Can One Really Accurately Count Calories?

Hiking Forest Trail in Montana September 2010 (Ranch 63 Vacation)

My weight loss as of today stands at 18.5 lbs since the beginning of the year. I'm keeping pace at the recommended 2 lbs per week loss through calorie counting and exercise as I've blogged these past few weeks. My strategy on the calorie counting is to just count the food calories I consume and not take into strict account the exercise calories I expend. My goal is to have a weighted moving average that stays around 1800 calories per day. The following chart shows my daily ups and downs but the trend stays pretty steady around 1800 calories. Almost every peak on the chart occurs on Saturday or Sunday.

Counting food calories today, with the help of Google (or your favorite search engine), is easy, if, and only if, you believe and trust the data presented in the search results or approach results variability in a consistent way. I say this because for every food search I conduct, I find multiple different values at different weights. For main ingredients, like specific cuts of meat or pasta, etc, the calories specified usually remain consistent per ounce or per gram across various sites. But when one starts searching for complete recipes, the numbers given become increasingly less consistent.

There are a few ways to deal with varied values. One is to be optimistic and consistently choose the lower values. Another is to be pessimistic and always choose the larger values for a given food, and a third way is to choose something in the middle. I tend to do the latter, often adding a fudge factor to get closer to the larger pessimistic value. Even though I say I do this because I would rather overestimate than underestimate calories consumed, my optimistic nature results in choosing a middle value rather than the largest possible (pessimistic) value.

In the long run though, the progress of my weight loss over time confirms that I am being consistent in keeping my calorie count below that needed to maintain (or gain) weight. If you track calories and you're not loosing weight, then you may be choosing to underestimate the weights/quantities of food you're eating or you may be using unrealistically low values provided by search engines. For the former, it would be wise to actively weigh and measure food quantities consumed. I found myself completely surprised at how little food makes a "portion" as stated in recipes and food labels for calorie quantities.

The second part of calorie counting consists of tracking calories burned. I choose to ignore those explicitly, but implicitly I know that I burn some calories at rest, during my walks, and during Kettlebell exercise sessions. Also, when I'm gardening or constructing ranch outbuildings, I know that I've burned a significant quantity of calories. Today, I stomped, twisted, yanked, and pulled my way through 1-1/2 hours of broadfork bed preparation which produced sore muscles, elevated heart and respiration rates, and a sheen of sweat. If that ain't burnin' calories I don't know what is. Although I don't strictly account for the burned calories, I do allow myself to not feel too guilty with weekend food calorie spikes when I offset consumption with heavy gardening exercise.

So even though it may not be possible to accurately count calories, one can reach their goal by applying a consistent approach to tracking calories, combined with observing feedback of weight gain or loss achieved over time.