Counting Calories For Weight Loss – Overestimate to be Sure
A comment I received from Kenneth in an earlier post brought up a very good point about calorie counting.
Don't Kid Yourself, There are More Calories In Your Food Than You Think!
Kenneth brought to my attention a new study done at tufts university that analyzed some commercially available foods (from restaurants and grocery stores) and compared how many calories that were stated on the label vs how many calories were actually in the food.
At this point I haven’t had a chance to pull the full article and analyze their methods but if this study is a well done piece of research (which I have no reason to believe otherwise) then this is an eye opening tidbit of information.
I always tell people to overestimate the amount of calories they’re consuming because most of the time you’ll be forgetting about something you ate or drank throughout the day. Most people can’t even remember all the items they’ve eaten within the past 24 hours (let alone how many calories were in them). So it’s pretty clear that keeping an accurate record of calories consumed is very difficult if you flat out forget entire meals and snacks that you’ve consumed.
As far as food labels go, you have to keep in mind that they are an ESTIMATION of total calories and not exact numbers. Commercially available items and restaurant serving sizes aren’t standardized right down to the exact calorie. There will always be some margin of error.
If they always err’d on the lighter side we wouldn’t have much to worry about, but unfortunately that’s not how it works. If anything they are an estimation and an average. Some items might be lower and some might be higher. And as this study is indicating some of them are WAY higher.
Take the calorie count on your labels as an estimation only.
I actually did a little experiment like this with Brad Pilon a while ago. We went to our local grocery store bakery and bought a 6 pack of muffins. The label on the package gave a complete calorie and nutrient break down per muffin. But when we opened the package and weighed the muffins we found a 25% degree of variance in their weight.
In other words, some of the muffins were almost 25% bigger than the others. This would also mean some of them had 25% more calories.
The point is labels are a guideline and are never 100% accurate. Without measuring all of the ingredients in every thing you eat and preparing it yourself you can never be 100% sure of the calories in it.
The best you can do is follow the labels as a guideline or estimate of how many calories are probably in that food.
And just to be safe, always assume there is MORE calories in everything you eat. This way even if the labels are underestimating you will be compensating for it with an overestimation.
John
14 Responses to “Counting Calories For Weight Loss – Overestimate to be Sure”
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January 14th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
I always assumed that the nutritional reports that you find now on napkins and walls at most restaurants were a little suspect to say the least. So when I look at the calorie info, should I double it, triple it….?
January 14th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Ok here’s a question/situation for you, John!
Lets say our subject fasts from dinner to dinner. And then at the end of the fast chooses to grab a Beer and some Chicken Fries (lets say 4). This goes on for, say a week. Now, if we calculate the calories our subject has during the day equals 200 + 1000 = 1200 (rough over estimated numbers considering a beer normally is about 150 and a Chicken Wings around 180, I might be wrong). I am totally stressing on a lower over all calorie consumption, so put any food in there. And BMR normally ranges around 2000 calories/day. Now, technically the subject is totally hitting a low Calorie consumption than his BMR, even if he is feeding on Beer and Chicken Wings (amounting to around 1200 – 1500), which means he is on a smooth path on fat loss. And he could boast of ‘Dude I totally live on Chicken Wings and Beer everyday.’
My question is, except that its all junk and no nutrition, is he actually hitting that Fat Loss route? It might not be the rightest of the methods but lets say he substitutes with a bunch of multivitamins and the ilk! Will he be the owner of a Beer Belly in the times to come?
Since both you, me and a lot of others advocate the Calorie In – Calorie Out principle, this should definately NOT lead him to a ‘Dude you are so fat and you have a pot belly too’.
John, I follow your principles and I am an Intermittent Faster (3 Fasts Per Week along with 4 days of Resistance Training) so I am actually trying to clear a few confusions on my part. Actually I enjoy a lot of beer everyweek, eat just about anything ONLY stressing on the number of Calories over a period of time (a week in my case).
January 14th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Aditya,
Yes in this experiment your subject would be losing bodyfat over the course of that week. With that said they would probably get pretty sick of eating this way within a few days and want to mix in some other foods. but yes it’s just calories.
JB
January 14th, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Rahim,
My first guess is that in most cases it’s nowhere near double. But I would guess that a good 10% overestimation as a rule will probably be a safe range.
JB
January 15th, 2010 at 10:13 am
You’d be surprised how easy it is to actually weigh stuff instead of estimating how large or heavy something is.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:19 am
I have rarely met a person who is careful about calorie counting as I have been so I agree completely. Metabolic ward studies are the only ones that I take seriously right now when it comes to the reality of what happens with calories in vs calories out.
I’ve stayed within 4-5 lbs of my ideal weight for the last 20 years. This is not because I don’t get hungry or ever eat junky foods. I have simply deliberately paid attention to what I’ve eaten in terms of calories by using a food scale and if my weight started to creep up, I would shave off a set number of calories a day and lose about 1 lb a week. Now I use intermittent fasting if my weight has crept up a couple of lbs, but I still count calories in between because when I don’t, I gain weight because eyeballing is too error prone!
I have tried a number of ways of eating (vegetarian, low fat, high protein and now more of a Paleo diet) so the foods I’ve eaten have been different in my life, but it’s always the same thing – the calories are what make the most difference to my weight. Exercise can too but only when I’m doing a LOT of it of course. At the most, being super active allowed me to eat maybe 400 calories more a day which helped.
Most people are not willing to count calories carefully, or they *think* they are doing it because they look up foods in a calorie book. Sure, even when weighing foods and using calorie books there will be some margin of error or a difference (for example, some apples may have more water than others per oz, etc) but if you aren’t eating processed or restaurant food very often, then it’s a lot easier to come closer to more accurate numbers.
Most people will say, “I can’t do that. That would be too much work.” Yes, it takes some care, but it’s worth it for me because I easily could have gained too much fat and thus would be on the extreme diet rollercoaster that most people seem to get on, had I not been careful about counting. Maintaining fat loss is not a breeze. There can be discomfort at times. Even during fasts, sometimes I feel bad for a couple of hours, but I’m willing to feel a bit bad for a couple of hours once a week during a 24 hr fast compared to how bad I would feel if I gained a lot of fat and had 10 or more lbs to lose.
One thing I want to note, from experience and research, is that If a person has food allergies/intolerances sometimes a side effect is edema, and if those foods are eaten consistently the edema will remain and seem like extra fat (a common allergy that can lead to edema is one to dairy products. I’m sensitive to dairy sadly – eating cheese, for example, even the best organic cheese, can result in 1-2 lbs of extra weight due to water). Higher carb diets (or days) can do that to, but aside from that, and the *rare* times that someone truly has a severe metabolic disorder, it seem to be about calories more than anything else.
January 15th, 2010 at 11:27 am
** Just wanted to add that with edema, the extra water usually doesn’t add more than 10-15 lbs to someone’s weight, so omitting the offending food(s) from one’s diet does not solve obesity, of course.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Great post, Lillea.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Lillea,
Great post. Everyone reading should pay attention to what Lillea just wrote.
Thanks again!
JB
January 16th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Hey, I was wondering how you feel about post/pre workout nutrition.
Also when does juvenile muscle start to decrease?
One last question, I am currently losing weight using ESE, and wonder if there’s a specific formula to how low my weight will have to be to see my abs etc. I am 6?2, 184 lbs and not there yet. I know in podcasts you said 5’9 people had to be in 160s. I’ve been 167 and never saw my abs.
January 17th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Hi I don’t know how else to get to you but I was wondering, before I actually purchase the Adonis Effect, is it possible for Everyone to reach the golden ratio for their height? For example, I’m at 1.78m height and my waist is 83cm, however my chest is at 118cm and I have been training by lifting heavy weights – deadlifts, squats, bench presses, breaking for 2 months a stretch for exams each semester in college. While I am not concerned too much about reaching the ideal waist size, I’m just wondering if it is actually ever possible for me to reach the Ideal shoulder circumference of 128cm because it seems quite a stretch to me, especially after listening to a few of your podcasts stressing on the fact that there is a genetic limit to muscle hypertrophy. I would say I am more of an ectomorph but I’m not too sure anymore when I ballooned 2 years ago at the age of 22 (and I have never exercised in my life before this time). I lost a lot of fat through cutting n weight lifting the past year but because I was working out my weight has remained more or less at 76kg. I am seriously intending to switch to your program but I need to know what to realistically expect.
Thanks for your blog and the podcasts at the Adonis Effect, I must say you remind me a lot of a lecturer who was an exercise/muscle physiologist when I was in 1st year med school.
PS: Sorry for hijacking your topic!
January 17th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Brad,
It takes time but yes I think most guys can get very close if not right on their ideal shoulder size. But it definitely doesn’t happen overnight. We’re talking about quite a bit of muscle.
JB
January 17th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Paul,
I think there is a general formula for weight vs how lean you look. Part of your weight and look will be determined by your muscle mass (which is dependent on how many years you’ve been training and the style of your workouts)…also remember that half of your total muscle mass is in your legs, so if you haven’t trained your legs seriously then you’ll end up being lighter than you probably expect.
With all of that said any formula we come up with will never be 100% accurate as a predictor. If you can’t see your abs yet, then it’s clear that you need to drop more fat. I suggest forgetting about bodyweight numbers for now.
re: Juvenile muscle. Are you asking about the time juvenile muscle ‘growth’ starts to decrease?
JB
January 17th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Yes, when does it start to decrease? I’ve seen people say if your 21, maybe big eating would still help. I am 23, almost 24 and google was no help in this question. I’ve only been training for a year, and haven’t seen much results (this is not from your program). I am stronger but don’t look it, maybe I’m carrying too much fat. Does this mean that I won’t experience the burst of muscle growth that occurs when you first start working out?
Yeah, when I was 167, I was still coming down from 273, so it was probably my lack of muscle mass from losing that much weight, and I wasn’t weight training at the time so I probably did lose some muscle in the process.
I am in the process of getting as lean as possible so I don’t need to cut down after.
Also, can you address my question about pre/post workout nutrition?