The Calorie Myth

We’ve been taught for decades that counting calories is the truest path to weight loss and better nutrition. In reality, it doesn’t take much experiment to realize that this theory is too simplified and missing many other aspects of weight loss through nutrition.
If calorie consumption was all it took to achieve our ideal weight, then eating 1400 calories of chocolate cake for a 5’4 woman ought to gain her the same benefits as eating 1400 calories of broiled veggies, nuts, lean meats, and fruits. On the flip side, for those desperate to gain weight, eating more and more calories doesn’t necessarily lead a person to gaining pounds! The theory of calories in, calories out is illogical and the cause of many people’s struggles to lose weight…and Jonathan Bailor takes on this science in his new book, The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better.
Collaborating with top scientists for over 10 years, analyzing over 1,300 studies, and garnering endorsements by top doctors from Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, Yale, and UCLA, Jonathan Bailor is a nutrition and exercise expert and former personal trainer who specializes in using high-quality food and exercise to simplify wellness.
Bailor explains the flaws in the calorie-counting approach that doesn’t work:

If calorie math added up, 100 calories of vegetables = 100 calories of candy. That doesn’t seem right–because it’s not. While some calories fuel weight loss, others work against us. Why? Because eating high-quality foods, like who whole-food plants, proteins, and fats, balances the hormones that regulate your metabolism.

Fortunately, Bailor is not the first person to address or realize this issue. His work is supported by the works of Dr. Mark Hyman, Michael Pollan, Dr. William Davis, Dr. Sara Gottfried…and many others! 
Better yet, Bailor isn’t pushing a new fad diet, but instead educating readers with support from research studies while explaining the simple science behind concepts such as:

• what prevents your body from burning fat for fuel
• why dietary fat does not make you fat
• the difference between dietary cholesterol and blood lipid cholesterol
• why low-fat does not mean healthy
• why more and more exercise is not the answer to weight-loss

This excerpt is clarifying the science of dietary fat’s impact on cholesterol levels:

Eating whole foods containing fat has never been proved to lead to risky levels of cholesterol. The effect of natural dietary fat on cholesterol has never been proved to cause heart disease. Studies have actually shown the opposite. The high-starch, low-fat and low-protein diet promoted by the government’s guidelines has been proved to worse the risk of heart disease. For example, a 2009 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine went so far as to call HDL [good cholesterol] cholesterol ‘a biomarker for dietary carbohydrate.’ In other words, the more ‘low-fat’ carbohydrates we eat, the lower our levels of the type of cholesterol that is beneficial to heart health.

Get more founded research from Jonathan Bailor’s book, The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better….and be sure to check out his podcast interview with Abel James at the Fat-Burning Man where digs deeper into the many misconceptions we’ve been taught around calories and nutrition.