How to Lose Weight Without Counting Calories
When it comes to losing weight, calorie counting can be an effective solution to staying on track towards your goals. Though this method does prove to be beneficial, it’s not the only pathway toward successful weight loss.In its simplest form, the basic requirement for weight loss is a calorie deficit. Keeping this in mind, there are plenty of great strategies and healthy habits that can help you lose weight without counting calories. Read on to learn more.
What Is Calorie Counting?
Calorie counting has been around for many years. As a popular method for tracking food intake, counting calories is commonly used to help individuals lose weight. However, many people also use it to support their weight gain goals as well.For most people, counting calories is a way to help bring more awareness to the foods we eat every day. It can help us identify harmful eating patterns, motivate us to stay active, and keep us on track to achieve healthy weight loss.
The Science of Weight Loss
At some point in our lives, we have heard about calories as being a “bad thing”. In reality, calories describe the energy our bodies consume from food and the energy we expend during activity [1].One of the essential components of weight loss is being in a calorie deficit, meaning that the total number of calories we consume is less than what we expend during rest or activity. In other words, optimizing our “calories in” vs. “calories out” is essential to help us burn fat and lose weight [2].
So, how do we achieve a calorie deficit? Well, this can be done in one of three ways:
- by eating fewer calories per day than we need to function,
- by burning more calories during exercise or movement than what we consume, or
- using a combination of eating fewer calories and increasing activity levels
