Counting Calories Is Basically Pointless. So Why Are We Still Doing It?

Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Getty In the short term, counting calories may help you lose weight. “It’s good to know relative calories: This food is high, this food is low, for example, especially if you eat out in restaurants often,” registered dietitian Abby Langer told HuffPost. “We can get so involved in the numbers that we experience a disconnect between the food we eat and our hunger.” - Abby Langer, registered dietitian What’s more, the tools we use to determine the number of calories we should eat to lose weight aren’t very precise. Some days you will naturally need more food than others.” “If we were to get out of our head and listen and connect to our body, we’d eat a lot differently.” - Aaron Flores, registered dietitian You might fixate on a number rather than on nutrition. “Many people have a hard time doing this because it is completely counterintuitive to what diet culture and our society teaches us: That if we don’t ‘control’ what we eat, then we’ll go off the rails, when in fact the opposite is true.” “Trusting your body means you don’t need to micromanage your caloric intake.” - Alissa Rumsey, registered dietitian and intuitive eating coach Nutrition can be complicated, which leaves us desperate for easy answers and quick fixes.