Why You Should Stop Counting Calories

Hey everyone. This will be a post about an article I read in Time magazine. It will be a quick breakdown of why you should stop counting calories. The author is Mandy Oaklander. Lets get to it...

If you want to lose weight, your best bet is to eat more of the right foods and cut back on added sugar. Counting calories may help you lose weight in the short term, but it is very difficult to keep off the weight in the long run. Many people end up putting the weight right back on and some even put on more weight than they originally lost. The truth is, now scientists are discovering that the quality of your calories consumed is much more important than the quantity for staying healthy and losing weight, while maintaining these results.

When you consume the right quality and balance of foods, your body can do the rest on its own. You don't have to count calories or go by the numbers. It is not the fact that foods have too many calories, but rather the cascade of effects that result on your body that promote fat storage and make us overeat. Processed carbs such as chips, cookies, soda, and crackers digest very quickly in the body and turn into sugar and increase levels of the hormone insulin. Insulin has your cells store these calories as fat and leave the body feeling hungry in a hurry. If you repeat this cycle too many times, it will affect your metabolism.

When you start to restrict your calories, your body can react buy slowing the body's metabolism in order to keep the calories around longer, and you begin to feel hungry. This combo of rising hunger and slowing metabolism is a battle that most are destined to lose in the long run. The best way to break this cycle is to replace processed carbs with healthy fats. Fats don't raise insulin levels at all, so they can be key to helping the body lose weight.

This may go against what many people were taught to believe. People have been duped into thinking that low fat is the best way to lose weight. People treated fat as something that will cause you to gain weight and get "fat." A lot of negative press went along with fat. The problem is that many of these low fat diets replaced fat with more processed carbs and sugars. In fact eating foods that are high in Omega 3's like salmon and olive oil do not seem to cause weight gain. People who have followed the Mediterranean diet rich in vegetables and fat live on average five years longer than those that eat low-fat. High fat diets even have lower risks of cardiovascular disease.

Real natural foods with fiber, protein and fat are naturally satisfying so they will keep you full longer and as a result you will eat less throughout the day. This will naturally regulate your calories without having to count. This also does not mean that you can eat all you want without limitations. Use your plate as a guide. Half your plate should be non-starch vegetables, a quarter should be protein, and a quarter quality carbs such as legumes. Foods with healthy fats may also pop up in the protein and carb parts of your plate. Another trick is to slow down when you eat. It takes around 20 minutes for your brain to pick up the fact that you are full, so spend time with your meal.

Hopefully you learned something new today. Let me know if any of these ideas work for you. Thanks for stopping by and I will see you again soon.