We’ve all had the experience of jogging on the treadmill for an hour only to realize we’ve burned a scant 100 calories. We only ‘earned’ a single cookie or a bag of chips after all that effort, and usually throw up our hands in defeat on the way out the door.

‘Calories in, calories out’ (CICO) is an overwhelmingly pervasive myth in our society. After all the years we’ve spent collectively ‘burning off’ calories, both our weight and our health has moved in the wrong direction.

There is something clearly wrong here.

Weight loss misconceptions like CICO are not serving Americans well. And yet, it remains an embedded part of our cultural consciousness that prevents us from achieving true metabolic health.

Why? Because it seems so simple.

Debunking the exercise + CICO myth

We’ll start with a definition.

The ‘calories in, calories out’ model says you can lose weight by exercising your way into a deficit. For example, you could eat 2,000 maintenance calories and burn 500 calories to create a 25% deficit. Doing this for a week adds up to 3,500 calories, which is the most common number thrown around for a pound of human fat.

But the ‘calories in, calories out’ model of eating and exercise is not the best way to lose weight.

There are some obvious flaws:

• If you’re focused on eating fewer calories rather than nutritional calories, you’re bound to miss key nutrients and starve your body of vitamins and minerals.
• CICO does not address eating times or frequencies. Even if you’re limiting your caloric values, eating without rest periods or right before bed may not contribute to fat loss.
• Cardio may ‘burn’ more calories, but it may not result in sustainable weight loss. You’re likely just making yourself hungrier, which encourages you to eat back your burned calories — and then some.
• CICO numbers rarely translate into the real world. The moniker of ‘3,500 calories equals a pound’ is just a rule of thumb that has been challenged by better science over the years.

The list goes on.

But putting these points aside for a second, we must understand that the idea of ‘burning off’ all calories is flawed at its core.

Studies show that people who exercise more do not have a clear relationship to weight loss. When you isolate cardiovascular exercise from other weight loss tactics, there is little to no correlation.

We can understand why this is from a conceptual standpoint. In order to burn off all excess calories, we would need to spend all day in the gym and consume practically nothing. However, some of the world’s largest bodybuilders only train for one to two hours per day — and eat well over their maintenance calories to build muscle.

I want to be clear: I’m not saying that exercise has no benefit to our health. Nor am I saying that calories don’t have an impact on weight. What I’m saying is that trying to manipulate your calories and energy expenditure isn’t the best way to manage your weight. 

Did you know that the FDA allows food labels to state calories as being 20% under what the product contains? That’s a huge number – if you were trying to eat 2,000 calories a day and accidentally consumed 20% more, you’d eat an extra 400 calories.

Then to make matters worse, exercise burns a surprisingly small amount of calories. That gym session might feel like it should have used 700 calories, but realistically you’ll be lucky to reach 200.

Compounding the problem further is the notorious inaccuracy of the calories on your fitness tracker. You’ve got potentially inaccurate calorie numbers on your food and inaccurate calorie numbers on your smartwatch, yet somehow this is a reliable method for weight loss?

The real way to lose weight and keep it off

The CICO method has failed us — but good data hasn’t.

Research shows us that we should approach the idea of weight loss from a different perspective:

• Exercise is good, but the main focus of exercise should be to maintain metabolic health rather than lose weight. This means building muscle and strengthening our cardiovascular system. 
• Muscle is more metabolically active than fat tissue, and the more muscle you build, the more metabolically active you will be. In fact, one of the best predictors of the quality and length of your life is the amount of muscle you maintain. It is critically important to focus on resistance training at every stage of your life.
• Eat real food. Abs are made in the kitchen, and whole, real good is the best way to shed extra pounds and promote metabolic health. Focus on unprocessed foods and animal proteins as much as possible, and reduce your intake of fast food that offers little to no caloric value.

Developing a metabolically sound weight loss plan

The CICO model didn’t set out to sabotage our health. In fact, it was derived from physics as a better way to understand our bodies.

But as we know, humans are not a clean physics system. There’s more going on in our gut than just calories coming in and calories coming out — which is why we need a better system for holistic weight loss and sustainable change.

If you’re interested in learning more about the metabolic approach to weight loss, I’m launching a brand new metabolic health coaching program. Join the waitlist to be the first to hear when it opens.