In this era, counting every single calorie you put in your mouth has become a major factor of fitness. One needs to track every single calorie, every rep at the gym, every footstep in a notebook and do all sorts of mathematical calculations to ensure that one is in a deficit of exactly 300 calories.

Big brands, small ones too, did not miss this chance to cash on by selling their high-tech, revolutionary calorie trackers and reinforcing the delusional beliefs about fitness that common people have. When someone thinks of fitness, images of running with a fitness watch and monitoring minuscule details in a smartphone pop up in the mind. In reality, the number that the majority of calorie trackers offer you is just a guesstimate and inaccurate. But we will look at that later.

First, learn how to calculate accurate calories to get desired results. The way to count calories without a calorie tracker is that…

You do not.

You just do not count calories.

Throughout history, humans were at their fittest when they never tracked calories, steps walked, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and other nonsense. Even today, the people who live in villages, sweat in their farms all day, eat real, unprocessed foods are never fat. It is the population that lives in a so-called modern, privileged, luxurious lifestyle that is facing all sorts of diseases that never even existed before. Why is that? It is because of two simple things:

1: Junk food.

2: Sedentariness.

Earlier, people used to work more and eat more. Now, it is work less, eat less in volume but dense in calories food. Where does this calorie-dense food come from? Fast-food companies, especially in America. A pizza has multiple times more calories than a same-size serving of vegetables. The modern world is driven by intelligence and not physical labour which forces people to adapt to a sedentary lifestyle. Many people do not have the time to cook their own food as they are very busy saving the world by scrolling through Instagram. Ordering readymade junk food is the only option available. In the case of America, the birthplace of fast-food companies, it does not have a traditional diet as it is a newly formed country. Their diet mostly contains meat and other non-vegetarian foods with a lack of fiber-rich foods which leads to constipation.

Other countries/cultures have a rich traditional diet that was experimented with and practiced for thousands of years. E.g. Indian lunch consists of a source of carbohydrates(rice or wheat, sorghum, pearl millet), a source of protein(lentils, sprouted pulses, beans, peas, legumes), a source of fiber(vegetables), yogurt or curd mixed with chopped onions, cucumber, etc. and a source of fats(clarified butter) sprinkled on top. Indians used to drink clarified butter and still not get fat as they used to work a lot.

The advantage of having a traditional diet is that creating a deficit or a surplus becomes very easy, even without a tracker. You know how much you eat every day. What is your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and how much junk food you eat. You know all of that. Just keep in mind the average amount of food in a week or two. If your goal is to gain weight then eat more. Maybe you are eating five pieces of bread daily. Then add one or two extra pieces to that. Eat an extra cup of lentils or pulses or nuts for protein and fats.

If you want to lose weight then first strike out the junk food. For example, If you are eating junk two times a week, then reduce it to one time. Be honest with yourself if what brings results. If luckily, you are not eating junk food regularly then just strike out some food items. Maybe decrease the amount of rice and a couple of pieces of bread. This is how easy it gets when you have been following a traditional or non-traditional diet for years.

If you have been following an inconsistent diet with heavy reliance on junk food and restaurant food then this gets tougher. It is not possible to calculate with 100% accuracy, the number of calories a particular food item has, especially junk food. The restaurant is not going to measure the amount of oil, sauce, and other stuff it is going to put into your dish. Even fruits have different calories.

Apple’s come in different sizes and types, you cannot look at it and say it has 116 calories and feed it inside your fitness tracker. In this case, working from the ground up and creating a decent, sustainable diet plan is the way to go. Before thinking of losing or gaining weight, you will have to create and follow a healthy diet for few months to find out your maintenance calories. Once your maintenance calories are found out, adjustments can be made for muscle gain or fat loss. Counting calories is the best option here. Once you get comfortable with your diet and know what your body wants, adjustments can be made based on portion sizes instead of calories.

For the people who follow a traditional or consistent diet, this hassle is saved. Here using your common sense helps a lot. You know your body. For how much time you are maintaining the same weight, what you eat, the lifestyle you follow. Just be honest with yourself and you will find out the reason and solution to your problem. There is no need to make drastic changes to your diet. Do not discard white rice cause some stupid dietician said it is unhealthy. Your traditional diet, no matter which country you are in, is healthy and is designed to suit the needs of your local population.

Let us look at why the majority of those calorie trackers, apps, websites, workouts, or watches do not work. Let us take a simple example, two people, one is 100 pounds and the other one is 200 pounds both have to do 20 squats. Who is working harder? The answer is the 200-pound person. Now let us say that the person is a muscular wrestler and does hundreds of squats every day. However, the other person is a beginner. Now, who is working harder? Muscle mass and your body fat percentage play a huge role in burning calories. Even if your tracker has the option to feed in your body fat percentage, how are you going to calculate it? Some people can have a shredded upper body and fat legs. How will you calculate in that scenario? The conclusion is that there is no perfect number of calories an exercise would burn. If someone is claiming that their workout will burn a specific amount of calories then mostly it is a scam. Stay away from that.

Now, these calorie trackers have certain tools that they use to provide you with a number. The majority of them use the heart rate sensor. Let us take another example. One person is walking for 2 hours and another one is watching the scariest 2-hour horror movie. Who will have a higher heart rate? And who is burning more calories? The answer is obvious, heart rate does not calculate how many calories you are burning. Heart rate can differ from person to person. Fit people can have lower resting heart rates compared to unfit people. Does that mean that unfit people are burning more calories cause they have a higher heart rate? No. Whatever the tracker provides you is just a guesstimate, unless there is some super costly high-tech tracker from the future. And most people cannot afford that much and it is not necessary to afford any tracker.

Let us now look at the apps and websites which will again provide you with a guesstimate. It is not possible to perfectly calculate how many calories a particular food item has. These websites have a fixed program which it uses for everyone. It may say you are burning 3000 calories when in reality the number could be a lot less. What is more important here is that people feed in wrong info. If a person is sedentary then, he may choose the lightly or moderately active option. If a person eats junk daily then he/she may say I eat once a week. That is why it was written earlier, “Be honest with yourself” for your own good. If you agree with yourself that yes you eat a lot of junk food. Then you have your solution right there.

Unless you are a competitor or fitness is your profession, do not stress yourself with counting calories. It is the simple things that work like eating healthy, avoiding junk food, remaining active.

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