You Probably Suck At Tracking Calories
1422 words, 7 min read time
Sorry to let you know, but it’s true.
But it’s not your fault. Truth be told, most of us do. It’s simply human nature.
Tracking your caloric intake is a fantastic way to manage your nutrition. When it comes to weight gain or weight loss, the end-all-be-all truly is your calorie intake. There aren’t many absolutes with this sort of stuff, but this is one of the few.
Don’t take this as me saying you should disregard everything that isn’t calories. It’s still important to eat a mostly balanced diet, for a variety of reasons. But for weight gain or loss, calories are #1. To gain weight, you must be consuming more calories than you burn in a day, thus to lose weight, you must consume less calories than you burn in a day.
Formally referred to as the Energy Balance Equation, or informally as CICO (calories in and calories out), this phenomenon is guaranteed by the laws of physics. It does work. Yet, many still find when they track their calories and consume less than they burn, they don’t lose weight.
There’s a lot of small but significant ways you can screw up the process and left frustrated and bewildered as you’re stuck not losing weight while evidently hardly eating anything.
Now the first logical assumption is that counting calories doesn’t work. That fat loss has nothing to do with the calories and it must be something else. Too many carbs, or sugar, or artificial ingredients or something.
Or that maybe something is simply wrong with your body and that you can’t lose fat.
But thanks to scientific research on the subject, we know that people tend to simply suck at tracking calories.
The study I’ve linked here is often used as a popular example of this being the case.
Several obese subjects who had previously failed to lose weight eating under 1200 calories a day (far under the limit required for them to lose weight) were compared to a control group of people who had no history of struggling to lose weight tracking their calories.
The researchers suspected these individuals were simply vastly underreporting how many calories they were consuming, and overestimating how many they burned while exercising, not that anything is wrong with their bodies preventing them from losing weight, or that there is another factor worth considering like sugar intake etc.
Sure enough, it was found that there were TONS of calories they were eating that were unaccounted for, up to and over 1000 calories per day, and they weren’t burning nearly as many calories working out that they thought they were.
This infographic by Ben Carpenter (Instagram: @bdccarpenter) illustrates the study very well.
Now you may be thinking, okay, I’m not obese, I have experience dieting and counting calories and have lost weight successfully. I know what I’m doing, I’m in a caloric deficit, but nothing is happening. What gives?
You probably still suck at tracking your calories and are consuming too many for weight loss.
It’s been shown that even dieticians, degree-holding experts on nutrition, still tend to under report their calorie intake.
Compared to a control group of normal people under reporting by an average of 400 cals per day, the dieticians did by 220 per day. Not much, but still enough to slow down or halt progress.
Combine that with the fact that the calorie counts on food labels we’re measuring from can be inaccurate, and that many of the entries on apps like MyFitnessPal that are user entered are vastly inaccurate, it’s incredibly easy to completely destroy any caloric deficit without realizing it.
It is possible that you have metabolic issues such as hypothyroidism which are preventing you from losing weight eating calories low enough for most to lose weight. But in 99.9% of cases, you’re just under reporting. Unless you are expressing several symptoms of hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s, it’s not really worth considering.
Common Mistakes When Tracking Calories
Measuring off inaccurate entries
By now you’re probably wondering what you could be doing which is throwing your measurements off.
First, I highly suggest double checking the accuracy of any entries on calorie tracking apps like MyFitnessPal. Most of their databases entries are created by other users, and needless to say, there’s lots of stupid people out there you shouldn’t trust.
I tell my clients to use Cronometer instead. All entries are from government databases. If you absolutely need to use an app which has a user-entered database, it’s better to just create your own entries of your most commonly eaten foods based off of government databases.
There are plenty available online with a simple google search. I like the website nutritiondata.self which is vastly more thorough compared to many other resources, including plenty of information about micronutrient content, amino acid balance, and lipid types. Overkill for what most people need, admittedly.
Not accounting for raw or cooked food
Many foods like meat lose moisture (water weight) when cooked, so weigh less than when they were raw, with largely the same nutrient content.
This means that if you’re trying to weigh out a cooked chicken breast but measure the calorie content based off of data for a raw chicken breast, you’re going to think you’re eating less calories than you really are.
This goes for foods like beans or rice as well, which take on water when cooked. If you’re weighing raw but measuring off of cooked data, you’ll be taking in way more calories than you realize.
ALWAYS make sure you weigh and measure the same exact way. As a general rule, weigh and measure as purchased. If it comes already cooked, use a cooked entry to measure with. If an entry doesn’t specify between raw or cooked, don’t use it.
Not accounting for leanness of meat
Different cuts of meat will have different levels of fat.
Chicken breast is almost entirely lean, whereas chicken thighs can be pretty fatty, and contain a lot more calories. This is why you can’t simply track “chicken”. It’s important to specify what part of the chicken.
If you’re not sure? Well, you probably shouldn’t be including large amounts of unspecified “chicken” or “pork” into your diet in the first place. What parts of the chicken are all in a nugget, anyway?
Missed little bites and snacks
Do you have a mindless eating habit? There’s a chance some things are going untracked that you don’t even realize. You may want to avoid eating anything outside of set meals.
Or, do you take little nibbles of things here and there, figuring that it can’t amount to much? It might not. It may only have a very minimal impact, but coupled with some of the above issues, can add up to enough to matter. Especially for something packed with calories like nuts. A small handful can be a few hundred calories as is.
Only tracking during the week
If you track 5 days a week, creating a calorie deficit of 500 per day, it’s entirely possible to ruin it over the weekend by eating too much.
Let’s say you burn 2500 cals a day, so you eat 2000 to create a deficit of 500. If you eat 1250 over that only two days in a week, or 3250 calories, that completely cancels out any deficit you created, as the average of your weekly calorie intake comes out to 2500 calories, how much it takes for you to maintain weight.
Now 1250 sounds like a lot. But a few 300 calorie slices of pizza, 200 calorie sodas and beers, with slightly larger portions of your other foods because you’re not weighing them, and that can go by quickly and easily.
Eyeballing instead of weighing
I’ll let this infographic by @thefitnesschef_ do the talking.
You’re not actually counting calories if you’re not using a food scale. That’s just estimating.
Making several of these mistakes!
Oftentimes, it isn’t just one of these mistakes that are the culprit. It’s a combination of several in small degrees that all together, make a sizable difference.
For further reading on the subject, James Krieger, who is a fantastic resource for evidence-based information, put out a fantastic article on the subject that dives much deeper than I did here, with all sorts of other links and references on the subject. If you’re into that sort of thing.
Nerd.
You can find that linked here.
If instead you prefer things that are made simple and practical for the average person and skip over most of the science of how and why things work, feel free to browse more of my articles, and sign up for my free program full of all sorts of other goodies. You’ll also receive an email notification every time I put out a new article.
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2 Comments
Mel
CICO goes back to when people thought sweat was melted fat. Your body isn’t a furnace, it’s is a complicated array of chemical reactions. Calorie science is literally based on how much food is needed to heat water by a degree.
Yes, eating less can cause weight loss in that you deprive the body of nutrition (starve it). But you’re losing not a lot of fat unless you’re mostly made of fat. That’s why people can have normal weight obesity or can eat at maintenance and gain muscle—because they don’t or do eat the right nutrients for their body’s needs.
People (op eds) will do all sort sorts of mental gymnastics to justify the calorie religion.
In addition, There are plenty of studies that show calories on packages are wildly made-up anyway, that steroids can build muscle without a calorie surplus or even lifting (forced biological efficiency), and that naturally skinny people have bodies that are superior at using what it needs and disposing of the rest vice storing as fat.
Sure, Those people might get fat later in life, not because they eat more, but because their bodies stop processing out nutrients before fat conversion. Hell, Look at what childbirth does to some women biologically. You don’t think post-baby women aren’t killing themselves with cardio and 1200 calories a day religiously while all their child-free friends are rail still thin?
Some people can kill themselves on carbs, beer, pizza and live that skinny person dream. Some people will become massive eating the same exact calories they would lose weight at in potato chips. No one has 50lbs of “water weight”.
I want all these 23-year-olds to come back to their fitness blogs at 45 after never been on gear and show everyone that their calorie restriction has kept their bodies in the same weight and fat % they rocked in their 20s.
Dylan Clark
Fortunately for me, my age is pretty irrelevant. Whether the energy balance equation theory is valid or not isn’t influenced by whatever I say or think or whatever qualities I possess as a person, and luckily I don’t have to rely solely on my own personal experiences and witnessed events to make sense of the world.
The truth of the matter solely depends on the evidence and facts supporting it to be the case. I’m fortunate enough that we live in a time where this system of modern science has been designed so that we can take our observations of the world around us and, to the best of our abilities, separate the inherent subjectivity to try and piece together what objective reality truly is.
The insinuation that I am just ignorant or naive because of my age ignores the reality that knowledge doesn’t depend solely on one’s own experiences anymore.
I could be the most naive guy ever, with rose colored glasses permanently welded to my face, and still be right regarding this theory due to the incredible ability our society has to pass on knowledge.
My age truly is irrelevant given some thought, but yet this type of comment isn’t surprising to me.
Humans, after all, are irrational and emotional creatures, not perfectly logical and rational robots. When someone is struggling to get the body they want, and deep down they honestly believe they’re doing everything in their power and fail, it’s pretty uncomfortable to grapple with the possibility that perhaps you’re not a very strong willed person, or you don’t know as much as you think you do.
It’s much easier to tell yourself that “they” have it wrong. The diet experts, the trainers, the doctors. They have it wrong, and you have been misled.
Really, it should be welcome news there are people out there who can help you, or ways in which you can learn to help yourself. Convincing yourself you’ve been misled and cheated by all these ignorant and naive trainers just leaves you helpless.
But, again, humans are not always rational. We don’t like looking at our reflection and honestly considering if we have flaws.
All the examples shared – the skinny dudes who eat like crap and don’t gain an ounce of fat, the recently pregnant moms struggling to lose any weight while their child free friends are just fine – these are just examples which highlight certain genetic, biological, and lifestyle factors which can tip the scales one way or another.
But they also don’t show the big picture.
You see the skinny guys that eat like a pig, but what you don’t see is that he often goes several days at a time barely eating anything, or only really eats once per day. What you do see is when he finally makes up for it all at once. You see the new mom struggling to lose baby weight, but what you don’t see is that before her baby, unbeknownst to her, she was barely scraping by managing to maintain her figure, and she doesn’t really have the best eating or exercise habits.
From the outside looking in, it’s very easy to misattribute what causes certain people to be a certain way. When judging our own experiences, it’s very difficult to be objective about the matter, without convincing ourselves of things that are not true in order to protect our ego or avoid taking responsibility.
You only see what you want to see, in order to confirm your bias.
Whenever there’s an in depth, scientific examination into the matter, time and time again it shows all sorts of things may tip the scale one way or another, but it always comes down to calories in / calories out, it is well within our control, and we are not helpless victims to genetics, hormones, or age.
This deflection of, “Well, easy for you to say since you’re young, it’s different when you’re older, don’t worry you’ll learn!”, is just an irrational justification to try and reconcile the mental conflict one experiences when presented with that possibility that, maybe, they got some stuff to work on.
But to the matter at hand…
There have been numerous studies and the preponderance of evidence confirms that weight loss, more specifically fat loss, is a result of consuming less calories than one consumes over a given period. This isn’t really up for debate as it is a matter of thermodynamics – energy isn’t created or lost, but transferred. A calorie just being a unit of energy. The short of it is, when you expend more energy than you intake through food, your body is forced to procure that energy from stored energy. Through the study of bioenergetics, it is known that excess bodyfat is primarily and most substantially utilized to make up for this energy deficit.
Other sources would be stored carbohydrates in the form of glycogen, skeletal muscle, and perhaps even organ/smooth muscle in extreme circumstances. In the context of someone not literally starving, adequately exercising in a manner to encourage muscle maintenance, and consuming enough complete proteins, cannibalizing muscle tissue for energy is insignificant. Depending on circumstances such as activity or amount available, sometimes the body has a preference towards using glycogen stores for energy. But this is a very limited resource, so even under circumstances where little to no fat is metabolized, that is only temporary until fat is then used – unless someone is starving, it is a plentiful resource.
Humans, maybe even all warm blooded mammals, have evolved this way for a reason. Fat is a very efficient storage of energy. Our body prefers to use it. Glycogen serves its purpose as a quickly available energy resource, but our bodies were not designed to carry lots of it, and it is not as dense with energy for its mass and volume. Glycogen is efficient for things like moderate to high intensity exercise, not so much for prolonged periods of being underfed. Muscle is very valuable and terribly inefficient when converting to energy, so we have evolved to use it as a last resort.
Restricting your energy intake isn’t “starving” yourself, it’s actually quite normal and natural to go through periods where you’re overfed and underfed. Humans survived in colder climates by packing on fat in the warmer months where food is plentiful, then burned it off in the colder months where food was sparse. In fact, plenty of research shows short term calorie restriction is quite good for you, as it can reverse climbing insulin sensitivity, high cholesterol, and other metabolic concerns.
When you create that deficit of energy, it has to come from somewhere. It’s not really coming from muscle, only somewhat from glycogen. If it’s not coming from fat, then where? It has to come from somewhere, it cannot just be created out of thin air. Law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, all that jazz.
That’s not to say there is no debate on the matter. There is debate to the degree that stored fat is used compared to other potential energy sources under certain conditions, and then which kind of diets or forms of exercise are the most efficient.
For example, studies into bioenergetics may find that the body may use more glycogen and less fat during and shortly after, say, something like a light jog, than what was previously assumed. But then if we are to examine what happens over the course of a day, we find that if more glycogen is used during one period of the day, more fat is used during other parts, and it all tends to even out over a practically relevant time frame.
Or for another example, plenty of research which supposedly proves that low carb diets are superior for fat loss, actually only show that low carb diets are superior for weight loss, not specifically fat, in the short term. As when carb intake is low enough, the body will empty glycogen reserves, along with it losing lots of water weight. But once that’s gone, that rate of weight loss isn’t sustained, and the rate of actual fat lost isn’t any different. Studies which account for the difference in water retention, control for protein, or simply have a longer study period of only a week or two, show no difference between low carb diets and other diets.
While what happens inside the body isn’t exactly as simple as calories in / calories out, there tends to be a very roundabout way of making that to be the case over a period of time that’s relevant, so it serves as an accurate simplification.
Another issue is with how inaccurate nutrition labels can be in regards to calories, and how difficult it is to truly figure out your energy expenditure. Unless you are living for days at a time inside a test chamber which analyzes the amount of nitrogen you exhale, the best you’re getting is a very loose estimation based on your lean body mass, total mass, age, and activity level. Which, there really isn’t a good way to quantify your activity level.
What this means is, someone may think they are consuming 1500 calories a day and burning 2000, therefore creating a deficit of 500 which should result in fat loss. But to no fault of their own, they could actually be consuming 1850 and only burning around 1850. Although often there is a degree of user error in tracking calories which has a bias towards underreporting intake. There have been numerous studies using the above method of measuring nitrogen output to get an accurate idea of calorie expenditure, and with those subjects, they would provide meals controlled for calories, then have them record their calorie intake to compare and see how accurate they were.
In instances of obese subjects with a history of failing diets, 1200 reported calories turned out to be hundreds or a few thousand lower than actual intake. Even in instances where the subjects are registered dieticians, trained and qualified professionals, they underreported intake by an average of 250 calories. Just enough to create a noticeable stall in fat loss or even fat gain. I believe this article even links to both of those cases.
This is why, in practice, I often assume calories in/out are not precise and use the numbers only in a relative basis. First by establishing a consistent diet, you account for some nutrition labels underreporting calories more than others. You can then adjust calorie intake relatively based on someone’s weight loss progress. So if they’re not losing weight despite on paper showing they should be in a deficit, this often means the true number isn’t being shown and you can suggest they reduce intake by x amount. By watching out for common symptoms of someone eating an excessively low amount of calories to the point it’s unhealthy, you can even “recommend” calorie intakes that would surely be too low, the assumption being that their actual intake is higher.
For instance, I had a client maintaining weight on “1200 calories” that wouldn’t lose any until in the range of “800” or “1000”. What was actually probably going on was some combination of inaccurate nutrition labels, a genetic propensity for lower energy expenditure, and just really bad tracking on their part. When they are very active, not absurdly hungry, gaining strength, and feeling energized over several months of eating “800 calories”, you can be certain their actual intake is much higher, and the suggestion to reduce intake by 200-300 and increase activity slightly was the right call.
Being clear in communicating that the likely scenario is their reported calories are off and eating so few calories for extended periods of time would probably not be a good idea is important in these cases.
Tracking calories is imperfect, but with the right strategy, it’s accurate enough to be of use.
I believe it’s important for everyone to have some experience doing it as it teaches you a lot about your own habits and what’s really in food. But many people do not need to do it to reach their goals, many of my clients don’t and never have, and I do not track my own calories. It’s not some be-all-end-all to managing your nutrition, and for many people it’s a little overkill.
Age is an important consideration, but the impact still does not disqualify any of the above. Many hormones influence calorie partitioning, or to what degree energy is stored/pulled from fat/glycogen/muscle. The hormonal changes associated with age and especially the sudden changes with menopause or pregnancy often skew calorie partitioning unfavorably. But skew, does not mean biologically what is true for someone young and healthy becomes an entirely different matter once you hit a certain age. It just makes it a bit slower or harder. In some cases, that’s enough to tip the scales to where that person cannot make any progress without the right strategy, or tips into regression and slowly starts accumulating fat and slowly losing muscle.
Considering the average person barely does the bare minimum to maintain muscle mass and not get fat in their early 20s, those same behaviors lead to problems as the decades go by.
This is a hard pill to swallow for many, and, as mentioned before, can easily lead to a situation where you search for scapegoats so you can avoid personal responsibility.
Regardless of anyone’s cognitive dissonance on the matter, the evidence strongly supports the energy balance equation – that much is clear. This is good news, just difficult to swallow sometimes.
People are entitled to their opinions, and there’s nothing wrong with some healthy debate, but I would suggest it’s probably not a good idea to come onto someone’s platform and indirectly attack their character. You’re just setting yourself up to be shown, quite elaborately, that you’re probably the one who’s character needs some work.