The 6th thing to give up if you’re ready to stop binge eating is counting your calories.

I’ve included this because I get asked this question by almost every client. So here’s my take on tracking your calories, points, or macronutrients…

It’s another way we grasp too tightly to control that ultimately leads to being out of control.

Take my client I’ll call Sandra, for example. Sandra is conservative with her calories all day because she doesn’t want to use “too many.” By dinner time, she’s famished, but she’s saved many calories so she has a big dinner. But for some reason, she can’t get full enough. So when her family goes to sleep a few hours later she is binge eating her kids’ school snacks at 11pm and hiding the wrappers. She mentally puts “grocery store” on her list for tomorrow to restock so no one notices her slip up. If Sandra wasn’t hyper focused on her calories, she probably would’ve just enjoyed breakfast and lunch and naturally needed less at dinner time. She would have eaten less overall if she would have just listened to her body instead of focusing too much on numbers.

I could also talk about my client I’ll call Cameron. Cameron went over her calories for the day and is feeling so ashamed about herself she decides “screw it – I already went over I might as well go get that ice cream I’ve been craving.” An epic binge ensues.

Or Kiera, who was saving her calories ALL WEEK because she desperately wanted to look good in her crop top over the weekend when she went to a party. She binged for two days straight.

Or Linda, whose fitness trainer told her she should eat less calories on the days she didn’t work out, and while she accomplished this and ate less Monday on her “off-day,” she was bingeing hard by Tuesday night.

Or Amanda, who used up her allotted calories by 4pm on Friday and figured she’d just have to wait until Saturday to eat again. Friday 10:30pm she was at the drive-thru getting ALL the treats.

The fact is that calorie counting is not sustainable, it creates scarcity and anxiety, and it ignores the fact that your body is already equipped with a built in system to tell you when to eat and when to stop eating.

When tracking, we are provided a finite number of calories or points for the day and this immediately creates scarcity and anxiety. We’re so careful not to go over, so cautious about every single morsel of food we put into our mouths, that we are once again not consulting our bodies about what it needs in that moment . We are thinking of past meals (how many carbs did I eat at breakfast?) and future meals (how many calories should I save for dinner later?) rather than what does my body need right now? What would be supportive and satisfying to me right now?

Another issue I have with tracking calories and macronutrients is the possible inaccuracy. Do you have any idea how many food labels are inaccurate? And who even comes up with these numbers about how much you “should” eat? An app? A calculator you find online? Stop and think about that for a second and I’m sure you’ll see how absurd it is. No one knows how much you should eat except you.

Many people find “success” in tracking calories and macronutrients. I was one of them. I was the thinnest I had ever been in my life. I was also anxious and fearful of ever stepping outside the lines of those parameters my coach had set. And oh my the STRESS about how to track my meals when I went out with friends was so high that I ended up avoiding it all together, which damaged my social relationships in a major way. My perfectionism took over as I needed to hit every macronutrient perfectly. One day I simply broke. I couldn’t handle the constant control anymore. I rebelled. And this set off years of uncontrollable binge eating for me.

Again, this is not a long-term solution. The ONLY time I suggest clients track calories is very short-term (a week max) to make sure that they are eating enough. As I’ve mentioned several times by now, if you’re not eating enough, your body will create powerful urges to eat and this often leads to a binge.

Do not be afraid to eat. It’s not eating adequate meals and calories that makes us gain weight – we gain weight from binge eating, emotional eating, and not listening to our bodies.

Emotional eating often leads to bingeing or overeating and tracking calories can keep you on an emotional rollercoaster. If you hit your calories you feel good, if you don’t you feel shame. It’s a vicious cycle and one that does not honor your body or that some days you will naturally eat more or less than others. Or that your body will automatically regulate this for you. Have you ever watched a child eat? They know when to stop. They graze sometimes, eat full meals at other times. This is a skill we are all born with, we’ve just lost our way from too many diets, food rules, and restrictions.

So go ahead and delete MyFitnessPal from your phone and celebrate! Food freedom is one step closer. Don’t stop now, I’ll catch you in the next article for your 7th challenge!

All my love,

Cina