Counting calories is 'virtually meaningless'. Huh?!

mayerrocks · August 2013

An article on the DailyMail web site claims that counting calories is meaningless.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2398393/Counting-calories-virtually-meaningless-digest-food-differently.html#comments

I guess that the 44 lbs I lost since August 2012 by counting my calories with MFP is just an illusion. I am just hallucinating when I see my size 38 pants, down from 44. Oh! and all those people who keep on commenting on my weight loss, they're hallucinating too....!

explosivedonut · August 2013

I imagined my 65 pounds lost, and my wife imagined her 80 pounds lost. Yup seems legit.

Escape_Artist · August 2013

:noway: Wait, I've been doing it all wrong?

jasonalvear · August 2013

Lol, I agree. Ever since I actually started taking the time, which is very little, to track food, I have made the most progress than all of my life put together. I know some are capable of "eye-balling" things, but thank goodness for MFP for those of us whom are not blessed with that mutant ability, lol!

T0FatToB3S1ck · August 2013

Yup lost 110 pounds by not watching what I eat. Calories are just a conspiracy invented by the FDA so they can up the price of "healthy" foods.

jasonalvear · August 2013

Yup lost 110 pounds by not watching what I eat. Calories are just a conspiracy invented by the government FDA so they can up the price of "healthy" foods.

*mind blown*

fatfudgery · August 2013

the DailyMail

Well, there's your problem!

ginnycarroll77 · August 2013

YUK....swallowed a bug,anyone know how many calories are in a bug

Francl27 · August 2013

Ok so it's not totally accurate. Sure seems to be more accurate than eyeballing my food though.

Totally ridiculous.

T0FatToB3S1ck · August 2013

YUK....swallowed a bug,anyone know how many calories are in a bug

Depends. What kind of bug 0_o

BrianSharpe · August 2013

Merely counting calories based on food labels is an overly-simplistic approach to eating a healthy diet – one that does not necessarily improve our health....................

The calorie content of protein has also been exaggerated by up to 20 per cent because the current system does not take into account the extra energy used in chewing.

Interesting that they are critical of the current "counting calories" system but don't propose a viable alternative.

jovalleau · August 2013

Daily Mail for the whoops!

quiltlovinlisa · August 2013

Meh, every system has flaws but however flawed this may be, it's working for me.

maillemaker · August 2013

Sure, counting calories is an inaccurate art. And sure, maybe different people metabolize foods differently. And sure, maybe the labels on the food aren't accurate.

But if you are fat, odds are very good that you have not been keeping track of how much you eat at all. You probably don't even know how many calories are in those three slices of pizza you ate - you just ate them because they tasted good.

Being oblivious to caloric intake is probably not going to result in eating a calorie deficit. Especially since being on a deficit is probably going to result in you being hungry and then eating until you aren't hungry anymore.

Yeah, eating "natural" (note the quotes) foods will make it easier to avoid calorie-dense foods and thus make it harder to over-consume, but if you don't know what you are eating you still can't be sure you are hitting a deficit.

If you are serious about weight loss, you need to keep track of what you are eating so that you at least have a ballpark idea of what sort of caloric intake you have. Otherwise you are just guessing.

Another benefit of tracking what you eat is that it gives you a much better idea of what kinds of calories are in food. We used to buy giant tubs of cashew nuts from Costco for snacks. I'd eat three handfuls at a time for a snack.

Turns out that 3 ounces of cashews has over 300 calories in it. That's about a handful. Three handfuls of cashews is almost 1000 calories - over half my daily caloric allowance! Needless to say I seldom eat cashews anymore. They just aren't tasty enough to blow 300 calories on a mouthful.

james6998 · August 2013

I guess i was wrong that 3500 calories= 1 lb of fat. :P
So how do these people want to measure what would be a pound of fat?

LAW_714 · August 2013

It would depend on what one means by 'meaningless'.

If someone believes that they are measuring their calories such that they are precisely accurate to the nth degree to what they ate, well... it's not that precise. There's a real margin error. Can't be eliminated. Humans are involved.

This on top of it's actually not a true measurement of how foods are metabolized in a biological system. Calories are a measure of how when burned they can raise the temp of 1kg or water by 1 degree Celcius. It's a measurement of the energy contained so it is a measurement of something, but that's not actually a measure for how cells utilize energy in a food... which gets a little esoteric and complicated, and who wants to figure out ATP per molecule? Calories may be an imperfect tool, but they are the most convenient tool to use and thus are quite useful. Relatively speaking, they work well enough, are better than nothing, and are a good source of information, so practically speaking, they are not 'useless'. They're greatly helpful.