Hello and welcome to Chaos to Calm podcast episode number 52. I'm Sarah, the perimenopause naturopath, your guide through the journey of perimenopause. So if you're over 40 and feeling like you're changing hormones or hijacking your mood, energy, and weight, and you want to change that in a holistic way, then this is the place for you. Because each episode I share with you, my views on what the heck is happening in your body, why you're feeling the way that you are and what you can do about it with actionable advice to help you feel more calm, in control, less stressed, and more comfortable in your body. I'm so glad you've joined me.

Let's get right into the discussion of today's topic so we can start shifting your perimenopause experience from chaos to calm. Now, I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, my weight actually fluctuated a lot. I have always had trouble maintaining a weight or a body composition for myself. And I remember that, it fluctuating right from when I was about 10 years old, I'd go on holidays, like school holidays, my weight would go up and then over the term, it would come back down, rinse and repeat.

Like it was just always like that. And it continued as a young adult into my late twenties, and really, if I'm actually honest, my whole life until the last four years or so. But in those years when I struggled with my weight, and because I was a teen and a young adult in the 80s and 90s, my go to solution was calorie counting and Weight Watchers, and early on it was calorie counting with them later on, it became points counting, which is really the same thing just with a different name. So they've made it a bit unique to themselves as a point of difference. They've assigned a point value for everything based on its calories and then you count the points. So, it's the same outcome then, but I always felt hungry and I always felt restricted because the things that I'd grown up eating that I loved, butter, cheese, nuts, eggs, all those lovely things that were higher in calories.

So that was really, if you ate those, you weren't eating much in your meal. So because of the calorie value that is assigned to fats is nine calories per gram protein is four and carbohydrates, so four. So because fats are higher in calories, it's natural that when you're doing calorie counting, or really it's calorie restriction, everything has to be low fat because the fats are more calorie dense, but fat's also where the flavor is.

So if you are going low fat and cutting fat, because you're calorie counting, then you'll know how bland and unsatisfying those meals can be. And I would always find myself like I'd finish a meal and then I'd be straight away hanging out for the next meal. Like not, not long after I'd finished the previous one.

Then it was just a cycle of thinking about food all day long. And when my husband and I first started dating, he would find it quite entertaining how I could wake up in the morning and have already planned out my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'd be looking forward to those meals, not just because they were going to be tasty or something like that, but generally because I was starving right through the day there as well.

I guess as a man at that time, in Gen X, it wasn't looking a particular way or being a certain amount of thinness was not a thing for men. It was purely contained for women at that time. So because the calories, carbohydrates are lowering calories, my meals were often really carb heavy, which means that it was impacting my blood sugar and insulin levels and I'd have lots of spikes and crashes.

And so I didn't really understand that. I didn't know I wasn't a naturopath or nutritionist then I didn't know about the importance of protein and fat for stabilizing my blood sugar levels. So, I just felt sad, hungry, and actually most of the time, really hangry from meal to meal. And, looking back like that and with what I know now, it's really easy for me to see how the constant focus on calorie counting and low fat foods was actually making me really miserable.

And it was unhealthy for my body, my mind, my hormones too, because they need fat to function well. So no wonder I was always agitated and unsatisfied. My period was a bit of a mess at that time. I used to get so hangry. Like I'd literally turn on a, on moments notice, it'd be fine. And the next minute I'd be in rage.

I'd be like, I need food now. I'm sure I know I'm not alone in that. Cause I often hear, we talk about, we joke about being hangry, but actually shouldn't really get to being hangry. Yeah. So like I said earlier, four years ago was about the first time that I actually learned how to maintain a healthy body composition for myself.

And that was when I learned, I'd finished my naturopathy studies and I did some more study on metabolic balance and personalized nutrition and that really taught me in a way I didn't know before, even despite my studies, about how to balance nutrition and incorporate those healthy fats and proteins and the importance of them, I knew they were important, but I learned even more about them then and how to harness the power of personalized nutrition to help people really learn about food and what suits them and what works well for their body and how to support and nourish it. And that's what I did and that's when I began to feel better and manage my weight effectively. So that was only four years ago and now I feel confident moving through holidays and not gaining a bunch of weight and I certainly don't feel like I'm ever missing out on life or festivities or having a drink when I want to have a drink or anything like that.

But, I want to talk today about calorie counting because it is like when I'm speaking to women, always the go to is calorie counting, or like I said before, calorie restriction when they want to lose some fat mass. And that's what we grew up with. It's what was talked about, what we saw done by the women around us.

And so that's what we know, but good reasons to not love it is that it doesn't work. Anyway, it doesn't tend to work for women over 40 and in perimenopause. And if that's you and you've tried to just cut back on what you eat or watch your calories or maybe do some more exercise to increase that calorie gap, you'll know it doesn't work.

So that's what I want to talk about today. Not so much why it doesn't work. I'll probably cover that off at another time or watch my free masterclass if you want to know more about that. But I want to explain how it was developed and then why I don't like it and which is essentially why the science isn't sound on calorie counting.

So let's go back to where it all began, which was in the early 19th century. So early 1800s, Nicholas Clement, a French chemist and industrial industrialist introduced the concept of the calorie to the broader public in lectures on heat engines. So he was studying it, as a unit of energy, not for food. He defined the calorie as a unit of heat energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. So Edward Franklin in the 1860s, he's a British chemist. He started experimenting using these things called bomb calorimeters.

And these devices measure the heat produced by the burning of food. So this is where scientists started calculating the energy content of various foods. And this is where the start of food energy values that we still use now, like the calories assigned to foods. That's where it started.

That's the science in 1860. Here we are 2024 and still using that science. So hold that in your head for later. Then late 19th century. So this is the late 1800s, there's some German physiologists, Max von Pettenkofer and Carl von Voit, and they started working on human metabolism. So how much energy, how many calories do we use, as daily functions and also in digesting food. So they used a respiratory calorimeter to measure the oxygen intake and the carbon dioxide output in humans to see how the body converts proteins, carbohydrates, and fats into energy. So they'd feed them, like a protein rich food and see how much compared to the oxygen taking in, how much carbon dioxide was coming out and how much of that oxygen they're using for energy to digest those. 

So that's where we started getting an idea of metabolic rates, like your basal metabolic rate that you might probably have calculated to try and squeeze some extra calories into your day there, and then what really took it to the next level was an American chemist, Atwater, he'd studied in Germany and he brought the principles that he'd seen there around human metabolic rate and the calorie content or energy, values of food back to America.

And he started really cap it like this is where we got calculations on all the energy values of thousands of foods. Like that's was his life's work was establishing that. Then along come World War One and , the USDA, so the U. S. government promoted calorie counting as part of its food conservation efforts.

So this is one example. Really where it started to get legs and spread and become the norm. So they published pamphlets that included calorie counts for a whole bunch of food items, and also the recommended daily calorie allocations for based on activity levels, sex, and age. So this is really. where things, where we ramped it up a notch and really started using calorie counting and, that basal metabolic rate as a thing in terms of managing your nutritional needs.

So this is making sure that people didn't eat too much and didn't waste food as well. They could know exactly what they should be eating for them, that women, men and their children as well now around this time as well, a doctor, Lulu Peters, she was a California based medical doctor.

She published a book diet and health with key to the calories. That was 1918 and hers was one of the first books that really popularized calorie counting as a method for weight loss. So she presented calorie counting as a scientific and rational approach to managing your body weight. And she sold millions of copies, which when you think about the time period and when it was and how big an audience she would have reached with that, she had a newspaper column that was syndicated.

So people across America were seeing that she'd lost weight with calorie counting, and they wanted that for themselves because also at that time, the vibe of the culture and society was one of being regimented, you did things for your country and, country first, and you did what your government asked you to, but also they shifted from the ideal of a woman or ideal shape of a woman around the late 1800s and early 1900s was quite a voluptuous woman. But come the 1920s, we're in the flapper era. If you think about any pictures that you've seen of women in that time, they were very slim hipped and very slender, and that became the feminine ideal. So, calorie counting was released as a scientific way of losing weight at the same time that a thin body is now the ideal for women.

So, Lulu Peters, she was saying this is the modern scientific way to do it, and they all wanted to be a person of science and be modern, but also, being regimented and doing things in an efficient and rationalized way. Was what they wanted at that time then. So yeah, early 1900s, 1920s, things really took off in America, 1940s to 1960s, it continued more governments and health organizations began to incorporate calorie recommendations into their dietary guidelines.

And so the focus expanded a bit to include balancing calories with nutritional. So vitamins and minerals to try and prevent deficiencies. And I suppose that they had started to notice that with calorie counting, that was becoming a thing. And then of course, our era, Gen X's, and not quite millennials, a bit early for them, but the 1970s to 1990s really saw a boom in the diet industry.

And I don't know if you remember at home, we used to get there was like the pretty can cook book and then there was the weight watchers diet book and we had Women's Weekly, I said Weight Watchers as well. And there was Jenny Craig foods started to pop up in the supermarkets and things like that as well.

So it became really popular then too, and probably coincided with Ansel Keyes and his discussion of fat and cholesterol and encouraging a low fat diet there as well. So we were all striving to be low fat and low calorie and, it's gross and it's tasteless and it's not what human bodies need. And it's still around, it's still a thing. And now we just have lots of apps that make it easier for us. You've got things like my fitness pal and, and lose it and lots of other different apps.

I'm not encouraging you to use them, please don't because they're just all about calorie counting, then calculating your calories, tracking your exercise, how many calories out you're putting and how many calories in and trying to create that big gap. And it just doesn't work for weight loss.

It's so much more complex than but our bodies are more complicated. Then that as well. And I suppose that is a really great segue for me to start talking to you about why I don't like calorie counting slash calorie restriction. So the first reason that I don't like them is that the calorie labels are actually very inaccurate.

Because those calorie counts on the food labels are based on science from the 1800s. Now if you think about what they were experimenting and how they were experimenting and the technology they had available to them then, and now think about where we are in 2024. There's a lot of growth and that has happened there, but calories hasn't shifted since that time.

So, the calories on your label, just an average for fats, proteins, and carbohydrate, or based of an average of those in the foods from that time period. And I'm also going to talk to you, some more about other problems around calorie content of food as well. So we've got cooking and processing, like a cooking method impacts how many calories we can get out of a food.

So just because say, let's go with almonds, they're a good example. Let's say that the serve of almonds has 179 calories in it. If those are chopped up or if they're cooked, we might, we're going to get a different amount of food out of them or calories out of them than what we will if they're in their raw state. like people always tell you to soak your almonds first to reduce the phytates, the phytates block you from getting the nutrients from it, so that's foods have evolved, like particularly nuts and seeds, they've evolved to resist digestion. To make sure that they can get propagated.

So when we were out living on the land and we were going number twos behind a bush or in a hole in the ground, it was in the benefit of the nut and seed to stay whole so that it could just pass straight through and come out and grow into a tree somewhere else with built in fertilizer even as well and some foods have evolved to resist our digestion. Flaxseeds are another one, like if we eat them whole, digestive system can't break down the cell wall, the seed husk, to get to the nutrients inside it. That's why I always told you to grind it up, if you want to get the benefit of the phytoestrogens and other things inside those flaxseeds. 

And so if we're looking at some, some foods will have a tougher cell wall like the flaxseed there and that impacts how much we can digest them and our teeth can't get them through. So of course it impacts how many calories we get out of that. And processed foods as well. So if we're talking about ultra processed or processed foods in the packet foods, they we're going to get more calories out of that than we are like a whole food because they're really easy and they just break down quite easily in our digestive system.

And we can take all of the, what's in it or mostly carbohydrates, from it and absorb them into our bloodstream there as well. So vegetables. You're going to vegetables, almonds, nuts, seeds, those kind of things. You're going to get a lot less calories actually out of it or available to your body after digestion than you are of something that is processed.

And I'm going to talk now about individual differences. Foods and the state of the food, whether it's raw, cooked or processed, is going to change how many calories you get out of it. Our bodies and the state of our health is going to impact how many calories we get out of food as well.

So we have, our metabolic variability. So, our metabolism, our age, sex, physical activity, health conditions. We all need different calorie amounts. So assigning a particular count of calories to all women should have 1600 calories per day, less than that if you want to lose weight. My needs are different to your needs and my needs today are probably going to be different to yours to next year or what they were last year. So the calorie counting and restriction doesn't take that into account. It also our digestive function. So physically there's lots of differences that impact how many calories we get out of food digestion. I talked about this a couple of podcast episodes ago about how our digestion changes as we age and as we move through perimenopause as well.

So your digestive secretions, your enzymes, your stomach acids, your gut microbiota, they all influence what you get out of the food that you're eating. So again, almonds, 179 calories in a portion. We're actually probably only going to get about 120 calories out of that. We're chewing it up and digesting it.

So I always say the losers out of the calorie count is the whole foods. And this is why, because we've got variability in our digestion and our digestive efficiency and our microbiome. Even our immune system as well. So if something is raw or maybe you like your steak more rare, then maybe there might be some microbes in it that your immune system is going to have to work on and make sure that they don't make us sick, that takes more energy.

So we're going to use more calories digesting food like that than we are. If it's all ultra processed and, and, or really well cooked. So the other thing too, is if we're eating lots of ultra processed foods, we don't necessarily have the microbes to be able to break down components in the food like particularly vegetables and things like that, and also our microbiome can influence how much of the carbohydrate or how well we cope with carbohydrates there as well, and then whether we are tending to store more of them as fat mass around our middle. So our genes influence that as well. So yeah, differences in the food, so calories don't take that into account in terms of the structures of the food or how they've evolved to resist, being digested.

And then we've also got our own individual differences. There as well, in terms of our hormones, say our thyroid function, our thyroid is our metabolic thermostat in our bodies, but also our gut health and is super important here in what we get out of the food, whether we have enough of the digestive enzymes.

So a good example is like lactose in milk. For some people, they don't have the lactose that is needed to digest it. So for you, if you're drinking a big milky coffee, you're not getting anything out of that. And probably nothing from your food that you might've eaten around it either. Cause everything's going through and coming out really quickly at the other end.

Whereas people that do have lactase, yeah, that's fine. They're no problem with that. No bloating, no diarrhea. They are able to digest and get the protein and the fat and the other nutrients from the milk. So another problem, my third issue with calorie counting is that it often leads to nutritional inadequacy because when we're focusing on calorie content and quantity, we are not looking at the nutrient density or the nutrient value of the food that we are eating.

And those macronutrients like protein and fat and the micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals are so much more important for us than the calories there as well. And because if you're just considering calories as the sole thing that you're looking at in food, then an ultra processed packet of I don't know, rice cakes with really nothing much in them, except carbohydrates is could have the same value as another food that's a whole food that's also got fats and protein in it, as well as lots of micronutrients of vitamins and minerals. So, if we're not thinking about the rest of the components of food, then we can run into trouble and have those nutritional deficiencies or insufficiencies.

Now I want to move on to like the psychological impact because it is high with calorie counting. It really pops us into that diet mindset, that all or nothing approach because we're obsessing and focusing on the numbers. And like I said, just before it overshadows the importance of your overall nutrition and the enjoyment of food.

And it ignores that food is a lot more than just fuel. So, we have as well as a society and cult, and culturally food is a lot for us there. So when we're just looking at the numbers around it and the calorie content of it, it brings up a quite an unhealthy relationship with food and eating.

It's really hard to sustain in the longterm as well, because our brains don't like restriction in a primal brain, our child brain is like, don't tell me what to do. You can't make me do that. And as soon as you say you can't eat that, or you're not doing that, or you're only having X amount of food, your child brain is going to spring up with that and sabotage your efforts.

 And like I said, often if we're calorie counting, we're doing low fat and it's low flavor. So, there's that as well. Now, I've talked about how rigid that it can be with calorie counting and maybe you might avoid social events because of it, or you might just that all or nothing, just whatever, and just eat everything inside in those social events there as well.

And then yourself talk, in a critic can really spiral out of control and a lot of people do feel from that constant monitoring or as well in that diet mindset, they're assigning a value to food. So with seeing foods as good or bad, and if we consume a lot of bad foods, we see ourselves as bad.

And so this is really perhaps not exclusive to calorie counting, but definitely part of that diet mindset. And it's something I work hard with my clients to help them undo so they can find freedom around food again and learn how to enjoy festivities and social events. And how to eat at those, how to incorporate having a drink or eating the cake and not letting it totally derail you or your health.

And that's what calorie counting doesn't teach you how to do that. It just tells you to avoid those things and not eat. And it's very Puritan calorie counting. That was a word I was looking for mentally before, and that's what the 20s were about. Very Puritan and regimented. So let's not make it that for these twenties, the 2020s.

Now, one last thing is calorie counting historically was marketed mostly to women around the ideal of what women needed to look like, what women owed society a thin body and looking pretty. Which we don't, that's absolute nonsense, but that's what calorie counting kind of reinforces.

It reinforces that ideal of thinness, that we should look this particular way. And women generally aren't made, we have rounded hips. We have curves and we have voluptuous. Of course, we're all different. And that's the thing, like what I was saying earlier, calorie counting doesn't take that into account.

Even if you try and adjust it for yourself, and I know there's websites and calculators that try and help you do this, it's very inaccurate and it's based of old science that hasn't evolved at all. And the other thing too, like particularly in the early days of calorie counting, access to those healthy, low calorie foods and resources to for accurate counting was really limited for lower socioeconomic classes.

And it was really an upper or middle class white woman thing. And some would argue it's, it remains that way these days, especially when we've got ultra processed foods being so cheap and so much cheaper than whole foods, then that is certainly how it is that these days, and I think, and I know I'm not alone in this because I've read others talking about it before as well, that the focus on dieting and calorie counting really serves as a means of social control.

It keeps women and girls preoccupied with their weight and their appearance and diverts their attention away from social activism or political activism and many other things there as well. It keeps us in our place. So that's the end of my show or rant for today. And I feel sad whenever I see calorie counting as a thing, or I see meal plans being advertised and they're all about calorie counting.

And yes, it's been widely used for a long time, but it. It's outdated and it's overly simplistic and it makes overly simplistic assumptions about human digestion and metabolism. It lacks guidance. This is what I see a lot of the time in meal plans or other, programs and things. They, they don't teach you how to eat when you're out.

They don't teach you about your building a positive relationship with food. It's really all or nothing, mindset still going on there as well. And that makes it hard to stick with it in the long term. I always teach my clients how to eat in the long term, how to incorporate social events, festivities, and not let it derail them, but also enjoy it without feeling like they have to be so mindful or conscious of every single thing going in their mouth.

I guess this episode highlights again, how important our gut health is. But also how unique we are to our genes, our biochemistry, our hormones, and there's so much more that influences our body's macro and micronutrient needs each day. So I think a more holistic understanding of food and digestion that considers that complexity of us and our biology is really essential for making informed choices about what works to support nourish you and your body mentally and physically there as well.

I think a moderate approach, there's room for that actual moderation, but I think we do need some concrete ideas around that and what, how, what that is for us, because again, we're all different. And so what works for you might not work for me and that's what my approach is. And that's how I work with my clients as well.

And I am really excited because I am in the next month releasing a new lower cost program that will enable more women to embrace that approach and find support on happy, sustainable way to manage their health in perimenopause and beyond to lose weight. The hormonal weight creep that can start how to keep it off and feel comfortable in their bodies, whatever size that might be for you or shape, and reclaiming your mood and energy.

I think they're the important things, feeling comfortable in your body, and also feeling good within yourself with your mood and your energy there as well. So I'm calling that PerimenoGO. And if you're looking for more info about it, you want to sign up to the wait list or you want some other resources or to submit a question for a future episode, please visit the show notes at www.chaostocalmpodcast.com and while you're there hit subscribe and make sure you don't miss an episode. Thank you once again for listening and sharing your time with me today, I do really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to exploring the master hormone insulin with you next time and what it means for your health in perimenopause so that we can help keep shifting your perimenopause experience from chaos to calm.