Calories for Weight Loss
Although most people realize how important are calories for weight loss, few are able or willing to guesstimate correctly their intake when it comes to their favorite foods.
Let's face it, when you see that triple-chocolate mousse cake topped with caramel in front of you, the last thing in your mind is to count calories for weight loss. And the same lame pattern goes with pretty much everything you eat.
It's hard to say no when we are surrounded by all these modern foods that are purposely created to cause a burst of sensation that is unmatchable by any natural food.
We are all hard-wired to crave them because they contain a fatal combination of fat, simple sugars and salt that we are genetically designed to love.
I'm sure that you don't need to read any mainstream diet plan to realize that you should eat your veggies. You know that already, and the cliché about your grandmother who was right is not even funny.
Yet, most of the time, we tend to ignore this information (or apply it only for a short period) because the emotional parts of our brain constantly undervalue the future – life is short, and we want pleasure now.
Eventually, you will put your vegetables in the freezer, only to find them early in January when you make your new year resolution.
Nowadays, these tasty foods are so cheap and easy to get that they became the staple of our modern diet.
Whether is Burger King, Cheerios or Snickers, they are all packed with fats, sugars and salt, and for this reason gorging a substantial amount of calories doesn't have anything to do with your physical hunger.
Furthermore, food creators are well aware that most of us tend to ignore any nutrition information, and consequently their portions became bigger and bigger. But this is quite normal for most of us because we all want as much added value as possible for our dollar.
Truth be told, this added value will go right in your belly fat because you will grossly underestimate your calorie intake. So instead of being stingy, think if you really need that much food.
The miraculous solution to this vicious circle usually comes from the one million and one diet plans available, which promise you weight loss without any calorie restriction. But when something sounds too good to be true, it's usually a lie, and the same goes with these diets.
In fact, all of them impose the same kind of stupid rules that will inevitably make you eat less for a short while, but will screw you up in the long term.
These gurus typically bring at the table carefully cheery picked studies in an attempt to make you believe their fallacy, and make you buy their future book which is as useless as their first one.
In reality, you can't just pretend that the modern delicious foods don't exist. Be realistic, you are in the twenty-first century, not in paleolithic. You may eat (and maybe act) like a paleo behemoth for a while, but soon you will give up, and revert to your ordinary habits.
It's important to mention that your anticipatory pleasure, which is correlated with the dopamine levels in your brain, increases drastically when you experience a restriction or poor availability of something.
In your case, this “something” would be the chocolate mousse cake from the first paragraph. And if you still believe that this is not applicable in your case, you are simply wrong. You are no paleo warrior; you are just a regular guy/gal who was brainwashed.
When it comes to anticipatory pleasure, although we assume that we are rational, most of our decisions are taken by our emotional brain. Therefore, restricting a certain food or macronutrient makes sense in theory, but it's not a realistic way to change your lifestyle.
Calories for weight loss: Putting it all together
You realize how important are calories for weight loss, and this is great. But remember, there are no bad or good foods. Everything depends on the context, so don't deprive yourself of anything.
For example, you need lots of simple sugars right after workouts to replenish your glycogen stores. Also, adding some fat wouldn't be a big deal, especially if you had a pre-workout meal.
By changing the timing of these calorie dense foods according to your needs, you will control your diet and not the other way around.
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