Book Review: The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor

Microsoft executive my day, health writer by night, Jonathan Bailor hits upon a nerve in the weight loss paradigm with his second book, The Calorie Myth. He shows in study after study that we should be doing the exact opposite of what we’ve been taught for decades. You actually need to eat more and exercise less. 

Based on more than a decade of research and endorsed by top doctors and researchers from Harvard, Johns Hopkins and UCLA, The Calorie Myth offers a radically new model for sustainable weight loss: the key to long-term success is not the number of calories that we eat – but rather what kinds of calories we eat.

You can listen to Jonathan extort his revolutionary ideas in the podcast we recorded called The Smarter Science of Slim.

I was never going to be a calorie counting person. It frankly seemed like too much work to me. The thought also crossed my mind that people for millions of years had not counted calories and managed to stay slim, so I was not going to bother. Instead, I opted to spend 4-5 hours at the gym working off my junk food and diet Coke diet. For some reason, this seemed to make far more sense.

I’ve done more than a few calorie calculations over the years. On one of many two-hour walks, I pondered that if I ate a candy bar that I would have to walk for an hour and a half to burn it off. And since at one point I was eating three candy bars a day (God help my pancreas), and certainly not walking 4.5 hours a day to burn them off and still managed to maintain a ‘healthy’ weight, I cast off the calorie counters as fools. Something did not add up, though there was no explanation at the time. It was either that or I had a screaming metabolism. I suspected things were not as black and white as the “calories in, calories out” theory.

As Bailor proves, when you eat more of the right foods – whole plants and nutritious proteins (think Paleo) – your body will find its normal “set point” weight by automatically balancing calories in and calories out. Eat the right foods and your weight will settle into the weight you are genetically destined to have. Eat as recommended in his SANE program and let the cards fall where they may. Hopefully, the end result will be your pants falling off your skinny hips where they may – on the floor.

Dare you eat sugar, starches, processed fats, and “edible food products” (love this phrase), your metabolism becomes “clogged,” causing the body to hold onto extra weight, elevating your set point. The wrong quality of food causes obesity by impairing the body’s ability to regulate our weight automatically.

The Calorie Myth shows us how exercising less – but at a higher intensity – is actually the key to burning fat, balancing hormones, boosting metabolism, and creating long-term weight loss. Bailor offers readers a step-by-step action plan, including a food plan and simple recipes based on non-starchy vegetables, proteins, fruits, and nuts and seeds and a detailed exercise program that requires a commitment of just 10-20 minutes per week!

Bailor has conceptualized his SANE calorie qualities – Satiety, Aggression (whether calories will be stored as body fat), Nutrition, and Efficiency (how those calories are stored). These all must be in balance to achieve optimum results. Busting through the inSANEity, Bailor addresses commonly held beliefs about weight management and exercise.

Jonathan Bailor’s groundbreaking book, The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight and Live Better, proves by picking apart over 1200 studies that counting calories is unnecessary and misleading. It’s time to change the way we think about weight loss. Jonathan exposes the fundamental myths upon which the diet industry has been built: the eat less + exercise more = weight loss equation. It simply doesn’t add up. If this model has not been working for you, it’s high time to try Jonathan’s method.

>>> Preorder <<< Jonathan’s book in time for your new year’s weight loss resolution!