First off, calorie counting does have its place in various dynamics for different goals, understanding of and an appropriate use of the approach.
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For the most part, for general health and fitness management, it can be confusing, restricting and something that creates an unrealistic rigid psychological view point to the nutrition element of your health care plan.
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Yes it is by some means an approach to ‘manage’ energy intake.
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The caveat is, it’s only as effective as the knowledge surrounding nutrition, physiology, the link between them both and an understanding of how to still maintain elements (when needed) of flexibility.
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Calorie counting for a novice can be massively misleading, the reasons being:
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The healthiest human body only digests you to 90% of the energy it consumes at best. So if you aim for 2000 calories, and your digestive tract is the healthiest it can be, knock 200 calories off.–
Calories are not just calories, we are not a car engine, our body NEEDS a variety of nutrients to sustain vitality, functioning of the bodily systems and to achieve healthy fitness results.–
Growing conditions can alter the nutritional make up of generic item calculations.–
Outdated data of food labels–
Product variety–
Ripeness–
Storage–
All of these factors combined, means that calorie counting can be as much as 25% over or less of the figure you think you are actually consuming. This means. Outside of a lab, we can’t know EXACTLY how many calories our bodies need use and absorb, how many calories are in our food and that using calorie counting as a method to manage your health and fitness as a novice can be time consuming, inaccurate and frustrating.
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As always, by learning the fundamental principles and establishing a plan of how to implement that plan, will always serve you best in the long run.