Ep. 48 Is calorie counting bad for you?

Is counting calories bad for you? Google will tell you one thing, your past nutrition coach might tell you another, but what is really best for you? 

Listen to this episode for a bit of an in-depth exploration of what counting calories or tracking macros might actually mean for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Welcome back to Boulder, the podcast all about body confidence with health culture. Learn how to eat well and improve your body image without letting yourself go. My name is Rachel Hunter. I will be your body confidence great godmother. I'm a certified nutritionist and body image coach, dishing out all of my best strategies to help you improve your relationship with food and with your body so that you can live a bigger, bolder life. Time to stop playing it small. Bonjour mon petit pois. I hope that you are exceptionally well. Welcome back to the podcast yet again, another episode, another day, another episode. What a life. I'm sure that you have heard that tracking calories is quote unquote bad for you. Or perhaps you've tracked calories, you felt obsessive, or you didn't, you felt like you didn't try hard enough, and the next time you get back to tracking, it'll finally stick. So let's let's talk calories, baby. Let's talk about you and me. Um, that wasn't great, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Okay, so before we like dive in headfirst, if you Google is tracking calories bad for you, you get some really fascinating results. I highly recommend. Uh Zoe, the multi-million dollar company that sells people 800 pound uh or like a thousand dollar continuous blood glucose monitors, thinks that you shouldn't use calorie tracking apps. Hmm, I wonder what they think you should use instead. Shock horror. Uh, I didn't click on the thread, but then I also saw a Reddit thread of a guy who was like, actually, uh, I think that they help people avoid eating disorders. And then the next sentence I just saw, like if you're anorexic, and it's just I didn't click on it because I was like, it's gonna make me mad. Uh, and I'm like the Hulk, I'm always mad. But like, okay, okay, Reddit guy, thanks for that. Eating disorders definitely are very complex conditions that require multidisciplinary teams to treat. Like, thank you. We're cured, amazing. Okay, bye. First of all, before we dive in head first, so that was the preamble. That was like the pre-preamble. This is now the preamble. Okay, let's all take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Oohsa. I am not going to sit here and tell you one way or another if tracking calories is good or bad. I am merely exploring the strategy from a point of critical thinking. And it is very circumstantial when counting calories is important. Okay, so this is a combination of research, and I may drop in some anecdotal stuff from or like quote unquote clinical experience from me working with clients. All right, so let's get into it, shall we? For real this time. So, an interesting stat that I looked up was when Under Armour acquired MyFitnessPal in 2015, they had about 80 million users. In 2025, MyFitnessPal now has over 270 million users. Okay, okay, that's wild. Plus, we have like millions and millions and millions of more platforms, right? So multiple different types of calorie tracking apps. And my fitness pal is just the one that I think we all think of, right? It's sort of like either the first one that you used, or maybe you still use it, or you have a friend who uses it, but it's sort of like bog standard. Uh, it's a very like well-known quote-unquote name brand, right? And another interesting thing that I found is that my FitnessPal has a 90-day retention rate of drumroll, please, 24%, according to Google AI. So that's a whole bunch of people who start and then stop, right? So this is exactly why I wanted to talk about this today, because it's not touting anything as good or bad for you, because I think that that's also incredibly unhelpful. Um, but I do think it's worth looking into. Like, if calorie tracking didn't work for you, why is that? And if calorie tracking didn't work for you, like is all hope lost, right? Like, does that mean that you should just give up forever because uh too long didn't read? No, right? You are far from a lost cause, but it is not a strategy, it is not a tool that is for everybody. Let's talk about it. First of all, we could get into like the science of why tracking calories is an imperfect strategy. Like, we could get into the actual nitty-gritty science of it. Food labels can are illegally allowed to be up to 20% inaccurate, right? So, in order to be considered a food label, they only have to be accurate up to 80%. Then when you couple that with the fact that a calorie tracking app, like MyFitnessPal, the database is user-generated. So, like if you log rice on there, for example, which is a pretty bog standard, like white rice. If you log white rice, there's gonna be 400 different variations of the calories and the carbohydrate content of white rice. White rice is white rice is white rice, right? But not if you ask my fitness pal. So that in and of itself will make things really inaccurate. Um, oh, I just thought of something else and it just vanished out of my head. So we'll keep going. Don't worry, I took notes this time. New iteration of the podcast, new me hunts. She actually has a run sheet, she's perfesh. Uh, so from a very basic level, something like my fitness pal is baseline already imperfect. Oh, I thought what I was gonna say. Also, the bioavailability of food differs from food types. So calories in and of themselves are an imperfect measurement. For example, it basically you measure a calorie or you find out what a calorie is for certain types of food by burning it. Okay, but your stomach is not an incinerator. Okay, so you see how then, like the I think almonds, for example, have lower bioavailability than what they actually say in the packet because they, you know, it's harder for a stomach to break them down, blah blah blah, whatever. You get what I'm saying, right? Like, but going too out into the weeds on the science of why calorie tracking doesn't work completely misses the point. So don't worry, we're gonna skirt skirt back from that right now. Counting calories is a strategy that essentially came from like bodybuilders, which, if you know any bodybuilders, they're like the most type A of type A people. Uh, follow my friend Michelle Carroll on Instagram if you're curious about finding out about how rife fitness professionals are with eating disorders, disorder, eating, and negative body image. I'm not saying that every single bodybuilder has a problem with any of those. I am saying that there may or may not be connection, okay? And Michelle's doing a PhD in it, so go talk to her. All right, and then you're downloading MyFitnessPal, right? Why are you downloading MyFitnessPal? Usually people are downloading a calorie tracking app to either maintain their current weight or to lose weight. Oftentimes. Not always, not always, but we will get there. Remember the deep breath we took a few minutes ago? Think of that. Think calm thoughts. So if you're trying to lose weight, again, oftentimes, not all the time, okay. The deep breath. I don't remember. I remember that. Okay. Your greatest motivation when you're trying to lose weight, usually, oftentimes, is to change your appearance. Usually out of feeling ashamed of your body, right? So it might be because you're not happy with how your body looks, you want to change it to feel better. Uh, you'll also likely be doing that to be able to feel more confident in your body or about yourself. You feel like maybe you finally can avoid rejection. Maybe you'll get uh the partner that you want, or you'll feel like you'll be deserving of a partner, or maybe you'll get uh you'll sack off your current partner and get a one that you think is hotter. I don't know what you're doing with your dating life. Don't ask me. Definitely don't ask me for dating advice. But the idea is that so you'll like your body and you'll actually be able to enjoy your life. Like it's sort of this projection and this fortune telling of once I get to X, once X happens, usually it's like dress size, scale size, scale size, scale weight, etc. Then I'll be able to go to the dance class that I want to go to, then I'll be able to feel confident going out to dinner with colleagues, then I'll be able to feel confident walking into that meeting, then I'll be able to go to that gym class that I really wanted to go to, then I'll be I'll feel more comfortable having sex with my partner, blah, blah, blah. Whatever it is for you, right? Oftentimes people are losing weight to gain this sort of ideal self that, you know, really it's not even their own fault because society just tells us like, if you're fat, you're a loser. If you're not fat, you're not a loser, your life will be better, right? So, like it, you know, the math is not hard on that one. And that's not to say that I'm judging you, right? If you are downloading My FitnessPal or you're wanting to count calories to change your appearance to feel better about yourself, we have all been there. We have all been there. I have more than one post talking about past versions of myself and my body image on my Instagram at Hunter Health Project. If you want to go read up on that so you don't feel so alone, please. That is exactly why I wrote them. Um, so this is where something like My FitnessPal, that's a really blunt instrument to use for what you're actually wanting to achieve. If you know how to count calories, you know how to track calories to the gram, and you still haven't reached your goals, you're still struggling to eat well consistently, you struggle to feel confident in your body, you struggle with unwanted bouts of overeating. The skill of counting calories is not really the deciding factor, right? Because you already have that skill. So, in order to get where you want to go, you probably need new skills or you need a strategy that is more effective to get you what you want. And I would just like to offer you a bit of a different perspective so that you don't feel so down on yourself because I can already hear you, okay? And I've definitely thought this as well, where it's sort of like, yeah, but Rach, like counting calories worked for XYZ person and they did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they're doing great. And I just can't seem to get it together. And if I could just stick with it for a bit longer, it would finally work. Okay. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. But if it isn't working for you, that's cool. Can I offer you a different perspective to maybe shed some light on the fact that you're not hopeless or useless or anything, and that maybe it just isn't a great strategy for you. Okay, because that's cool. There is a study that was done that basically graphed and charted out the level of cognitive restraint relating to how many actual calories people were consuming. Okay, so if you are working really hard, thinking about what you're gonna eat next, thinking about how you're gonna hit the certain number of macros that you uh, you know, had set out for you, thinking about, oh, well, you know, if we go out to eat tomorrow, then if I order the salad, then that might be okay. And I don't know how I'm gonna track that, right? So the the level of cognitive restraint, the level of brain power that you are using does not correlate to how many calories you're actually eating. That graph from that paper looks like someone fucking splattered paint on the wall. Okay. So it's woefully unfair, but I think that it's a really interesting insight to the fact that if you feel like you're working really hard to try and control how much you're eating and try and control your nutrition in order to gain the type of body that you really desire. If it feels really hard and you're not seeing a lot of results, you're probably right. It probably is really hard because how hard you're working in your head and what you're actually consuming are not the same things. Okay. So that's one instance of sort of like it's not you, it's the strategy. Okay. Another reason why you're not a failure or a bad person if calorie tracking didn't work for you is because science can't actually work out the difference between rigid control and flexible control. So if you've seen posts or coaches encouraging, like, yeah, but if it fits your macros and flexible dieting this and flexible dieting that, first of all, I used to be one of those people. Sorry about me. Uh again, I didn't know better. Uh sorry to past clients who I gave like flexible macro targets to. Again, I didn't know. Let's talk about it. So, why is that a problem? Okay, because rigid control, rigid control over your diet, we know is associated with increase in disordered eating patterns. Why do we care if it's associated with disordered eating patterns? Okay, because you're sort of like Rachel's saying you're talking a lot and you're not saying much, babe. Can we get to the point? So disordered eating patterns is sort of a giant chunk of sub-clinical, okay? So before things get really bad, basically, sub-clinical traits that if they go unchecked, you could end up with a full-blown eating disorder. Eating disorders are, I believe, the number one most deadly type of mental health condition. So it's, you know, not to overstate it, but like it is, it is pretty serious, right? Like these are not things to be fucked around with. And disordered eating patterns are typically this kind of really unfulfilling zone to be in. And it's unfulfilling because you're working really, really hard. You're putting a lot of mental energy, of physical energy, of um, like maybe you are taking the time to like track all of your food to the gram. You're saying no to social events because you're worried that when you get there you can't track, right? You're pouring all of these efforts into a strategy that is not giving you the result that you want. But, you know, basically, overall, the fitness industry just says, well, if you just tried a bit harder or if you ate a little bit less and moved a little bit more, then I promise you you would achieve the results that you so desire. I don't know why you're struggling so much. Sucks for you. Ha ha. And then they just go on their merry way and they find like a bunch of new clients to do the same thing with, right? So the reason why I'm bringing up rigid control versus flexible control when it comes to counting calories is that when we don't know the difference, when science can't tell us the difference between flexible control and rigid control, essentially it's saying that they share more in common than they don't. So basically, flexible control is rigid control and rigid control is flexible control. You see what I mean? Like science can't tease, researchers can't tease out the difference between the two, which means that even if you are quote unquote flexible with your macros, even if you quote unquote just, you know, if it fits into your macros, then I can have whatever I want as long as it hits the calories, you are still operating under the guise of rigid dietary control. And if you have yo-yo dieted for years, and if you have um potentially a bit of a negative body image, right, where you're not happy with how your body looks, and you like cut out certain fruit food groups, and you have all of these traits, if left unchecked, again, could worsen, could be really disordered eating patterns or become a full-fledged eating disorder. That's important to talk about because it really is this proof, it is not the right word. But if we follow the direction of the effect, it is not giving you what you want. You want to be able to eat well, feel like you're in control of your food, right? You want to feel at peace in your body, you want to feel confident, and you want to feel like you consistently are looking after yourself well and doing something that could potentially worsen, or if unchecked, leads you to having a full-fledged eating disorder. That probably isn't in line with you feeling and being really well and looking after yourself well and being, you know, the healthiest version of yourself. Do you see what I'm saying with that? I'm not just bringing it up to sort of like gobbledygook a bunch of science at you and be like, oh, science says it's bad. But it's being critical of does that give me what I want? Potentially, no, likely not. So with all of that said, right, I I hear you cry. And they there may be only a few of you, but there still may be some. But Rach, Rach, I feel so much better when I'm counting calories. When I did it in the past, I felt really on my shit, and I felt like it felt really felt like I was accomplishing something and I was really moving towards my goal to be counting calories. I'm and I'm not that obsessive about it. So, like, stop shitting on my thing. And again, I'm not trying to shit on the thing that you love. We are sticking to the evidence, and the body of research is not favorable to counting calories when you are doing it from a place of trying to change your appearance to feel better about yourself, right? If you are coming from Shame Planet, Shameville, and you are the mayor, that is when we can pretty confidently say that tracking calories is not going to be helpful for you. It is not going to give you what you want. Again, it's not bad, but in certain contexts, counting calories is not helpful. Counting calories is really specific to context. And when like I screen all of my clients or potential clients for disordered eating patterns, for body image, and for compassion, as well as what their motivations are for change. So if we play on that for a second, right? And you saying, like, barrage, berage, I feel better when I count calories. Let's just pause there because what feeling are you actually chasing? Are you chasing a sense of control? Does it ease your anxiety about weight gain? Is it a sense of security? It feels really great and you feel like you're super accomplished when you hit all the numbers and the scale starts to move down, maybe, and that all like all that just feels so good. But do you really gain a sense of control? Right? Is it a real sense of security over what you're eating and how you're fueling your body? Because you're essentially outsourcing everything, right? By outsourcing calorie tracking, oftentimes I found with clients is that they would just eat because they like had room left in their calories, or they would ignore their hunger signals because they didn't have enough calories left, or they would bank calories. Sometimes I would encourage them to do that because again, I didn't know the difference between my ass and my elbow, also known as flexible dieting at virgin control, etc. etc. For that I am very sorry. You know, which banking calories really reinforces this sort of like binge restrict cycle where you feel like you're sort of trapped in a pattern of like unwanted overeating and you feel shame for it, and you feel like it's completely out of your control. So then if I outsource it right to this app and it can tell me what I can and can't eat, then I'll follow it. It really doubles down on your black and white thinking. So when you're really on it, you feel like you're, you know, king of the mountain. And then if you if one thing goes wrong, you feel like a total failure, right? So it's this really dichotomous, all or nothing thinking that is being reinforced by using a tracking app. So again, I'm not saying that counting calories is bad, it is what you're using it for. So the reason why I'm talking about this and this particular podcast sounds very, very biased towards not tracking calories, right? Is because the people that I work with usually have dieted on and off for years, years, years, years. People that I work with often feel like crap about their bodies for years and years and years at every size they have ever been, they found something wrong with their body. That's a body image issue, that's not a you need to track better issue. I work with people who maybe they have tracked for a long time. They saw a bit of success, they stopped tracking, and they want to feel like they can actually feel their body and enjoy food when they want to enjoy food. And they don't want to have to, they know that they don't have to go back to calorie tracking, but they don't know what else is out there instead. They don't know how to improve their relationship with food and uh exercise and their body unless it's under the very, very narrow framework of like, well, this works for bodybuilders, so maybe you should just do it too. So the paradox, right, of control around food is that to have full quote unquote control over your eating behaviors, you can't actually achieve that from controlling your food. You cannot achieve that from micromanaging your food because again, you're outsourcing the sense of anxiety that you feel about potentially gaining weight. You are being able to make yourself and make your life much smaller by saying no to social events that you might there might be foods that you don't feel are quote unquote safe. And these are all signals and symptoms of your relationship with food. It is not, right, that you desperately need to be tracking calories to gain these skills. So if we were to play devil's advocate, when is it a good idea to track? Okay, Rach, so you keep saying calorie tracking is context dependent. Well, then give us some fucking other context, all right? Like put your money where your mouth is. When is it a good idea to track? It could be a good idea to track if you're not eating enough. Okay, so if you are worried that you're really undereating because you're going through a particularly stressful time in your life and your body responds by having no appetite, then yeah, it probably is a really good idea to track, isn't it? So that you are getting a sufficient amount of nutrients and calories to keep you alive and to keep you thriving, right? Because if you're in a difficult time, your body already feels like dog shit, you do not then need the added stressor of your weight plummeting through the floor. So it's not necessarily track to be able to like thrive, because I think if you're in that stressful situation where you have no appetite, you probably aren't going to be thriving anyway. But you're reducing the number of things that are having a negative impact on your physical, emotional, and general well-being, right? By ensuring that you're eating enough. If you are an athlete that requires you to be in a certain weight class, okay, it can be difficult to hit your weight class without tracking, but that's coming from a place of performance rather than this sort of like insecure striving and body shame. So again, it's it's context dependent. And if you have a fairly regular eating pattern, you have a pretty good body image, and you just want to check in on you're getting the night right nutrients for a short space of time, go nuts. Thing is, right, when I say that, if all of those things are true for you, you probably would not feel the need to track calories anyway, right? Like you could, but to what end? Because you probably wouldn't feel the need to. Just to reiterate, right? Calorie tracking is context dependent, and it is a lot more important to focus on that than the actual tool itself. Tracking calories is just a tool. If you have successfully tracked calories in the past, but then when you stopped, you feel like all of your progress backslid, then you probably don't need to track calories again. You already know how to do that. Completed it, mate, right? You already did it, and if it's not working for you long term, but you want to look after your health and well-being in the long term, then you probably don't need a short-term solution, right? You likely need new skills, different skills, like the skills of developing a more positive body image. Because positive body image, if you are really concerned with your weight from a physical health perspective, a positive body image is associated with a lower BMI. You can take that to the bank, right? So I'm not just talking about body image because I think that we should have more diversity, and I think that we should have less weight stigma, and I think that it would just feel really good for me personally to be a person that lives in a world where we have more body inclusivity. All those things are true, but I'm not doing it because I feel like it's important, right? This is what a body of research shows that body image is really supportive of our overall health and well-being. And when we take focus off of scale weight, if we focus on like the process, and if we focus on treating yourself well, uh, learning how to improve your relationship with food, learning how to take care of yourself when you don't feel like it, learning to enjoy foods that you used to consider quote unquote bad, because food is an important part of connection. It is not just fuel, right? Learning how to manage cravings, learning how to structure your meals, learning how to rest, learning how to tell the difference between physical and emotional hunger. And maybe you need to learn how to meet your own emotional needs. You likely need more self-regulation skills, and you probably need a bit of self-compassion. You probably don't need to re-download My FitnessPal. I also would like to point out that by not tracking calories, it does not mean that there is no structure, that there is no like no rules. Like, you know, there's no teacher around to watch at recess. Not tracking calories means that we're introducing something a little bit more along the lines of a flexible structure that can give you a strong foundation to jump from so that you can actually start living the life that you want, so that you can live a bigger, bolder life. So if you're one of those people where you don't really want to go back to tracking calories, but you also don't know what else there is to be healthier and to look after yourself, I have included my coaching inquiry form in the notes just to break the fourth wall. Because as someone who for a long time trended really anxious, which as I found out it wasn't really anxiety, it was actually just raging ADHD. Anyway, uh, if what what happens, right, when you fill the form? You filled the form. If I can help you and I read what you're struggling with, if I can help you, I'll set up a call. And there's no obligation to sign up at any point. All I'm doing, if I take people who are not a good fit, is I'm making my life harder and I'm wasting your time. Neither of those things I'm particularly interested in, but there are there's a really good chance that if you identified with the fact that you don't want to try calories anymore, but you don't know what else there is, I could probably help you. So if you think that you could benefit from some flexible, flexible structure, some flexible structure around food, and maybe you're Body image needs a little bit of attention too. What are you waiting for? Inquire below. All right, my honeys. This has been uh this has been real, it's been a slice, it's been a delight. I've had an absolutely spectacular time, and I hope you have too. I have also included in the show notes a link for a Ask Coach Rach form. So if there's anything that you're struggling with and you're like, man, coaching isn't in the cards for me right now, but I would really love some help with this, go ahead and ask below. I will do a podcast episode for you. You are, of course, welcome to stay completely anonymous. And I look forward to talking with you all next week. Okay, bye.