You are what you eat, they say. It’s common knowledge that eating healthy is important, but I feel like there is a lack of awareness of what proper nutrition looks like. What makes up a good diet? Should you only watch what you eat if you’re trying to get rid of extra pounds? There are countless ways to approach nutrition, and one can get lost in its sea of possibilities — as it happened to me. I had goals to meet and no idea of how to get there, until I found an approach that worked for me. Today, I’m here to share how I learned to navigate the tumultuous waters of nutrition, its ins and outs, and the unexpected thing that kickstarted this discovery: calorie counting.
Starting off with the basics, a calorie is a unit that measures the energy needed to increase the temperature of a gram of water by one degree celsius. Your body needs energy to function, and this energy comes from the food you eat. There are ways to calculate how many calories your body needs to maintain your current weight, but the bottom line is that consuming more calories than needed will result in the body storing the extra energy, while consuming less will make the body use its energy reserves. It’s calories in, and calories out. Some foods are higher in calories than others, and while that doesn’t necessarily make them bad, it helped me realize where a lot of that extra stored energy was coming from.
I feel like calorie counting has a negative reputation for some people in general, because obsessing over calorie counts and prioritizing low-calorie food over quality, nutritious food can do more harm than good, becoming unhealthy and unsustainable. When I understood calorie tracking is a tool to know what my energy needs are and the quantity and quality I’m giving my body via food, it turned into one of the most important tools in helping me understand how my body uses food as fuel. I had tried different approaches to nutrition, but they all ended up in frustration and felt restrictive — like being placed in a cage forced to either follow the instructions or suffer the consequences. Eating healthy felt incomplete, amiss. In my heart I knew that caring for my body should feel liberating, not frustrating.
I know myself to be a person that likes to understand how stuff works behind the curtains, so I figured I could try that approach with nutrition. I wanted to understand why vegetables are so good, and why sweets and chips are not so good. My goal was to understand what I was fueling my body with, how much and what kind of energy I was feeding it, and what it was doing with it behind the scenes.
I downloaded an app called MyFitnessPal to help me track what I ate and understand the macro nutrients — the main nutrients your body needs to function properly — and the vitamins and minerals (micro nutrients) each food provides. I was surprised at how much I learned just from tracking my food the first few days. Things started to click into place. I knew veggies are good but with this method I really got why veggies are so good — they’re basically an all you can eat item on the list because of how low most of them are in calories, and how much fiber and vitamins they pack! I understood that sweets and chips are not my enemy, as long as I eat them with moderation. Anything done with moderation is fair game. I notice a huge difference in how I feel on the days I hit my macro nutrient goals — I can only describe it as smooth sailing, no sluggishness.
I stopped feeling guilty about eating the food I desired, because I am still eating the things I want by choosing wisely and being smart about the portions. I feel empowered and I am seeing results. I feel like I finally cracked the code that has personally helped me in my nutrition journey. Having a tool that lets me understand, quantify, and control what I’m nurturing my body with has been unexpectedly liberating. Food doesn’t feel like a mystery anymore, and I like that.
So, if you are feeling like trying something new for your nutrition journey, feel free to give calorie counting a go! Remember that food is fuel, and your body needs proper fuel to feel good. Personally, it has been a very rewarding experience, I know nutrition is not a one size fits all thing but just knowing that this way to go about it is valid helped me out a lot. Who knows, it might work for you too!
