Is Calorie Counting The Most Effective Method To Lose Weight?

When you think of diet meal plans to lose weight, the thought of calorie counting will probably come to your mind. It is the generally believed idea that if you take fewer calories in the form of foods and burn off more calories through physical activities, you will lose weight.

Even though this concept of being in a calorie deficit to lose weight is fundamentally correct, it does not necessarily cover for some biological and psychological concepts. To start off, it is inaccurate to say that all calories are created equal. If you were to measure the amount of energy released from taking an equal amount of calories of apple and doughnut, it is actually the same. However, you feel vastly different after taking a doughnut versus eating an apple. This is pretty much because an apple contains a lower level of sugar than a doughnut does. When you take a doughnut, you are consuming a lot of sugars, and your insulin and blood sugar levels will spike, causing your metabolic rate to slow down drastically. Subsequently, the rate at which your body can burn fats and calories will be greatly slowed down. To add on, your body will also start accumulating a lot of excess fats within your body as a way to store the excess energy provided by the huge amounts of refined sugars found in the doughnut. You will also feel hungrier after eating the doughnut as well as crave more sugary foods. This will then go into a vicious cycle. On the other hand, if you were to take that apple instead, none of this will happen.

Therefore, even though two foods may contain the same amount of calories, they will affect your body in very different kinds of ways. Taking foods high in sugar content will definitely cause you to gain weight quicker, while taking natural and unprocessed foods like fresh fruits, vegetables and lean cuts of meat, you will be better able to lose weight!

In a nutshell, it is important to understand right now that what you eat is much more important than how much you eat. If you can change the types of food you eat, you will be able to break out of that vicious cycle where you will continuously crave for more sugary foods and keep growing fatter. By changing the foods you eat, you can even eat 'more' than usual amounts of food without becoming fat!