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This is the third article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Many people believe the goal of counting calories is to count as few calories as humanly possible in your food. I’m sure there are diet plans out there that advocate this barbaric practice, but not here at EatEveryThree.com. Today you’ll learn that you must count calories not only to avoid eating too much, but also to avoid eating too little.

Have a goal.

If you have physical goals to meet, such as losing fat weight, you must count the calories in everything you put in your mouth at every meal until you reach your goal. This usually involves keeping some sort of log of your foods and portion sizes. Yes, food logs are inconvenient, but we are talking about your health, which should be of concern to you. Weight loss can be achieved without keeping a log, but it will take longer or you may never reach your goal.

Uncontrolled calorie intake will either leave you landing low or high of your required calorie target. Both circumstances will have negative consequences on your physical health and your ability to lose or gain weight.

If you simply want to maintain your weight, you should be at least counting calories in your head to make sure you are in the ballpark of your target calorie range.

Don’t eat too few calories.

People often do not think of this as a problem. One of the reasons you should be counting calories is to ensure that you are eating enough, and often this means eating more healthy food at each of your meals. Keep in mind that many healthy foods are not calorie dense. As a result, you may stuff yourself with healthy food but still be short on your required calories.

If you do not eat enough calories, you may lose fat for a little while. Eventually, your body will stop losing weight as your metabolism slows due to the lack of energy (calories). Reduced metabolism makes losing fat weight difficult.

The only cure for slow metabolism is to eat more healthy calories. It seems backwards to popular opinion, but I promise it works if you have been in calorie deficit for a while. The trick is figuring out how many calories YOU require.

Don’t eat too many calories. 

If your calories are too high, the common side-effect is weight-gain in the form of fat. Regardless of whether you are eating healthy foods or not, you may still be eating too many calories in any given day. Remember, it is possible to eat too much healthy food and gain weight.

Eating more calories than your body requires is not necessarily a bad thing. These excess calories can be put to good use. For example, weight training on a regular schedule will cause some of those excess calories to build muscle, which increases metabolism. The type of foods you eat will also contribute to how well this process works.

Eat the calories YOUR body needs.

There is not a magic number of calories I can tell you to eat. Any diet program that tells you there is a perfect number of calories is lying. I can say a man should eat 2800 calories a day to maintain his weight, but that would probably only be accurate for 1 in 8 men. The number depends greatly on his activity level and body composition (muscle mass and fat). Don’t get caught up in statistics that show calorie averages. As far as I’m concerned, the average American is unhealthy and overweight. You should not want to be average.

There are formulas available to help men and women determine how many calories they require based on body composition and activity. The difficulty with the numbers is that the multiplier for the activity level is subjective. Most of the time, these numbers need adjustment, because they only provide a number of calories as a starting point.

As a starting point, men can look at 2200 and women 1800 for weight maintenance. Expect to adjust these numbers based on your results. If you are eating healthy food that adds up to the target calories (+/- 50), you should know within a week or two if those numbers are too high, or too little based on weight gain or loss. 

The CalorieKing has a basic weight maintenance calorie calculator that I found somewhat accurate. You may need to get a couple of calorie calculations by adjusting the activity profile if you feel you fall between categories.

If you want to lose weight, shave off a few hundred calories. Do not cut calories too much or your metabolism will slow down. Women might want to only shave 100 calories at a time. If you go too low, then you may be literally starving yourself to death. You will still get great results by cutting small amounts of calories.

Check your weight each week, if you are going down then don’t change a thing. If you stayed the same or gone up, adjust accordingly. If you distribute your calories properly throughout the day (eat every three hours), you will have more energy and get better weight loss results than you ever have before.

There are more advanced methods of calorie calculations that I will cover at a future date. For now, get accustomed to counting your calories for every meal. Before long, counting calories will be second nature.

In my next article, I’ll discuss the specifics of tracking your food in a log and planning daily meals.

Do you have any calorie counting tips or tricks to share?