Counting Calories Has Always Been A Fat Phobic Scam
Recently the Journal of the American Medical Association published results of a clinical trial that found there was no significant difference in weight loss between two groups of participants; one who follow a low-fat and another that followed a low-carbohydrate diet. Furthermore, the study found, as reported in the New York Times, that “…people who cut back on highly processed foods while concentrating on eating plenty of vegetables and whole foods — without worrying about counting calories or limiting portion sizes — lost significant amounts of weight over the course of a year.”
It is the “…without worrying about counting calories…” part that interests me most. These findings, which have been duplicated in other trials and ones like it, make me feel both satisfied and rageful at the same time. What this illustrates is that as a country we have been lied to for decades as doctors, dietitians, politicians, and seemingly smart people have espoused the validity of the “calories in, calories out” method of weight control. One may wonder why this ridiculously oversimplified notion of our bodies’ complex digestion systems has dominated for so long. How could intelligent people with medical degrees perpetuate an idea that upon very little investigation, reveals its fallacy? I believe it has to do with money, because everything about what and how we consume in this culture is about money. But more damaging to our psyches, because “calories in, calories out” lays the foundation for size discrimination. We have been brainwashed to believe such nonsense because it supports fat phobia and size bias. The myth of “calories in, calories out” is one of the most enduring ideologies of a nation that hates fat bodies, particularly fat bodies owned by black, brown, and poor people.
First, let us examine the notion of a calorie. Do we even know what a calorie is? A calorie is a measurement of energy, more specifically it is the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 degree celsius. What does that have to do with pizza? Well, a couple of French guys started messing around with measuring the amount of energy in foods in the 1830s. Then Wilbur Atwater burnt up foods in his New York laboratory in the late 1840s and measured the heat they gave off in kilocalories, which we in the U.S. just call calories. His counts of burnt up foods, specifically carbohydrates, fat, and protein, are still the counts we use today. And when you read a label, the amount of calories it says your food has is the sum of the food’s ingredients, based on counts from over 100 years ago.
This is all deeply disturbing to me for so many reasons, I’ll try to be brief. First and foremost, YOUR BODY DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO COUNT. As I’m known to say to students and clients, there is not an elf in my tummy counting calories as they make their way down my gullet. My body doesn’t do math. Second, to be so bold as to predict precisely how my body will utilize the energy I consume is ridiculous. Digestion is an extremely elaborate system involving many of our organs, enzymes, hormones, gut bacteria, 5 to 6 feet of colon, and finally, how many calories we may reabsorb from our feces before it leaves our body. And how much energy you expend through living or moving is also a very mysterious and complicated process involving genetics, resting metabolism, gut bacteria, (again), hormones, how much energy it takes to break down the food in the first place, and, mostly, genetics.
Furthermore, to espouse that it’s as simple as “calories in, calories out,” is to accept that my body somehow is so stupid it does not know the difference between 100 calories of Twizzlers and 100 calories of tuna. And that is absolute bullshit. My body does not know how to count but it does know the difference between food and not food. But guess who makes money off of us believing such absurdity? Corporations that claim to sell edible things, of course. If we believe that eating plastic chemicals disguised as food is cool as long as we’re counting our calories; if we believe we can have that soda as long as we “burn it off” later; if we believe this packaged salt and corn syrup bomb is good for us because it says the word “healthy” on the plastic it’s wrapped in, food companies keep making money. They sell us packaged nonsense that our bodies do not recognize as food, and when our bodies become big, (which more and more studies are showing is a result of the inflammation a body goes into when substances that are not food are consumed), they sell us different packaged nonsense that says “low calorie” on the wrapper. Your belief in calories is money in their pocket.
Sociologically speaking, why would we continue to believe that bodies are big or small based on a 1st grade math problem? Because it allows us to blame a person in a big body for its bigness. Fat phobia exists because we have bought into three distinct lies: 1. That every single body should be the same size and that size is thin, 2. That people in thin bodies are morally, intellectually, and all around superior to people in big bodies, 3. That if a person’s body is big, that person can and should change the shape of it at this very moment by consuming less and burning more calories.
Believing in “calories in, calories out” has allowed us to blame people in neighborhoods lacking actual grocery stores for their fatness, creating at times an intersection of stigma involving poverty, class, race, and obesity. It allows for a belief that everyone has equal access to a body shape we have all agreed is the “right” shape, because even if you can’t find an apple in your neighborhood, you should be reading the calorie counts at McDonalds. Believing in “calories in, calories out” has encouraged bigotry and vitriole based solely on a person’s body shape at a time when some of us are facing and fighting bigotry in other forms. It ensures that people in big bodies will hate themselves because they, too, have been brainwashed to believe it’s just so simple, so, I must not be trying hard enough? It allows us to further shame and bully people in big bodies because despite a diet industry that makes billions upon billions of dollars, precisely because diets fail, we still hold onto this old idea that anyone can do it at any time if they really want it enough, or commit enough, or….. It means we can feel justified in our illusionary superiority over fat people because “they’ve done it to themselves.”
Bodies are wonderful, weird, beautiful and complex, just like the people who inhabit them. To even consider that they would fall in line to some elementary math equation is ignorant and ludicrous. Our bodies are so much smarter than we are, and yet we try and try to control them, to no avail. The truth is bodies come in different shapes. Period. They should be celebrated and respected and honored, just like the people who inhabit them.
