The Surprising Problem With Calorie Counting

Make no mistake, the principles of energy balance work:

Take in more calories / energy than you expend, you gain weight. Take in fewer calories / energy than you expend, you lose weight.

However, counting calories as a way to try to know, and control, your energy intake is fundamentally — sometimes hopelessly — flawed.

For starters, you can’t really trust that the calorie (and macronutrient) numbers you see on food packages are accurate. You see, the
way they’re calculated — if they’re calculated at all — is surprisingly imprecise.

Plus, even if food package numbers were precise, once the food is cooked, or chopped, or blended, the amount of energy available for digestion and absorption changes.

Then there’s what happens once that food enters your body...

In the end, even something that seems as simple as knowing how many calories you’re taking in (and absorbing) can be influenced by dozens of unexpected factors.