the-sunshine-cult:capfalcon:whenever i see “low in calories” im just like??? u mean. low...

the-sunshine-cult:

capfalcon:

whenever i see “low in calories” im just like??? u mean. low in energy?? low in energy. that is what u r promoting to me??

a calorie is a literal unit of measurement for how much energy something gives u, so when a product is like “low in calories” im like. great. so the exact opposite I’m looking for in food.

I want you to know that this post has genuinely helped me feel better about eating, even if I’m not eating “”healthy”” things. When I start feeling bad, I remember that I’m fueling my body to get through the day and so it’s okay if the food is high in calories!!

Very genuinely, you helped at least one person with an ED feel better about the food they eat.

So, okay: I saw this post earlier and I just wanted to set it aside to come back to, because there is so, SO much misinformation out there about nutrition and food’s effects on our bodies. One of my side-gigs is that I coach people in weight loss, specifically for the sake of improving metabolic health (rather than “correcting” some arbitrary notion of how a person “should” look or something!).

Here’s the thing: what the OP said is exactly right: calories = energy. No one should focus on getting less energy in terms of how they eat. If you’re concerned about weight or health in general, but particularly if you have type 2 diabetes, liver disease, metabolic conditions like PCOS, etc, the thing to look at is not “how much energy does this food contain”, but “what kind of metabolic response is this specific type of food going to produce in my body?” A calorie is essentially a meaningless way to measure food. 100 calories of cake is going to have a very different effect on your body than 100 calories of broccoli - and how an individual body will respond will also vary. It’s intensely unfair, but a heavier person’s body is going to respond worse (in the sense of metabolic health and weight) than a lighter person’s body will. There’s not really any such thing as a universally “healthy” food in the first place; it depends on your own body and what its needs are. 

I don’t talk about this here on tumblr much at all, but I say this as someone who has hacked her own metabolism and reversed a lot of health problems that were becoming rather large, and I did it specifically through how I eat. And I never for a second considered lowering my caloric intake, because calories are energy and everyone needs energy. I just changed what sort of foods I get my energy from to change my body’s metabolic response. 

I’ll shut up now, but given that it’s early January and it’s a time when a lot of people typically want to make changes to their health, hit me up if you have questions. I’m always down to help other people their way when it comes to this stuff. 

Tl;dr: “calories” are a useless way of measuring food. Also: food is good.