It's even harder for fruits and veggies - if there are 110 calories in a banana, how big is that banana? With so many different sizes, each is going to have a different amount of calories. For instance, if you're looking up the calories in a half-cup serving of rice, that number will be different if the rice is cooked or uncooked. While there are several online directories of calorie counts for foods, getting precise numbers is still not straightforward. For starters, it's hard to know how many calories are in the food you're eating. Tracking your calorie intake accurately is notoriously difficult.
Hazards can arise when calorie counting, so it's important to be aware of the potential dangers and warning signs to look out for.
This is not to say calorie counting can't be useful, but it depends on the individual - including their health history and emotional relationship to food and their body. For some, it's been linked to contributing to eating disorders and disordered eating. Oscar Wong/Getty Images What are the potential hazards of calorie counting?Īlthough tracking daily calories can be a tool for weight loss or for making sure you're fueling your body correctly, it's not an appropriate practice for everyone. The size of produce items can change the calorie count, making it hard to accurately track calories. To find the truth, I spoke to an expert, David Gaviria, a doctoral student in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Depending on where you look, research can rebuff or affirm the effectiveness of calorie counting. Self-proclaimed health experts on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok say that weight loss boils down to calories in versus calories out.
Like with many trends that emerge in the health and wellness realm, we need to critically evaluate both the promised benefits and the potential hazards. But is calorie counting really a healthy practice? Apps like MyFitnessPal and Noom built their brands around determining exactly how many calories were in that Starbucks Grande Vanilla Latte (250) or that banana you had for breakfast (105) for the stated purpose of helping users lose weight or make changes to their body shape by maintaining a calorie deficit. I was eager to make changes to my body shape and improve my health, and I'd read that calorie counting was the best method.Ĭalorie counting has often been considered an effective way to quantitatively measure your nutrition. There was a time in my life when I wouldn't eat a meal without carefully documenting exactly how many calories I was consuming and how many I had left over for the rest of the day.
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