Time Restricted Easting Vs. Calorie Counting

We are obsessed with counting calories as a means to lose weight. In this blog post I would like to explore the reason for this and an alternative that can be much more effective. First off, there is nothing empirically wrong with counting every calorie that you consume and then understanding how many calories you are expending through activity as a way to lose weight. This is typically what bodybuilders, fitness models, etc. do to look the way they do. Counting calories will work for weight loss. But if it is as simple as just counting calories to lose weight why doesn’t everyone look like a bodybuilder or fitness model? The reason comes down to psychology not physiology. Counting calories is tedious, time consuming, monotonous, and it takes all of the joy out of meals. Counting calories to lose weight is an accounting job. When the average person diets by counting calories they are often successful in the beginning. They follow the eating and activity plan and track everything religiously. Inevitably life happens however. Counting every calorie day after day, week after week, and month after month is simply not sustainable as a long-term solution to weight management issues for most people. Your life kind of needs to revolve around it (like in the case of bodybuilders and fitness models). But calorie counting is what is pushed by most coaches. Why? 1. It’s simple and easy to figure out if someone is following it or not. 2. It is what the pros do so it must be the best. The coach then can blame the client for not following the program when it inevitably fails. And make no mistake, bodybuilders often go through massive weight cycles (yo-yo diets) where they gain a bunch of weight and then lose it and then gain again so it may not be the healthiest option either.

The average overweight person, I would argue, needs a simple and livable plan that doesn’t feel like anything resembling a second job. It is for this reason that over 10 years ago we abandoned suggesting calorie counting as a method for permanent weight loss in our Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky weight loss offices. It just doesn’t work for most people because most people aren’t obsessed with their diet and/or exercise routine.

So, I will, instead, propose that Time Restricted Eating (TRE) is a much more practical way to manipulate one’s diet to achieve long-term results. I have discussed TRE (also known as intermittent fasting) countess times in blog posts, YouTube videos, interviews, etc. Briefly, TRE means to eat all of the food you will have in a day in a shorter window. We typically recommend that a 6 hour eating window with an 18 hour fast (18/6) is easiest, and most effective, for weight loss. The research backs this up. Multiple studies have shown that simply reducing the time that you eat in a day is equally as effective as counting calories. The key is that it is also easier to maintain long-term. Simply starting and stopping eating at certain times in a day is much less complicated than figuring out all of the calories of all of the ingredients for each meal.