What’s the Deal with Calories?

Calories - a scary word when it comes to dieting or trying to lose weight. But you shouldn’t be afraid of the simple calorie! A calorie is simply a measure of energy, so calories in food tell you how much energy is contained within that food or drink. Your body needs energy - or calories - to function. To breathe, to pump blood, to react and to move about.

When it comes to trying to lose weight, the ONLY way to lose body fat is to be in a calorie deficit. That is to say that you need to be putting in fewer calories than you are using on a regular basis. This means that your body will have to turn to breaking down its stores of energy (for example in fat cells) to function.

However, you definitely do NOT need to count calories in order to lose weight. There are ways of tweaking your diet, for example by bulking out all of your meals with tonnes of veg, that will naturally put you in a calorie deficit without tracking every morsel you eat. You can also increase your daily activity or exercise to increase the calories you’re using, again to help with that calorie deficit.

It is also worth knowing that if you use an app to track the number of calories you’re eating, or even if you just use the back of food packets to calculate calories for yourself, these are by no means accurate. 

Food labels can be out by 10% and how often do you actually weigh all the food that you are preparing before you enter the info into the app? Did you check whether the calorie content stated was for the food cooked or uncooked? Is there a difference (often weights will be different when foods are cooked)?

Tracking what you’re eating can be a good realisation tool to use to help you understand the areas where you could maybe improve your diet, and calorie counting may be useful for some people.

However, it is definitely NOT a necessity when it comes to weight-loss.

Working with a Nutritionist can help you to naturally create a calorie deficit with some simple tweaks to your diet and lifestyle to help you lose weight.

No numbers and no faff.