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"HOW DO I KNOW
She didn't like my answer.
The fact is, there is no magic number. Sure, as a registered dietitian, I can calculate your metabolic rate using complex formulas and high-tech machines. But--I'm going to shock some of my colleagues here--I believe calorie-counting isn't useful in the long run and can even be harmful.
USEFUL IN SMALL DOSES
Watching calories briefly has its uses.
For someone who has been blissfully ignorant, keeping a food diary for a week or two can be enlightening. Most people aren't aware of the calories in everything they eat and drink.
For example, one woman I knew bragged, "I'm so proud of switching from soda to low-fat milk."
While it was a healthier choice, her portions were too big--she guzzled nearly a gallon of milk a day, providing an eye-opening 1,800 calories--almost her whole day's needs, without counting solid food. No wonder she couldn't lose weight.
So, a brief exercise in calorie-counting helped her.
But I cringe when people obsess about calories, especially folks who latch onto calorie limits and mentally berate themselves if they eat more.
Often, there are good reasons for eating more calories than they intended.
If a person is exercising hard, she may have burned so many extra calories that day that she needs to eat more to preserve her muscle strength. The body doesn't want to cannibalize its own muscles. So, through a bit of unconscious chemical wizardry, it simply makes a person very, very hungry--so hungry that it's nearly impossible to stick to a diet.
Women's menstrual cycles also throw off calorie calculations. There's a reason that women crave food in the week before the period begins: Basal metabolic rate rises by 400 calories a day.
That means that during PMS, a woman is actually burning an extra 400 calories a day while sitting still! No wonder she's hungry and has a hard time sticking to a diet that week.
DIETING DOESN'T WORK
If diets were medicines, the federal government might have banned them because the statistics are pathetic.
While most dieters lose weight in the first six months, to eventually regain that weight and more, according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dieting makes many people feel deprived and stressed--ironically making them more vulnerable to overeating. (Read more about this phenomenon in psychologist Martha Beck's book "The Four-Day Win.")
Even worse, people who diet, especially young girls, are more likely to develop eating disorders. Anorexia nervosa--voluntary starvation--and bulimia, with its insane eating binges, shame and vomiting, can be serious and even fatal.
Dieting doesn't work. But there is another way.
THE WAY OF TRUST
Eating intuitively may sound touchy-feely and unscientific, but trusting the body's feelings of hunger and fullness is based on biology.
Our bodies have a complex system to regulate weight, involving not just the stomach and intestines but potent hormones that affect the brain. We can tune up this system.
Make time to be physically active for 30 minutes to an hour each day. Get seven to eight hours of sleep to avoid hormonal changes that make you more hungry. If you have issues with emotional eating, consider counseling.
By balancing your activity, sleep and emotions, you're calibrating your body's unconscious internal calorie-counter.
Now all you have to do is eat at least three meals a day while sitting down--not watching TV or driving and not otherwise distracted. Choose small portions of mostly healthy foods. Eat slowly for at least 20 minutes.
And here's the intuitive part: Let your sensations of hunger and fullness guide your portions. You might need seconds or thirds, or you might not clean the plate, depending on how you feel at that moment.
COMING TO OUR SENSES
That last idea, about letting your sensations guide your portions, caused a stir among dietitians when I suggested it be included in a weight-loss pamphlet.
"People will eat themselves sick," one colleague said accusingly.
But several studies suggest that intuitive eating works better than traditional dieting to help people reduce stress, blood pressure and cholesterol. It's especially effective for children. If they regularly eat until they are satisfied, the urge to overeat melts away.
This sensible lifestyle has worked for thousands of years around the world.
Intuitive eating is responsible for the French paradox, in which French people eat rich cheeses and buttery dishes yet remain slim. It works in Greece, the birthplace of the famous Mediterranean diet. It works in Okinawa and Latin America and anywhere people are active, eat slowly and balance mostly wholesome foods with occasional rich treats.
Worldwide obesity rates are rising as people dine more like Americans--eating fast food while driving, and not walking or exercising.
Deprivation diets don't work--they cause rebound weight gain.
Luckily, moderation is not only more pleasurable, it's more effective.
Jennifer Motl welcomes reader questions via her Web site, brighteat ing.com, or mailed to Nutrition, The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401.
Jennifer Motl is a registered dietitian. Formerly of Fredericksburg, she now lives in Wisconsin. |
