Geschatte leestijd: 12 minutenCounting Calories. What are you actually counting? What should your target number be? More importantly; does the number of calories tell you the whole story?
Table of Contents
- Counting Calories
- What is a Calorie?
- The Energy Balance
- Counting Real Calories is Impossible
- Counting Calories in Practice
- Energy Expenditure
- Step 1: Nutrition Calculator
- Just an Indication
- Counting Calories with an App, Much Easier!
- Macronutrients
- Conclusion
Counting Calories
By keeping track of the number of calories you consume daily, you try to get an indication of the amount of energy coming in. It doesn’t say anything about the form in which this energy comes in, nor about how much energy your body actually uses.
Different types of sources of the same amount of energy can cause different reactions in the body. Moreover, individual reactions to the same number of calories can vary greatly [1,2].
As part of a diet, the number of calories you consume is only part of the story, regardless of your goal. However, it is such a big factor that it makes sense to look at it first when evaluating your eating habits.
In this article, I will first provide a brief theoretical basis for counting calories. Then, we’ll discuss the necessary caveats about the reliability of counting calories in practice. Finally, a brief explanation will follow on how to best apply counting calories in practice, taking into account the mentioned caveats.
What is a Calorie?
A calorie is the amount of heat (energy) needed to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree.
Nowadays, we almost always use the kilocalorie (kcal), which is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 liter of water by 1 degree, or 1000 calories.
Also read the article: what is a calorie?
The Energy Balance
The energy balance is the ratio between the number of calories you consume and the number of calories you burn. When this balance is in equilibrium, you normally maintain the same body weight. However, the balance can also be positive or negative:
A positive energy balance means that you consume more calories through food and drink than you burn, resulting in weight gain.
A negative energy balance means that you consume fewer calories through food and drink than you burn, resulting in weight loss.
Counting Real Calories is Impossible
Such an energy balance sounds very simple, but as mentioned, the practice is more complex. The exact amount of energy your body effectively receives does not have to correspond to the number of kcal on the package.
The way food is prepared can affect the number of calories you actually receive. Digesting food itself also costs energy, the so-called ‘metabolic costs’ of food. The more energy this costs, the fewer calories you effectively retain from the food. For example, some nuts absorb 25% less energy than the nuts themselves contain.
I will elaborate on these points in the article titled: The one calorie is not like the other.
Counting Calories in Practice
In practice, these caveats mean that the number of calories is more likely to be overestimated than underestimated. For most people, this will be a ‘positive miscalculation,’ just as a clock that is 5 minutes fast is only useful for people who are always late. For most people, there is therefore no reason to try to correct for these complex factors.
The first step in counting calories in a meaningful way is to determine what your goal should actually be. Do you want an energy balance to maintain a healthy weight? Or do you want to create a deficit or surplus to respectively lose or gain weight?
In all three cases, you start by determining the balance. At this point, you are missing the most important piece of information: How much energy do you expend?
Energy Expenditure
Your body uses energy for various reasons. First, to keep things in order, even when you’re doing nothing at all. Especially brains consume energy, but muscle mass also costs energy. About 60 to 80 percent of the energy you expend is used to keep everything running. This is the so-called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). You won’t change this expenditure without changing your weight.
In addition, physical activity naturally costs energy, but possibly less than you would expect. Only 20 to 40 percent of the energy you use is utilized by activity. The 40 percent refers to very active athletes who train intensively almost every day.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, digesting food itself also costs energy. About 5 to 10 percent of your total energy intake is used for this, although this varies depending on the nutrient.
It must also be emphasized here that it is almost impossible to measure your exact energy expenditure without turning into a lab rat. And even then, you would have to wear a mouthpiece with hoses all day long to measure this.
Step 1: Nutrition Calculator
The most accessible method for estimating your daily energy expenditure is the Harris & Benedict formula. Although not perfect, this is a very good indication of your daily energy expenditure. You can also use an online tool, which will make the calculation for you. You only have to fill in your age, weight, height, and gender.
Also read the article: Calculate how many calories you need.
Just an Indication
This formula gives only an indication. So always check whether the given number corresponds to what you actually consume and how your body responds to it. Are you not losing weight while your deficit seems large enough? Or are you losing weight too quickly?
These can be signs that the calculated maintenance value is not correct. For example, you may have a slower metabolism than average, or you may have more muscle mass, which increases your BMR.
Counting Calories with an App, Much Easier!
Now that you know how much energy you consume, you can start counting calories. The easiest way to do this is with an app. The most used app is MyFitnessPal. This app has a huge database with all kinds of food and drinks, from which you can quickly select what you have eaten. You can also scan barcodes and save meals for later.
Don’t you want to be looking up your entire diet for the rest of your life? Then start by determining the energy content of the meals you often eat. You only have to search once and then you have it. After a while, you will know the content of your meals by heart.
Macronutrients
Also, pay attention to the macronutrient distribution of your diet. Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates provide different amounts of energy per gram. In addition, they each have their own function in the body and influence, among other things, your hormone balance and muscle mass.
In a later article, I will go deeper into the distribution of macronutrients. However, I recommend that you already pay attention to this when drawing up your diet plan. That way, you can prevent common mistakes and optimize your diet for your goals.
Conclusion
Counting calories gives you an indication of the amount of energy you consume. This is the starting point for making adjustments to your diet. However, don’t make the mistake of staring blindly at the number of calories and ignoring the other nutrients in your diet. For a healthy body, it’s also important to look at the distribution of macronutrients and the source of the calories.
Also read the article: The best diet, how do you put it together?
By taking into account the energy balance and the distribution of macronutrients, you can adjust your diet to your goals and improve your health and well-being. And all that without having to follow the latest diet hype!
Table of Contents
Counting Calories
By keeping track of the number of calories you consume daily, you try to get an indication of the amount of energy coming in. It doesn’t say anything about the form in which this energy comes in, nor about the degree to which energy is consumed by your body.
Different types of sources of the same amount of energy can cause different reactions in the body. Moreover, individual reactions to the same number of calories can vary greatly [1,2].
As part of a diet, the number of calories you consume is only part of the story, regardless of your goal. However, it is such a big factor that it makes sense to look at it first when evaluating your eating habits.
In this article, I will first provide a brief theoretical basis for counting calories. Then, we’ll discuss the necessary caveats about the reliability of counting calories in practice. Finally, a brief explanation will follow on how to best apply counting calories in practice, taking into account the mentioned caveats.
What is a Calorie?
A calorie is the amount of heat (energy) needed to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree.
Nowadays, we almost always use the kilocalorie (kcal), which is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 liter of water by 1 degree, or 1000 calories.
Also read the article: what is a calorie?
The Energy Balance
The energy balance is the ratio between the number of calories you consume and the number of calories you burn. When this balance is in equilibrium, you normally maintain the same body weight. However, the balance can also be positive or negative:
A positive energy balance means that you consume more calories through food and drink than you burn, resulting in weight gain.
A negative energy balance means that you consume fewer calories through food and drink than you burn, resulting in weight loss.
Counting Real Calories is Impossible
Such an energy balance sounds very simple, but as mentioned, the practice is more complex. The exact amount of energy your body effectively receives does not have to correspond to the number of kcal on the package.
The way food is prepared can affect the number of calories you actually receive. Digesting food itself also costs energy, the so-called ‘metabolic costs’ of food. The more energy this costs, the fewer calories you effectively retain from the food. For example, some nuts absorb 25% less energy than the nuts themselves contain.
I will elaborate on these points in the article titled: The one calorie is not like the other.
Counting Calories in Practice
In practice, these caveats mean that the number of calories is more likely to be overestimated than underestimated. For most people, this will be a ‘positive miscalculation,’ just as a clock that is 5 minutes fast is only useful for people who are always late. For most people, there is therefore no reason to try to correct for these complex factors.
The first step to counting calories meaningfully is to first determine what your goal should actually be. Do you want an energy balance to maintain a healthy weight? Or do you want to create a deficit or surplus to lose or gain weight, respectively?
In all three cases, you start by determining the balance. At this point, you are missing the most important piece of information: How much energy do you expend?
Energy Expenditure
Your body uses energy for various reasons. Firstly, to keep things in order, even when you’re not doing anything. Especially brains consume energy, but muscle mass also costs energy. About 60 to 80 percent of the energy you consume is used to keep everything running. This is the so-called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). You don’t change this consumption without changing your weight.
In addition, physical activity naturally consumes energy, but possibly less than you would expect. Only 20 to 40 percent of the energy you use is utilized by activity. The 40 percent includes very active athletes who train intensely almost every day.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, digesting food itself also costs energy. About 5 to 10 percent of your total energy intake is used for this, although this varies by nutrient.
It should also be emphasized here that it is almost impossible to measure your exact energy expenditure without turning yourself into a lab rat. And even then, this is difficult to determine under all the different circumstances of your daily life.
To have a practical way of determining how much energy someone expends, scientists have developed various formulas over the past decades. Based on as much data as possible, these formulas try to make the best possible estimate of the ‘personal’ consumption based on easily fillable variables.
By easy variables, I mean things like weight, age, gender, height, and body fat percentage.
Step 1: Nutrition Calculator
So, first, you determine which nutrition calculator you use for your initial estimate of your consumption.
My preference is for the Katch-McArdle formula because it takes into account the ratio between fat mass and lean mass based on a measurement rather than an estimate.
More muscles consume more energy. This is therefore an important fact, especially for people who have more or less muscle mass than average. On the other hand, it means that you need to know your body fat percentage.
An alternative is the Harris-Benedict formula, which makes an estimate and does not require you to know your body fat percentage. An easier formula because you don’t have to do a fat measurement, but less accurate because it is based on averages.
These formulas only try to estimate your BMR. To also take into account your activity, the BMR must be multiplied by a factor for activity:
- Little or no training, office work — x 1.2
- Light training/sports 1-3 days a week — x 1.375
- Average training/sports 3-5 days a week — x 1.55
- Heavy training/sports 6-7 days a week — x 1.725
- Heavy daily training/sports plus physical work or training twice a day, marathon, soccer camp, competition, etcetera — x 1.9
Below you can calculate the outcome in both formulas (work with commas):
Harris-Benedict:
- Weight (kg)
- Height (cm)
- Age
- Activity level
12345 - Your BMR
- Maintenance
Katch-McArdle:
- Weight (kg)
- Fat % (cm)
- Activity level
12345 - Your LBM (kg)
- Your BMR
- Maintenance
Now you have a goal to aim for. This number is the best estimate of your consumption based on the available data and therefore also the number of calories you should eat for an energy balance. This is also called a ‘maintenance level.’
If your goal is to lose weight, you can subtract 5 to 10 percent from this, for example, for a diet aimed at gradual (and therefore hopefully sustainable) weight loss.
I often advise starting by counting the calories in your current diet for a few days, without making any adjustments. This is often an eye-opener. There is a good chance that it immediately shows a major improvement in your diet. People who struggle with weight loss and think they eat little often find out that they were simply eating too much. People who ‘struggle to gain weight’ often see that they simply ate less than necessary. So, it’s more a matter of struggling to eat the right amount of food and not how your body deals with it.
Just an Indication
Once you start making adjustments to reach your target, realize that this initial target was the best possible indication. If eating 5 to 10 percent less does not result in any results, for example, if you have gained weight after 2 months instead of losing weight, it is possible that the indication was off by 10 percent. The first few weeks should therefore mainly be a test of your data.
This may all sound very complicated (and unfortunately it is to some extent), but without such an approach, it remains a bit of guesswork. That can work fine, of course. However, if you have to maintain the motivation and discipline for a long period to stick to a certain diet, it is useful to also pay enough attention to evaluating the diet itself. There is nothing more demotivating than not reaping the rewards for your hard work.
Counting Calories with an App, Much Easier!
Fortunately, nowadays you don’t have to keep a whole administration yourself to count your calories and note what you have consumed. This used to be a difficult obstacle on which many a diet could fail.
However, nowadays there are apps that can help you with this. We are particularly proud of the Fitsociety app that we have developed for this purpose. The app contains thousands of foods with their nutritional values. This means that you only have to select a product (with or without the barcode scanner function) and enter how much of it you have eaten. The app calculates the total number of calories for you per meal and per day. It couldn’t be easier.
Macronutrients
As far as counting calories is concerned, you’re all set. Yet it’s not uncommon, for example, to eat neatly at your maintenance level for a few months and still find yourself gaining weight. This can also happen if the initial estimate of your needs were to be completely accurate in a laboratory setting. This may have to do with the sources from which you derive your energy.
There are three types of nutrients that are the main suppliers of energy to the body. These are the so-called macronutrients:
Carbohydrates: 4 Kcal per gram
Proteins: 4 Kcal per gram
Fats: 9 Kcal per gram
(Alcohol: 7 Kcal per gram)
As far as counting calories goes, you don’t actually need to know this. After all, the number of calories is stated on packaging, and for fresh products, you can look this up.
The so-called ‘macronutrient distribution’ of a diet is the extent to which energy is supplied by the different macronutrients. This is a very important fact because this energy can be used by the body in different ways. For example, a diet that is very high in fats or (simple) sugars will lead to an increase in fat mass more quickly than a diet high in proteins.
The ‘ideal ratio’ of macronutrients can also vary from person to person and depend on your goal. Normally recommended ratios for carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are, for example, 50-30-20, or 50-25-25. In the first example, this means that 50 percent of the daily energy should come from carbohydrates. Suppose you need 2000 kcal in a day (easy calculation), then you should get 1000 kcal from carbohydrates. Since 1 gram of carbohydrates yields 4 kcal, you would need to consume 250 grams of carbohydrates per day.
People who, for example, want to burn fat but not lose muscle mass are often more critical than people who simply want to lose weight. For example, by specifically reducing carbohydrates that can be converted into body fat, but still eating enough proteins for muscle maintenance.
Since the macronutrients are also included in the Fitsociety app, you can also use it to see your macronutrient distribution at the end of the day.
Conclusion
So there are many factors that determine whether you gain or lose weight, but also to what extent such a difference is in lost or gained fat or muscle mass. Some factors are not mentioned here, such as the time of eating, as this is a topic in itself.
However, by having a good understanding of your estimated expenditure, you have a good target for what your intake should be. Chances are you’ve hit the nail on the head with that. By taking the time to check your data, you reduce the chance of disappointments.
Especially when you take a step further by looking at your macros, you leave little to chance. Success or failure is then ‘only’ a matter of effort.
References
- Johnstone, Alexandra M; Murison, Sandra D; Duncan, Jackie S; Rance, Kellie A; Speakman, John R; Koh, YO (2005). “Factors influencing variation in basal metabolic rate include fat-free mass, fat mass, age, and circulating thyroxine but not sex, circulating leptin, or triiodothyronine”. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 82 (5): 941–948. PMID 16280423.
- Speakman, John R.; Król, Elzbieta; Johnson, Maria S. (2004). “The Functional Significance of Individual Variation in Basal Metabolic Rate”. Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. 77 (6): 900–915. doi:10.1086/427059. PMID 15674765.
- Diet induced thermogenesis. Klaas R Westerterp. Nutrition & Metabolism. 2004;1:
