Should You Count Calories?
I’ve worked with many health and fitness enthusiasts who were previously hyperfocused on tracking every bite of food they consume. Tracking is often thought of as a necessity when trying to achieve a health goal, especially when it comes to reaching a certain weight.
There are definitely reasons why tracking your food intake can be beneficial. Knowing how much you eat and what your macronutrient ratio looks like can help you reach your health goals faster than if you’re going at it blind. However, there are also reasons why knowing every calorie you consume can be detrimental.
So how do you know if tracking your food intake is a good idea for you or not?
Top Reasons To Track Your Food Intake
1. You Have A Weight Loss Goal
Losing weight is about more than “calories in, calories out.” Your hormone function, micronutrient status, and microbiome are key. But it’s true that you can lose weight in a caloric deficit.
Tracking your food intake is a way to know that you’re eating fewer calories than you’re expending, which has been proven as an effective weight loss strategy. By keeping track of what you eat in a day, you quickly learn how many calories you need to expend to create a deficit. HOWEVER, there’s a significant difference between high calorie flux and low calorie flux.
Low Calorie Flux: A person consuming and burning 2000 calories per day, then goes on a diet eating only 1500 calories per day. 1500 calories in - 2000 calories out = -500 calorie deficit
High Calorie Flux: A person consuming and burning 3000 calories per day, then goes on a diet eating only 2500 calories per day. 2500 calories in - 3000 calories out = -500 calorie deficit
Most nutritionists and dieticians would say there’s no difference between the two. But research shows the difference is actually very significant.
The high calorie flux person typically has:
More fat loss and less muscle loss, with greater ease of fat loss
More satiety and less hunger
Faster metabolism
Higher energy levels
High calorie flux is how Olympic athletes can eat over 8000 calories per day yet be leaner than the average person. The higher the flux, the more willing our bodies are to be lean and maintain high energy levels.
If you do choose to use a caloric deficit to achieve a weight loss goal, I recommend using a high calorie flux rather than the commonly used low calorie flux.
Tracking your food is also a form of self-monitoring, which can be helpful for sticking to healthy choices and reigning in old tendencies you want to avoid. Recording everything you eat can open your eyes to the impact that a snack or extra serving makes on your overall calorie intake. When you’re pursuing a weight loss goal, those calories can add up and make it more difficult to lose weight if you’re not burning them off.
2. You Want To Make Sure You’re Eating Enough
On the other hand, tracking your food intake can be helpful to ensure you’re eating enough calories.
Most people I’ve worked with over the years have been relatively health conscious already, and many of them were undereating without realizing it. It’s actually very common in the health and fitness space.
If you have a history of undereating or fly through fast paced days on nothing but crumbs and coffee, tracking your food can help you make sure your body is getting the fuel it needs.
You might find you’re intermittent fasting, exercising hard most days of the week, and only eating 1200 calories. This can be really problematic over time, especially for your hormones.
Without consuming enough calories or the proper ratio of macronutrients, you can experience symptoms of undereating, such as:
Fatigue
Low body temperature/being cold all the time
Loss of your menstrual cycle
Constipation/lack of bowel movements
Waking up to pee during the night
Hitting a weight loss plateau (it’s possible to undereat for so long that you stop losing weight. This is one of the reasons why people believe they can’t be undereating since their weight isn’t going down, which often leads them to eat even fewer calories and creates a vicious cycle. To learn more about this, check out the Top Signs of Undereating)
Not eating enough carbohydrates can cause electrolyte imbalance, blood sugar, mood, and sleep issues.
Not eating enough fat can cause low energy, brain fog, and hormone issues.
Undereating can also contribute to signs and symptoms of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Without tracking your food intake, it would be a lot harder to determine the potential cause of your symptoms.
3. You’re An Athlete Or Exercising Intensely
If you’re an athlete or hit the gym regularly for intense workouts, tracking your food intake could be right for you.
When you’re training, you have higher calorie and macronutrient needs than when you’re not. By tracking your food intake, you can ensure you’re fueling your body appropriately for what you’re asking it to do.
For example, your protein needs increase when you’re doing any activity that breaks down and builds muscle. Plus, if you’re not eating enough calories, your body will break down muscle to slow metabolism.
Most women have enough trouble meeting their baseline protein needs when they’re not training, so tracking your food intake while you’re trying to achieve a fitness goal helps you make sure you’re fueling your body appropriately.
It’s Not Necessary To Track Your Food Forever
Once you get the hang of what your body needs on training days versus rest days, you can estimate and adjust your food intake without actually tracking.
However, before you attempt to start tracking your food intake, it’s important to know if you fall into the category of people who likely wouldn’t benefit from it.
Top Reasons To Not Track Your Food Intake
1. You Have A History Of Disordered Eating
Weighing food, knowing it’s calorie content, and eating according to a plan can be triggers for disordered eating. If you have a history of these tendencies, it’s best to avoid a practice that requires such intimate knowledge of your food intake.
It’s easy to use food tracking as a way to normalize disordered eating behaviors. Tracking your food intake under the guise of wanting to reach a health goal can be misleading to both yourself and your loved ones.
While your intentions might be pure, if you have a history of disordered eating, this practice is likely not ideal to do alone.
If you want to start tracking your food intake to reach a health goal but are worried you could fall back into disordered tendencies, I recommend working with a therapist and/or nutritionist to keep you accountable and on the right track.
Knowing your limits and what tempts you to fall back into old habits is important. Only you can know if tracking your food intake might be triggering for you.
If you feel that it could upset your path to healing, you’ll want to steer clear of the practice.
2. You Don’t Want To
Simply not wanting to track your food intake is a perfectly good reason not to.
You can have a weight loss goal, focus on eating enough, and be a high-level athlete all without tracking your food intake.
Documenting how much you eat every day is not a necessary step in reaching any of those goals.
If you focus on food quality and eating a variety of whole nutrient rich food, then eating intuitively can be a powerful skill. While it can be more difficult and require more internal motivation to meet your goals while following intuitive eating, it is possible.
You can pursue a weight-loss or fitness goal while listening to your body’s cues rather than eating according to an app. There are no rules that say you have to track your food in order to achieve body composition goals. There’s even some research showing that overweight women were able to change their behaviours long-term and improve their health risk markers by practicing intuitive eating instead of dieting.
Eating intuitively and listening to your body’s cues can be amazing ways to reach your fitness goals and become more in-tune with what makes you feel your best.
How To Make Tracking Your Food Easier
If you do decide to track your food intake, it doesn’t mean you have to use measuring cups and a food scale.
Eyeballing your portion sizes is more than enough for most health goals, and can prevent the process from being time-consuming and tedious.
Once you understand how many calories your typical meals are (by tracking a few of your most frequently eaten meals), you’ll be able to estimate your daily needs without actually tracking.
One of the methods I teach you about in Nourished For Life is using your hand as a guide for measuring portion sizes instead of weighing your food.
Keep it simple:
Use your hand instead of weighing your food
Within Nourished For Life, I also teach you how to use my favourite nutrient tracking tool.
I don’t like the commonly used My Fitness Pal because it only focuses on calories and macronutrients. It doesn’t give you accurate info about the micronutrients you’re consuming, such as Vitamin B6, choline, magnesium, zinc, etc. This can lead to hitting calorie targets and getting enough protein, carbs, and fats, but running deficient in important vitamins and minerals.
Why does this matter?
You won’t look or feel your best, and your body will start breaking down and going into a state of dis-ease if it doesn’t have the proper vitamins and minerals it requires to function optimally. This is typically when signs and symptoms of health problems start to arise.
How To Know How Many Calories To Eat
How your body uses calories depends on a number of factors, including the type of food you eat (whole food vs processed packaged food), your body's metabolism, stressors, sleep quality, hormone function, and the type of organisms living in your gut (your gut microbiome).
We are bioindividuals, and calorie needs vary from person to person, however, there is a general formula you can use as a starting point.
Fill out the form below to determine your estimated calorie needs for weight and health maintenance.
Calorie Calculator
Now I’d love to hear from you! Have you tried tracking your food? Did you find it helpful or harmful? Share and let me know!