Anonymous Story

It's Okay to Count Calories

From personal experience, calorie counting as a concept has been incredibly divisive. Some people think it’s the root of disordered eating, a loathsome product of diet culture. Others just think of it as a key tool in achieving control and peak performance. There are hard-liners in each camp. If you have a history of disordered eating related to calorie-counting, my condolences, this think piece is not for you. This is for everyone who may be on the fence or those who want to have greater control over their health.

Objectively, counting one’s calories is really just eating, with extra steps. In itself, calorie counting will not make you anorexic, it will not make a successful cut-cycle. Done right, it will simply tell you how many units of energy you have consumed for the day. What makes it so polarising is how people react to this new awareness. To beginners, it is jarring to know how much energy there is in a tablespoon of oil, or in a piece of cake, or in a cup of rice.

It would be easiest for me to take a completely neutral stance on calorie counting. To be clear, I really do believe in personal autonomy, if you truly have no desire to know what you are putting into your mouth, no one should force you to read a label. (Ironically, no one wants to be the person blocking up the supermarket aisle reading the back of boxes. There appears to be societal pressure to appear ‘nonchalant’ while grocery shopping, God forbid you want to know how much sugar there is in your cereal.) However, in this current environment, I find myself unable to advocate for pure ignorance. Especially if you have a goal to lose weight, or to achieve a certain physique. Although it may ‘trigger’ you, although it may feel “bad” to find out that a single typical ‘digestive’ biscuit has almost the same amount of calories as a medium-sized head of broccoli—I would argue that you would be better off knowing.

Sure, it is true that sometimes counting calories can spiral into something monstrous, obsessive. But you don’t need to count calories to be obsessive over weight loss. Some say that counting calories actually inhibits weight loss since some people just eat more if their budget allows it—experience will vary from individual to individual. I’m not advocating that you count them every single day, but I think it would be good if you knew what your average day of eating looks like. Calorie-counting has its risks, but I would recommend doing it once in a while, for a single day so you know what your eating habits are like. For beginners—don’t let personal accountability and the pursuit of your health goals be defeated in the name of ‘ignorance is bliss’.