Why bother counting calories and macros?

I am not the biggest fan of counting calories.  For weight loss and maintenance, my general recommendation is to focus on foods high in protein and low in fat and carbs.  This information is usually enough for weight maintenance or loss.

However, I do think calorie counting is a valuable experiment. At least for a period of time.  This is because at the end of the day, we all have individualized maintenance calories.  Maintenance calories are the amount of calories we need to consume to maintain our current weight.  If we eat more than our maintenance calories, we will gain weight.  If we eat less than our maintenance calories, will lose weight. 

Counting calories is a lesson in portion control. It is easy to mindlessly overeat in our culture. When we count calories, we learn the appropriate amount of food to consume for our individual bodies. Through counting calories, we can also learn about the dangers of under-eating. Chronically under-consuming calories can cause health problems and actually result in weight loss plateaus or even weight gain. This is because chronically under-eating can lower our metabolism, decreasing calories burned. We see this a lot with yo-yo dieters. To appropriately count calories, we first want to find our maintenance calories (calories required to maintain current weight). To lose weight, we want to reduce daily maintenance calories by about 100-300.

In addition, by tracking how much you consume in a day, you can see your macronutrient breakdown.  Macronutrients are the nutritive components that our bodies use for energy.  Macronutrients consist of carbohydrates, proteins and fats.  Our total caloric intake is based off of the total grams of macronutrients we consume in a day. Why do macros matter? The main reason why they matter is because it is crucial that you obtain an adequate amount of protein each day.  Targeting protein is necessary for building and maintaining lean body mass (increasing the amount of body fat you burn), satiety, and obtaining adequate micronutrients.  Protein-rich foods from meat are highest in bioavailable micronutrients. Lastly, protein has a high thermal effect. This means that we burn more calories when we consume protein compared to fat and carbohydrates.

Lastly, it just makes intuitive sense to target protein. Carbs are not an essential macronutrient and we only require a small amount of essential fats. Adequate protein is essential for many biological functions. In my professional opinion, most people should target to consume between .7g to 1g of protein per pound of body weight per day. For example, I weigh 130 pounds. To figure out my protein requirements, I would multiple 130 by 0.7 and 1. Therefore, I should be consuming between 91 to 130g of protein per day. I find that most people are not consuming enough protein.  Tracking calories and macros can show you if you are consuming an adequate amount of protein.  

How to calculate your caloric needs

So how do we calculate our maintenance calories? Weight loss calories?  Calorie calculators are a good starting place, but they are notoriously inaccurate.  They can be off by 20%.  For example, when I plug in my information into an online calorie calculator, it says I should be consuming about 1900 calories per day to maintain my weight. Through my own tracking, I notice that I actually maintain my weight closer to 1600 calories per day.

Our caloric requirements are very individualized.  Lean body mass, exercise, stress, growth, sleep and health status, quality of food intake and hormonal fluctuations all impact the calories we burn. So what is the best way to figure out how many calories we need to maintain weight?  To lose weight?  

What you will need

1. Calorie tracking app:  You first want to download a calorie tracking app.  I used “FitGenie” but “myfitnesspal” is another option.  This is where you will be plugging in the food and drink you consume each day.  The app calculates the total calories and macros you consume in a day.  

2. Scale for food:  I highly recommend weighing your food instead of measuring it’s volume.  Measuring a foods volume can be very inaccurate. 1 cup of food may have very different values dependent on:

• How refined the food is.  If the food is more refined, it is more compact.  More compact = more calories.  1 cup of quick oats (more ground up) has more calories than 1 cup of rolled oats (whole grain). 
• How much you pack in.  If you tightly compact a food into a measuring cup, you can increase the amount of food you cram in, increasing total calories.
• How level the cup is.  When people use a measuring cup, they may not level off the top appropriately. If it is not level and the food is bulging over the measuring devive, it will be more calories.
• The type of measuring device you use.  There can be a big difference between measuring devices.  Different brands can vary up to 10% in size from each other.  

These infographics demonstrate why measuring a food’s weight is more accurate than measuring volume. For example, many people may estimate that a spoonful of peanut butter is equivalent to a tbsp. However when you actually measure the weight of 1 tbsp of peanut butter to 1 spoonful, there can be a dramatic difference in weight. This weight difference adds up to a lot of extra calories.

3. Scale for body weight . You will need a scale to weigh yourself on a daily basis.  I recommend weighing yourself first thing in the morning, naked, before eating or drinking anything. 

What do I need to do?  How long will this take? 

Tracking calories 

Track your caloric intake every day for at least 3 weeks.  Miss a day or two?  Totally fine.  Again we are looking at the weekly averages.  However I encourage you to be diligent.  The more data you get, the more accurate your averages will be.  I only tracked for 3 weeks when I made this post (I also missed 2 days), but I plan to continue to track to obtain more accurate data.  At the end of each day, document your total daily caloric intake into a table.  After a week, add up the calories for each day and divide by 7 to get the weekly average.  Do this for each of the three weeks. Check out my calorie tracking table below to see how I documented my data.

Tracking weight 

In addition to tabulating calories, you will be weighing yourself each day.  Your calorie tracking device should have an area where you can log in your daily weight.   If not, add your data to a table.   Remember you want to weigh yourself in the morning right after you wake up with no clothes on.  Just like calories, you want to do this every day.  However if you miss a day or two, no sweat.  We are looking for averages!  You may find that you weight changes by 1-2 lbs each day.  Again, don’t worry about this.  Our weight can fluctuate up to 2 lbs per day due to changes in fluid.  When you look at my week 1 data, you can see a reduction of one pound from Friday to Saturday.  I theorize that the reason why I lost a pound is because I drank alcohol.  Alcohol dehydrates us.  When you are dehydrated, you lose water, temporarily losing weight. This weight loss is most likely water weight, not fat weight.

Document your data into a table.  After a week of documenting your calories, add up each day and divide by 7.  Do this for at least 3 weeks.  Check out my weight tracking table below to see how I documented my data.

What about working out?  

I recommend being consistent about your exercise.  If you work out 3 days a week on week 1, work out in a similar fashion on weeks 2 and 3.  If you are not consistent about your workouts from week to week, your weight data could potentially be skewed.  Again we want to get an accurate read on what a typical week looks like for you.

Do I need to work out to lose weight?

Not necessarily.  At the end of the day, total caloric intake is a more effective lever to pull in terms of weight maintenance and loss compared to exercise.  Only about 20% of the calories we burn comes from exercise.  80% of the calories we burn is through basic metabolic processes to keep us alive.  We have more control manipulating our caloric intake rather than caloric burn.  

Assessing data

After obtaining this data, compare your average weight from week 1 to week 3.  If your weight has not changed much, you can safely assume that your weekly average caloric intake is your maintenance calories.  If your weight has increased, you can assume that your weekly caloric intake is higher than you need to maintain weight. To lose weight, reduce maintenance calories by 100-300 per day.

My experiment!  

Listed below is my daily weight and daily caloric intake for 3 weeks along with weekly averages.  

Some more information about my activity level.  I am pretty sedentary during the day.  On average, I walk about 6,000 steps a day (something I would like to work on).  I do 30 minutes of cardio (either HIIT or running) 2 x a week.  I do resistance training 1-2 x per week.  

Daily body weight in lbs

Day of week	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3
Tuesday	131.2	132.4	132.8
Wednesday	131.8	131.2	132.4
Thursday	132.4	131.8	131.8
Friday	132	132.8	130.2
Saturday	131.2	X	130.4
Sunday	130.8	X	130.8
Monday	131	132.8	130.4
Average	131.5	132.2	131.3

Daily caloric intake

Day of week	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3
Tuesday	1453	1219	1428
Wednesday	1406	1476	1504
Thurs	1540	1350	1594
Fri	2022	1775	2265
Sat	1994	2256	1912
Sun	1546	1594	1146
Mon	1342	1347	1370
Average	1615	1574	1603

As you can see, my average weight is pretty steady from week 1 to week 3.  I did not change that much from week 1 to week 3.  Therefore, I can safely assume that my average caloric intake is my maintenance calories.  The average caloric intake between the 3 weeks is about 1600 calories.  There was an increase in my weight from week 1 to week 2 (0.8 lbs) even though I consumed less calories.  This could be due to many reasons.  I may have worked out more, I may have been more stressed.  Who knows!  At the end of the day, we shouldn’t be focused on the minutia.  This experiment is all about the trends and averages.  We just want to acquire a general sense of how much we should be consuming each day.

Macro breakdown

I also want to note my macronutrient breakdowns.  As previously stated, I recommend consuming between .7g/lb to 1g/lb of body weight in protein per day. I weigh about 131 lbs so I should be consuming somewhere between 92g to 131g of protein per day. Here is my data!

Total grams of protein consumed

Day	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3
Tues	124g	100g	92g
Wed	98g	112g	102g
Thurs	116g	90g	67g
Fri	105g	77g	41g
Sat	68g	46g	83g
Sun	102g	65g	72g
Mon	91g	86g	106g
Total average	100g	82g	80g

Here is an example of what I typically eat in a day (minus a few food items) to reach a total of about 100g of protein:

As you can see, I consume a little more protein from meat, fish and poultry than the typical American. 🙂

What I learned

My total caloric intake changed a lot from the weekdays to weekends.  I assumed that, but it was really eye opening to see the actual data. On average, I consumed about 2,037 calories on Friday and Saturdays.  On average, I consumed about 1,421 calories on Sunday through Thursday.  This is because on Friday and Saturdays, I usually go out to a restaurant.  Restaurants make overeating very easy.  This is because the meal contains a lot of added fat. I also end up eating more carbs than usual. Those extra carb and fat calories add up fast.  For example, check out this meal I consumed one day at a restaurant:

Looks pretty healthy right? Even though it looks healthy because it contains lean protein and lentils, the meal contains an excessive amount of added fat and carbs. I estimate that there are about 2 tbsp of fat from pesto (on top of each scallop), 2 tbsp of fat in the cauliflower mash (yellow stuff under scallops) and 1 tbsp of fat used to cook the scallops. Most people should aim to consume no more than 1 tbsp of added fat per meal to meet maintenance calories. This meal is over double what I should be consuming per meal. Additionally this meal contains about 1 cup of lentils, equivalent to 40 grams of carbs, about 2.6 slices of white bread. There is also about 2 tbsp of raisins, an additional 15g of carbs. I aim to consume no more than 100g of carbs per day. Therefore, this meal brings me to about half of my daily carbohydrate allowance.

Like others, I enjoy wine. I consume about 1/2 bottle of wine on both Friday and Saturday night. 1/2 bottle of wine contains about 326 calories.  By tracking calories, I am able to visualize how much of my total caloric intake comes from alcohol.

I also noticed how eating out and drinking alcohol on Friday and Saturday takes away from protein intake goals. If I wanted to reel in my diet, improve my lean body mass and lower my body fat, I would focus on reducing my alcohol intake and eating out on Friday and Saturday.

This experiment also demonstrated to me that I frequently consume a little less protein than I recommend. For example, on weeks 1 and 2, I averaged about 80g of protein. This is 9g less than the minimum I recommend for a person of my body weight (I recommend consuming 89g-130g of protein for a person of my size). By tracking my calories and macros, I see where I am currently at more clearly. I can now make effective changes to reach my dietary goals.

I really enjoyed conducting this experiment.  By tracking calories, I became more accountable of my food intake.  I generally aimed for more protein-rich foods from meat in order to meet my protein requirements.  I also became more mindful of portions.  Even as a Registered Dietitian, I realized I was off in my portion estimations.  Having a scale really puts portion size into perspective.  

The take away of this blog post should not be to never go out to eat and never drink alcohol. In my opinion, partaking in indulgences is an essential part of life. If you exceed your daily maintenance calories, it is ok! You can still maintain your weight and/or lose weight. Weight maintenance and loss is contingent upon your average intake. Look at your calories like you would your bank account. We all indulge in a nice vacation every once in a while. The vacation does not break the bank because we minimize our spending on other days. You can consume more than your daily maintenance calories and not gain weight as long as you consume less on other days.

Tracking calories is just one of many tools we can use to maintain or lose body weight. If you find that this method is too stressful, there are many other strategies you can implement to reach your body composition goals. Message me if you have further questions!