Ask the Dietitian: All calories are not created equal

Written by Melinda Charlet

Dear Dietitian,
I have been keeping track of the calories that I am eating and staying under my recommended allotment, but I am not losing any weight. I was always told that if you ate fewer calories than you burned, you would lose weight. This isn’t happening for me.  Is there a piece of the puzzle that I am missing?
Sincerely,
Counting Courtney

Dear Courtney,
You are correct; there is a missing piece to the weight-loss puzzle we have all been trying to put together. We have all been told that if you just exercise more and eat less, you can lose weight. But it’s not that simple. The missing puzzle piece is: “All calories are not created equal.” If you eat 100 calories of broccoli or 100 calories of soda, they have profoundly different effects on your body, even though they contain the same amount of calories. Let’s talk about the 3 reasons why the quality of your food is important, not just the quantity.

Hormones
When our broccoli and soda are burned in a laboratory, they release the same amount of caloric energy. But when we put those foods in our bodies, it’s not that simple. Our bodies are complex and produce hormones such as insulin and cortisol just to name a few. The soda spikes your blood sugar causing insulin to be released. Insulin decreases your blood sugar levels but also leads to cravings and fat storage. The broccoli on the other hand causes very little insulin to be released and the fiber it contains helps you feel full. When we have too much insulin in our bodies over a period of time, we can become insulin resistant which makes it even harder to lose weight.

And don’t think that just because you drink diet soda that you are off the hook. Studies have shown that artificial sweeteners might be just as bad for you, if not worse. When you eat something that is artificially sweetened, the food still tastes sweet, so it sends a signal to your brain to release insulin. Then you have insulin running around in your body with nothing else to do but store fat.

Cortisol is another hormone that can affect weight-loss. Cortisol is released when we experience stress. Going on a very low calorie diet or doing extreme amounts of exercise puts stress on our bodies which releases cortisol. Lack of adequate sleep also causes cortisol to be released. Cortisol makes you crave sugar and can also slow down your thyroid hormone function.  Elevated cortisol levels make you store fat, especially in your belly. So don’t think that you can starve yourself and exercise eight hours a day and lose weight. It doesn’t work. Your body will just hold on to what it already has and as soon as you feed it, it will turn it into fat.

Inflammation
The analogy I like to use to explain inflammation is when you know someone is lying to you, you usually get irritated and angry.  The same thing applies to the food we eat. When we lie to our bodies by feeding it processed, fake foods and chemicals, they don’t like it and they get angry or inflamed. High insulin levels also lead to inflammation. Fructose is a type of sugar that is in fruit and many processed foods in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is processed by your liver which turns it into fat and leads to a fatty liver which causes more inflammation. Chronic inflammation leads to weight gain, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer. We need to stop lying to our bodies and feed them real foods that they know how to digest and utilize.

Nutrient content
If you stick to the belief that all calories are the same, then someone should be able to get all of their calories in the form of junk-food and lose weight, while someone who ate more calories from plant-based whole foods would gain weight. But that is hardly ever how it works. Junk foods contain little to no fiber, vitamins or minerals. This makes your body want to keep eating because it is not getting the nutrients that it needs to function. When our bodies don’t get the right nutrients, we get cravings and end up eating more than we should to in order to try to fill these needs.  

Just because someone put a few mini-cookies in a bag that says 100 calorie snack pack, doesn’t mean it’s a better choice than 200 calories of kale. And you would have to eat almost six cups of kale to get 200 calories. This is called nutrient density.  Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes are more nutrient dense than processed pre-prepared foods. Therefore you will end up feeling fuller on a plant-based whole foods diet and you won’t have to be so concerned about limiting your portion sizes. When we eat the right foods, our bodies will tell us how much we need to eat.

When our hormones are disrupted, inflammation occurs, and our nutrient stores are depleted, we gain weight instead of losing it. So in order to prevent these problems, stop focusing on the amount of food you are eating and focus on getting the right kinds of foods. Don’t stress out about keeping track of your calories and keeping them under a certain level. We don’t want your cortisol level going up, do we? Plus, who wants to have to keep track of every calorie you eat all day anyway? We all have better and more important things to do.

Healthy wishes,
Melinda the Dietitian
Feel free to submit your nutrition related questions and I will address them in future editions of Ask the Dietitian.

Melinda Charlet is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian that lives in St. George, Utah. She has a bachelor’s degree in Medical Dietetics and works throughout Southern Utah and Nevada helping patients and clients achieve proper nutrition for their individual needs. She also runs her own weight-loss clinic and likes to create healthier versions of recipes in her free time. She assists people with a variety of conditions including diabetes and kidney disease, and counsels people that would like to lose some weight, need help dealing with cholesterol issues or simply want to live a healthier lifestyle. Send her your questions at [email protected].