Should You Be Counting Calories?

What is a Calorie? A calorie is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, in another words a calorie is a measure of heat energy. When food is burned, it releases a certain amount of heat (energy), depending on the type of food, for example; Fat has more calories (9 calories per gram) than Carbohydrates (4 calories per gram). The more calories that are in the food, the more energy will be released when it is burned and whatever surplus energy that is not used by the body will get stored as adipose tissue (body fat).

Whatever your goal might be, be it to lose weight or gain weight, you need to count calories to reach your specific goal. If you want to lose weight then you need to be in a negative calorie balance, for example; if you require 2500 calories per day to maintain your body weight, then to lose weight you would need to lower your calorie consumption per day (negative calorie balance) and the opposite is true if one wants to gain weight. So if you do not count calories then you will not know whether you are in a negative or positive calorie balance and that’s one of the reasons why so many people go through numerous diet plans and training programs without achieving the results that they require.

Do not assume your calorie consumption, if you say to yourself that you will eat less than what you normally do so you can be in a negative calorie balance, then I have news for you, this in most cases will be disastrous because if you go too low on your calorie consumption it will send your body into starvation mode where you will plateau quickly which in turn will slow your metabolism and make it more difficult to lose weight. You will also put the weight back on and more when you start to binge, which is bound to happen on a very low calorie diet.

A very low calorie diet is not sustainable and will lead to muscle depletion, low energy levels and other ailments and injuries. The loss of muscle will result in unhealthy weight loss and a slower metabolism and this is the reason why you find a lot of people on very low calorie diets put the weight back on and a lot more.

My Advice is to get a body assessment done by a professional. The results will reveal the amount of calories you require per day to maintain your current body weight. You can then adjust your calorie intake based on that. 

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Is It Ok To Have A Cheat Day When On A Calorie Restricted Diet?

Can cheating on your diet help you lose weight?

There have been many controversies around a cheat meal or a cheat day. A cheat meal is generally a meal that you would not eat when on a diet, a meal that would make you feel guilty. I personally together would many other professionals out there know that cheat meals or a cheat day does have benefits and can boost fat loss. Cheat days also helps make dieting more bearable; imagine staying away from your favorite foods like pizza for 12 weeks? That’s one of the reasons why people cannot stay on diets for long periods.

Having a cheat day will help prevent your body from going into an adaptive state like starvation mode. Going on low calorie diets for long periods without a cheat day lowers the leptin levels in your body thus in turn slowing your metabolism. For those of you that don’t know what leptin is, let me explain; leptin is a hormone that communicates the nutritional status to your body, your body then uses this information to make the necessary changes like fat burning and metabolism. Low levels of leptin = low fat burning and metabolism and high levels of leptin = high fat burning and metabolism.

Low calorie diets will eventually lower your leptin levels which will lead to you hitting a plateau but the good news is that it takes just 1 day of cheating to bring your leptin levels back to normal thus boosting fat burning and keeping your metabolism running at its peak. So don’t feel guilty and give up on your diet because you had a cheat day.

When on a calorie restricted diet choose a day and cheat without feeling guilty but my advice is to try and keep your cheat meals to a maximum of 2 meals for that day. There are some people that have leptin resistance and this is developed in the same way that diabetics develop insulin resistance. If you consider yourself to be overly obese then there is a chance that you have leptin resistance and if that’s the case then I would suggest staying away from cheat days for about 3 to 4 weeks until your leptin resistance has been reduced.