Should You Count Calories?

Should You Count Calories?

Interview with Tera Warner

Yuri: You know, I should copy and paste that and put it up on our site. That’s a great, great statement. I really like that.

And then just to kinda further that point, I think it’s a very, you know, if people buy packaged foods, you have the food label, which will show you the energy and calories, and then you have the ingredient list, which shows you the ingredients, and most people will gravitate towards, “Oh, how many calories does this food have? Oh, it has three hundred calories.”

But they fail to look at the quality of the food itself, so they don’t—even though the food might only have three hundred calories, they’re not considering that this processed, packaged food has tons of additives and chemicals that have been man-made and added to the food.

So, again, we’re so kind of focused on the numbers and how many calories are we taking in that we’ve totally lost track of what food is, I think.

Tera: Yeah, and just asking the question. Like, when you’re looking at that label, just ask yourself: What are you looking to discover and why? Why do you wanna know this?

I was recently with a friend in a Starbucks of all places, and I was watching her choose her food—I didn’t choose anything; I was just there for the ride—but she was being very careful to avoid carbs.

I’m just like, “What?” This is the foundation of energy; without carbs—and, I mean, it’s because—you know, or looking at how many proteins.

Am I getting enough protein? I don’t wanna have carbs, but I do wanna have protein. Who taught you this? That’s the question I wanna ask.

Who taught you to avoid carbs? Why? Do you know what grapes are? Those are carbs.

Some of the most beautiful, satisfying, colorful, tasty food, the food that just makes the most sense and all the children are drawn to that grows on trees, that can be picked with your hand, and fits perfectly in the palm of your hand, these are carbs. They’re great. They’re high-water, super nourishing foods.

And we get, you know, someone sold something called an Atkins diet or the pie carb diet or the protein diet. I don’t know half those books ’cause it’s not interested me enough to read them, but I know that we’re operating on circuits that have very little to do with what makes sense for the human body in its natural environment given the tools that it has.

You know, sometimes in our workshops I like to do a bit of a visualization process, and I’ll just ask people to transport themselves into the middle of a wheat field and you’re hungry and you wanna eat, but if you look around the wheat field, what are you gonna do if you pick a few grains of wheat—or stocks of wheat; I think that’s what they’re called—what are you gonna do with all those pasty, dusty grains?

There’s nothing in that that resembles a croissant or a loaf of bread or any of those things. It’s so far removed from the actual product as nature delivers it.

But if you put yourself in an apple orchard or even—I mean, I used to live in Costa Rica in the jungle, so just look around and there’s food all over the place. But even if you just look out at an apple tree, the color of an apple, it draws your attention—we’re so attracted to color aesthetics as humans—and you pick it and it just fits perfectly in your hand and then you eat.

And I actually make people in my workshops eat a mouthful of dusty wheat grains. You know, “Go for it. How does that taste for you? Is that good? Do you like that?”

And then you take this apple and it’s so hydrating and it’s so crisp and sweet and delicious and it just makes sense. There’s no nutritional bible out there, there’s no nutritional pyramid or chart out there that’s gonna tell you that; just common sense.

It looks good, it fits in my hand, it tastes great, it hydrates me; just go for it. But we’re just, we’re kind of, you know, really influenced by media, and it’s hard to sort of retrain ourselves; just do what makes sense.

Yuri: It really is true, you know, the simplest solutions are usually the best ones, which I think is pretty obvious based on that scenario you just described, which would be the simplest solution.

What do you, I mean, what do you recommend to people who are obsessed about—even for people transitioning to raw foods and they’re worrying about their protein or whatever it might be? What do you tell people?

What do you recommend people who enjoy or love or need to count how much protein they’re getting and how many carbs and how much fat? ’Cause one of the questions that I get quite often, quite a bit is from some of our younger followers who are interested in working out and they wanna eat more raw foods.

The first thing they worry about is, “Can I maintain my muscle mass? Do I need that, where am I getting my protein from?” So, what do you recommend to people like that?

Tera: Well, I think that’s a great question, and one of the things I wanna be careful to do is, you know, in discussing some of the things that we are, I don’t want to negate the fact that for many people, this is a passion, understanding calories.

There’s a fine line between passion, maybe, and obsession, but if you are really curious, you’re really passionate—and I know some people are; they really wanna make sure they’re getting what they need, and I think that’s great—and if you are, then there are sites out there where—you know, I don’t know if you ever send people to this, but FitDay.com or it’s another one; there’s something called NutriDiary where you can go, and it’s just a free resource and you can go and basically enter the foods that you eat, you know, if it’s three cups bananas or spinach or whatever it is that you’re eating and it will calculate about the nutritional value of what you’re eating and the calories.

I think that’s a great personal experiment for people to do to satisfy their curiosity or if you’re very passionate and you wanna know, then that’s a great thing to do. I know, you know my friend Brendan Frasier, who’s an athlete, he’s really into observing some of those things and has, which served as the foundation for his books.

And people want reassurance, partly because we’ve been educated this way and want that satisfaction. So, if you want that satisfaction and it speaks to you, well, go for it.

And the other one—you know, you kind of talked about simplicity as often the solution—one of the things I do wanna be careful to do is just not negate the fact that there are people suffering with health complications. And some of those do require more attention than cucumbers and avocadoes can provide, and in that case you find the qualified health care practitioner that you trust, but you have a long road to travel if you’re dining at the Burger Barn on your own even before you get there.

I mean, there’s a lot, there’s so much that people can do to just take the first steps and move towards a more natural diet. So, I understand the curiosity, and I understand even the satisfaction and assurance that can come for people by looking at these charts and calculating their numbers.

But for me it’s just never, I mean, in the very beginning I was training for a marathon, so I would want to make sure that I was getting enough calories, because, otherwise, what would happen is I would go a few days and I was chronically undereating, so then I would just have these, you know, I would just wanna eat anything.

I was just so hungry, and I would eat food that just didn’t make sense, but I was just really trying to replace my calories quickly. So, I think it can be helpful to make sure that you are getting enough over time, but bodies change and things adjust and, yeah, I don’t know. Did I answer the question?

Yuri: I think so, yeah. Definitely some good nuggets in there. So, what about people looking to lose weight?

Like, how are they—again, if people think that they have to count calories or weigh their food in order to lose weight successfully, what should they be doing or what could they be doing better in your eyes?

Tera: Well, this is my favorite question, and when you started talking about Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, I just started dancing around in my seat, because I love this conversation and it’s really a big passion of mine, talking about these kinds of things.

One of the things—you know, I’m just gonna tell people right now—our primary, we have a program. I created a program called Body Enlightenment, and it’s kind of literally body enlightenment, right? It’s the name of our weight-loss program and it’s at BodyEnlightenment.me. But the acronym for this site is BE, and the reason that it is this way, and I just love it, is because, you know, you can go to that page and actually read.

It’s very funny but it’s kind of snarky and a little bit, you know, I make this joke about Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, but what they do, you know, this idea of reducing calories, right, they basically are shipping out smaller portions of double-chocolate fudge brownies and microwavable pizza to people, and they’re never considering how the quality of the food is affecting our health.

So, so many of the foods that people—you know, you can watch your calories all you w ant, but if you’re not checking on the quality of what you’re eating, many foods are physiologically addictive, especially gluten and dairy products. These are two major foods that most people, in North America at least, are including in every meal, and it’s not an accident.

They’re actually physiologically addicted to these foods because of the opiate receptors that are in the brain. So, that’s a longer discussion maybe for another day, but also just, you know, one of the things I like to do is just ask people to imagine yourself in front of a plate of pasta. You know, it’s pasta and tomato sauce and you’ve got parmesan cheese on top.

When you put yourself in front of a plate of that kind of food, just observe what happens in your body. And even just thinking about it, you’ll feel it in your body; you’ll feel that little tingle.

And I know that most people have had that experience of just being able to eat and eat and eat. If it’s a baguette, you know, it’s bread and butter or if it’s pasta, but that feeling of almost just not being able to get enough, you know?

And the food is very, first of all, it’s low in nutrients, so it’s not enough, there’s not very much actual nutritional value in a plate of spaghetti that’s giving any nutrition to the body. It’s just kind of, like, gluey fuel to keep it running; it’s not serving in any real valuable way the body needs.

So, if you compare that feeling of being in front of a plate of spaghetti to being in front of a plate of even steamed broccoli, right, or grapes or some apples, there’s only so much you can eat, and even the physiological sensations that happen in your body—and I’ll even pick something cooked, like steamed broccoli—but it doesn’t create that same buzzy kind of feeling inside. So, that’s one thing.

Before you worry about calories, look at the quality of the food; that’s very important. And the more it comes to what you would find in nature. I’ve chosen to be a vegetarian and mostly vegan this time around—actually, let’s not get too metaphysical, but I mean for right now in my life.

But I think it’s actually, you know, there are some people who feel okay eating small pieces of meat, and I think a piece of steamed fish or something like that is probably even better for the body than some kind of processed soy-product burger with a bun and fake fries on the side, you know?

French fries might be vegetarian, but they have nothing healthy to offer the body, so quality is important, and the closer it gets to what my body could naturally find in nature using the tools that I have on my body, then, yeah, I could catch a fish probably.

I personally don’t want to because of my own ethical and environmental considerations, but I know some people feel comfortable with things like that, and I totally honor every person’s choice to do what feels right for them. So, choosing foods that come closer to as you’d find them in nature, I think that’s a good way to start.

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Raw Food Diet, Weight Loss, Eating for Energy