re likely to feel fuller faster.
Hydrate Yourself
Water flushes out the waste from our system. We’re likely to feel exhausted, hungrier, and even get body aches when we’re dehydrated. It’s vital for our health to drink enough water to keep our systems going.
Don’t Think of Food as Off-Limits
When you think of particular food as ‘bad’ or ‘off-limits,’ especially if you happen to love the food, you inadvertently turn it into a guilty pleasure. You’ll crave it more and feel like a failure if you give in to the temptation.
Slowly wean off of them by reducing the portion size of the ‘off-limits food first. You can do this by visual cues like serving your meals in smaller plates or bowls and adding larger quantities of greens with a little bit of meat in the mix – this tricks your brain into thinking of the serving as much larger than it is and makes your body feel fuller.
Plan Your Snacks
Snacks are generally unplanned foods, but you can plan them beforehand. Make sure you don’t have unhealthy or sweetened treats around the house – surround yourself with healthier choices.
Make Veggies Tasty
People find it hard to stick to a vegan diet because vegetables can get quite bland –but only if you don’t know how to cook them. Vegetables get a bad rep for being tasteless, but there are plenty of ways to add some jazz to your veggie eating experience
- Use tomatoes, beets, red cabbage, and peppers to add color to your food
- Use olive oil, almond, chickpeas, and even a little bacon to your lettuce, kale, broccoli, and spinach
- Use carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, squash, and yams to add sweetness to your meal
- Try grilling or steaming the blander leafy greens like asparagus, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts
Read Nutrition Labels
Many of us don’t know how to properly read a nutrition label, have many misconceptions about it, or buy things without taking them into account in the first place. Looking at the nutrient tab is arguable the most important thing you should do whenever you’re grocery shopping.
The nutrition labels are divided into:
- Serving Information
- Calories
- Nutrients
- Percent Daily Value (%DV)
Look at the ‘nutrients’ part of the label to determine how the item will nourish you. The ‘percentage daily value’ will give you an estimate of the amount of the exact nutrient you’re consuming. A rule of thumb for %DV is that it’s low if it’s less than 5% and high if it’s above 20%.
Remember to choose the food with more of the nutrients you want and less of what you need to limit.
The Take-Away
Calorie-counting might help with weight loss, but that’s not the only marker of good health. Healthy diets with the right quantity, quality, and preparation of nutrients help protect you from malnutrition and non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. They work best when complemented with physical activity.
The most important part of thinking beyond calories is to take into account the nutrients you’re getting – the closer they are to nature, the better for our health, body, and mood.