Should You Track Calories I Should You Count Calories For Weight Loss I
In this video, Eric Roberts explains whether you need to track calories for weight loss, muscle gain, or maintenance, and if you must continue tracking forever. He starts by comparing calorie counting to a financial budget, emphasizing that a calorie deficit is required to lose weight and that tracking is a useful tool to learn portion sizes, protein needs, and overall nutrition. Roberts argues that calorie counting is a learning instrument, not a permanent requirement; after gaining enough knowledge and habits, you can stop counting. He outlines how to transition from a deficit to maintenance calories, presenting two options: reverse‑dieting (gradually increasing calories week‑by‑week) or jumping straight to maintenance. He explains how to verify you’re at maintenance by monitoring weight fluctuations (±3‑5 lb) and body measurements. Finally, he provides a step‑by‑step phased plan to reduce tracking frequency (e.g., 6 days on/1 day off, then 5/2, 4/3, 3/4, 2/5, 1/6, then zero days), allowing you to maintain results without daily counting. The video ends with a call to action to like, comment, and check his podcast.
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What is going on, guys? Welcome back to the channel. Welcome to this video. In this video, you and I are going to be discussing, do you have to track calories first and foremost? And second part to that, do you have to track calories forever in order to see your result and then maintain your result? And there's going to be a few main points that we touch on here in this video, so please stick around for the whole thing. All right, first and foremost, before I directly answer the question, because As anybody who knows me knows, my favorite answer is it depends. And it depends on a few things, but let me give you some examples first and foremost. Number one, let's just say your goal is to lose weight. I often parallel this to a budget. Let's say you wanted to save $500 each month for 6 months in order to then have $3,000 to be able to go on vacation. What are you probably going to do in order to actually save money for that period of time in order to be able to go on vacation? You're probably going to do a budget, which means you are probably gonna make sure you are spending less money than you are making. You are bringing in more money than what is going out. Otherwise, you will not be able to save any money to accomplish the goal of being able to pay for your vacation. You have to lay out all of your bills, Your gas, your water, your mortgage, your cell phone, every single thing. You have to then maybe lay out, are you going out to eat a few times a week? Do you want to buy some clothes here and there? You have to make sure you know the numbers coming in and the numbers going out. Calorie counting is the same thing because in order for you to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit just means you are eating less calories than what your body burns. And if you need more If you need clarification on what a calorie deficit is, I'll put a video right here above. But that is how you create a calorie deficit, right? So if you are trying to have less calories coming in than what is going out, don't you think counting your calories would be an efficient way to know that? I think yes, it would. Now let's talk about a budget. For example, could you maybe by chance save $500 each month on the dot to make sure you can go on that vacation in 6 months? Yeah, you definitely could. Is it very likely that's gonna happen? No, probably not. Because if that were the case, you probably wouldn't need to do a budget anyway, unless you have $3,000 just sitting around ready to use whenever you want to. The same thing goes with calories. If it were just that easy to just eat in a calorie deficit by intuition, you probably wouldn't be in a place right now where you would even need to be eating in a calorie deficit because you'd already be where you wanna be by now. So calorie counting is just a tool that you can use much like doing a budget in order to make sure, for example, you are eating less calories than what your body burns. And it's a great way of just tracking things as opposed to just going by chance. Number 2, let's say you are a surgeon, for example, and you went to school for God knows how many years to be a surgeon. Awesome. You went to school for 10 years right now after you went to school for 10 years or whatever it is. Do you need to continuously show up to school every single day or can you take the 10 years of schooling that you had and And now be able to put it into practice, into your daily practice for what you do for a living and be able to use the knowledge you gained. Yeah. To my knowledge, yes, maybe you might do some continuing education every now and then. Like myself, I still do continuing education on fitness, nutrition, working out, fat loss, all these things. But I learned a tremendous amount upfront, which is why I'm able to do what I do right now. I think of calorie counting as the same exact thing. Calorie counting is simply a tool that you can use in order to learn about nutrition, about protein, about fat loss, about everything when it comes to nutrition and weight loss or weight gain or just healthy eating in general. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to use it forever. And that's where I think people oftentimes get lost. They hear or they see calorie counting and they think, oh my God, I have to do this forever. No, you don't have to do this forever. Now, are there people who maybe count their calories forever? Yeah, there may be some out there and there's nothing inherently wrong with that either, but you don't have to do that. Myself, for example, I counted calories for the better part of 3 years almost every single day, but now I no longer count calories. Because I learned what I needed to learn and I gained the skills and the habits that are needed to now be able to maintain what I currently have. And do I track calories here and there now and then? Yeah, for sure. And we can touch on that here in a second. But I counted calories for a long period of time upfront to be able to learn about protein, learn about portion sizes, learn how many calories are actually in foods. And now I have that knowledge. So I don't necessarily have to count calories anymore in order to maintain what I have. And that would be my recommendation right there. You do not have to count calories by any means. Like I said earlier, can you save $500 a month by not doing a budget? Sure you could. Could somebody do surgery on you and somehow you still come out okay? They could. Not sure if you'd want them to, but they could. But don't you think doing a budget is gonna ensure you save $500 a month? Or don't you think having somebody go through you know, surgeon school to be able to learn the things they need to learn to then be able to put it into practice later on. Don't you think that's a better idea? I think so as well, which is why my recommendation is normally if you have a goal of losing weight or building muscle or whatever your goal is, my advice is to use calorie counting as a tool to help get you and navigate you to that goal because your overall calories are just too important to not focus on and to not educate yourself on in order to get to your goal. And by the way, goals might change. For example, let's say your goal was to lose weight and it took you 6 months to lose 20 pounds, which would be amazing, by the way. Cool. Let's say you lost your 20 pounds. Then let's say you maintain that for a little bit, which we're actually going to talk about how to maintain that over here in a second. But let's say you maintain that for a bit and then you decide, I want to go into a calorie surplus. Now your goal is changing. So now maybe you do count calories again to make sure you are eating enough food, enough protein, enough carbohydrates in order to fuel muscle growth. And then let's say you do a calorie surplus for 6 months. You intentionally gain some weight and gain some muscle. And then you say, all right, now I want to slightly go back down in body fat percentage. So I'm going to go back into a calorie deficit. Cool. Maybe you go into a calorie deficit for 2 or 3 months. And you track your calories again and then you're really liking how you look now. So now for the next 6 months you're just going to maintain. And if you don't want to count calories during that period of time, you don't have to count calories during that period of time because again, you learned what you needed to learn upfront in order to allow you to maintain where you are currently at. So my recommendation is normally using it as a tool to get to where you want to be and then you can transition away from counting calories if you so choose to. Now, how do you actually transition out of tracking calories? Because I get that question a lot too, and it's honestly a big fear that people have for a few reasons. Number one is because that's the tool that you used in order to get your goal, right? Well, if that's the tool you use to get there, how do you make sure you stay there? Most people think they have to keep using that tool, but what you have to remember again about calorie counting is if you do it right and if you don't just eat 1,200 calories a day And try to starve yourself, if you actually follow a sustainable plan and implement habit changes along the way, like eating more protein, like understanding proper portion sizes, like realizing it's not about being perfect, it's about being consistent. If you do all these things along the way, when you get to that point, you will have learned the things you needed to learn in order to maintain the result. Because whatever you do to get the result is what you're going to have to do to maintain the result. And people hear me say that and they think, oh, well, that means I got to keep counting calories then. No. No, because all of the habits you have gained along the way of calorie counting and all of the education you gained, that's what you're going to have to keep doing. The habits and the education, the knowledge, that's what you'll have to keep doing to maintain, not necessarily keep counting calories. And the second fear is also just about, well, how do I know that I'm not going to be eating too many calories and I'm not going to gain all my weight back, for example? Great question. Let's talk about it. So when we talk about transitioning out of counting calories, If you're somebody who now wants to maintain the progress you've made, what you probably should do is you should then go up to your maintenance calories. And I'm just going to continue to use the example of if somebody is trying to lose weight and they reach their desired level of leanness, desired level of body fat, they reach their goal body weight. How do you transition out of that? That's the example I'm going to use, but this goes for any single thing, even if you're somebody who wants to build muscle or whatever the case may be. So you first must have to find your maintenance calories. There's various different ways to find your maintenance calories. I'll put a video here above, but let's say you're somebody who's coming off of being in a calorie deficit and now you want to go to maintenance and maintain. You can either reverse diet your way back up to your maintenance calories, or you can just jump straight to your maintenance calories. Now, what does this stuff mean? Let's just say, for example, you are somebody who's eating 1,500 calories right now, and that's what you were eating to lose body fat. Let's just say your maintenance calories are 2,000 calories. That's how many calories you need to maintain your weight. All you would do is simply go from eating 1,500 calories, which was your calorie deficit, and then go to eat 2,000 calories, which is your maintenance calories. Now again, you can either reverse diet to get from 1,500 calories to 2,000 calories, or you can jump straight to your maintenance calories. There is no right or wrong answer here in the way you want to do this. Everybody has personal preferences. I've known people who they might want to reverse diet in order to just stay as lean as possible, to then be able to find their maintenance calories while staying as lean as possible. And if you don't know what reverse dieting is, I've done an entire video here on YouTube on how to reverse diet. So I will put that here in the corner up there. But essentially all you do is just add calories each week. So again, for example, let's say week 1 you're eating 1,500 calories. Week 2 you're eating 1,600 calories. Week 3 you're eating 1,700 calories. Week 4, 1,800. Week 5, 1,900. Week 6, 2,000. So over 6 weeks, you slowly work your way back up to your maintenance calories. That's what reverse dieting is. Dieting is bringing your calories down. Reverse dieting is bringing your calories up. That's the first option. Or the second option is Just simply jump straight to your maintenance calories. So week 1, you're on 1,500. Week 2, you're on 2,000. Again, there's no right or wrong way to do this. It depends on what you would like to do. If you jump straight to your maintenance calories, you may gain more weight in the short term. And you might be like, well, what do you mean, Eric? I thought you said I'm going to eat my maintenance calories, which means I'm going to maintain my weight. Listen, you will never weigh the exact same thing 24/7 every single day. So when you reach 150, you're not going to weigh 150 every single day. You're probably going to weigh somewhere between 145 and 155. That is going to be your maintenance range because when you add calories back in, you're going to have more food in your stomach because 2,000 calories is simply just more food in your stomach than what 1,500 calories is. And number 2, you will add something called more glycogen, which is just like Stored energy inside of your muscles. And if you have more glycogen, this typically means you are going to store more water weight, which is fine because it goes into your muscles and it helps you work out, get stronger, build muscle, all those great things. But yes, the scale may go up a little bit when you jump to your maintenance calories or when you reverse diet as well. So let's say for example, you jump straight to your maintenance calories and you gain 3 pounds or 4 pounds on the scale, which is totally normal. It might take you a week to gain 4 pounds or Let's say you took reverse dieting. It might take you 6 weeks to gain 4 pounds. Either way, you're going to gain the same 4 pounds. So my personal preference is I just go right back to my maintenance calories because I understand my weight's going to go up a bit and it's going to fluctuate. But if you would like to reverse diet, you can do that too. Now, how do you know if you're in your maintenance calories or not? A couple of things. Number one, like I said, your body weight is going to fluctuate around the same couple of pounds. So, you know, you'll probably fluctuate typically on a week-to-week basis within 3 to 5 pounds. This is why it's still important to track data as you continue to work your way out of counting calories. And number 2, your measurements will probably roughly stay about the same. So if let's say you're tracking your waist measurement, as you start to increase your calories and as the weeks go by, your measurements should not be climbing and climbing and climbing. They should be roughly around the same because let's say for example, you increased to your maintenance calories and the scale initially spiked up 4 pounds. But then it stayed around the same 4-pound spike up, you know, within 3 to 5 pounds, and it did that for 3, 4 weeks, and your measurements were pretty much staying the same as well. That would mean you're in maintenance calories. But if let's say you increased your calories and then 2 weeks later and your weight spiked up a little bit, and then 2 weeks later it's still spiking up, and then 2 weeks later it's still spiking up, okay, you overshot your maintenance calories. Just bring them back down a little bit and you will be in your maintenance calories. So first and foremost, that is how to get to your maintenance calories. Now, once you're there, the process of transitioning out of tracking calories is actually very simple. Here's what I would do. Once you've found your maintenance calories, I would just go weeks 1 and 2, I would do 6 days of tracking, 1 day of not tracking. And I would typically make that 1 day of not tracking some day that is super normal for you. For example, I wouldn't put that day on a Saturday where maybe you go out to eat and you have all these things going on. I would put that day on a Tuesday where you're in your normal routine. You go to work, you come home, you cook dinner, everything's normal. That's weeks 1 and 2. Then I would go to weeks 3 and 4. I would do 5 on and 2 off. So I would count your calories for 5 days. I would not count your calories for 2 days. You've already been not counting your calorie for 1 day, which was, let's say, a random Tuesday. This time I would incorporate a weekend day. So let's say, for example, you do Tuesday and Sunday. Those are your 2 days to not track calories. Incorporate a day in there on weeks 3 and 4 where it might not be normal so that you can get comfortable with not tracking calories even when things aren't 100% perfect and knowing that you will still be okay. Next, weeks 5 and 6, I would go 4 days tracking, 3 days not tracking. The 3 days you don't track, I would probably pick 2 weekdays that are pretty normal and then pick one weekend weekend day where it's not that normal. And from there, what I would do is week 7 to 8, I would go 3 days of tracking, 4 days of not tracking. Now I would do both weekend days and then 2 days throughout the week as well. So let's say you do Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday. Those are your 4 days you do not track calories. You track calories the other 3 days. Then from there, simply kind of transitioning and water your way down from 3 days tracking, 2 days tracking, 1 day tracking, Zero days tracking. That's how you can reach your goal, maintain your goal forever, and be goddamn proud of yourself for accomplishing what you wanted to accomplish. And I hope this video helped you. If it did, please feel free to let me know below and give it a thumbs up. If you have any questions, drop them below as well. And just so you know, I also have a podcast if you enjoy listening to podcasts. It's just called the Eric Roberts Fitness Podcast. I'll put a link for it here below. It's on iTunes and Spotify. Hope it helped. Thanks, Eric.
