Forget What You Know About Calories

Editor's Note:  Counting calories has been the traditional approach to weight loss but is it necessary? The answer is no! Jon provides a more practical approach to watching what you eat!

I have a pop quiz for you. Ready?

What is a calorie?

Are all calories created equal?

Let’s say you knew that on a diet of 1,500 calories you would drop body fat. Would it matter if you got those calories from chicken versus table sugar?

What is the number one food in America calorie-wise? In other words, what single food do we consume the most? Is it beef? Chicken? Dairy products? Something else?

Okay students - pass in your answers. Wait - better yet, I’ll give them to you, and tell you why this will change the way you think of calories and calorie counting forever.

First, a calorie is nothing more than a unit of heat; a way to measure the heat (or energy) of food. When Matt Spurlock asked people on the street what a calorie was in his documentary, Supersize Me, not one person could answer the question. “Something you should not eat,” was the answer I received when asking the same question at a seminar once! My response? “Well, only if you want to die really quickly, I suppose that’s true.”

Fit Over 40 contains dozens of nutrition plans and very few of our role models suggest calorie counting. They simply “eat”. In your quest for the real answer to permanent fat-burning, start with Fit Over 40 and just read what these role models say about food. In last weeks audio with Janis Hauser, you heard how Jan, once morbidly obese, now consumes more food than she ever did when weighing over 100 pounds more than she does today.

How is this possible? Most doctors say the opposite — that it’s all about “calories in, calories out”…yet most of the doctors need to be on a nutrition plan themselves! What is the answer?

The answer lies in the second question: all calories are not created equal, and all the arguments back and forth are just fodder for food geeks. The truth is really based in common sense. Eating 200 calories of broccoli versus 200 calories of pure sugar…well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what your body will respond to. I’m about to tell you why…but first, I’m going to skip ahead in my quiz and answer the last question. It’s a mind-blower.

One of every five calories in the American diet is liquid. The single biggest “food” consumed by Americans is…soda. Disgusting, but true.

From the AP: “In reports to be published in science journals this week, two groups of researchers hope to add evidence to the theory that soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks actually cause obesity. In reality, proving this would be a scientific leap that could help make the case for higher taxes on soda, restrictions on how and where it is sold — maybe even a surgeon general’s warning on labels."

“We’ve done it with cigarettes,” said one scientist advocating this, Barry Popkin at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Surely doctors in all their wisdom feel the same. Well - no. Hardly. In fact, in the traditional medical and dietary circles, it’s still “calories are ALL that count.” Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society perpetuates the ignorance that a “calorie is a calorie” with these conclusions — “Caloric imbalance causes obesity, so in the sense that any one part of the diet is contributing excess calories, it’s contributing causally to obesity.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

First of all, most obese individuals are not overeating, but eating too much of the wrong foods. In fact, many formerly obese individuals now eat more than they ever did when they were obese.

Second, a calorie is NOT a calorie, and this fact has been proven in numerous studies. For example, what if you fed a group of monkeys identical calories, with the only exception being the "type" of calorie consumed? Would they all gain weight at the same rate? Apparently not. At the Obesity and Diabetes Research Center at the University of Maryland, this exact experiment was conducted.

Some of the monkeys grew heavier with an identical diet as their thinner counterparts. Discussion of the metabolic changes that were going on in those monkeys that grew heavier on the same diet revealed loss of insulin sensitivity, rising blood sugars, rising insulin levels, and diabetes. In fact, insulin sensitivity, or lack thereof, was the leading predictor of death in the monkeys. As the study abstract states, “Hyperinsulinemia led to a 3.7-fold increased risk of death (p = less than 0.05).”

So, certain foods, despite their calories, increase body fat and disease states associated with weight gain more-so than other foods. Is this true in humans as well? Indeed. As if Fit Over 40 didn’t proof this conclusively, we have tons of research to fall back on. Here’s just one example:

A recent study directed by Penelope Greene of the Harvard School of Public Health and presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Study of Obesity found that people eating an extra 300 calories a day on a very low-carb regimen lost just as much during a 12-week study as those on a standard low-fat diet.

Over the course of the study, they consumed an extra 25,000 calories. That should have added up to about seven pounds. But for some reason, it did not.

“There does indeed seem to be something about a low-carb diet that says you can eat more calories and lose a similar amount of weight,” Greene said.

Low-carb diets lower insulin in most people — and therein lies the factor to look at.

Let’s go back to common sense for a minute. For all the debate that goes on, and the perpetual ignorance that “all you have to do is eat less”, one should consider this: do you really think eating 2,000 calories of pure sugar will shed fat as much as 2,000 calories of balanced food? Assuming you could eat 2,000 calories of pure sugar without getting sick, it doesn’t really take a PhD researcher to answer this question — of course not.

Have you ever noticed that the homeless who drink have “beer bellies”? How, if they are only consuming a fraction of their daily caloric needs? Because they’re doing so with the help of pure sugar in the form of alcohol.

Now, this is not to say that calories do not count — they do. The key is to eat natural, unprocessed foods, with the focus being on lean proteins and healthy fats (for most people), and lower calories just enough to stimulate fat-burning. Lower your calories too much, and you’ll shut your metabolism down cold. Too little, and you won’t drop body fat.

Editor's Note: Tom Venuto wrote an article titled, The Truth About Counting Calories. He provides a method on how you can keep track of your calories without actually counting them. You can combine Jon's suggestion of eating natural foods, lean proteins and healthy fats with Tom's method for an effective calorie-tracking plan!

So, in summary:

A calorie is nothing but a measurement of energy and heat — it’s nothing to be feared and probably nothing to be counted unless you really know your body. Even then, most people who were once over-fat and who are now lean do not count calories. They watch them at best — and when eating the Fit Over 40 way, consuming natural unprocessed foods, it’s downright difficult to eat too much.

All calories are not created equal. Calories from sugar cause different hormonal responses than calories from, say, lean meats or veggies. These hormonal responses shut down fat burning.

The largest single food item consumed in the U.S. is not a food at all by practical definition, but soda pop. Do we really need to wonder why obesity and diabetes is on the rise?

You must trick the metabolism when planning a nutrition plan to shed fat. This will do far more in the war on fat than counting calories ever did. This also honors the fact that calories “do” count…it’s just much more than “calories in, calories out”.

I cover my techniques for tricking the metabolism into permanent, long-term fat loss in Fit Over 40. To learn how, pick up your copy today.

If you don’t have a copy of Fit Over 40 yet, get yours today. In less than a few minutes you’ll have the number 2 fitness e-book of all time right on your desktop — 304 pages of inspiration, motivation and fitness strategy.

Fit Over 40 isn’t just for people over 40 — it’s an invaluable training and motivational e-book that can save you years, even decades of frustration when it comes to learning what works for your body and seeing the results you want. One of the reasons I wrote the book was to save others the years of trial and error I went through as I went from obese to fit. With over 50 role models profiled, Fit Over 40 will stand the test of time for anyone interested in health, strength, fat loss, muscle, and motivation — at any age.

Jon Benson