Fair to say it gets a bad rap, it also has its advocates.
So why is this?
Personally, I think it comes down to the methods and mythologies of how it is implemented.
A few weeks back we were talking about balancing calories and exercise, and how knowing the baseline requirement is very important, the same is true even without the increase in training.
When we think about counting calories it’s normally
· How much is in something, shortly followed by “that’s a lot!”
· I can’t have that
There are plenty of other thoughts, however as always, lets focus on just a few.
Thinking about those items, it would be fair to say those feel like limits being placed on us or being restricted.
Let’s change the viewpoint for a moment, take a fictional baseline, say 2000 daily calories and look at a week:
Rather than a limit, lets budget those calories:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Total | |
| A | 2000 | 2000 | 2000 | 2000 | 2000 | 2000 | 2000 | 14,000 |
| B | 2000 | 1800 | 2000 | 1800 | 2000 | 2400 | 2000 | 14,000 |
| C | 1800 | 2000 | 1800 | 2000 | 1800 | 2700 | 1900 | 14,000 |
Imagining we train 3 times per week (Mon/Wed/Fri), the first option, should our personality like structure and routine, would work out nicely.
The second two focus on cycling our calories, option B looks at increasing our calories on training days, perfect for those of us who are a tad hungrier once we have trained. Option C gives us a few more calories on non-training days if we need a few more on our recovery days.
Both option B and C use those cycles to increase our available balance on the weekend, this could be a meal out etc.
Having flexibility allows us to control the overall intake but assign it based on our needs and how we operate best.
Moving onto creating a deficit, lowering our calories to lose bodyfat can be a sea of information, first off we have to know what our baseline is, how many calories on average are we taking in each day? – Doing this over a 5 day period that includes a weekend is the easiest way to get that baseline.
From here we can look into what deficit looks like, not wanting to re-visit previous topics, some apps/websites/techniques will look at the time goal, we are looking for balance and longevity which ultimately leads to success.
Try dropping 100 calories from your baseline, it’s a small amount that is not only manageable but also gives us lots of room for manoeuvre. Body fat not shifting, we can drop another 50-100 calories.
Lastly, calorie counting can have a negative effect for some of us, if that’s the case then just writing down what we are eating can help, we tend to lend a little more thought to our food when writing what we’ve eaten.
Slow and steady wins this race, heavy restriction leads to frustration and feeling punished, when we should be enjoying the process and feeling good about ourselves.
Information overload? – if you have any questions or would like some help speak to a member of Team SF on info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.