It would make sense that if you wanted to lose weight, reducing your calorie intake would be imperative. And in order to reduce your calorie count, you need to know how many calories you’re taking in on a regular basis. It’s simple, yet for many of us, it’s just not. 

According to experts, there’s definitely still a place for counting calories, although it’s also accurate that it doesn’t work for all of us. But if you’re trying to create a deficit in calories to lose weight, it’s important to monitor your calories or your intake in some form, says Eric Colombo, a dietitian at The Ohio State University Wexler Medical Center.

“You need to be tracking your food intake in some kind of way but that doesn’t always mean calorie counting,” Colombo says.

Read More: Is Weight Loss as Simple as Calories in, Calories out?

The Benefits of Calorie Counting

Calorie counting can be well suited for patients who need a baseline to know how many calories they normally eat and the places where they might not realize they are adding a lot of calories, like wine, cocktails, and grazing, as well as healthy but calorie-dense foods like nuts and dried fruit.

Colombo recommends doing metabolic testing to find out your personal calorie needs, so you know how much you might need to reduce in order to lose weight. And if you have a week where you lose a good amount of weight, consider replicating those meals so that you can see more success in the coming weeks. 

For calorie counting to be the most accurate, you’ll need to do it directly after you eat as well as make sure that you’re writing everything down, says Sonal Haerter, an internal medicine and obesity medicine physician at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. 

Haerter says that calorie counting is not suited to patients who have a history of struggling with any form of an eating disorder. “For these patients, it can trigger obsessive behaviors and create anxiety around food,” says Haerter.

Keeping a food journal with a pen and paper is the old-school way of calorie counting, followed by looking up the calorie count online for the foods you eat. A number of apps, including MyFitnessPal and CalorieKing, can also help you keep track of the foods that you eat on your smartphone.

Mindful Eating and Portion or Ingredient Control

If counting calories isn’t for you, consider other approaches like mindful eating. Here you utilize a hunger scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being famished and 10 being full. Try to eat when you’re at a 4 until about a 6, says Colombo.

You can also look at your portions, understanding that your stomach is only about the size of your hand, and portion size is often much smaller than you might imagine. Vegetables should take up half of the plate, protein a quarter of the plate, carbohydrates should take up a quarter of the plate, and high-fat foods should take up a smaller portion at the center of the plate. Or consider that fat should be about the size of dice, vegetables as big as a baseball, and protein and carbohydrates as big as a deck of cards. This can help you keep calories in check without counting them.

Beyond Counting Calories

It’s also helpful to make sure that you’re logging your hydration, even if it’s water and doesn’t contain calories, because hydration can often mask itself as hunger. “If you’re not drinking enough water, you might be sensing that as hunger,” Haerter says. 

Also, consider logging emotional eating. “Were you really hungry, or were you just trying to fill that void?” Haerter says.

And what about the times when you find yourself the most susceptible to eating when you’re not hungry? For example, if you’re more likely to overeat when you’re sitting in front of the television, consider setting the table for all your meals so that you can really pay attention to your body’s hunger signals.

Losing weight is all about remaining mindful of the calories that you’re eating, and for most of us, reducing calories can’t be done unless you know how many of them you’re taking in. So, one way or another, intake and portion control are important if you’re looking for the scale to tick down. 

This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.

Read More: Food Can Trigger Positive and Negative Emotions — Here’s How To Regulate It

Article Sources:

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

• Eric Colombo, a dietitian at The Ohio State University Wexler Medical Center

• Sonal Haerter, an internal medicine and obesity medicine physician at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona

• Mayo Clinic. Portion control for weight loss

Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She’s also a candidate for a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University, (expected graduation 2023).