Why you are not a calorie machine!
I’m commonly asked how many calories should I be eating? What should a portion of this or that weigh? Should I follow the portion specified on the pack?
If these are questions that weigh heavily on your mind, the truth is very likely to disappoint you –
There are no set calorie measured portion sizes that we ‘should’ be following, as the diet industry would have us believe. Counting calories is a fruitless exercise that keeps us stuck in an endless cycle and promotes the development of an unhappy relationship with food.
The fact is we all require significantly varied amounts of energy. For each individual, this will differ from day to day and from person to person will depend on their age, height, weight, gender, lifestyle and many other factors. Even two people of the same height and age may have vastly different calorie needs.
To understand this further lets looks at how we burn our energy:
~The energy we need to stay alive uses approximately 70% of our daily calories and depends on the amount of muscle and fat we have, our age, our gender and our genetics.
~To process our food, we burn around 10% of our daily calories (yes that much!) and depends on the amount we eat, the type of food and our genes.
~Our daily activity uses in the region of 15-30% of our daily calories. This will depend on the type, duration and intensity of activity and our body weight. There are many advantages to exercising but going to the gym to compensate for eating a ‘forbidden’ food is not a helpful strategy. You would need to run about 11 miles, for example, to burn off the energy in a large bar of chocolate. It is always better to eat a balanced diet without depriving yourself of essential nutrients and exercise moderately.
~And although our liver and brain make up only a small part of our body weight; they each account for one fifth of the calories we need to stay alive. Added to this, we burn a significant amount while we are asleep because our heart keeps beating and our organs need to keep on working throughout.
The answer lies in – not spending wasted hours trying to calculate your calories burnt and totting up the value of calories in foods (which can never be accurate by the way)– but learning how to become present with your body’s own innate hunger, fullness and satiety signals.
I work with women who are done with the never-ending cycle of calorie counting, food anxiety and yo-yo dieting and are ready to build a happy relationship with food and their body
If you would like to ditch yo-yo dieting, binge eating or emotional eating for good and create everlasting change in your life, I warmly invite you to book in for a free call HERE to see if a personalised one to one programme with me is for you and how I can help.
Alternatively, you can put your name on the waiting list for when the doors re-open to join The Food Freedom Method – 8 week coaching programme.
Click the button below to find out more and reserve your place on the waiting list.