Wellness
Why You Don’t Need to Cut Calories to Lose Weight
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Calories. Or what we like to call, one of the most misunderstood components of healthy living. We used to obsess over them. Counting and tracking intake to then go “burn” them off. As if they were magical little balls that disappear when we workout.
To be honest, learning to stop the counting was scary. We were surrendering a sense of control that we felt when knowing, measurably, the exact amount that came in, and the exact amount that went out. But, that apprehension and the subsequent shift was life-changing.
To feel your best, lose weight, or maintain your health goals, you do not have to be committed to the calculator. It’s more about understanding how your body digests and functions optimally, and less about looking to control and manipulate our bodies through tracking caloric intake.
Here are three reasons why you don’t need to count calories to lose weight:
Not all calories are created equal.
A hundred calories in a banana vs. a hundred-calorie snack pack are not the same. When we focus on calories, rather than value, we are shorting ourselves nutrition. When we short ourselves nutrition, we end up, well, hungry. Seems counter-productive, no?
Some foods work well together, some don’t.
Some calories are important to include for promoting digestion, upping energy, and delivering nutrients throughout our body. We need some help with the absorption of what we are eating. These factors are way more important than a bolded number on a packet (hello marketing strategy!)
Fueling your body with fewer calories can cost you more.
Our bodies are amazing—they were designed to build humans. When we fuel up with things that are hard to process and digest, it taxes our body. When we focus on calories, we risk being under-nourished and overfed. Cutting calories is not the goal, it’s omitting the calories that deplete your body and increasing the ones that nourish your body.
We get it. These tips break “norms,” but like we always say, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Not only has ditching calorie counting changed our own lives, but it’s also changed hundreds of others when they made their MOVE.
Want more healthy tips? Check out Move with Mooch and Mel, and follow them at @move.withmm on Instagram!
