Stop Counting Calories, Dummy!

Open up almost any health magazine and read the tips on losing weight. I bet almost every writer in there subscribes to the idea that as long as you burn off more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. This is only part of the big picture. It's really not very helpful to think this way. If you do, you will end up counting all the calories you consume and burn and wonder why you're not losing that 2 pounds a week your diet journal tells you you should be losing. Who has time to do all the calorie counting nonsense anyway? It's very stressful. The reason it doesn't work is because you're body is far more complex than you can even imagine.

There are roughly 50 trillion cells in the human body. 50 trillion! Millions die every minute only to be replaced by another similar cell. It's just staggering to think about. All of those tiny little cells in your body don't know you and don't give a damn about you. They're all as stupid as can be. Even the one's in your brain are dumb. Despite the stupidity of these cells, as a team, they make one remarkable walking, talking, breathing organism. One that can ride bikes, blog on the internet, and drive a car.

When we think about the body, we don't think of it as a decentralized network of cells all looking out for themselves. We think of our body more as a machine when it is anything but. Just think of the language we use when we talk about it. We call food "fuel" as if it's a gasoline powering an engine somewhere in your body. Your body is not like a car or any other mechanism. It is a complex organism that is the product of millions of years of evolution.

It's helpful to know this if you want to be healthy. After you discard the old machine model of the body you can start to think of it as an organism. You are an organism that needs to eat the right foods and exercise to balance all those hormone swimming inside your bloodstream. That's the key to all of this. It's about the quality of food you take in that will manage your weight not the quantity.

You won't lose weight at the rate you hope to if you merely count calories and don't consider the quality of the food you eat. If you eat 2000 calories worth of Twinkies and Pepsi every day, chances are you will gain weight. But if you eat 2000 calories of lean meats and veggies every day you will most likely lose weight. Same amount of calories, different outcome. Why is this so? It's because the lean meats and veggies won't disrupt the delicate balance of hormones your body as been accustomed to for thousands of years. Twinkies, soda, grains, legume and other foods of large scale agriculture are completely foreign to your ancient body and will raise your insulin to levels that it is not used to. Humans and our predecessors have never been exposed to the absurd amount of carbohydrates that we are just surrounded by.