[Ryan D Andrews]

Oh, Those Calories

Want to develop stress, anxiety and a preoccupation with food?

Then rigorously count calories.

Say what!?!?

When the focus is on calories, we create a realm of restriction and limitation. Once we hit XXXX calories for the day, we must stop eating.

Newsflash: That strategy doesn’t work. It freaks us out. It backfires and we overeat anyways.

The best calorie counters I have ever worked with and met are overweight, unhealthy and have a miserable relationship with food and eating (well, to be honest, not all of them were overweight – a few of them were actually very malnourished and underweight on the verge of cardiac arrest at eating disorder centers).

The healthiest and leanest people I have ever worked with and met don’t count calories. They focus on food quality and hunger/fullness signals.

Is that surprising?

When we focus too much on calories, it results in dietary displacement. It’s more about meeting a numerical goal, and we forget about eating plenty of healthy foods.

Here is a typical exchange:

Me – “How is your nutrition going?”

Client – “Well, I met my calorie quota!”

Me – “Okay, so what did you actually eat?”

Client – “A large Frappuccino and 2 scones.”

Congratulations on bad nutrition.

If we are legitimately hungry, and we’ve already met our calorie quota for the day, should we really stop eating? Our body apparently needs more nutrition. Again – the catch here is eating real food. If a bowl of broccoli and tofu doesn’t sound good, but a cookie does – then it isn’t true hunger. When we are truly hungry, we eat.

The feeling of control that counting calories brings someone can be pretty intense.

But guess what? By the time we even add up calories for the day and factor in visual error, variations in soil quality, variations in calorie content, and assimilation by the body – who the heck knows how many ACTUAL calories have been consumed.

When we focus on numbers, percentages and equations – are we really in tune with our body? What about hunger? What about satiety?

Many people claim to have no sense of hunger and satiety and get scared. I completely understand that issue. The good news is that you are perfectly safe if man-made foods are avoided.

Eating unprocessed, whole foods regulates the appetite and breaks nasty feast/famine cycles.

While we all tend to overeat/undereat from time to time, we don’t consistently overeat nature’s real foods.

Have you ever just kept eating and eating from a fresh pot of quinoa? What about baked potatoes? Kale? Oranges? Garbanzo beans?

I didn’t think so.

What about losing it with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, tortilla chips, cookies or 100 calorie packs?

Me too.

Those are man-made. They do not promote satiety. If they did, the companies that sold them would sell less and make less profit.

Our Focus
As a society, the more we focus on calories – the fatter we get.

So what should we focus on?

A great strategy when picking out food is to look at the ingredients before the nutrition label. The nutrition facts label is worthless until we know exactly WHAT we are eating.

So, if monitoring is your thing, then monitor food quality more that quantity.

I don’t know if a daily calorie tally can “out-smart” this:

“The hypothalamus receives at least three distinct types of relevant information via direct or indirect neural connections as well as hormone receptors and substrate sensors bestowed on hypothalamic neurons. First, the medial and to a lesser extent the lateral hypothalamus receive a rich mix of information pertaining to the internal state of relative energy repletion/depletion. Second, specific hypothalamic nuclei receive information about the behavioral state, such as diurnal clock, physical activity-level, reproductive cycle, developmental stage, as well as imminent (e.g. fight and flight) and chronic (e.g. infection) stressors, that can potentially impact on short-term availability of fuels and long-term energy balance. Third, the hypothalamus, particularly its lateral aspects, receives information from areas in the forebrain involved in the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of sensory representations of the external food space and internal food experience, as well as from the executive forebrain involved in behavior selection and initiation.”

Berthoud HR. Multiple neural systems controlling food intake and body weight. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2002;26:393-428.


Strict diets predict fatness? Yup.

“Dietary restraint and radical weight control behaviors PREDICTED obesity onset.”

Stice E, Presnell K, Shaw H, Rohde P. Psychological and behavioral risk factors for obesity onset in adolescent girls: a prospective study. J of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 2005;73:195-202.


What did these authors discover?

“Higher levels of dietary restraint, weight concern, and body dissatisfaction among young girls at risk for overweight were accompanied by greater weight gain from 5 to 9 years of age, consistent with other recent findings suggesting that youths' attempts at weight control may promote weight gain.”

Shunk JA & Birch LL. Girls at risk for overweight at age 5 are at risk for dietary restraint, disinhibited overeating, weight concerns, and greater weight gain from 5 to 9 years. J Am Diet Assoc. 2004;104:1120-1126.


Conclusion of this study…

“Children's reports of binge eating and dieting were salient predictors of gains in fat mass during middle childhood among children at high risk for adult obesity.”

Tanofsky-Kraff M, et al. A prospective study of psychological predictors of body fat gain among children at high risk for adult obesity. Pediatrics 2006;117:1203-1209.


Then again, I could be wrong.

“These results did not support the hypothesis that caloric restriction causes increased eating disorder symptoms in overweight adults. In general, caloric restriction had either benign or beneficial psychological and behavioral effects.”

Williamson DA, et al. Is caloric restriction associated with development of ating-disorder symptoms? Results from the CALERIE trial. Health Psychol 2008;27:S32-S42.


Jean Antonello, author of Breaking Out of Food Jail might say it best:

“Avoiding adequate calories actually promotes eating disturbances and weight gain. This is a fact you simply must get a hold of in order to begin to eat enough, to stop under-eating and perpetuating the cycle you’ve been on. You need enough calories, a minimum, in order to get well, so start eating more good food when you get hungry. Quality calories are good for you. When you eat enough, they keep you from craving, and bingeing on, lousy food. In fact, you want to eat the amount of high-quality calories (real food) that your body asks for every day. Remember, your body will tell you how much food it needs. Then its fuel needs will be well met and your appetite can get back to normal.”

Constantly trying to minimize calories can enlarge the appetite.

You can medicate hunger with diet foods, diet drinks, artificial sweeteners, and so on, but you can’t satisfy it and get off the feast/famine cycle. Giving up calorie counting can be tough, since it tends to be obsessive. The good news is that we can learn about tuning into hunger signals and developing a healthy and satisfying relationship with food.

Let’s break the cycle.

[ddasilva]

The whole time under Krista's program.. I did not count any calories... nor did Krista assign any caloric figure.. I knew what I should be eating, when I should be eating etc.... so.. the result of that... 5% decrease in body fat in 8 weeks, 2 pounds of LBM gained..

[Ryan D Andrews]

Ahhhh, nice.

That's exactly it. Keep it up.

Did you ever count calories in the past?

[ddasilva]

I only ever counted on occasion to get a feel for the breakdown and total calorie content for the day. Once I knew that... I can ballpark it... and sometimes eat slightly more.. some less...

Every now and again.. I drop the numbers into my worksheet... just to see how Im doing.. then I forget about it.

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by Ryan D Andrews

<B>Then again, I could be wrong.

“These results did not support the hypothesis that caloric restriction causes increased eating disorder symptoms in overweight adults. In general, caloric restriction had either benign or beneficial psychological and behavioral effects.”

Williamson DA, et al. Is caloric restriction associated with development of ating-disorder symptoms? Results from the CALERIE trial. Health Psychol 2008;27:S32-S42.

</B>

This looks like it's simply caloric restriction, not "individually monitored and counted" caloric restriction. People may have just been eating less, not necessarily and purposefully restricting their intake.

[principessa54]

Ryan, thanks for that great article. Things to make you go hmmmm.

[Ryan D Andrews]

Woman sues restaurant over diet menus
Thursday, June 12, 2008
By KIM HOLCOMB / KING 5 News

SEATTLE - A Seattle woman who claims some major chain restaurants aren't telling the truth about calories on their diet menus has filed a lawsuit.
Anne Paskett claims some well-known restaurants duped her by filling her plate with much more fat than advertised.

For three years, she's been on a strict calorie-counting diet, sometimes with frustrating results.

"I would go in and weigh in and the scale, and the lady behind the counter would say 'you're up 2 1/2 pounds,'" she said. "And I would say, 'but how could I be? I've been eating according to my plan.'"

Paskett, who is on Weight Watchers, believes her plan was derailed by well-known restaurants falsely advertising low-fat meals.

Seattle attorney David Breskin is representing her in a class action lawsuit that alleges misrepresentation and consumer deception.

"It's difficult to put prices on that, but I think what we're looking for is that it's not going to happen in the future," he said.

A national media investigation tested the nutritional contents of diet menu items at places like Chili's and Macaroni Grill. In some cases, the fat and calorie content was several times higher than the restaurants claimed.

Chili's is named in the lawsuit filed by Seattle woman Anne Taskett, who claims that some popular restaurants lied about the calories on their diet menus.

Most of the Chili's locations in Western Washington have closed.

Paskett still eats out, and doesn't want the restaurants gone. She just wants to believe in the menus again.

"I'm very careful, I don't necessarily pick what's on the lighter fare menu, I just try to make the best choice that I can," she said.

The parent company of Chili's and Macaroni Grill -- Brinker International, based in Dallas -- hasn't commented on the litigation.

Originally posted here (with video):

http://www.kvue.com/news/top/stories...TOKEN=27739759

[Ryan D Andrews]

This women has 2 serious problems.

1) She is calorie counting.

2) She is eating out at places like Chili's and Macaroni Grill.

She's doomed.

[Stuj79]

I really like the idea of "legitimate hunger" - its so simple really, i can't beleive i never realised it before......

If i was craving something (usually something unhealthy), i would rationalise it by saying - "well if i'm craving it, i must be hungry and so my body needs food". But when you think about what exactly it is that you're hungry for - everything changes!

So now when i'm hungry, i find it extremely useful to run through in my mind a range of things i think will satisfy that hunger. If i come to the conclusion that its bread or creamy pasta or the like, but not lean protien and veggies - i don't eat (obviously sticking to the every 2-3 hours rule)

Its seems to be working so far - i've been doing PN for only about 2 weeks now and have lost about 5-6 lbs (i hope its just body fat)

I used to starve myself and then when i couldn't take it any more, i'd eat a big bowl of cereal or pasta thinking - "man i'm so hungry i deserve this!". Needless to say it never worked in achieving my goals.

So anyway - that is one of the most useful things i have gained from this forum - the concept of "legitimate hunger".

[jwlm2676]

I carry my food journal everywhere along with my pocket-sized calorie counter. It started with things like Subway and 100 calorie packs years ago, but now that I've scrapped processed foods, I still track things like 6 strawberries, 5.2 oz steamed broccoli, 1 Tbsp raisins, etc. I've been doing it for so long that I can pretty much recite most foods from memory and keep a running tally in my head all day as well as on paper.

The obsession runs pretty deep and I'm convinced that when I don't do this I will just overeat all the time. Am I stressed about it? Yeah, probably, but it's such an addiction that it's hard to break. I suppose the addiction is to control. Not knowing exactly what I've consumed makes me nervous. Hard things to admit, but true. Just don't know how to break it!

Any advice of HOW to break the cycle??? Anyone know of a Calorie Counters Anonymous group???

Thanks for this "kick in the pants" post!
~Laura