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Questioning Calorie Counters: Better Ways To Get Real Fitness And Body Change Success · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your strongest body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, betsy, here I am testing the sound as I'm starting to record, because a few days ago my daughters came in and recorded their own podcast, so I set the mic for them, I lowered it and got it in their position and today I realized, oh, I got to put it back.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So I believe I've gotten everything to my previous settings.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We'll see.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The podcast that they're working on is incredible not fitness related, but maybe we'll get it out there at some point.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: So today we're going to be talking about using the calorie counters on your fitness wearables or on the cardio equipment or anything that you have access to, using those calorie caloric estimates to reach your fitness goals, why that might not be the best choice for you.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I have some insight on how that information can be inaccurate and sort of stand in your way, but I'm also going to give you some things you can focus on.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: So I don't know about you, but I have noticed that almost everyone has an Apple Watch or a Fitbit or an Order Ring or any of these sort of fitness wearables, and it's really cool.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It's a neat concept that we're so connected to the idea that health and wellness is something that we could focus on in little chunks throughout our day that these pieces of equipment, these pieces of technology, have become so ubiquitous.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I think there are also lots of other advantages to some of these technologies.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Like I always say, the best thing about my watch is that it finds my phone.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: For me and I'm maybe not even like the fitness stuff is great, but I actually just want my watch to be able to find my phone because I am that absent minded at points, but people are wearing them, so it's clear that people are using or connected to that data in some way.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: For people who are focused on weight loss goals or body composition goals and when I talk about body composition, I'm speaking about body fat versus lean mass and how, for many people who want a more toned physique, they want to decrease their body fat and increase their lean muscle mass.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: For those people who have those weight loss or body composition goals, it might feel like the right choice to actually look at the calories burned and use that as a measurement to determine how many calories they can intake as they eat.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: One of the most basic concepts as it relates to weight loss is calories in versus calories out.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Now I really want to make a point here that I think is important for me at least and in my business and this is just me specifically on this podcast and in my coaching, I talk about weight loss goals because people have them and because people have the autonomy, and I want them to have the autonomy to be able to choose what their goal is and if they choose to lose weight, that is what they're choosing.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: So I want them to have great information and helpful coaching.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: I just also think it needs to be said from me that I don't believe anyone needs to lose weight, and we have conflated weight and health in a lot of ways, and we now know that information isn't necessarily true.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: But that also does not mean that I think it's wrong to have a weight loss goal and anyone who wants to have a weight loss goal.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I am going to give them the tools and the information.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I'm just also going to talk about it, and we're going to look at it from an intellectual, societal and mental health perspective.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people have weight loss goals.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I want to help you with this information if it pertains to your weight loss goal or your body composition goal.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: So this is how this episode came about for me.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I was walking on the treadmill last week, guo Mr Jia, I was spending time resting because I irritated my shoulder, and so I was doing a lot of long walks on the treadmill.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I don't otherwise do that many long walks on the treadmill, so I was.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I put it on, you know, my watch, my Apple watch, on indoor walk in the fitness section, let it run, and I looked up at the screen on the treadmill at one point and the number for calories burned was really high.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: So then I looked down at my watch because I thought, oh, maybe I'm working really hard and my watch number was wildly different.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: So then, at the end of the workout, I decided to take a picture and on the so I, for the amount of time that I was walking, the screen on the treadmill said that I was burned, that I burned 382 calories.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: My watch said I burned 241.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It's a difference of 140, which is not you know like.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, you're going like well, that's not a lot of calories, but compared to each other, that's almost double the amount.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That's almost double the amount on the screen of the treadmill versus what's on my watch.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Now, how, how are those numbers so different?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons could be that the treadmill takes into account.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So the treadmill, like equipment, has a generic height and weight of someone, some random person that they use for everybody that gets on the treadmill, unless you go in and change the settings, because height and weight determine the amount of calories that you're burning as you exercise.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Bigger bodies burn more calories.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Lots of other things go into calorie burn as well.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes, the fitter you are, the less your heart rate raises, raises as you do certain kinds of exercise.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: If your heart rate is not high, you are burning less calories.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Note, that's the only thing that's different there.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: You're, you could be working very hard, but if you, if that doesn't raise your heart rate, then it's not burning a lot of calories.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: For resistance training workouts, you don't burn a lot of calories, but you're lifting heavy weight and you know you're working hard.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: It's important to know that, because what I'm going to say is that burning more calories isn't always better, particularly when we look at the different kinds of exercise that are best for our health.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So, yes, we do want to do exercises and and movement that raises our heart rate, but that's part of a whole picture and if the goal, if we're constantly focused on burning more calories, then what we focus on more is getting our heart rate up and we start to neglect those other elements of fitness that are really important.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Many people change their body composition by resistance training.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: That does not burn a lot of calories, but that's, that's another post, maybe for another day.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I just actually yeah, that's another post for another day when it comes to those calories burned, the estimate, that's what the treadmill is taking into account, so they might just have a random weight that they put in there.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So if my weight is different than the random weight it has in the computer on the treadmill, I'm going to get a different number.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: My watch is a little more sensitive also to my trends over time and knows what things raise my heart rate and probably is more attuned or measuring my heart rate, but it's also not incredibly accurate.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: We know that for measuring heart rate we actually would need the more effective heart rate monitor, at least the last time I checked.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe something has wildly changed is around your chest.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: There are different kinds.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I think they're constantly evolving in terms of these pieces of technology, so there may be something that is going to get a really accurate read on your wrist and I think the Apple Watch has specifically gotten better over time but it's still a tool with a margin of error.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: That error is probably contributing to the variability in the calorie count that you're getting in those workout assessments, so it's not incredibly useful if we have inaccurate information.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Now, if you have a body composition or weight loss goal or any kind of goal where you're trying to reduce total calories, if you're trying to change that body composition and lose fat or you're trying to lose weight, you're going to ultimately try to be in a caloric deficit, meaning eating less, taking in less calories than you are burning.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: So if you were using this number to help you with that, which number would you pick?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And you can see that that's wildly different between those two numbers.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Is it going to be useful?
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So if you say I burned, if you looked at my watch and I had 241, oh, I can have 241 more calories of food One.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: That's not all that accurate.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: So we just talked about that.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: But also what that's doing.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: When we sort of turn to those numbers, we're attempting to override, slash, replace our bodies internal cues for hunger and satiety.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Part of that is going to be inevitable a little bit if you're trying to decrease the amount of calories you're taking in, if you're trying to be in a deficit, your body is not going to want to be in that and so it's a little unnatural.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So you're going to be sort of overriding these cues sometimes.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But if you're trying to use this information, these calorie counts, to make all your decisions, you're probably not using accurate information and you're not learning the tools for yourself to be able to say when am I full?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: When am I feeling like I am satisfied?
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: What do I feel like I need after a workout like this to be able to continue my day.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Instead, you're getting attached to these numbers that likely, again, aren't all that accurate.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: So that's something to be thinking about.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: It's a no-transcript.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: It is a helpful tool if you think about it in terms of measuring against itself.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: So reliability If you get on a scale.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So you know.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Also there's a lot of variability in scales.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: If you get on the same scale, what you know is, at least you have a measurement against.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: You can use the difference between that.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping I'm communicating that clearly.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Same thing with your wearable technology.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: If you're always using your Fitbit, then you can tell the difference between your workouts from the Fitbit.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So you could.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: While you may not use the exact calorie number as an indicator, you might go oh I see that I burned a lot more calories today.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: That's probably true because my Fitbit last time measured this.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: If you're using your Fitbit or you're using your Apple Watch, you can kind of track changes.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: That's helpful.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Same thing with the scale.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: You can track changes against the same scale.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: It's not all that helpful if you're going to lots of different scales that aren't all that accurate to begin with or that all have a variability of a pound or two, especially if you are fixated on a pound or two.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Do you see what I'm saying?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: If the mental and emotional challenge of being up by two or one or a half is going to cause great anxiety, then I 100% would not use different scales because there is always enough variability where that could be the case.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: There's enough variability based on water and based on time of day, and all of that too.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: In another episode I sort of walk through some of those tools you can use to make the scale a little bit more helpful.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: But I just want you to see that a lot of these measures are imperfect.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: So if we note that measures are imperfect, then we can either use them with a sort of open mind, but not hard and fast, or we can use other forms of measurement or tracking or things like that to actually impact our results more effectively.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: So, like I said, if you are attached to those numbers that you are getting on the calorie count and then you are always using those to determine how much food you eat and you're not seeing a change on the scale or a change in your body composition, it is likely because those readings are inaccurate, and then you are either putting in too many calories or something where you're not actually in the deficit that you need to be in.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Now I think for many people, especially if the goal is sustainable weight loss or sustainable body composition changes, then I think that the goal needs to be learning your body's cues to be able to make these decisions about nutrition, about sleep and about exercise.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: If you are a person who is training for a specific event maybe you are trying to cut your weight for a certain sport or activity you are probably going to not listen to your body's cues and find a different method of getting there quickly, regardless of your body's cues.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: The reason why people gain that weight back is because they were going against their body's cues and when they are without the tools for measuring, all of a sudden it returns to where it was before.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: There are reasons why you would do that For a competition, for an event or something like that.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I would caution the average person or a person whose focus is on health, because that's not necessarily a healthy way of doing it or a way that promotes health.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: If you are looking to change your body long term, change the way you approach nutrition, you can use these tools as a guide, but you're going to really try to figure out how you listen to your body and how you make decisions around that so that you can maintain this for a long time.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: What do I mean by that?
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Well, let's go through what behaviors and habits are going to be more helpful if you're trying to change body composition, lose weight, than using the calorie trackers on your wearable fitness stuff.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: One things you can focus on around exercise.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: That will probably be more beneficial.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Number of minutes If you did this amount last time, how much can you do this time?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, you're never going to be able to do infinite amount of minutes, but if you're trying to increase the calorie burn, number of minutes is going to do that.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Intensity is going to do that.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Intensity is going to do that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: If you want to change your weight and your body, specifically, if you want to change your body composition, you want to pair those calorie burning workouts with resistance training workouts that are not going to burn a ton of calories, so to speak, but they are going to build lean muscle mass.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Lean muscle mass is going to change the way you look.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: It's going to change how much body fat you have on you and it's also going to burn.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: You will become an individual who burns more calories at rest, because that's what more muscle does.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So you need a balance of those things, especially if body composition is the goal.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: If you want to increase your overall calorie burn, you can increase the number of steps you get in a day, because that is just more movement and in a lot of ways, that's not taxing movement and it adds to the overall burn.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Because the other thing that we want to think about when we're focused on, say, a weight loss goal or a body composition goal, is not getting into the place where we are overworking ourselves, where we never recover.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And so if you're constantly looking at your calorie burn on your watch and it's not enough, you might be pushing past what your body is really able or wants to do.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: So how can we increase by a little bit but not overtax our body, increasing our step count?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So those are some things that are probably going to be more helpful than looking at the calorie burn and you notice all of those didn't give you, say, a number for you to go back and try and intake that same amount of calories.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: That's really helpful.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: The other thing that can be helpful when it comes to these weight loss or body composition goals is tracking your food and at least while again, food labels and food information, all of the macronutrient counts on the sides of packages.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Again, this is going to be maybe not the same kind of variability, but the accuracy is not always going to be 100%.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: You can get a food scale and measure your food and that would make a big difference, but it's not going to be 100%.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: But if you want to focus on eating less than you are burning, you may want to set aside the calorie counters on these fitness wearables and actually just complete a TDE calculator.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: So that's total daily expenditure.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: It's going to you put in your height, your weight and you say what your activity level is and that will give you a pretty good not always 100% accurate again where we're dealing with technology but it will give you a number that will tell you what your general daily expenditure of calories is and then you can aim to track that and ideally eat less than that.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Because those calculators are going to take into account your activity level.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: It is assuming that you've already done that activity.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: That number includes the activity, so you don't have to think about what you're getting on your watch.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: You might pick sedentary, you might pick mildly active, you might pick highly active and a lot of the good calculators I'm actually going to put one in the show notes.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: So if you go to the, I think I'm gonna put two in there.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: If you go to the show notes.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: You can scroll down and there'll be two TDE calculators in there that will help you estimate and then you leave the information from your watch or your wearable aside and you just track your food like that.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: As I've said in my tracking episode, tracking is good for some people.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Tracking is not great for other people.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: You have to know thyself and decide what's going to be best for you or limit yourself to a certain amount of time and realize if it is causing problems.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: There are other ways to approach this and that's kind of what I do in coaching in in working with a trainer and a coach individually, particularly someone who has a nutrition coaching certification I'm able to.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not telling you what to eat, but I'm walking you through what methods of of keeping track for you are going to be the least costly on your mental health and the most improvement on your overall energy levels, help you progress to your goals but also keep you enjoying life and the food that you eat.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: But if you want to think about going into a caloric deficit, the better way is going to be with that TDE calculator, eating less than, and those TDE calculators are probably going to give you well, I know they give you a pretty good measurement tool as far as the macro nutrients go.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So proteins, fat and carbs.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: You may want to tweak those a little bit depending on your activity level, but you can look at those and if you need any help or anything, you can drop by my DMs and I would be willing to help as as much as I can with what little information I know, if we're not coach and client.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So you're going to use that instead of holding on to.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I got close to the mic using the that wearable technology.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Also a reminder that if you use that TDE calculator and you just want to focus on your protein intake, it will give you your protein, your ideally your ideal amount of protein to intake in a day and you might want to just focus on that.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: That is going to be better for your fit, your resistance training goals.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: But realize that sometimes if you're getting your protein from a lot of high calorie things, you might be going over the amount of calories you burn and therefore not losing weight.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Because, again, what are?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: If we're?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: If losing weight specifically, not changing body composition, is the goal, then we have to have less that we're taking in.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: If we're changing body composition.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we're in taking a little bit more calories to build a little muscle and then we're taking those calories away later.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: It's all going to depend on the individual If that's helpful or interesting.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: I can have another episode about that.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: But for our purposes today, keeping it short, set your wearables aside.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: You can use them in terms of comparing to itself.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So, oh, it looks like I burned more today.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I must have been working harder today.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: But I'm not going to take that specific number and then go and eat that amount of food if my goal is weight loss or body composition change.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Instead, you're going to focus on things like am I doing more minutes?
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Am I doing more intensity?
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Am I using more effort in my resistance training workouts?
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Am I using more weight?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Am I being able to do more reps, more sets, and am I increasing the number of steps I'm getting in or general movement outside of my exercise time For diet stuff?
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: You're not going to use those numbers to determine how much food you eat.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Instead, you can try.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: If you're trying to track, you're going to use a TDE calculator to get your daily expenditure, which also already includes your guesstimated amount of movement you're doing, and then you're going to have less than that in order to be in a deficit, to lose weight or lose or change body composition and there are some more specifics about changing body composition that may be on another episode.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I don't want to necessarily equate body weight and body composition together, but in this circumstance it's kind of easy to put them in the same category.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: All right, that's it All I have for you today.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I want to remind you of the contest.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: We're getting close.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: November 12th is around the corner.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: That's the last day you have.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: If you share the podcast on Instagram stories or via text or email, and just screenshot it and send it to me with each share, you're entered to win one of four $15 Starbucks gift cards that I'm going to draw for on November 13th.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: So go share that, if this is helpful to you.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: If you have questions, you know where to find me.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: My Instagram is at foster underscore strength, or you can email me, betsy, at be foster strongcom.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: That's the letter be foster strongcom.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you, as always, for listening.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Until next time, go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you later.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Bye.