I was trying to count calories for my soup, some ingredients had calories on the package, but vegies and meat didn’t, so I went to online calculators. None of them were capable of measuring ingredients in grams - I have kitchen scales so can easily weight raw ingredients and put them in the calorie calculator, but all of them measure food in servings instead of concrete number, like what is one serving of my soup? And are the calories for raw ingredient going to be the same after being cooked? The only way to measure calories is to dehydrate it, burn in a special chamber and count the ammount of excluded energy. You can find people onlain making claims like “I’ve eaten 2017 kcals today”, but like how did you measure that 17 kcals with such a precision? The measurements I got from online calculators gave me a 500 kcal range of error, as in a serving of my soup could be 400 kcals or 900 kcal and again those are just estimates made from combining known calories of raw ingredients. Calories are for scientists and experiments, without equipment you can’t actually calculate the calories, just like you can’t really measure how many calories did you burn during the workout, again the range of error is huge, it’s good to keep in mind the calories in calories out idea, but actually measuring them is not for the 99% of thr population
I think, for some people, calorie counting is frutrating. Personally, I’m a bit too neurotic for it. I get really caught up in the details and coutning every calorie right and then frustration when the calories are reported incorrectly or if mutliple sources give different calorie values for the same raw ingredient. I honestly get so obsessive when I try to calorie count it becomes a borderline eating disorder. And, in fact, calroie counting has resulted in eating disorders for many people.
I think it’s good for a lot of other people. But, when it boils down to it, any diet you can stick to is the right diet for you. Seriously, research has shown time and time again that, after a few months, most diets have the same weight loss results for most people if they stick to it. So I personally don’t find the “its just calories in and out” rhetoric thats really popular to always be the most correct or helpful statment.
Calorie counts on food are an approximation, sure, but it’s not unreliable. If someone eats roughly X amounts of calories every day and they lose/gain weight at Y rate, then the exact amount isn’t as important.
ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I was trying to count calories for my soup, some ingredients had calories on the package, but vegies and meat didn’t, so I went to online calculators. None of them were capable of measuring ingredients in grams - I have kitchen scales so can easily weight raw ingredients and put them in the calorie calculator, but all of them measure food in servings instead of concrete number, like what is one serving of my soup? And are the calories for raw ingredient going to be the same after being cooked? The only way to measure calories is to dehydrate it, burn in a special chamber and count the ammount of excluded energy. You can find people onlain making claims like “I’ve eaten 2017 kcals today”, but like how did you measure that 17 kcals with such a precision? The measurements I got from online calculators gave me a 500 kcal range of error, as in a serving of my soup could be 400 kcals or 900 kcal and again those are just estimates made from combining known calories of raw ingredients. Calories are for scientists and experiments, without equipment you can’t actually calculate the calories, just like you can’t really measure how many calories did you burn during the workout, again the range of error is huge, it’s good to keep in mind the calories in calories out idea, but actually measuring them is not for the 99% of thr population
the_q@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
It’s weird that it works for most people.
FinnFooted@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think, for some people, calorie counting is frutrating. Personally, I’m a bit too neurotic for it. I get really caught up in the details and coutning every calorie right and then frustration when the calories are reported incorrectly or if mutliple sources give different calorie values for the same raw ingredient. I honestly get so obsessive when I try to calorie count it becomes a borderline eating disorder. And, in fact, calroie counting has resulted in eating disorders for many people.
I think it’s good for a lot of other people. But, when it boils down to it, any diet you can stick to is the right diet for you. Seriously, research has shown time and time again that, after a few months, most diets have the same weight loss results for most people if they stick to it. So I personally don’t find the “its just calories in and out” rhetoric thats really popular to always be the most correct or helpful statment.
JandroDelSol@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Calorie counts on food are an approximation, sure, but it’s not unreliable. If someone eats roughly X amounts of calories every day and they lose/gain weight at Y rate, then the exact amount isn’t as important.