Do I need to count calories to lose weight?

(Photo by Imnop88a)

Every field of study has one or two major seminal arguments that underly the basic philosophy of understanding in that subject.

Biology has the whole ‘nature vs nurture’ debate. Music has the whole ‘learning by feel vs learning by studying theory in depth’ debate. And of course, celebrity culture has the whole ‘Paris Hilton vs Nicole Ritchie’ debate (ok, scratch that last one).

Weight loss is no different, and despite the tremendous advances in the exercise science field over the last decade, there still rages on a heated argument that divides fitness enthusiasts everywhere.

The Simple Formula For Losing Weight

Traditional theory has always been that weight loss is simply a product of one simple formula:

Calories in vs calories out = weight change

Essentially, what this theory states is that if you eat more calories than you burn over the course of a day, you end up with an excess of calories which gets stored by your body as excess weight. Conversely, if you burn more calories than you eat, your body is left with an energy deficit, and so as a result needs to consume some of its fat (or muscle) stores to make up the difference.

What this means in practice is that weight loss is pretty simple. If you want to lose weight, you simply make sure that you burn more calories than you eat on average.

How? Easy! You either eat less food (or healthier food that has less calories) in order to take your calorie intake down, or you increase your level of physical activity and exercise to increase the amount of calories that you burn up. Or, if you’re really savvy, you do both!

That’s ‘Side 1’ of the great debate. Sounds pretty reasonable right?

Is Quality More Important Than Quantity?

Maybe not so much if you think about it from another perspective. ‘Side 2’ proponents believe that this argument is oversimplified and ignores many other important factors in weight loss.

Take, for example, the following scenario: I take 2 people. I tell them both that they must restrict their caloric intake to 1500 calories per day. However, participant A must eat only fruits, vegetables and lean protein to make up that 1500 calories, while participant B must eat only McDonalds hamburgers and fries to make up that 1500 calories. Both participants are undertaking exactly the same workout plan and are burning up the same amount of calories per day. Technically, according to the calories in vs calories out theory, those two people should experience the exact same weight loss or gain while on that nutrition plan. Since calories in vs out are identical in both cases, there should be no difference.

Does that seem right to you? Me neither.

The Great Weight Loss Dilemma

So what’s the answer? How do we reconcile these two differences and find out which factor has the most important determination on weight loss – the amount of calories or the type of calories?

The truth is that as yet, science has not provided us with a cut and dried answer. So, as usual, it’s up to us to use our logic to find the solution that seems most logical. And as is pretty much always the case when you’re dealing with two dogmas in the fat loss world, the answer in my opinion lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Does weight fluctuation depend on calories in vs calories out? You betcha. Does the type of calories that you ingest matter? You betcha.

(In fact, I’d also add that the combination of calories in vs out makes a huge difference on the outcome as well – someone who is losing weight by taking in only 600 calories a day while doing no exercise is VASTLY different to someone who is losing weight by eating 1700 calories a day but burning up 2000 calories a day. But that’s another story for another blog post.)

The way I see it, the basic underpinning argument of calories in vs out just makes sense. It’s hard to argue with the fact that if your body has a surplus of energy it will store it, and if it has a deficit in energy it will lose some of the weight that has previously been stored. But there’s no way that eating hamburgers can ever be equal to eating fruits and veggies when it comes to health and weight loss. Even if you’re eating a reasonable number of calories when on your fast food diet, how is your body going to get the vitamins, nutrients and energy it needs to be able to exercise efficiently? How is your body going to be able to build muscle instead of fat when it is missing the essential lean proteins it needs to do so?

What You Can Learn About Weight Loss From Two Construction Workers, Some Sticky Mud And A Rickety Wall

Here’s an example to illustrate my thinking:

Take 2 construction workers. Give them both the same tools and the same procedure to follow, and ask them to build a 10 foot high wall for you. However, you provide one of them with good quality cement and bricks, and the other with sticky mud and roughly hewn pieces of square rock with which to get the job done.

If both of those workers follow your procedures as instructed, they’ll both get a wall built in the same time and to the same specifications. But the quality of the walls will be vastly different. One of them will be rigid, sturdy and completely solid. The other one will be fragile, filled with holes and gaps, and could probably be easily toppled after a short period of time.

Weight loss is the same. Watching your calories in vs calories out is like adhering to the specifications of the wall. If you follow the guidelines and maintain a negative energy balance then sure, you’ll lose weight (initially, at least). But the quality of your calories, which is analogous to the quality of the materials used to build the wall, is also of critical importance. If you eat terrible food and all of your calories are from empty, junk sources, then the wall that you just built isn’t going to be very sturdy. It may be standing now, sure, but it’ll be so weak that just a little bit of effort will topple it down and crush all of your efforts. Likewise, if you eat poorly, you’re likely to end up lacking the essential nutrients that your body needs, meaning that sooner or later you’ll cave and fall into bad habits again. Or maybe you’ll weigh less, but all of the weight that you’ll lose will be muscle instead of fat, leaving you lighter on the scale but looking saggier and flabbier than ever. Is that really what you want?

So that’s why the answer to the great debate, in my opinion, lies somewhere between the two extremes. And that’s why I believe you should never listen to ‘celebrity’ trainers or diet books that tell you that the way to weight loss is to drastically reduce your calories. There’s a whole lot more to the puzzle than that.

What are your thoughts on the subject? I’d love to hear them, whether you think I’m wrong, right, or somewhere in between. Feel free to leave them in the comments below.

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