I’m willing to bet that practically every person reading this knows what a calorie is. There’s a good chance you read the labels whenever you buy groceries, or check the nutrition facts whenever you go out to eat. Or maybe, if you’re trying to lose weight, you use an app like MyFitnessPal to track totals for the day.
You’ve also likely heard how calories work: the more you eat beyond what your body needs to maintain itself, the more weight you gain. This means the obvious solution to losing or maintaining weight is to eat below the number your body needs.
Except, if it were that simple, why do millions of Americans dutifully follow calorie labels, only to maintain or gain more weight over time?
What you probably haven’t heard about is the lawsuits related to calorie misrepresentation. Or the high rate of variance in reported calorie counts.
This, in my opinion, is largely due to misconceptions about food labels and their reporting.
I’d like to take the next few minutes to show you what that is.
Article Overview
- The calorie is a century-old thermodynamics concept that is well understood in the world of nutrition science, but often poorly reflected in nutrition labels.
- Attempting to count calories may not produce results for a variety of factors, including nutritional density, individual processing, inaccurate reporting, and more.
- Rather than counting calories alone for health and weight loss, it may be easier to ‘de-process’ your diet by eating whole, real foods, prioritizing animal protein and quality fats, and reducing carbohydrates and sugar.
Why calories aren’t the most reliable metric for weight loss
The calorie is a particularly finicky unit of energy to measure, especially for a human body.
There are a few reasons why:
The calorie is a unit of heat, not food
First things first, you should know that a calorie is a unit of heat energy. Or, more specifically, it’s the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water by one degree Celsius. It was originally a concept from thermodynamics. But in the 1820s, scientists applied it to nutrition by placing food in a bomb calorimeter, then measuring the heat released.
This gave rise to the Atwater system, which is formula that gave rise to the fixed calorie value for each macronutrient:
- 4 calories per gram of protein
- 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate
- 9 calories per gram of fat
This is how food scientists reverse-engineer the calorie counts of any new food product (think: packaged pancake mix) by assessing macros from the ingredient list and placing them on the label.
But even if this was perfectly accurate, there’s a problem for the consumer: the FDA allows for a 20% variance in calorie counts for packaged foods. That means you could be tracking your calorie intake appropriately, but have incorrect numbers. Worse, you could be up to 20% off per food item.
Calorie calculations aren’t always accurately reported
As already mentioned, the FDA has a 20% margin of error for packaged foods. But this isn’t the only place where calories may be misrepresented by accident.
A 2013 study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that restaurant meals contained an average of 18% more calories than the label indicated. And that didn’t account for things like drinks, appetizers, and desserts, which could easily overthrow any careful calorie counter’s process.
And don’t get me started on how sneaky “per serving” amounts are often posted on food labels (all while declaring that a single-item product, such as a cupcake or a bottle of soda, is actually multiple servings).
Maybe you’ve seen this on a prepackaged meal box before: the nutritional information makes it sound ‘healthy,’ but when you read the fine print, you see that ‘one serving’ is not the entire product but only half, if that.
So, even if you do try to religiously track calories, there’s a very good chance you’ll be under- or over-counting due to variance in reporting and/or marketing tactics.
A calorie isn’t just a calorie
You don’t need to be a food scientist to realize that two foods can share the same calorie counts while producing completely different metabolic responses.
Think about it: 100 calories of soda and 100 calories of butter trigger completely different insulin responses, gut microbiome changes, and satiety signals. Their calorie count tells you nothing about their nutrient density, bioavailability, hormonal impact, or long-term metabolic effects.
Remember: the body doesn’t have a built-in sensor for calories. But we do have a sensor for taking in nutrients. When we don’t get enough, our health will suffer. And 1,000 calories’ worth of cookies and ice cream will never lead to the same nutritional outcomes as 1,000 calories from eggs and steak.
How then should we eat?
It’s true that eating fewer calories than you expend can help you lose weight over time, but:
- Being thin is not the same as being healthy
- Accurately counting your calorie intake is not as straightforward as it sounds, for the reasons mentioned in this article so far
So rather than tallying up daily calories or opting for low-fat and/or ‘calorie-reduced’ foods, I recommend you take a more nutrient-dense approach.
Eat whole, real foods
Whole, real foods refer to any edible item that comes from the ground or eats things that grow on the ground.
This includes foods like lettuce, berries, beef, and eggs. It also includes other items like potatoes, beans, and corn — which technically fall here, but may not necessarily be as healthful for you as other whole, real foods (we’ll get into this later).
Remember: As we’ve learned, most whole, real foods are lower calorie anyway compared to their processed counterparts. One study found that eating processed foods instead of whole, real foods decreased postprandial (post-eating) energy expenditures by nearly 50%. In the researcher’s words:
“This reduction in daily energy expenditure has potential implications for diets comprised heavily of PFs and their associations with obesity.”
Thus, if you eat less processed food and more whole, real options, you have a much higher chance of losing and maintaining your weight.
Opt for protein and fat
On the protein side of the equation, aim for animal meat, particularly ruminants (aka, hooved creatures). Beef, bison, venison, and goat meat are some of the best options around. Seafood is also a close second.
For fat intake, prioritize animal fats or liquid oil options like:
- Avocado oil
- Olive oil
- Coconut oil
And contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to worry about saturated fats. Quality animal fats like butter, tallow, and lard aren’t the heart-damaging compounds most old science would have you believe.
Seed, canola, and vegetable oils, on the other hand, ought to be avoided as much as possible.
Learn more about what happens when these oils oxidize here.
Reduce carbs and sugar
Multiple studies have found that reducing carbohydrates can lead to better weight loss than tracking calories alone. This means that choosing a low-carb diet like keto or carnivore may actually help you lose weight more effectively than simply counting numbers alone.
Remember how I pointed out whole, real foods like potatoes, beans, and corn? These vegetables are high in carbohydrates. Some, like beans, also contain high amounts of oxalates, which are problems in and of themselves.
That’s one of the reasons why animal-based diets have such a leg up over plant-based diets.
More insights around calorie counting
We covered quite a bit of the ‘calorie iceberg’ here, but it goes further. And I certainly believe in doing your own research so you can take back ownership of your metabolic health.
You can start by reading through the following articles: