Episode #087

Raphael Sirtoli

The Problem with Tracking Calories and What To Do Instead

We try to give people metrics that aren’t calories because calories matter but they’re useless when it comes to behavior changes. Click To Tweet

Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to lose weight by tracking your calories.

Without seeing you, I can probably guess that you’ve tried this method at least once or twice before — we all have.

The problem is, as you may have already seen, this weight loss “tool” rarely works.

And oftentimes there’s a big discrepancy in how many calories you’re supposed to eat versus what you actually should be eating.

So the question is, is there a better way to track your food intake that actually gets results?

As you’ll hear about in this podcast episode with my guest Raphael Sirtoli, there is definitely a better, more effective approach here and it comes down to tracking a few metrics.

Instead of only focusing on calories, there’s other variables, such as a nutrient density score, keto score, and insulin index, which are far more effective.

When you tune into this episode, you’ll discover why this alternative works so much better for reaching your goals — including fat loss — and improving your overall health.

Not only that, Raphael also explains why you don’t need to measure your food and what you can focus on instead so that you’re not tied to weighing what you eat or measuring every ounce you bite into.

You just need to “overeat” by the bite of an apple a day for a decade to gain pounds and pounds of fat. Click To Tweet

If you’re not familiar with Raphael Sirtoli, he’s a super bright, well-educated researcher and science writer who’s currently pursuing his PhD in the Behavioral and Molecular Lab at the University of Minho.

There, his focus is on combining neuroscience and metabolism to understand the side-effects of antipsychotics and whether or not a keto diet can help mitigate them.

Raphael has also studied the metabolic theory of cancer using breast cancer cells, and that’s still just the beginning of his incredible professional career.

Raphael is also the co-founder of a food tracking app called Nutrita.

Unlike most of these apps on the market, Raphael’s focuses on rating foods based on their nutrition score, among other things, so that you can increase your overall nutrient intake instead of worrying about calories only.

Through his app, he’s helping people reach their health goals by focusing more on behavioral changes that will keep them feeling satisfied instead of hungry for junk foods.

By tuning into the episode, you’ll hear about these topics and so much more:

  • Raphael’s background and how he found himself down this path of health
  • Whether he shifted his viewpoints after diving deep into the research
  • The first three foods Ralph eliminated from his diet and the one he wishes he got rid of sooner
  • Why seed oils are actually worse for you than sugar
  • The negative impacts of consuming too much linoleic acid and why so many people are unknowingly doing this
  • Why you should only focus on one of four key areas when it comes to your health goals and how you’ll see a bigger improvement by doing this
  • Why tracking what you eat shouldn’t be focused on calories
  • Why most food tracking apps are garbage
  • Why calorie counting is an inaccurate way of controlling body fat mass
  • The protein targets that people should shoot for to lose fat
  • Why Raphael emphasizes a higher protein intake than most
  • How Raphael’s app ditches food measuring and what it does instead
  • Why Ralph believes everyone can do well on different degrees of carb restriction
  • Why you may see results from restricting calories and why that’s not what’s causing the results
  • Ralph also explains more about his app’s keto and nutrient density score, including how both of these are measured
  • The science behind the insulin index
  • Ralph also shares more about his own macronutrient split
  • The essential fatty acids Ralph and his team prefer
  • The most nutrient dense foods
  • How to include more organ meats in your diet and the ones Ralph loves
  • What Ralph does when he travels

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