Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host, Monica Ryan Able.

Lots of people use diet and activity trackers to log their food intake and their exercise.

After all, there is an old saying that you can't manage what you don't measure. But I often see this approach

backfiring. I get email after email from people who are using these trackers, and they can't

understand why they're not losing weight. They're entering in every morsel of food they eat

and logging every activity they do. And according to their trackers, they should

be shedding two or three pounds a week. And yet, the scale hasn't budged. Or they've actually

gained weight. And I think sometimes the problem is the way we've come to think about,

quote-unquote, net calories. So here's how many of these trackers work.

You start every day with a certain number of calories to spend. And that number is based on

your height, your weight, your age, your sex, your activity level, and your goals. That is,

whether you're trying to lose, gain, or maintain your current weight.

So that's the number you start out with. And then calories are subtracted from your balance as you

log your meals into your diet tracker over the course of the day. So ideally, you don't want to get

to zero too early in the day. But if you do,

there is a solution. Let's say it's 5 p.m. and I'm down to my last 400 calories. But wait,

I can take an evening run. I log that into the app and now I've got 840 calories to spend on dinner.

I mean, how awesome is that?

Now, the general principle here is sound.

The more you move, the more you can eat.

In practice, however, these net calorie calculations are inaccurate and misleading. And I think they are suckering people into eating

too many calories. Although diet tracking apps can help you get an accurate picture of your calorie

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