Is Calorie Counting Harmful? Learn English Listening Us Ep 811
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Hi there and welcome to this podcast episode. If you're learning English, then listening to these podcasts will help your language learning. Let's cover a really juicy topic today to keep your interest while your brain does its English language practice. Have you ever done a calorie-restricted diet? A

Calorie, C-A-L-O-R-I-E, is a unit of energy similar to a joule, J-O-U-L-E. And a calorie restricted diet is a very traditional way that people use to try to lose weight. You restrict the number of calories in your food. Have you tried a calorie counted diet? Did it work? Today's podcast is

is Partner to Subscription Episode 72, which talks in more detail about our understanding of diet and the best ways to lose weight and how we know so much more in recent years. That episode also covers the story of calorie counting and the rise of Weight Watchers and how that became a billion dollar industry, which is no longer successful.

In this podcast today, I'm going to talk about why I'm pleased that calorie counting and Weight Watchers and similar organisations are no longer the model for losing weight that many people use and why I think Weight Watchers may have been harmful. A generation of women and girls had been taught to regard

not as something pleasurable and good and healthy, but rather as an enemy, something to be controlled and limited. It's perhaps a controversial opinion, but I would be really interested to hear from you if you have a different opinion. And this podcast covers what I hope will be an interesting topic to keep you listening longer.

so that you learn more English. Hello, I'm Hilary and you're listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.

If you want to know more about our subscription service, it covers even more fascinating topics than you hear on the podcast. More in depth and many more of them. Our paid subscription service is helping a lot of people develop their English language skills. And we've covered some great topics recently. Find out what I really thought of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin podcast.

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Those were just some recent topics. Many more are covered in our subscription service. And it's great value for money and a brilliant way to continue improving your English. So, the harm done by Weight Watchers and calorie counting to a generation of women. But

First of all, just an acknowledgement to anyone listening who's done Weight Watchers or done calorie-counted dieting, calorie-controlled dieting. If it worked for you, well done. I in no way want to lessen that achievement. If anything, even more praise because what I'm saying is that it's actually quite difficult to lose weight on a calorie-counted diet.

diet. It needs huge amounts of self-control. I mentioned in Subscription Episode 72 a newspaper article I read by Xing Zheng with the title, A Generation of Women Are Still Haunted by Weight Watchers. The word haunted there is from the verb to haunt.

H-A-U-N-T, which means to cause repeated suffering or anxiety. That's a big word. So the idea that Weight Watchers has caused lots of suffering and anxiety. Xing Seng also says, Weight Watchers and calorie restriction products

profoundly altered how a generation of women and girls felt about food, not as a pleasurable source of nourishment, but as something to be controlled and limited. Or, as she says later in the article, the idea of food as something to be portioned and carefully handled like a radioactive substance, which could ruin your week.

if you weren't careful. At the same time as Weight Watchers and calorie counting were succeeding and becoming the dominant model for people who wanted to lose weight, eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia were massively on the rise. What we call in

English eating disorders are hugely complex, very difficult psychological problems. But in the mix of other things that may create them, I'm sure that the thinking promoted by Weight Watchers and the popularity of calorie counting will have played a part. And a rec

Anorexia, A-N-O-R-E-X-I-A, is a disorder of the mind where people restrict their food intake so much that they become very thin. It can even endanger life and tragically people can starve themselves to death by not eating.

because of anorexia. A famous person, singer Karen Carpenter, died in 1983, aged only 32, after a long struggle with anorexia. And bulimia, B-U-L-I-M-I-A, it's

similar in many ways, but presents differently. With bulimia, people eat more normally and tend to have normal weight. You can't tell, in other words. But secretly, people with bulimia eat to excess. They eat too much, usually through what we call binge eating disorder.

B-I-N-G-E. And then bulimics tend to use various methods to remove the excess foods from their bodies, maybe vomiting or using laxatives. Both of these disorders are serious.

and ruin the lives of many people, mostly women and girls. The idea of food as some kind of enemy, and I believe these restricted methods that have been promoted for losing weight, play a part in these eating disorders. Anorexia was first recognised in the manual, the book, used by psychiatrists

in 1952. But bulimia didn't appear and wasn't recognised as an eating disorder until 1980 with the third edition of that psychiatrist's manual known as the DSM-3. So the rise of eating disorder and the success of Weight Watchers and calorie counting actually occur in the same timeframe, which I find interesting.

The website Eating Disorder Resources, there's a link in the transcript, asks, does Weight Watchers encourage disordered eating? And it answers its own question that

Studies have shown that 80% of women engage in some eating disordered behaviours. Maybe Weight Watchers won't trigger an eating disorder for the majority of people who join the programme, but it will trigger body hate, food obsessions.

and low self-worth. I realise that eating disorders are complicated psychologically, but the idea of restricting food is central to eating disorders. There's usually a big fear of food

and the idea that eating a single biscuit can suddenly lead to a massive gain in weight. People with eating disorders are fearful about food. Rather than seeing it as something wonderful, nourishing, health-bringing and pleasurable, food becomes an enemy to be treated with suspicion.

What's particularly unfair about this situation is that actually many people are overweight because of the type of food that's available. It's hard, especially if you are on low income, to avoid ultra-processed foods. It's much cheaper to buy these ultra-processed foods and carbohydrates

than it is to buy fruit and vegetables in many areas of the world. This can be particularly so in inner cities. We even talk about food deserts in the middle of cities, where it's difficult to buy groceries and even harder to buy fruit and vegetables.

In these food deserts, you can get fast food. You can buy a McDonald's hamburger, but you can't buy an apple. In America, in 2019, more than 53 million, or 17% of Americans, were considered on low incomes.

and had little access to supermarkets or large food stores because they lived in inner cities. That's 2019 from the US Department of Agriculture. The Weight Watchers model

tends to suggest that people are greedy and they eat too much. This may be true for some people, but in many ways the food industry is responsible. The food industry puts lots of effort into making sure that the foods we eat are perfect

balanced in fat and sugar content so that we end up automatically eating much more of these foods than we intend. Fat and sugar do not occur in that balance in nature, in natural foods. Something as addictive as Pringles doesn't exist in nature. So some of the responsibility for people being overweight, the obesity epidemic,

in other words, lies with the food industry. And the notion of calorie counting is somewhat old-fashioned. The science has moved on.

You don't need to calorie count if you want to lose weight. I've stolen this next bit from my own podcast, number 701, which was on the obesity epidemic. That's O-B-E-S-I-T-Y. If you're interested in listening to this one, here's a small part of it. Finally, calorie counting is no longer seen as a way to lose weight. An old saying, a

calorie is a calorie is a calorie has been quoted to me in the past. This belief that all calories are the same comes from an American chemist called Wilbur Atwater and dates back from the late 1800s when science first learned that you could measure the calories in

food by burning it. But guess what? The science has moved on since the 1800s and it turns out that measuring food by the calories released when you burn it is not that useful. What happens to your body when you consume fat, sugar, protein or plant foods is completely different.

And most people are miserable doing calorie counting. So actually, this is good news. There are better, more effective ways to lose weight. Scientific understanding has moved way beyond Wilbur Atwater and his food burning. So I tend to see Weight Watchers going bust.

rather as something to celebrate. It's the end of the calorie counting era. Better ways to lose weight which have scientific backing? Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglyss.

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Thank you.

You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglys. Before starting Epglys, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about Epglys and visit epglys.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Even if they haven't been adopted yet by mainstream health organizations like the NHS, there are different methods which will suit different people.

And not all of these suggestions will work for everyone. But the list of ways to lose weight or maintain healthy weight are as follows. Intermittent fasting, so that's to fast, F-A-S-T, which means to not eat for a period of time. This includes the so-called 5-2 diet or the 8-16 diet. Other variants are OMAD or one meal a day or TMAD, two meals a day, a bit less extreme and suited to more people.

There are paleo diets, keto diets, diets which suggest eating only proteins, fruits and vegetables. These work for most people if they want to lose weight. But for most people, eliminating ultra processed foods and carbohydrates will cause

probably work wonders. The UK's Zoe program is another method. This is interesting because you find out exactly how your body processes food. We're not all the same. The Zoe program is currently quite expensive to do.

But my hope is that this type of healthcare will become more widespread and people will be able to learn what type of eating is best for them and their bodies. I say rest in peace, Weight Watchers. We are glad to be rid of calorie counting and the misery that sometimes goes with it. Once again, let us know what you think. Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.