How Calorie Counting May Be Harming Your Health
Calorie tracking and restricting is popular among wellness enthusiasts — but is it actually healthy?
Calorie restriction is an ever popular method amongst those trying to lose weight or improve their diets. We’ve all heard the equation “calories in vs. calories out” in terms of losing or maintaining body weight. That statement is inarguable. However, just because we associate calorie restriction with low body weight doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for your health.
When it comes to dietary choices, Western society tends to focus on the individual. We push the narrative that your personal choices are what impact your weight/health/appearance. However, in truth, there are many factors that contribute to a person’s diet and relationship with food. That’s why calorie counting alone isn’t enough to maintain weight loss. These competing factors influence our dietary choices each day.
Low-calorie does not mean high in health
The saying “a calorie is a calorie” doesn’t paint the whole picture. While it’s true that a 400 calorie donut may metabolically process the same way as a 400 calorie meal, these foods do not provide your body with same quality of nutrients. Diets comprised of unprocessed foods are associated with the best health outcomes. Therefore, 1,200 calories of low quality foods does not promote health in the same way that 1,200 calories of whole foods does. Both may be low calorie, but caloric content alone doesn’t paint the whole picture when it comes to optimizing health outcomes.
You can go too low
For most people, there are significant dangers associated with maintaining a very low calorie diet (VLCD) over time. VLCDs are defined as having fewer than 800 calories per day. They should only be done when medically necessary and supervised, and they are inappropriate for most individuals. Eating too few calories is a major risk factor for malnutrition, which negatively impacts organ function (including the heart), immunity, muscle density, and mental health.
Additionally, when it comes to weight management, calorie restriction is simply unsustainable. This is due to a natural metabolic response to reduced nutritional intake known as adaptive thermogenesis. Your metabolism naturally drops to conserve energy, meaning the body will require fewer calories for maintenance. Think you can compensate by increasing exercise? It may not be that simple. Adaptive thermogenesis primes your body to avoid excessive energy expenditure, so exercise becomes unappealing and difficult to perform.
It doesn’t boil down to willpower alone; when energy intake is low, the body will compensate by increasing food-seeking behavior and decreasing behaviors that expend too much energy. In other words, the body recognizes caloric restriction as an unnatural state and adapts in unfavorable ways in order to protect your health.
Associations with eating disorders
Dieting is a predictor for developing an eating disorder. You may be familiar with the Lifetime movie versions of this scenario — a young girl (typically white and middle-class) notices her stomach sticking out in gym class or hears a negative comment from a critical parent. The girl starts dieting, receives positive feedback, and then suddenly develops a full-blown eating disorder.
In reality, there are many complexities to eating disorders, and they often begin more subtly than the media portrays. However, it’s true that there is a delicate balance when restricting food intake, and doing so can lead to unhealthy weight control behaviors and disordered eating. This is particularly true for populations most vulnerable to developing eating disorders, like adolescent girls.
More specifically, the act of tracking calories is associated with disordered eating. College students who use calorie and fitness trackers show greater concerns regarding food and display more eating disorder symptomology. Counting calories can become obsessive and unhealthy for many people.
The society factor
Low quality diets don’t occur in a vacuum. These are habits that are learned over time.
We know that overeating and inactivity can cause obesity and/or poor health outcomes, but they’re byproducts of larger societal problems. Calorie counting does not address the root causes. Processed food is cheap and both food manufacturers and the diet industry profit from society’s poor eating habits and lack of control. Rather than addressing the overarching elephant in the room, it’s easier to blame the victims for their less-than-stellar food choices.
“[P]ublic health should work primarily to support the consumption of whole foods that help protect against obesity-promoting energy imbalance and metabolic dysfunction and not continue to promote calorie-directed messages that may create and blame victims…” (Lucan & DiNicolantonio, 2014)
The solution to our bad eating habits may be investing more in our civic duties rather than using a fitness app. Want to see lasting change? Write to your representatives! Reducing lobbying from food manufacturers, restricting advertising to children (i.e., creating lifelong customers), and demanding demonstrable action in health and nutrition policy are better ways help to address the root causes of obesity and poor nutritional habits.
But isn’t calorie restriction associated with good health?
Although research has shown that calorie reduction is protective of cardiovascular health and factors associated with aging, long-term studies are limited and many were conducted on non-human subjects.
One hypothesis proposes that the reduction of low quality foods is the greater contribution to positive health outcomes associated with low-calorie diets. In theory, if that’s the case, it would be as beneficial to focus more on introducing more high quality foods to replace foods with less nutrient density. This may help to improve overall health outcomes without the risks to mental and physical health outlined above. We should be shifting the perspective to one of overall health abundance rather than restriction in the name of health.
Conclusion
It’s not that we’re powerless to control our diet, but it’s important to recognize the influences of social, cultural, and physiological factors that make calorie restriction alone unsustainable, or even harmful. Unlearning standard American dietary habits may be more critical in maintaining a healthy diet rather than endlessly fixating on tracking and controlling a number. That’s not how our bodies are wired.
Ideally, we should be consuming more whole, natural foods rather than consuming less food overall. As a culture, shifting away from a restrictive mentality where foods are forbidden, calories are stressors, and struggling dieters are simply weak-willed could make a difference in unhealthy attitudes toward food and harmful food behaviors.
The bottom line is: calories are not the enemy, restriction is not the answer, and health should be a priority. For our collective wellbeing, let’s challenge diet culture mentality and re-learn to trust our bodies.
