Counting Calories?

Counting calories seems to be the most popular approach for weight loss. Many clients and friends tell me about new iPhone applications they have downloaded to track their daily calories burned and consumed. “So if I burn 200 more calories then I eat today and do this every day, at the end of this week I should lose two pounds,” they say. Most doctors and registered dietitians will tell you to do the same thing. “It’s simple. Just use the calories in calories out approach for weight loss and burn more calories then you take in.”

Experts on Counting Calories?

Of course I used to believe and practice this myself. This was taught to me in college when I was studying nutrition, however, after college I continued to research health and nutrition on my own. I wanted more of an understanding of why obesity is such a problem in America. I started following Dr. Mercola who is one of the most popular holistic health doctors today. All of the information on his site I found to be very eye opening. This eventually led me to another site called Underground Wellness. The founder of UGW is Sean Croxton, who graduated from San Diego State University with his Bachelors in Kinesiology. I could relate with him because he was a personal trainer for many years; he expressed some of the same struggles that I have had in personal training and in my own health. Also, the information and beliefs he shared followed closely to Dr. Mercolas. Sean hosts one of the most popular health radio shows on the Internet. Every week he features a different guest that has expertise in different topics specifically in health and nutrition. On one episode Sean introduced a science writer and author,  Gary Taubes on the show. Taubes graduated from Harvard in applied physics and aerospace engineering at Stanford. He wrote a book called “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and recently published another called ”Why we get fat and what to do about it?” He spent over 5 years writing this. In Croxton’s talk show with Taubes, they discuss the calories in calories out approach and why its not the best to follow. Taubes explains, “that the Law of Thermodynamics supports the calories in calories out approach to weight loss but it does not explain why that happens.” He further explains, “that if you consume more than you burn or vice versa you will become larger or smaller but not necessarily all of it will be from fat.” The reason people get fatter is because the body has a disorder in fat regulation due to eating food that are high in: starchy carbohydrates and sugars. The hormone that is in charge of fat regulation is Insulin, and when you consume these foods your Insulin levels will spike encouraging the storage of fat. Avoiding or minimizing intake will greatly affect fat storage.