Top 5 reasons you should stop counting calories

Top 5 reasons you should stop counting calories
 
A lot of people are using my fitness pal and other tracking apps to make sure they aren’t eating too much to make sure they hit a certain macro target or targets, which is incredible as people can see just how much they eat, what foods contain a lot more calories than they thought.
 
I can be a great way to teach you about balance and it’s how I start almost all my clients off on their nutrition journeys, however, the goal is to get them off from using it as soon as possible, here are the reasons why!
 

1. It takes some of the pleasure and fun from eating - when you go out for a meal the last thing you want to do try and work out how much food your eating, every meal you have to scan and portion, everything you want must be tracked, someone birthday in the office and get a muffin? Tracked! Someone buys you a latte? Tracked!
2. It can develop some disturbing behaviours of people where if they can track the food they won’t eat it, there is even a new eating disorder because of these apps where people become so obsessed with tracking it becomes unhealthy.
3. The act of tracking itself doesn’t actually teach you anything, you need someone to help guide and teach you how to then get away from tracking and weighing everything
4. You don’t have to only track and log everything you need to weigh all your food, you need match the labels to the app, you need to double and triple check otherwise you might then log it wrong and either massively under or over eat – which then reinforces the obsessiveness of the app.
5. The last thing about them is just the act of tracking itself, being really hungry or thirsty and having to then wait while you log it in to your phone and if the food itself isn’t in the app having to then wait even longer before you can eat it to make sure you get all the ingredients in the right quantities, a lot of people track at the end of the day and can miscalculate by up to 500 calories per day, so you have to track as you go to get the best results.

 
So there you have it, the pain of tracking is hard, Personal trainer will make it sound easy, we have time to do it, we eat similar things every day, we tend to have good habit building abilities, to get a Mum to track would be pointless, kids running around and fighting and slamming doors and all sorts a mum isn’t going to get her kids to sit down while she tracks, young kids don’t work like that unfortunately.
 
The apps can be incredible for some people but definitely shouldn’t be long term use, they are a great starting tool to be weaned off, so you know roughly how much you eat, roughly how much protein, carb and fat there is in foods, how many calories are in foods etc and used as a tool for learning.
 
Hope this helps! Make sure you check out the 3 ways I can help you get in shape and feel sexy and confident again!