Since it seems I’m on a kick to tackle all possible controversial topics, let’s discuss one of the most controversial ones in fitness: calories. In a number of discussions over the last year, I have had to fight this battle over and over. It seems there are a very large number of people under the impression that calories do not matter. I understand why they feel this way – I used to be in their camp. In fact, I have done Atkins twice and a CKD (Cyclical Ketogenic Diet) once. I’ve read a very large amount of material on it, and believed very strongly in it.
The first time I went on Atkins, I was around 24. I simultaneously began a weight lifting regimen (using the typical bodybuilder bodypart split) and cheated occasionally (once a week or so), making it more or less a CKD. I used keto sticks to ensure that I was in ketosis. However, I did not track what I ate, and I did not keep logs. I saw very good results: I lost 40-60 pounds over 6 months, and dropped my cholesterol from 317 to 208. To say I was a believer would be an understatement.
I then quit dieting and exercising, and, over the next 2 years or so, gained all of the weight back. I tried Atkins one more time, this time without the weight training, and without cheating at all (though still not tracking food). I didn’t lose any weight. This brought up a big question in my mind, but I decided it must have something to do with the combination of diet and exercise, so I decided to wait until I could do both again before trying again.
Fast forward to 8 years later (eek!), and I had gained another 30 pounds, making me roughly 100 pounds overweight, and decided something had to be done. First, I just tried cutting back on my eating and adding roughly 15 minutes of cardio a day (again, without any tracking of any kind). I lost little to no weight. I decided that weight training was the way to go: I had done the dieting thing (not really, but we’ll get to that) and that hadn’t worked either with caloric restriction or Atkins, but weight lifting had taken the pounds off. So, I set out to start back lifting, and bought some equipment.
Now, being somewhat OCD, I wanted to track my lifting religiously, so I researched a lot of options and chose DailyBurn for tracking. Since DailyBurn also lets you track food, I decided to go ahead and do that as well, even though I wasn’t dieting at all (other than trying to eat a lot of protein).
Fast forward 3 months, and while I gained a tremendous amount of strength and muscle, I was still fat. In fact, after a period of loss initially, I was even gaining weight slowly. I decided that this wasn’t working, and I needed to change something. I decided to try reducing my calories by reducing the quantities of food I ate. Three months later, and I had lost about 30 pounds, but here my weight loss stalled.
I checked online BMR calculators, and they all agreed that I should need about 3800 calories a day to maintain my bodyweight, so anything lower than that should have lost weight. By my estimations (I wasn’t weighting/measuring most things at this point, just estimating amounts), I was eating between 2500 and 3000 calories a day, so I should be losing weight, but I wasn’t.
After a month or two with no loss, I decided that caloric restriction might not be correct either, and began further research into ketogenic diets (Atkins is an example of a ketogenic diet). During my research, I came across Lyle McDonald’s excellent Body Recomposition website, and read a LOT about various types of diets, physiology, nutrition, and scientific research. It was here that I was first introduced to the CKD, and I researched it thoroughly before deciding that it was the best option for my diet. However, I also read a lot of Lyle’s statements on the subject of dieting, and understood that he believed that calories did matter, and that ketogenic diets tend to work because people unconsciously get tired of eating all of the same crap over and over and naturally reduce intake. I was not convinced, but I decided to test his theory.
To do this, I decided that I would track everything I ate even more religiously than I had been, to the point of weighing and measuring everything (only estimating when I had no choice, like at a restaurant).
To further reduce estimation errors, I decided to forego eating out as much as possible, to the point that I quit eating lunch out at work and began packing my lunch daily. I followed the CKD with no regard for calorie intake (eating as much as I wanted) for 3 months.
My results? At first, I lost a bit of weight (about 8 pounds), so it appeared to be working splendidly. However, Lyle had mentioned this, and said it was water and would pile back on as soon as I quit the diet. Over the 3 months, I lost no more weight. In fact, I gained about 5 pounds of the weight I lost in the first week back.
However, my lifts, which had previously been increasing steadily (even on caloric restriction), all stalled. I made no progress in either weight lifted or muscle mass (measured by measuring tape once per week) in the three months. My caloric intake for the 3 months averaged at 3300 calories per day (which, again, should have been under maintenance according to the BMR calculators).
At this point, I was completely and thoroughly fed up. I decided, however, that this likely meant that caloric restriction was correct, and that either A) I was underestimating quantities on the few foods I was still estimating, B) I was way off on my BMR calculation or C) I was unconsciously reducing activity when dieting. It was at this point that I began looking for an accurate way to track calorie expenditure in order to eliminate possibilities B and C, and I came across the BodyMedia FIT.
For those that have never heard of it, the BodyMedia FIT is a little device that you wear on your arm throughout the day that tracks a number of different metrics and uses them to calculate caloric expenditure. The one often cited study claims it to be about 90% accurate, though that is somewhat disputed.
Anyway, I decided it would be better than estimating in any event, and bought the unit. Once the unit came it, I quit the CKD, and concentrated on eating normally for a week while doing all of my normal activities. In that first week, several things happened:

1. I gained the 8 pounds of water back pretty much immediately, which made me about 5 pounds heavier than when I started the CKD.
2. My lifts immediately went up, and I set new PR’s for the first time in months.
3. I noticed that my caloric expenditure was actually only about 3300 per day on days when I worked out, and 3000 or less on days when I did not.
4. I noticed that the BodyMedia FIT does not track recumbent biking well at all, due to its location on the arm. However, if you move the band to the leg, it becomes extremely accurate.
5. I noticed that heavy weightlifting actually burns nearly as many calories as recumbent biking.
6. I found out that playing drums (at least when you do it very energetically) burns more calories than anything else I do…Which actually makes sense, considering that I can bike for 12 miles and just have a decent sweat, but playing drums for an hour leaves me panting and completely drained.

What immediately struck me was that, based on the caloric expenditure, I should have seen exactly the results I saw on the CKD. However, I still wasn’t sold on caloric restriction: I needed to see the diet actually work.
In this regard, I decided to make some changes and test my theory once and for all. First, I would reduce my caloric intake to 2500 per day, targeting 260 grams of protein and a balance of fat and carbs (roughly 80 grams of fat and 180 grams of carbs). Second, I would get even more severe about tracking, making absolutely sure that every meal was precisely measured and/or balanced. No more guessing or error due to estimation. Finally, I would increase my daily caloric expenditure by increasing the amount of cardio (drumming and biking) that I did from ~2 hours per week to ~5 hours per week. This increased my average daily caloric expenditure to 3500.
My results can be seen in this blog, but suffice it to say that it worked, and the combination of accurately tracking intake and accurately tracking expenditure is very accurate. There is now zero doubt in my mind that calories not only matter, they are the only thing that matters in weight loss. If you eat less than you expend for a significant period, you will lose weight. If you eat more than you expend for a significant period, you will gain weight.

Don’t believe me? Test it for yourself. Follow this guide and prove to yourself that even with a ketogenic diet, calories still matter.

In an upcoming post, I will discuss why calories matter, from a physiological standpoint. See you then.