Why Tracking Calories is Crucial for Weight Loss: Understanding BMR, NEAT, and Effective Strategies | Free Willy Fitness
“I’ve tried everything and still can’t lose weight.”
A common phrase said by someone who has tried every fad diet under the sun. It’s the same story every time: you are consistent on the diet, see some results, have a weekend of no preparation, a trip where you get off the plan, and bam—the scale is right back to where it was before.
Now, all of a sudden, all the hard work and restricting of your diet doesn’t feel worth it since you just ended up gaining the weight back anyway. You’re left defeated, feeling like “what’s the point?”
To actually have success with weight loss, we need to understand WHY it happens. When you burn more calories than you eat or drink, you lose weight. Why is that?
If you are not consuming enough food to maintain your physical activity levels, you need to tap into longer-term energy storage. This means your body fat. One of the main reasons you have body fat is for starvation protection. In the absence of food, we start to break down our body fat storage to fuel our activity.
There are about 3,500 calories per pound of fat. That means we can actually schedule weight loss to some degree.
Let’s look at that number: 3,500 calories in 1 pound. That means that you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you eat and drink to lose 1 pound. It sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?
Well, divide that up over one week. That comes out to about 700 calories per day. That does NOT mean you have to get on the treadmill to burn 700 calories every day. A large majority of the calories we burn every day comes from normal survival processes that you don’t have any effect on.
This is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This number can be anywhere from 1,200 to 2,000+ calories per day.
This number does not include your basic activity levels. Your basic activity includes the steps you take at home from room to room, the calories you burn cooking meals, the calories you burn digesting food, the fidgeting motions you do while focusing on a task, etc.
This is called NEAT—Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
Your NEAT can add an additional few hundred calories to your BMR. That means you might be at 1,600 to 2,700+ calories per day, WITHOUT EXERCISE.
NEAT and BMR can fluctuate highly for the individual, based on age (less so than we previously believed), hormone health, muscle mass, nature of work, and more.
This is why it’s important to understand just how many calories you are truly consuming.
To lose weight, there are really three ways we can focus our efforts:
1. Decrease calories we consume. Eat less food, drink fewer calorie-filled drinks.
2. Increase our activity levels. If we burn more calories per day and eat the same amount, we are still looking at creating a deficit. We just need to make sure we’re exercising enough to counter the amount of food and drink we have.
3. Both. The simple and well-known phrase, “eat less, move more.” This is the most aggressive form as we’re attacking the deficit equation from both sides.
Each person’s scenario is different. Psychology, past experiences, current stress and work demands, and family life can all play a role in how we should approach weight loss. This is one of the reasons I suggest working with a coach. Having an objective third party who can help you identify the right strategy for you can be hugely beneficial, especially if you’re a repeat weight-loss individual.
Now, you may have experience tracking calories in the past. You may also believe you can estimate the amount of food you’re eating accurately. You are probably also wrong.
A 6 oz sirloin steak and a 6 oz ribeye steak have very different calorie and macronutrient profiles. A 6 oz sirloin can contain around 340 calories with 42 grams of protein and 16 grams of fat, while a ribeye of the same size can contain 480 calories with 36 grams of protein and 38 grams of fat.
Many just think of steak as steak and do not take into account the different varieties. A few missteps with accuracy like this in a day could account for upwards of 500-1,000 calories if you’re having three meals a day.
This is when we typically see someone who says that they’ve tracked calories before and it didn’t work. They either were not accurate in their tracking or they didn’t track everything they ate. It is a simple scientific fact: thermodynamics is real.
If you are tired of trying out all the fad diets and none of them having a lasting effect, and you’re tired of feeling like you’re lost in this weight loss journey, it’s probably time you start tracking your nutrition.