Sun, May-28-23, 08:43
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Is counting calories a waste of time?
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Is counting calories a waste of time?
There’s more to what you eat than kilojoules, writes Ben Spencer
When it comes to dieting, the calorie has always been king. Not only does every packet in the supermarket have calories listed on the side, but since last year every café and restaurant has had to print them on their menus. The tyranny of the calorie counters is upon us. And it’s all thanks to the first law of thermodynamics. Calories in, in the form of food and drink, minus calories out, in the form of exercise, equals energy stored, in the form of fat.
“A calorie is a calorie,” says Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow. “If you take on more calories, you’re going to put on more weight if you don’t run them off.”
The calorie, though, is under attack. Every week another expert joins a growing group of those who say that, for most people, calorie counting simply does not work as a weight-loss strategy. “The whole calorie counting industry is, in my opinion, a bit of a fraud,” says Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London. “It doesn’t tell people that while anyone can lose weight in the short term — whether you’re on a low-fat diet, a keto diet, a carnivore diet or a fresh-air diet — keeping that weight off in the long term is hard.”
That is backed up by the data. A review of weight-loss strategies led by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in the US found that even if dieters are initially successful, half of the lost weight is regained within two years, and within five years more than 80 per cent is put back on.
Andrew Jenkinson, a consultant in weight-loss surgery at University College London Hospital (UCLH), says our obsession with calories ignores a central part of the way the body works. “The body tries to maintain a particular weight setting,” he says. It does this by adjusting the “basal metabolic rate” — the energy used to carry out unconscious body functions such as breathing, pumping the heart and maintaining temperature.
The energy used to run these functions is adjusted by the body as a way to conserve or expel reserves. “It can be changed by 600 to 700 kilocalories a day, depending on whether we’re on a really low-calorie diet or whether we’re overeating,” Jenkinson says. “If we overeat, our metabolism will increase and if we starve ourselves it will slow down.”
A calorie may be a calorie but the way the body responds to that calorie can differ markedly, depending on the performance of our metabolism.
The microbiome also plays an underestimated role. Different individuals share just 25 per cent, on average, of the bacteria in their gut. And this bacteria has a big impact on the way food is metabolised. Spector’s research has shown that even identical twins often have completely different reactions to the same food.
Hormones also make life difficult. “When you are dieting your body ramps up hunger and does everything just to get you started eating again,” Spector says. “Your appetite levels are going through the roof.”
Dr Chris van Tulleken, an infectious diseases doctor at UCLH, says modern diets make this harder. The additives and manufacturing methods used in ultra-processed food confuse the brain’s hunger-reward system, meaning we end up consuming more and more calories to make ourselves feel full. Self-control and willpower don’t come into it, he says, because modern food makes it almost impossible to regulate our eating habits.
“Wild animals don’t have any nutritional information available but there is no obesity at all among them,” he says. “Even when animals have abundant food, they don’t need to count calories to regulate their energy balance. The only reason we have to count calories is because of the weird food we eat that has subverted our evolved mechanisms.”
Van Tulleken says avoiding ultra-processed food helps the body regulate itself — but acknowledges this is very difficult because convenience products are cheaper, easy to consume and heavily marketed. “If you just eat real food, it all more or less takes care of itself,” he says. “But that is an impossibility for most people.”
Calorie counting is also difficult because dieters often fail to work out how much they have eaten. “It’s very hard to know what 30g of Coco Pops is and then how much milk to add,” van Tulleken says. “Our ability to count calories is diminishing. It may be subconscious bias because we feel ashamed and so we will try to give ourselves a better mark. It may be because we’re eating out more.”
Focusing on calories also misses the overall nutritional value of a food. As the British Heart Foundation website puts it: “The energy you get from 100kcals is the same whether it’s half an avocado or half a bar of chocolate.” Fat, sugar and salt are worth paying attention to — and should be clearly labelled — but you may have to squint to see the quantity of fibre, vitamins and minerals in a particular product.
Spector says so-called diet foods are a particular problem because they make a virtue of their low-calorie content but are full of artificial alternatives to sugar and fat. “Ultra-processed foods that call themselves ‘low calorie’ are a health hazard and should come with a warning. I think it’s indefensible. They are stacked with artificial sweeteners, flavourings and emulsifiers that are screwing us up — people are being conned.”
Sattar has a little more faith in the role of the calorie. “There might be some variance in the way people react — in their microbiome or to ultra-processed food — but if I measure my calorie intake for the week and then try to cut it, I will lose weight. If I have a big enough deficit in calories that I can’t make up by changing activities, I will lose weight.”
He admits that people find it hard to keep track of their intake, and that they find it difficult to stick to a low-calorie regime. “It is difficult, boring and hard work, and people usually don’t do it for long.”
Yet Sattar believes simple swaps — as long as they are sustainable — can make a difference. “Every time I used to have a cup of tea I’d eat four custard creams,” he says. That’s 240 calories, a few times a day. “Now I just have a finger of KitKat — 52 calories. I don’t need those extra calories but wanted that sweet kick. Another thing I do is, for my evening meal, I make sure a third of my plate is covered by salad, so it’s slightly less pasta or chips.” Another trick, he says, is to stop having sugar in coffee.
“By retraining your palate or retraining your behaviour you can really cut your intake, without counting calories.”
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-time-52bzhkj3p |
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