Should We Stop Counting Calories?

A laborious day-to-day process or a controlled way of eating? The experts thrash it out

- Lucy Gornall

It’s nothing new – we’ve known about calorie counting since the dawn of time (well, kinda) but still to this day, it’s a constant debate. Do we devote precious eating time every single day to tallying up numbers which, let’s face it, we round down more often than we should. Or, do we simply ignore the figures and eat mindfully, ensuring portions aren’t too OTT and that we’re eating healthy, wholesome food? Most of the time, anyway. Alternatively, there’s always the eat-what-you-want-when you-want method. Although we’re not too sure this is the best way to staying in shape…

‘NONE OF US NEED TO BE WEIGHING BROCCOLI!’

Ashton Turner, nutritionist at London’s evolve reckons life’s to short!

‘There’s a time and a place for calorie counting, however, it’s boring and laborious and with the best will in the world, most people are out by at least 20% so it really isn’t as accurate as people think. The problem is, people like to lie to themselves and so when they track calories they either “miss” things out or choose the slightly better option on MyFitnessPal (a calorie-counting app, FYI) to manipulate the numbers to where they have been told they should be in order to make themselves feel better.