Calories. To count, or not to count...
The whole calorie on menus furore. Yup… agree. Overall, not helpful.
This is my worry you see... A big ‘trustworthy’ establishment saying “Check your calories. End of comms.” It’s only ¼ of the picture. It’s misleading. It’s wrong. It's potentially dangerous. It’s clouding the truth, again. It’s leading to new and unhealthy food obsessions and it’s a trigger to those who already pain themselves with calorie counting.
If your simply focus on achieving a calorie goal, you are neglecting nutrition. You can keep hitting your 1500 calories like this: a bowl of coco-pops, a meatball marinara subway and a bottle of white wine, which will be amaaaaazing for a moment, but then it will inevitably lead to a total erosion of your body and mind. #Drama
Personally, I believe you should know quite a bit about a what you eat. We spend a lot of time dissecting and analysing the behaviours of others… Their relationships… their jobs… their social lives and their diet and exercise habits especially. But do we ever think to spend any such time on ourselves, understanding what makes us tick (literally)? Nope. Not as far as I can see. Quite sad that, isn't it?
If you need to lose weight, or put on weight, then I do believe counting calories, IN THE INITIAL STAGES, is often essential. But you also need to learn a little about what good nutrition looks like. I.E How you’re going to consume your calories. You should know a little about what macros are too. (Not telling you what these are, go nerd-up!) All this information offers clarity, instead of fumbling around in the dark for the answers. Then, after a while, eating well becomes intuitive and you won’t need to track and count. This is how I run successful weight loss clubs: We shed light over everything, find the problems, remove the problems and replace them with good behaviours. Obviously, it takes time and practice, but we always get there.
If you want to get good at anything, you need to learn about the subject matter (that be YOU by the way) - thoroughly. The better informed you are, the better your decision making will be and you absolutely won’t need to reference anything other than how you feel in that moment.
Basically, it comes down to better education about 'all this stuff' from a very young age. It could easily be integrated more in to the sciences couldn't it? Golly... I'm sounding really old!
P.S My kids are discouraged from saying "Oh my God" so we're a "Gosh" or "Golly!" gang now
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