How To Stop Yourself Counting Calories Obsessively: Life After Apps
You might think that my choice of image for this article is an odd one.
But by the end of you reading this, I promise it will become clear.
I am writing this because I got this gorgeous question from one of my one-to-one clients on the Strong and Confident Program.
Firstly, the fact that my client feels like she is personally battling this, means that there are probably millions of others out there battling with it as well.
It’s normal to feel scared about wanting to stop counting calories.
So my first point is, if you are here reading this, you are not alone.
You are here because you are struggling, and you want to find a release…this Article will provide that release from counting calories obsessively.
An awful lot of people when they are struggling feel lonely.
So please don’t.
To help stop you from feeling lonely, it would be awesome if you wanted to become my friend.
As your friend, I will send you some things. Links to my podcasts, an opportunity to work with me, some educational material, and a few books. and workout programs and probably the odd story about me, and my cats Nala and Simba.
If you want to chat more, please just send me a friend request by filling out this form:
My face now we are friends:
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR: How To Stop Yourself Counting Calories Obsessively: Life After Apps
Does Calorie Counting Work?
Should You Stop Counting Calories?
Strategies to manage Calories Without Calorie Counting
The Process Behind Stopping Calorie Counting
A Little Pep Talk
You can listen to the audio version of this Blog Post on my Podcast: The Fitness Solution
You can watch the video version of this Blog Post on my YouTube Channel:
Does Calorie Counting Work?
It wouldn’t take you long to flick through my Blog Posts and see that I regularly give out advice to help people learn how to manage counting calories and how to make it more effective.
This is because if your goal is weight loss or weight gain - counting calories can work.
But that doesn’t mean it will always work.
And it doesn’t mean that it is the best strategy for everyone.
If you look at the titles of my posts:
It would be fair to assume that I am indeed in favour of this as a strategy. But if you read the posts and look deeper, you will see the great variance and nuance in my message around Counting Calories and their relative success for you in your Weight Loss goals.
This morning I was talking to a Physician who specialises in Type 2 Diabetes Healthcare - and we got into a glorious discussion about what is optimal healthcare for these clients.
The conclusion we both had was:
You have to let the person decide what science you are going to use.
There is Science out there that clearly shows Calorie Counting can help manage body composition [1]:
“Over 3 times as many Consistent Trackers as Inconsistent Trackers achieved ≥ 5% weight loss at 3 months (48 vs. 13%) and at 6 months (54 vs. 15%; ps < .001). Though causality cannot be determined by the present study, tracking weight and/or diet nearly every day [on a Commercial App] per week for 12 weeks a commercial app may serve as an effective strategy for weight loss. Strategies are needed to promote greater consistency in tracking.”
There is also science that shows truly how damaging counting calories can be. Damaging for a relationship with food, relationship with body image, relationship with social occasions - and this damage is real - I’ve worked with more than enough people to know that to be true.
This study [2] analysed 5.5k posts on community forums and three mobile food journals in relation to the difficulties with food tracking.
It found posts summing up these emotions of those who engaged in this behaviour:
Food journalers report feelings of shame, judgment, or obsession associated with current designs. P6 reported journaling “made me feel guilty sometimes”, while P27 noted a lack of positive feedback: “I always felt guilty when I ate too much, and there wasn't that much pride when I was under my goal.”
“Sometimes I feel like not logging things because I know it’s really unhealthy”
”It made me too focused and obsessive about what I was eating”
“It was more of an on the way to an eating disorder thing than anything else (tried to keep calories extremely low)”
“I think I was hesitant to do the logging if not alone”
“I had more of a problem with eating out at a friend’s house because I didn’t want to ask for ingredients or mention that I was logging calories”
Many of those feelings I can imagine you relate to. Which is why you are here.
The great tragedy in all of this is that my dear friend, “the fitness industry” has painted this as a black and white scenario.
Counting Calories = losing weight. Regardless of the cost.
And with all behaviour there is a cost attached - and you must always ask yourself when engaging in behaviour whether the cost is worth it.
But the good old “fitness industry” doesn’t tell you this. It doesn’t understand that everybody is different and you need a unique path for you.
It just draws a line from where you are to where you want to be and expects you to follow it.
Counting Calories has worked for many people. If it didn’t Under Armour would never have bought My Fitness Pal.
But its greatest failure is its inability to screen its users to actually check to see whether or not they should be counting calories.
Because there is a whole host of people, people more than likely just like you, who should not have engaged in tracking calories, to begin with.
So here I am. A humble fella with just his keyboard as his weapon to try and help you reverse that damage and show you a way out of this tunnel you feel like you are in.
Take my hand… Let’s find you a way out.
Should You Stop Counting Calories?
As I mentioned previously, many people can count calories and use it as a perfectly decent way to manage their intake.
But many others cannot.
This doesn't mean that one person is superior to the other, it simply means that there are no black and white rules in fitness, other than you must always treat each and every case on its individual merits.
This also doesn't mean that if you don’t count calories, you can’t achieve your goals.
Believe me, you really can. In fact, I would say 80% of my clients on The Strong and Confident Program don’t count their calories, and we manage their nutritional needs in other ways - more on this later.
As I write this, it is very important to me that I am clear on who should not be counting calories, so that you can judge whether you fall into one of these categories, and can therefore learn how to move away from this obsessive behaviour.
Have you ever been diagnosed with an Eating Disorder?
If the answer to this question is yes. Then you should not be counting calories.
Period.
No ifs. No buts.
End of discussion really.
You must remember with every behaviour there is a cost attached, and the cost attached to counting calories if you have ever had a diagnosed eating disorder - or suspect you might have an eating disorder - just isn’t worth it.
It’s not worth the cost to your Mental Health and physical health.
Knowing the calories in your food is not worth the negative effects that can occur from counting calories.
This study [3] looked into this very topic and found:
“Of the app [MyFitnessPal] users, 73% stated that the app had at least somewhat contributed to their eating disorder, with 30% reporting that the app very much contributed to their eating disorder. Additionally, the more likely an individual was to report that usage of the calorie tracker had contributed to their eating disorder, the more likely they were to have higher eating disorder symptoms”
If you are already susceptible to an eating disorder, tracking your calories is only going to re-open that pandora’s box again.
And believe me, no physique goal is worth that.
Are you a perfectionist?
If you have perfectionist tendencies, then tracking your calories is not a good idea as it will create too much stress in your life.
Calories aren’t perfect.
The calories that are published on packets can be up to 20% inaccurate.
This study found the following:
“Measured energy values exceeded label statements by 8% on average in pre-packaged convenience meals (12), which is slightly higher but consistent with the label disparity of 4.3% in packaged snack foods. Also consistent with this study, most products in our sample fell within the allowable limit of 20% over the label calories per Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations”
Added to that, all the clever equations we use in Fitness to help calculate your Maintenance Calories, for it is from there where we can establish your Calorie Window, is just the best guess.
Figuring out your weight, height and age, and then asking you to subjectively rate your movement each week in terms of intensity is not going to be accurate.
This is why when you use many different Calorie Calculators, you get different numbers. Whether it’s the Katch McArdle Method, or the Mifflin St. Jeor neither are perfect.
This is exactly why I work with a Calorie Window with all of my clients. I don’t need their calories to be perfect, I need them to be in a range that will work.
Therefore if you are a perfectionist in an imperfect set up you will find untold stress in trying to get it right all the time.
You can’t get it right. But you don’t need to. Comprehending the imperfect system will help you be less obsessive with counting calories.
Do you feel guilty after eating certain foods?
If you can’t eat a Krispy Kreme doughnut without feeling like you have to go to the gym for an hour to “burn off those calories” then you need to start creating space between what you eat and that immediate feedback on the calories involved.
No good can come from eating something and then chastising yourself by logging it immediately, and to see that the calories are more than expected which compounds all of those feelings of shame and guilt around what you enjoyed.
Even though you see tracking and logging your foods as a way of working towards your goals, it is actually counter-intuitive if you experience this guilty feeling. This is because it will slowly rot away your self-esteem. You will feel completely undermined, and you will be left with three choices:
Spend countless hours in the gym time and time again to punish yourself for the food you ate - damaging your relationship with your body and exercise.
Stop tracking the foods that make you feel this way and therefore feel like a failure every time you have them - and be aware you are “lying” to yourself about your caloric intake - damaging your sense of self-worth.
Give up on your whole fitness journey period - again leading you down a path of feeling like a failure and thinking you will never succeed at changing what you want to change.
None of those options are ideal for your long-term success.
Do you refuse to eat when you are hungry because you are worried about going over your Calories?
Calories are a best guess.
If you are refusing to eat when you are genuinely hungry because you might be over for a day - then you have a problem.
Hunger can mean many things - not all hunger is a desire for food.
Hunger can mean you are bored, you need a hug, or you are in need of a connection other than for food.
But there is an element of hunger that is related to the need for food - if you are denying that hunger too much in order to stay within your calories, and you are doing it too often, then there is no way you will be able to keep that up.
The hunger will win - and then you will again give into that physiological feeling - perpetuating your feelings of failure either way.
Strategies to manage Calories Without Calorie Counting
You are probably sitting there thinking this all so far makes sense but how on earth do you keep working on your goals when you have no idea what your intake is?
But there are many ways to manage a calorie deficit without having to track your calories.
A Study called: The Effect of Adherence to Dietary Tracking on Weight Loss: Using HLM to Model Weight Loss over Time [3] concluded that:
“Consistent trackers had significant weight loss (-9.99 pounds), following a linear relationship with consistent loss throughout the year. In addition, the weight-loss trend for the rare and inconsistent trackers followed a nonlinear path, with the holidays slowing weight loss and the onset of summer increasing weight loss. These results show the importance of frequent dietary tracking for consistent long-term weight loss success”
However, when you look at how they were asked to track their dietary intake you find a great nuance that doesn’t involve MyFitness Pal.
They managed this long-term weight loss by:
Maintain daily food journals and physical activity records;
Reduce portion sizes;
Reduce foods high in calories, fat, and simple sugar;
Increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products;
Weigh themselves frequently and at least weekly
They each worked with a Health Coach and attended interactive sessions designed to educate them on nutrition and exercise adherence.
Strategy 1: Food Journals
The food journal in the study above could well have been on MyFitness Pal. But it doesn't have to be on there exclusively.
A Food Journal can just be writing a record of what you ate and when you ate it. No Calories but just the foods.
For example:
I chose this diary as an example because I love the “Starbucks” comment.
I do think that with Food Journals if you can also document an emotion along with the food you are eating it would be really helpful. It just needs to be a sentence, explaining how you were feeling at the time and how that led. to you eating what you had.
For example:
Porridge with peanut butter - was a little tired but wanted to have a good breakfast.
Coffee - I was tired, and I love starting my day with coffee.
Plant Kitchen No Chicken Indian Wrap - I thought this was a good lunch option, but I was a little short on time because of my work schedule, but I enjoyed it.
By doing this you begin to create objectivity between your food and emotions. You can begin to see how your emotions are impacting your food choices and the more information you gather in this way the more you can see patterns and get insights into how your emotional state affects your caloric choices.
Strategy 2: A Structured Diet
I come across an awful lot of people who use Calorie Counting as a way to try and control emotional and binge eating. But as we have seen from the studies, this can be very counterintuitive.
A lot of calories do come into your diet when:
You don’t eat because you are “busy”
You restrict too much and then binge.
This is where a structured diet will have huge benefits. The two issues are essentially the same.
Just yesterday, I had a banana for breakfast and some toast at about 07:30 am - not a huge amount of calories for me - then I didn’t eat again until I was in a restaurant at about 12:30. But by that point, I could feel my blood sugar levels dropping, I was getting anxious and was beyond hungry. The second I sat in the restaurant, before my lunch, I asked for a Croissant with Nutella in it. Just because I was ravenous.
I then ate my full lunch too.
That is an extra lot of calories that could have been managed a lot better by having a much better breakfast.
I have worked with many people who vow that they don’t eat that much, I then ask them to start eating breakfast…and they start to achieve their goals.
As this study [4] backs up:
“Eating breakfast is a characteristic common to successful weight loss maintainers and may be a factor in their success.”
When you don’t eat at regular times during the day it creates moments where you overeat at mealtimes.
By eating in a more structured way you protect yourself against that.
In many ways - you will feel like you are eating more - and yet you are actually consuming less.
How To Structure Your Diet
I have one method: 3 Meals. 2 Snacks.
Each meal must fit on one plate - as much food as you want - but it must only be on one plate.
If you have an alcoholic beverage the night before - try and take away a snack the next day - but this isn’t essential.
If you can iron out your food intake to more regular moments with food, in a structured manner your body will respond well. It will enjoy the rhythm and pattern of knowing when it is being fed, and your hunger hormones, grehlin and leptin, will respond in a much better way because they will have a structure.
Remember:
The other important aspect of structured dieting is actually spending time with your food. Don’t eat in a distracted manner, if possible. As in, don’t work as you eat, don’t watch TV as you eat, and certainly don’t scroll social media as you eat.
I fully respect and understand the issues with this advice for parents with young children - you are exempt - just do what you need to do to get through dinner.
But allowing yourself a moment of self-love, self-care and nourishment when you eat is going to help you improve that relationship with food, and will help stop the mindless eating.
It is all about being more mindful, not mindless.
Strategy 3: Five Awesome Rules For Fat Loss Life
I came up with this for my clients when I first became a personal trainer. It was more instinct than science, and since then science has very much backed up what I put in place.
These Five Rules are very simple:
Be in a Calorie Deficit
and the others help you achieve that, without counting calories:
2. Three Litres of Water A Day
3. Protein and Veggies at every meal
4. 10,000 steps a day
5. 7-8 hours of sleep a night
I explain all of them in much more detail right here:
5 Easy Ways To Do A Calorie Deficit Diet without Working Out
Or you can watch this:
Strategy 4: Portions and Food Choice
Now within 3 Meals, 2 Snacks it would be wise to still follow some guidelines for better nutrition. It’s important we don’t overthink this because overthinking this can lead you back to that desire to track what you are doing to make sure you are getting it “right”.
I recommend Protein and Vegetables at every meal.
In fact, some meals I have personally, are only protein and veggies.
You are allowed Carbs - probably more Carbs than you think you should have - in fact, Carbohydrates will be the fair majority of your diet - in the forms of Fruit, Vegetables, and Complex Grains.
Remember, no one ever gained weight from eating too many fruits and vegetables.
The fact that within 3 meals, and 2 snacks you are only allowed your food to fit onto one plate is designed to help control portions.
When it comes to Carbohydrates, portion control is the issue. They are so easy to overeat.
This is why I always recommend building your plate of food with Protein first, Vegetables second, then Carbohydrates last.
But it is also why you should make sure your food fits onto one plate because then you know you are controlling portions in a more optimal way.
When you look at the study I referenced earlier one of the points that led to more successful weight loss was:
“Reduce foods high in calories, fat, and simple sugar”
There are a number of other studies that back this up. In this study [5] participants had maintained a weight loss of at least 13.6kg for at least 1 year, and they found that:
“Successful maintainers of weight loss reported continued consumption of a low-energy and low-fat diet.”
The tasty food isn’t the Carbohydrates. It’s a very real combination of carbohydrates, Fat and Salt.
Like with potato chips. Let’s take the greatest potato chips ever made:
These have:
123kcals, 6.5g of Fat which is 58.5kcal and 14.3g of carbohydrate which is 57.2kcal.
If you want to have a bag of chips, then please do. But as you do. consider the portion size a lot more and by doing that you will naturally improve your calorie management.
The Process Behind Stopping Counting Calories Obsessively
Everything I have so far said in this article will help you stop calorie counting because it is all designed to help take your fear away.
Because I get it.
You are stuck in this loop of;
“I don’t want to count calories anymore, but I am scared of having no control over what I am doing”
And the thought of just not logging into MyFitness Pal and not tracking that one carrot and teaspoon of Hummus you ate a 20:30 when you were at a friend’s house is just too scary.
So there are a couple of things you can do to help ween yourself off tracking your calories.
Make Sure You Have A Structured Diet
I am not going to go through the structure again;
***Cough***
Three Meals, two Snacks
***Cough***
But I do want to make sure I emphasise how truly important this is to your success away from tracking calories obsessively.
Track One Meal A Day
Pick a meal - any meal - and just track that each day. Then over time, you will see that you are still making progress by only tracking one-fifth of your intake, and you will show yourself that everything else you have implemented aside from tracking food is working.
Go into an Education Mindset
I believe this should be the case for anyone who starts tracking anyway - but sadly very few people set themselves up in this manner. When you started tracking your calories, rather than using it as a way to control your intake, you should have used it as a way to educate yourself about your intake.
And this difference takes away the shame.
It adds in the aspect of investigation and exploration, two very important themes in how I work with clients.
Therefore if you are trying to stop tracking calories obsessively, give yourself a time frame of a month or two to use the tracking as a way of learning, a tool for you to create a knowledge and database in your head about what you usually eat and how that all plays into your goals.
Tracking your calories should only ever be used as an educational tool - not a tool to control you, and the more you learn the more freedom you will find over time.
Make Sure You Are Doing “The Work”
Many people use calorie counting to control their intake because it gives them a sense of working towards their goals. They almost use it as a way to make up for doing the other work that is required.
They aren’t going to the gym, they aren’t getting their steps in, they aren’t making mindful and healthful choices with their food and so they can use tracking as a way to either help beat themselves up for not doing the other work, or they see tracking their intake as “the work”.
A great way to make sure you feel comfortable in moving away from tracking your calories is to make sure that you are executing a well-thought-through plan each day that helps you move towards your goals.
I am by no means saying you can give up tracking and do nothing else and still achieve your goals. Implementing the rest of your plan will help reduce your anxiety about stopping counting your calories.
A Little Pep Talk: Life After Apps
The reason you are so nervous about giving up calorie tracking is that you are scared of undoing your progress, or not making any at all.
This comes down to a trust issue.
MyFitness Pal is very clever in the sense that it gets you to put your trust into it and you therefore attach your success to the app.
Its a very good marketing strategy. But it comes at great cost. Great cost at your relationship with food, and great cost at the expense of your confidence in yourself.
To give up calorie counting. you have to teach yourself to believe in yourself.
You have to build your confidence to be able to stand on your own two feet.
You have to trust that you are able. You have to trust that you can do this. You have to trust that you won’t “screw up again”.
And I know that you can do that.
As this article draws to an end, I want you to use this as your guide, I want you to start working on the concepts laid out in it, and I want you to start rebuilding your trust in yourself.
You deserve food freedom.
You deserve unconditional permission to eat and enjoy your food.
You deserve the balance that can be found between those two concepts and your goals. You deserve self-love and self-trust.
You deserve self-empathy and compassion.
I started this Article with a text from one of my clients who gets one-to-one coaching from me on the Strong & Confident Program.
I would also like to finish with what she put in her weekly report to me the other week.
There are four weeks between the first text I showed you and the one I am about to show you:
She has put in the work to get to this point. She has implemented behaviours and actions that have bought balance into her life.
Those behaviours have allowed her to begin to release the toxic control that counting calories can have.
Set and Keep Promises To Yourself
If you want help developing a system where you can rebuild that trust in yourself. Rebuild your confidence and develop your ability to know that you are doing the things that will work towards your goals then I would suggest starting with getting a few things written down and laid out for you immediately so that you can have a system which supports you.
It started with this Google Form right here:
The First Step To Building Your Confidence
What’s Next?
I hope you found this article useful, and that you feel a lot better about your struggles at the moment.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my work, it really does mean a lot to me to have you here.
I also have some other articles you might find useful to help you navigate scale weight and your relationship with it:
It would also be a delight if you wanted to join my Facebook Group. It’s a safe space for anyone who would like some free help with empowering their Fitness Journey. I can’t wait to have you in there.
References:
Patel ML, Brooks TL, Bennett GG. Consistent self-monitoring in a commercial app-based intervention for weight loss: results from a randomized trial. J Behav Med. 2020 Jun;43(3):391-401. doi: 10.1007/s10865-019-00091-8. Epub 2019 Aug 8. PMID: 31396820.
Cordeiro F, Epstein DA, Thomaz E, Bales E, Jagannathan AK, Abowd GD, Fogarty J. Barriers and Negative Nudges: Exploring Challenges in Food Journaling. Proc SIGCHI Conf Hum Factor Comput Syst. 2015 Apr;2015:1159-1162. doi: 10.1145/2702123.2702155. PMID: 26894233; PMCID: PMC4755274.
Ingels JS, Misra R, Stewart J, Lucke-Wold B, Shawley-Brzoska S. The Effect of Adherence to Dietary Tracking on Weight Loss: Using HLM to Model Weight Loss over Time. J Diabetes Res. 2017;2017:6951495. doi: 10.1155/2017/6951495. Epub 2017 Aug 9. PMID: 28852651; PMCID: PMC5568610.
Wyatt HR, Grunwald GK, Mosca CL, Klem ML, Wing RR, Hill JO. Long-term weight loss and breakfast in subjects in the National Weight Control Registry. Obes Res. 2002 Feb;10(2):78-82. doi: 10.1038/oby.2002.13. PMID: 11836452.
Shick SM, Wing RR, Klem ML, McGuire MT, Hill JO, Seagle H. Persons successful at long-term weight loss and maintenance continue to consume a low-energy, low-fat diet. J Am Diet Assoc. 1998 Apr;98(4):408-13. doi: 10.1016/S0002-8223(98)00093-5. PMID: 9550162.