Do you really have to count calories?
Is counting calories a waste of time?

Who are these people?
It’s amazing to me that the idea of not counting calories gets downplayed or dismissed because the “blogger” deems it unnecessary and not nearly as important as the food choices you make.  Talk about comparing apples to oranges!  I’d venture to guess many of them are mommy bloggers who just got fed up with the idea and simply wanted to connect with their readers?  Or maybe they figured it was inaccurate anyway and proper food choices were way more important.
Sure I think anybody with common sense can nod their head that making better food choices in the long run is more important than counting calories.  But some of these blogs are non-sense.  They make mention of ancient societies that do not exist anymore or talk about how our ancestors ate in in prehistoric times.  Meanwhile, they miss the point of why anybody would even bother tracking calories in the first place.
The Biggest Benefits of Tracking Your Diet

* it’s a basic road map of where you are and what you need to do to elicit change
* you have an idea of what’s happening so you can make better choices

Did you know that if you don’t bother with tracking calories, you can make the best food choices and yet still eat too much of a good thing and gain weight?
Look, I’m not saying counting calories is accurate or that you have to do it for every meal for the rest of your life.  But for those who want to gain weight, maintain weight or lose weight, it’s a nice way to get a basic idea of where you are today and what needs to happen to change your body composition.
Once you get that down, you don’t need to track every morsel that goes into your mouth but for most people, it’s pretty clear that have no clue as to how much energy (calories) they are consuming, less of an idea of what makes a complete meal and little to no concept of energy expenditures in relation to intake vs output.
Counting calories is not a waste of time.  It’s a necessary and useful step to getting an idea of where you are and what can be done to make effective changes to your body composition.
Nothing is more frustrating than eating good foods (eating clean) and still not gaining or losing weight simply because you aren’t eating enough or eating too little to make those changes.  Think of counting calories as a map.  You want to enjoy the scenery but with a map, you know the routes you need to take to arrive at your destination.  Once you have a plan, you can look to make better food choices that match the route you want to take.
Sites Mentioned in This Podcast:
Fitday
FitBit
MyFitnessPal