Why Calorie Counting is Overrated for Women Over 50

In this episode of Midlife Mojo, host Lisa DuPree discusses the pitfalls of calorie counting for women over 50. She explores three main issues: its potential to trigger negative emotions due to past restrictive diets, the difficulty of accurately estimating calories, and the limitations of online calorie calculators. 

Lisa offers alternative strategies for achieving health and fitness goals, emphasizing the importance of nutrient-dense foods, a balanced diet, and listening to one's body. She also introduces a free Lean and Strong Jumpstart Checklist to help you build lean muscle and feel great without the stress of counting calories.

Episode Highlights:

[00:39] The Downside of Counting Calories
[01:53] Personal Dieting Experiences
[05:23] Challenges of Accurate Calorie Counting
[08:36] Focus on Nutrient-Dense Foods
[10:07] Understanding Your Caloric Needs
[14:26] Special Offer and Conclusion

Thanks for listening!

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Chapters

• 0:39 The Downside of Counting Calories
• 1:53 Personal Dieting Experiences
• 5:23 Challenges of Accurate Calorie Counting
• 8:36 Focus on Nutrient-Dense Foods
• 10:07 Understanding Your Caloric Needs
• 14:26 Special Offer and Conclusion

Transcript

Hello, hello. Welcome to Midlife Mojo - Fit and Flourishing in your Fifties. I'm your host Lisa DuPree and today we're diving into a topic that may resonate with a lot of you and that is about counting calories. So, if you've ever felt frustrated, stressed, anxious, triggered by having to calculate calories for every bite and every sip that you take this episode is definitely for you.

I'm going to be highlighting three ways calorie counting can be more detrimental than helpful, especially for women over 50 and what you can do instead to achieve your health and fitness goals. Let's dive in. 

Counting calories can be triggering for many women over 50 and that is because of our past experiences with restrictive diets. And because of this counting calorie, while effective, really can often backfire. So many of us have a long history with dieting, often starting at a young age. We've been through so many cycles of highs and lows with various diet trends from low fat. Anybody remember those devil's food snackwells from the nineties to low carb in the 2000’s where bread and potatoes were just the enemy.

And then everything in between. So many of these diets severely restrict calories or specific foods. Repeating the cycle of restriction and deprivation over and over can create negative relationships with food. And for some, just the act of counting calories brings up memories of past diets along with feelings of failure and the stress and the guilt that come along with that.

If you think back to your younger years, when the latest and greatest diet craze promised all these miraculous results. I mean, it's happening even now, right? For some of these past diets that I've tried, things that come to mind for me were a no fat diet. Trying to get in no fat at all.

Yeah, I definitely noticed effects with my hormones, my skin, my hair was dry, my nails were brittle, so many things that happen as a result of eating no or very low fat. I remember the cabbage soup diet. Ooh, man, so it was basically this soup that had some vegetables in it, broth, and then a lot of cabbage.

Oh my gosh, I have never been so bloated and gassy in my entire life. This was decades ago, and I remember it so clearly. Yeah, not going back there. And then the grapefruit diet. I remember the grapefruit diet used to be a big thing. You’re drinking grapefruit juice, or you're just having a half a grapefruit for a couple of different meals. So substituting just that very low calorie fruit for a whole meal. But the thing I remember about that is, oh my gosh, my teeth enamel, my teeth enamel suffered for that, for sure. And I love grapefruits, but just the volume of grapefruit was, whew, it was a little bit too much.

If you've tried some of these things, you might've found yourself cutting out entire food groups or having to meticulously measure out every food and count every calorie. And so while these types of diets may have worked temporarily, they really often led to feelings of deprivation a lot of frustration because they're not sustainable over the long term.

The result really is just this up and down diet roller coaster of losing and gaining, being very disciplined, and then just giving into temptation. So over time, these experiences create a mindset where food is often seen as the enemy, something to be tightly controlled or even avoided rather than food being your friend and something to be savored and enjoyed.

For some calorie counting can foster an unhealthy preoccupation with food. Tracking every bite of food and every sip of liquid, anything and everything that goes into your mouth can make you hyper focused. on food and your intake, and that leads to anxiety and stress around eating for many people.

I remember when I was working in corporate wellness years ago, we were collaborating with a popular diet program at that time. And they actually have participants track every single thing that went into their mouth sugar free gum, diet soda. And this hyperfixation can be particularly counterproductive for women over 50 who may already be dealing with certain emotional and physical changes related to perimenopause and menopause.

Instead of fostering a healthy relationship with food This hyper fixation on counting calories can make us feel trapped and preoccupied with eating or not eating as the case may be. And it can turn eating into a chore and a source of stress rather than a source of nourishment and pleasure.

The second thing to realize is that sometimes it's really difficult to accurately estimate the calories in most foods that are not prepackaged. The types of foods that are typically Packaged are also highly processed, not all of them, but for the most part, that is, it's a highly processed food.

Ideally, you don't want a lot of highly processed packaged foods to make up, the bulk of your eating plan. Whole foods fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, lean proteins, whole grains are the foundation of a healthy, well balanced diet. And so most of these foods don't come with a nutrition label or they don't come pre portioned out with an accurate nutrition label, which makes it more challenging to accurately assess the calories.

So even if you're using, some of the most up to date apps and the best nutrition databases that they have out there, estimating calorie content is still a challenge. It's still an extra step. And when you look at. estimating the calorie count content of a home cooked meal. It has a lot of different ingredients in it, or even a meal out at a restaurant.

It's really challenging at best. And then wildly inaccurate at worst. And is possible to accurately track your food with these apps. And it really does involve measuring out the ingredients. It involves weighing it. It involves recording it, coming up with recipes or making specific meals so it can be done.

It's just really challenging because if you think about how much time it takes to prepare a home cooked meal or even just  preparing a salad, so imagine you're preparing a salad with, has a variety of ingredients. It has leafy mixed greens that has red onion, tomatoes, avocado, cucumber, shredded red cabbage.

It's got shrimp and you have a homemade vinaigrette. So each of these ingredients has a different caloric amount and the way that you prepare those It makes a difference as far as how it's prepared, how it's cooked, if it's cooked, something  that. With salads, not as much. But then the amounts that you add to that specific salad can really make a difference in the overall calorie and nutrient content.

And so trying to calculate the exact number of calories in this kind of meal has a lot of ingredients is, it's pretty good. I mean, it's time consuming and it's tedious. I doing that kind of stuff because I really lean into kind of the science and the data part of it. But sometimes I even get tired of doing it.

There are times where I'm just not going to measure this out. I'm not going to weigh it. I'm going to put the stuff in the bowl and I'm going to eat it and I'm going to eyeball it. And, I've done it long enough to where I'm in the ballpark, but it's definitely not accurate.

Instead of stressing over these kinds of unknowns, focus on the quality and nutrient density of the foods that you're eating. This is much easier to do. One effective strategy is to incorporate high volume, nutrient dense foods into your meals. So these foods, the leafy greens, the non starchy vegetables, fruits, things that.

They tend to be lower in calories, but they are higher in nutrients and fiber. They tend to have more water content. So higher volume, lean meats, seafoods, legumes, beans, things that. They provide protein. Also, so you want to add that in which help with overall satiety or feeling full and satisfied.

And those things also provide you with essential macronutrients. So you've got that protein the leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables or even starchy vegetables that are giving you the carbohydrates. Things healthy oils, avocado. are going to give you the healthy fats. Micronutrients or something else that come with eating really high-volume nutrient dense foods.

You're getting your vitamins, you're getting your minerals and then you're getting your phytonutrients. And the phytonutrients are things that provide antioxidant and immune benefits. boosting benefits. And these are things that make it easier to main, help maintain a healthier weight and optimize nutrition without obsessing over counting calories.

Finally, the third thing I wanted to mention is there are so many factors that go into daily caloric needs and it is challenging to get an accurate total daily caloric goal without over restricting calories when using some of the calculators that are available online. So if you're not meeting with a registered dietitian, you're not meeting with a certified nutritionist, this is the stuff that they can do for you.

And they have tools that they're using to do that. You can use online calorie calculators and those often provide a rough estimate based on factors like age, height, weight, and activity level. However, it doesn't really take into account individual variations such as muscle mass, hormonal changes, metabolic rate.

Your history with restrictive dieting, things that and calorie restriction can affect your metabolic rate. And these things are particularly relevant for our, for women in their forties and fifties. For example, two women that are the same age, same height, same weight can have vastly different caloric needs.

One might have higher levels of muscle and have a higher metabolic rate while the other might be dealing with some hormonal fluctuations and things that have overall affected her metabolism. These differences can make the standard calc, that are looking at caloric intake levels can be inaccurate or, at worst potentially harmful.

So one of the better calculators I've seen and used is called TDEEcalculator. net. It's an online tool and that actually has the ability to enter your body fat. So if you have the ability to get an accurate body fat estimation. So if you have that, you can enter that in as well. And these calculators are.

When you get all that entered in they suggest your maintenance calories, they suggest your  calories for losing weight and then calories for gaining weight. So you can look at all the different things there, but a lot of the times the calorie suggestions that they have for losing weight are really too low and that can lead to over restriction and nutrient deficiency.

When we cut our calorie intake too drastically, our bodies go into this, survival mode, slowing down your metabolism to conserve energy. And you don't have as much energy coming in. You tend to not expend as much energy. So a double whammy there.

Over time, this can make it even harder to maintain or lose weight. So instead of relying on these calculators exclusively, use them as a ballpark, a starting point, but really listen to your body's hunger and fullness cues can be the key here. So paying attention to how you feel after eating different types of foods different levels, different amounts of foods, and then adjust your intake accordingly.

You want to really be aiming for balanced, nutrient rich meals over time that satisfy you and that they also provide sustainable energy. So this approach is more enjoyable I think, than solely focusing on hitting a specific calorie target because if you think about, high volume nutrient dense foods and you are aiming for a calorie intake of 1600 calories a day, there's a lot of different foods that can fit into that 1600 calorie a day target. But if you're eating a lot of processed foods, a lot of foods that have higher fat content higher sugar content, things  that, they're not going to leave you as satisfied as having more  bigger volumes of food that are lower in calorie and more protein that is of a lean source that is going to keep you satisfied for longer and help you feel full for longer.

All right. So before wrapping up today's episode I want to let you know, I've got something special just for you. And if you're ready to take the first steps towards your most fit and confident midlife, I've created a lean and strong jumpstart checklist, which is your guide to a fit and confident midlife.

This checklist contains simple effective tips to help you start building lean muscle and feeling great without the stress of counting calories. Head over to LisaDupreeCoaching.com/checklist to download your free copy. If you can imagine waking up every day feeling energized, strong, ready to tackle whatever comes your way, that's exactly what this guide is designed to help you achieve.

And the best part is it's totally free. So don't sleep on this free resource. Go to LisaDupreeCoaching.com/checklist and download that free copy. I'll also pop the link in the show notes that you can just easily go to the show notes and click on that and get that checklist. So wrapping up today's episode on why calorie counting is overrated for some midlife women.

First, it can be triggering and counterproductive due to past experience with Restrictive diets, it can lead to obsessing obsessive behaviors and a negative relationship with food. Second, it can be difficult to accurately estimate calories in whole unprocessed foods, which should be the bulk of our diet just for overall nutrition and longevity and health.

So instead, it's thinking of focusing on the quality and the nutrient density of your food to be most beneficial. That's all. But we also discuss online calculators and how it often can provide, more restrictive calorie levels, or it can be inaccurate and that can lead to over restriction.

And so thinking about listening to your body, aiming for a balanced nutrient Rich diet every meal having enough protein and enough volume to make you feel satisfied and how that's a more sustainable approach. Thank you for tuning into Midlife Mojo. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend and don't forget to follow the show so you never miss an episode.

Until next time, stay fit, stay flourishing, and keep your mojo rising!