Expert: Counting Calories Just Won't Help If You Want to Lose Weight

If you want to lose weight or live a healthy life, you don’t necessarily have to count calories.

Oscar Wong / Getty Images

If you want to lose weight, you should stop counting calories and instead focus on eating the right ingredients. He says Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology in London.

Highly processed foods can be less filling than whole foods, causing people to eat more than they actually are when hungry.

“Food that has been heavily processed is the enemy,” Spector said. The longer the list of ingredients, the more processed the product.

If you want to lose weight and live a healthy life, you should not count calories, but make sure you eat less processed foods. This recommends epidemiologist Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College in London.

Although losing weight requires a certain calorie deficit, this alone would be the wrong approach. It is also important what calories are consumed. According to Specter, the nutritional information on the label is often inaccurate. Plus, if you eat primarily whole foods without artificial additives, you automatically burn fewer calories.

“We need to stop talking about calories,” he told Business Insider. “Highly processed foods are the enemy.” Spector is the best-selling author of Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong, and is the scientific co-founder of Zoe, a personal nutrition company that helps people eat. To understand your body’s response to it, control your reactions.

Many foods are processed in some way, such as oatmeal, yogurt, or flour. However, highly processed foods are mass-produced and contain additives such as colors and preservatives to achieve the desired taste or texture. These additives have been linked to various health problems in the past. Examples of highly processed foods include pre-baked cakes and cookies, and chips.

Research suggests that more than half of the foods consumed in high-income countries are highly processed foods.

One small study A 2019 study from the US National Institutes of Health found that people whose diets were high in highly processed foods consumed an average of 500 more calories per day and gained more weight than those who ate fresh foods . Science is still not unanimous about the reasons for this. However, some people suspect that our hormones may interact differently with processed foods.

noisy A study from 2020Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, highly processed foods may already be associated with a higher risk of heart disease and a shorter lifespan.

“It’s a myth that calories are useful”

Spector believes that the biggest (and most harmful) myth is that calories are beneficial. Their importance is “too predictable”. Instead, people should pay more attention to the composition of the food, Spector said.

“We all have very different metabolic needs. That’s why we can’t compare ourselves to others. Just because someone else sticks to an arbitrary calorie limit doesn’t mean we should,” he says. Told. For example, a croissant has fewer calories than avocado and egg toast. However, the latter has far higher nutritional value and will keep you full for longer due to the fiber, protein and healthy fats.

According to Spector, counting calories often leads people to eat more processed foods because they may appear low in calories at first glance. He says many producers are now removing fat and sugar from foods to reduce calories and are instead adding chemicals and sweeteners to preserve flavor.

But they don’t keep you full for long. Research shows that this eventually leads to eating very low-calorie but highly processed foods, which can lead to weight gain in the long term.

On the other hand, whole foods are far more filling because they usually contain more fiber and protein. As a result, energy is released from food more slowly, according to Spector, resulting in a longer feeling of satiety.

Nick Shaw, bodybuilder, personal trainer, and nutrition coach at RP Strength, tells Business Insider that he encourages people to eat whole foods if they want to lose weight, even though less nutritious foods contain calories and macros. be the same number.

“You should always take the quality of the food into account when considering how much to eat each day,” he said. “If you stick to mostly whole foods like lean proteins (eg, sweet potatoes or whole grains), you can still lose body fat.”

Avoid foods with more than ten ingredients

Foods that are technically processed but not overly processed also lend themselves to a healthier diet. Examples include canned fruits, frozen vegetables and yogurt, Spector said. To find out if a food is highly processed, you must look at the length of the ingredient list. A rule of thumb might be this: If a food has more than ten ingredients, you should probably stay away from it.