Calorie counting, may work for a few, but how long it is questionable? It is very common that, many overweight lose weight with strict control of diet, and after some times regain that. Personally, I do like the idea of calorie counting, I feel like I am giving punishment to myself. A restricted diet doesn’t work in the long term, we have studies on that. There are few factors why does calorie counting fail in weight management in the long term.
why does calorie counting fail in weight management in the long term?
First of all, to count calories, you need to design your meals, breakfast, snack to meet the targeted calorie for each season. It is fine if you are an expert in the field. Otherwise, you need an expert’s service for the whole affair. It is a costly service and not affordable for all.
Secondly, we prefer to perform our daily activities habitually. True habits are behaviors that we can do without much effort, without much use in our cognitive brain. We all know, we need to eat healthily. But all are not working in the health area. So, if you are not working in health sector, you are not going to give much attention on that. Your lifestyle will not allow you to count calories for every meal. Rather it will demand free flow of good food without much thinking, habitual eating of good foods. Mostly you are not going to track your every meal.
Apart from that, foods need to be available to you.
Thirdly the designed diet needs to meet your emotions, stress anxiety level throughout the day. You are passing through different levels of mental states in your life every day and the designed program needs to meet at least a minimum level of satisfaction to your mental state. Only you know, what is going on in your life. If you have a list of good habits you can still make some balance even in a stressful situation.
In summary, although debates exist in most of the areas of food and nutrition, the message is very simple. Sticking to the whole foods, foods with their most natural states and say no to processed foods, food-like substances, and for most less active foods with high insulin score. You can’t aspect to be perfect. You are not able to eat some of the foods due to a health condition, it is a different matter. Otherwise, whole foods are the right kind of foods for most of us. What you are going to eat doesn’t depend only on what is available in front of you, it depends on what is going on in your life in many ways. Those are very different approaches other than direct food and nutrition and are too much to discuss in a single article. Your mental well-being, your vision in life is inextricably related to your physical wellbeing. That’s why you need a holistic approach to your overall wellbeing.
2 Responses
very nice this post
You are very welcome