Making Cents of Calorie Counting

In #science

The Physics Diet essentially is Energy In < Energy Out. This is the same as Calories In < Calories Out or "maintain a calorie deficit to lose weight". This is obviously not the entire picture for weight loss, but pretty much every diet and fitness plan has this as a starting point. Even Weight Watchers has as their original equation for their "points",

$$ \text{WW points}=\frac{\text{calories}}{50}+\frac{\text{fat [g]}}{12}-\frac{\text{fiber [g]}}{5} $$

(you can see this in the patent document https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6040531.pdf) which is a fancy way of doing calorie counting, with a small adjustment to encourage low-fat, high-fiber calories. There are even studies that show that the primary weight loss achieved from the Keto diet comes from the calorie deficit itself.

It's also known that even tracking calories, without trying to maintain the deficit, results in a lower calorie intact -- having to write down all your snacks makes snacking less appealing.

Personally, I have found it hard to maintain calorie tracking. It's not hard, it's just tedious and you have to use a calculator or an app to figure out your totals. Further, once you are older and need to pay attention to more macros, especially protein, it adds friction to have to be calculating things all the time.

Counting to 20

So I came up with a different way of counting which leverages a hunch I had from teaching science, that people don't have a good intuition for numbers much larger than 20. Things like 100 and 120 mentally give about the same mental image, unless one scales it down. Things like 18 to 20 one can visualize the difference. Some quick research confirmed this hunch (one such reference is https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-019-01804-6). So, if you scale the daily calories needed down to numbers no more than 20, one can achieve some advantages.

  • one can do the math a lot faster (often in your head) because adding 2+3 is easier than adding 180+295.
  • you can visualize the calorie deficit, which foods drive you over, and which foods don't
  • you can use a simple analog system to track, like the standard hash marks for counting, because the numbers aren't large

The easiest way to do this then, given a standard 2000 calorie diet, would be to divide any calories by 100 and round up. To get your target you'd divide the TDEE by 100 to get the maintenance energy in these new units. Since these units are 1 unit = 100 calories, and "century" is 100, I'll call them cents. (Technically centicalories would be 1/100 calorie, and hectocalories would be 100 calories, but I don't think this rolls off the tongue as easily).

Equations

The equation for TDEE/100 (or maintenance cents, \(¢\)) would be:

$$ \text{TDEE}/100= \lfloor W [\text{lb}]/18 + H[ \text{in}]/5 - A [\text{yr}]/16 -2_\text{ (if female)} \rfloor_{\text{(round down)}} $$

in \(¢\) units.

Examples

  • 55 yo male, 170 pounds, 5'10"
    $$ \text{TDEE}/100= \lfloor 170 [\text{lb}]/18 + 70[ \text{in}]/5 - 55 [\text{yr}]/16 \rfloor_{\text{(round down)}}=20¢ $$
  • 30 yo female, 130 pounds, 5'3"
    $$ \text{TDEE}/100= \lfloor 130 [\text{lb}]/18 + 63[ \text{in}]/5 - 30 [\text{yr}]/16 -2 \rfloor_{\text{(round down)}} = 15¢ $$
    Since 1 lb of fat = 3500 cal that is 1 lb of fat = \(35 ¢\).

So, to lose 1 lb per week would be a deficit of \(5 ¢\) daily -- really easy to visualize.

We can then write down the \(¢\) for common foods and activities. It's really easy, by eye, to convert from calories to \(¢\) -- divide by 100 and round up.

  • 130 cal = \(2¢\)
  • 280 cal = \(3¢\)
  • etc...
Food Calories
1 egg \(1 ¢\)
protein shake \(2 ¢\)
peanut butter sandwich \(4 ¢\)
cheeseburger \(7 ¢\)
apple = banana \(1 ¢\)
6 oz chicken grilled \(3 ¢\)
10 jelly beans \(1 ¢\)
sesame bagel \(3 ¢\)

I use the LoseIt App to find the calories for a serving, but then write out my own list of \(¢\) in a notebook so I don't have to keep looking things up. It's much easier to track \(¢\) through the day, and to see how a little extra builds up to \(35 ¢\) for 1 lb of fat.

Further you'd have

Activities Calories
Moderate Walk, 1 mi \(1 ¢\)
Run 1 mi \(1 ¢\)
Strength 30 min \(1 ¢\)

So you can "purchase" more calories through exercise, but you can immediately visualize that, as they say, you can't out exercise a bad diet. One \(7 ¢\) cheeseburger over your target requires a 7 mile run to burn off!

Including Protein

Now that I am trying to work strength training into exercise, tracking protein is another one that is important. We can play the same trick here. Recommended protein amount is approximately a minimum of 1 g-1.5g of protein for 1 kg of mass. For someone who is 170 pounds, this translates to about 77 g-116 g. These numbers are too large, so let's divide by 5 and round to get our new protein units.

$$ \text{protein [$ᵽ$]}= \lfloor \text{protein} [\text{g}]/5 \rceil_{\text{(round)}} $$

These units will be 5g protein units, or pentagrams (which I find amusing given the double meaning) or pents (\(ᵽ\)) for short. The equation would be,

$$ \text{min protein [pents]}= \lfloor W [\text{lb}]/11 \rceil_{\text{(round)}} $$

A 170 lb person would then require a minimum of around 15 or 16 ᵽ. The chart above would look like

Food Calories Protein
1 egg \(1 ¢\) \(2ᵽ\)
protein shake \(2 ¢\) \(6ᵽ\)
peanut butter sandwich \(4 ¢\) \(4ᵽ\)
cheeseburger \(7 ¢\) \(7ᵽ\)
apple = banana \(1 ¢\) \(1ᵽ\)
6 oz chicken grilled \(3 ¢\) \(10ᵽ\)
10 jelly beans \(1 ¢\) \(0ᵽ\)
sesame bagel \(3 ¢\) \(2ᵽ\)

Again, using LoseIt (or any other calorie and macro reference), dividing by 5 and rounding is pretty easy.

  • 9.5 g = 2\(ᵽ\)
  • 22 g = 4\(ᵽ\)
  • etc...

Future directions

Fiber?

Tracking fiber may also be useful, but I haven't looked at the equations for that. Sometimes trying to do too much tracking will undermine the imperfect benefits of tracking fewer things. If I do include fiber, I think I should call the unit "fents" (pronounced like "fence") so that I'd have cents, pents, and fents (the first letter denoting the type of measurement).