The Calorie Conundrum

When it comes to how your body deals with calories, you, my friend, are a unique snowflake.

Calories are confusing.

Not only are food companies allowed to be a whopping 20-percent off from what their label claims, but those same labels can’t possibly account for every variable.

There’s how each food is prepared, or not prepared. The unique atmosphere of our gut microbiome. Even the size of our large intestine matters when it comes to how much energy we absorb from food. And while this might be annoying, maybe even downright infuriating, it also explains why two people can eat the same diet and have wildly different reactions.

More importantly, it shows just how dangerous it is to compare our results with someone else’s. How having expectations based on the physiology of another leads to disappointment.

When it comes to how your body deals with calories, you, my friend, are a unique snowflake. And the only way to know what works best for you is to weigh and measure your food. Because even if the label lies, the food scale doesn’t.

Calories are confusing. But five ounces is still five ounces.