It’s Time to Stop Counting Calories

The following is adapted from Unstoppable.

Antisthenes was a Greek philosopher, Cynic, and student of Socrates who once said, “The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.” In other words, arm yourself with a critical lens and liberate yourself from the things that don’t serve you. 

It’s high time that we “unlearn” some of the most destructive health and wellness myths, and there’s no better candidate than the pernicious “calorie balance” myth. Many people will tell you that you will lose weight and feel better, as long as you burn more calories than you consume, but nothing could be further from the truth. In this article, I’ll show you why calorie-counting doesn’t work and explain better ways to take control of your health.

What is CICO?

“Balancing calories,” “counting calories,” or “CICO” (calories-in-calories-out) entails carefully monitoring caloric intake combined with meticulous outtake—or “burning”—of those calories through exercise. At the end of the day, it’s predicated upon the incredibly popular notion that it doesn’t matter what you eat, it just matters whether or not you create a caloric deficit by burning more calories than you take in.

Seems simple, right? Of course it does. That’s why people love CICO and rely on this approach today. With CICO, all you’ve got to do is read nutrition labels, do some simple math, and commit to physical activity every day of your life.

Only problem is, CICO has massive potential to do more harm than good, both physically and—I’d argue—psychologically.

Why Doesn’t Calorie-Counting Work?

When I employed the CICO approach to my weight loss efforts early on, I found it ultimately debilitating and ineffective. Counting calories certainly allowed me to simplify my approach to eating, but it reinforced the notion that the food itself didn’t matter. I could eat foods with little nutritional value, just as long as they didn’t exceed the amount of calories I allotted myself for the day, and weren’t more than I could physically “burn” by working out.

Sure, I was eating low-calorie snacks by the boatload, but each afternoon, my brain was foggy, and I was starved. When it was time to work out, I sometimes felt weak. Worst of all, it created a cycle of shame around eating, prioritized the wrong foods for my body, and turned exercise into a form of punishment if I went too far off track.

Advocates of CICO believe in this strategy because they think the cause of obesity is simply consuming too many calories. This lends credence to the notion that obesity is due to mere overeating and under-exercising. And while I’m a huge advocate of mindful eating and staying active, some experts warn that CICO itself sets people up for failure by putting them in a vicious cycle that actually makes their body demand more fuel. A person will do their best to restrict and expend calories appropriately, but over time, increased exercise requires increased fuel intake. And that’s when people cave to the endless hunger, binge eat, and feel shame over the situation they’ve found themselves in.

There’s More to Health than Weight

CICO “works” in the sense that if I were to significantly reduce my calories, then I would almost certainly lose weight. However, as important as losing weight can be to your overall health, it’s not the only factor to being healthy. If you splurge at lunch and eat a burger, fries, and drink two beers, you’re going to have to work extremely hard at the gym later in the day just to get back to even in terms of calorie counting. And if you don’t get back to even, or barely get back to even, you’re going to be tempted to eat very little (if anything at all), later in the evening.

But here’s the thing: Your body is going to ask for more fuel when you’ve burned more fuel. The result is a lingering feeling of having to make up for the calories that were consumed, frequent guilt or shame, and overall misery.

As I discovered, being healthy and losing weight requires thinking not only about how much you eat, but what you eat, too. It also means paying attention to other metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of our efforts.

Case in point? Body fat. It’s much more useful to measure your overall body fat percentage than your weight because it can provide key insights into the overall composition of your body and how your organs are affected. There are many people who appear skinny, but aren’t lean—that is, they’re mostly comprised of fat and not lean muscle. It’s a subtle distinction that, unfortunately, can have a significant impact on your health.

There Are Better Alternatives

If you consider some of the more modern science about how calories are consumed and burned in the body, there are much better options out there than calorie balancing. Instead of counting calories, I suggest a low-carb, high-fat diet. Low-carb dieting positions your body to do what it naturally does from an evolutionary perspective. In reality, fat is actually a great fuel source, and the cleanest-burning fuel in the human body because it’s broken down into ketones. In turn, ketones are the preferred energy source for the brain. 

If you want to experiment further beyond a mere low-carb diet, I recommend avoiding sugar and refined carbs, and limiting your total carbohydrate intake. Just know that carbs from vegetables are always good because of all the fiber that comes with them. Suddenly, instead of just losing weight, you’re losing body fat and building muscle—and, yes, you can build muscle by consuming low-carb foods and moderate protein.

This information will come as a surprise for some individuals. It was for me. After all, I went through most of my life thinking that feeling hungry was normal, thinking that having food constantly on my mind was normal, and thinking that snacking constantly was normal. It’s magical when you realize that eating the right foods (including fats) allows you to go days without obsessing over food and feeling hungry.

These days, I no longer count calories because I know that I’m consuming exactly what my body needs to make itself productive and not store them as fat. A low-carb diet eradicated the stress of counting calories for me, and now I can exercise out of enjoyment instead of guilt. That gave me enormous freedom, and it can do the same for you.

For more advice on health myths, you can find Unstoppable on Amazon.

David Hauser is a serial entrepreneur who launched several companies before he began high school. David spent his youth working more than one hundred hours a week, until he realized the toll it was taking on his mind, body, and life. After failing to see results from conventional wisdom, he decided to do what he does best: innovate. His unique journey to wellness has helped him realize his life’s purpose of empowering others to optimize their own lives by reclaiming their health. As David continues to evolve, he receives tremendous support from his partner, Dawn, and their three inspiring children.