Counting Calories..

If you have been following my stories so far, you shall realised one thing - I've never count my calories... input or output. Why?

Why not? I never need to.. to start with, counting calories are just too complicated, and not practical. To make things worse, we, living in Malaysia, the government doesn't put any strict rules for our food manufacturer to list the 'nutrition labels' in every food they released in the market (unlike in USA market, you can actually rely on their food ingredient list, and food nutrition list). Yes, there are some local manufacturer provides those labels, but only to those who has the ISO certification. The rest? I don't trust them.. hence, I don't rely on any of this inaccurate information to do my judgement..not anymore.

Having said that, like I've mentioned many times, focus on real whole food diet - in other words, if the food has a label, most of the times, it's not whole/real. So, best to put it back on the shelf. As Dr. Hyman had put it - Everytime you're not sure if the food is real or processed, ask yourself this question "did my great grandmother eat this back then?", if the answer is no, again, put it back on the shelf, you're better off without it.

It's true that the basic rules of losing weight is to understand the input & the output of calories. How much coming in (input), and how much it's being used (output). Simple-losing-weight-math says, if the output is greater than the input, thus it creates a caloric deficit in your body, the result? you will loose weight. That's for sure.

My problem with counting calories is.. the counting. Typical adult male needed about 1800-2000 calories a day (enough energy to get through his normal day - checkout BMR), and to loose weight, you need to be below that - around 1600 or less kilojoules only, and maintain that throughout. On days where you've exercised slightly more (the output), then you perhaps can take in (input) extra calories... well, after a gruesome 5km run, having an extra cheeseburger doesn't hurt right?.. right?

If you've been big, and trying to loose weight, still trying to achieve that set goals... then that is wrong for you. After running for 5km, you've created a caloric deficit environment in your body, what you should be doing instead is to gobble up on nutritious food to nourish your damage cells/muscles for a full recovery, and enhance your metabolism further, and quickly recover for the next run! i.e Eat lean chicken or fish or eggs, with dark leafy or cruciferous veggies, some brown rice, and fruits on the sides - btw, drinks only plain water please! That cheeseburger is nothing but loaded with high saturated fat (the burger meats), trans-fat (the meats was deep-fried?, slathered with thick layer of mayonnaise), and refined-carbs (in the buns) - all of the ingredients to keep you.. fat.

Get my drift?


Sher Khan.