Reading · Weight Health with Ashley Koff RD

Calories are a unit measure of energy in your body. Yes, this is true.

Everything else you’ve been taught is not.

And today we set the record straight so you can finally give your body the calories it needs to promote weight health.

[Reminder: weight health is where your body’s weight components — fat, muscle, bone, water — type, location, and amount signal that it has what it needs, when and where it needs it, and can use what it gets to run optimally.]

“But the science says you have to be in a caloric deficit to lose weight” — that’s the argument I hear on repeat from clinicians and researchers, often telling you why to discount anyone who states otherwise.

What are they getting wrong? The most important nuance.

The science isn’t measuring the end goal you want and need.

Yes, it is factually true that a caloric deficit (burning and using more than you take in) will result in weight loss.

But weight loss is an umbrella term for a lot of losses: bone, muscle, fat, hair, energy, and more. Even fat is an umbrella term — we know we have different types of fat.

And we only want to lose the excess fat that is hampering the body’s health (visceral and certain types of subcutaneous fat). For fat loss to be weight healthy, we want to retain the fat that supports the body.

So when research uses “weight loss” as an endpoint, it is not specific enough in helpful or healthful outcomes. And likewise, when the method for doing so is caloric deficit, it is not specific enough in helpful or healthful outcomes.

Could this help someone you know? I’d love your help getting it to them

25 years of helping patients and practitioners learn to think about calories differently — including how to interpret the research that informs recommendations — made it clear we all need an updated tool. That’s why I’ve created this better Caloric Playbook.

It features three critical components, and I’ll use a car analogy to help it stick.

Yes, your car needs gas (or electricity) to run. But try operating a car without air in the tires, oil in the engine, or a fully operational system under the hood (I don’t know any of those parts other than say “spark plugs,” so this is where that part of the analogy must end). And try driving across a dirty road without windshield wiper fluid? Pretty risky if you can’t see in front of or behind you.

#1 Your body needs carbs, protein, and fat. Those are caloric types — fuel for its operations. And not all fuel is created equal: a calorie from an ultra-processed, low-nutrient source and a calorie from a whole food don’t give your body the same instructions, even when the number on the label matches. One comes with the raw materials — fiber, micronutrients, structure — that help your digestion actually convert it into something usable. The other often shows up asking your body to do more work for less return. Quality isn’t a bonus feature of a calorie. It’s part of what determines whether that calorie ever becomes a usable resource at all.

#2 It needs a digestive system (under which I include hydration and detoxification) to get the nutrients where they are needed, in forms that can be used when they are needed — and to identify, convert, and eliminate what is harmful or used and no longer helpful.

Calories are potential resources. Your digestion must be able to take, process, and deliver them in order for calories to be available to impact your body’s operations. — Ashley Koff RD

#3 It needs the amounts of nutrients it can use at that time, storing only what it can readily use later, and only what doesn’t cause harm to store.

When we consume calories, these are the considerations we need to make to help build and maintain the parts of our weight that are protective and healthful, while losing — if indicated — the parts that are not.

Everything — because most of it is not accurate, and some of it is just blatantly wrong.

When becoming a dietitian, I was taught to recommend daily caloric goals based on current weight and energy expenditure (adjusted for health status). We have gadgets and gizmos that measure resting energy expenditure, calories burned on exercise equipment, and caloric need based on weight loss goals. And we have nutrient recommendations based on body weight — grams of protein per pound or kilogram, fiber based on daily caloric intake, sex, and age.

All of these won’t help you get your calories to deliver what your body needs for weight health.

They don’t decode your current digestive operations hub. They don’t look at nutrient needs in the moments the body will actually use them (instead focusing on daily intake and the idea of storage, or circulation until needed). And they don’t account for specialty situations that call for replenishing what’s been used up (dust storm, rainstorm, windshield wiper fluid — you get it).

This is why I wrote Your Best Shot as a playbook (available wherever you borrow or buy books) instead of a set of mass recommendations. We need to personalize your caloric intake regularly — but that’s step #2.

The first step is to optimize digestion so that the breakdown, movement, absorption, and delivery of nutrients — along with the elimination of waste — enables optimal use of the potential resources your calories retain.

This does not mean you don’t have IBS, or that you can tolerate your gas and bloating, or feel okay pooping every few days. Digestion working well enough to move calories from potential to available to usable resources looks and smells different. That’s why I recommend the digestive assessment in my book or here on my Substack.

The second and third steps work synergistically. We use the “pit stop” approach to caloric optimization. I discussed this in full detail in my recent bonus article for paid subscribers, in case you don’t have access to my book — that’s an option.

If you want each article I write, when I write it, make sure to subscribe. You can invest if you want the more in-depth “how to” ones and the additional access resources.

Meals vs. snacks — those terms no longer work, because they carry meanings that guide choices that may not align with your body’s resource needs. We think of meals as larger amounts of calories, more well-balanced, and happening at set times. Snacks are to tide us over — less caloric (100-calorie packs, anyone?), and often more permissive in terms of quality.

In my book, I feature a patient who told me she never eats lunch — she grabs a snack here and there, then has a bigger dinner because she skipped lunch. When I looked at her food journal, I shared: “I see you are having 3–4 lunches most days.” So we employed the “pit stop” approach to erase any confusion.

The body often benefits from refueling about every 3 hours — pit stops — like a race car. This isn’t a set time, just an average I’ve found useful for a variety of reasons. And when you pit stop, it needs a full refueling plus some tools to help it use that fuel better — including water, movement, and even a break from your screen or your stressors.

Instead of daily totals, I work with patients to guide them through amounts per pit stop, then use different pit stop choices to accomplish daily variety goals.

And then we fill in gaps and optimize nutrient needs with the other part of our total nutrition: nutrient supplementation.

Weight loss is not a goal — it’s an umbrella term for a lot of losses. Get more specific with your goal.
Weight health means the body’s weight components are optimal.
Calories are potential — not actualized — resources for the body. Your body needs all aspects of digestion to work well enough to convert one into the other, and the quality of the calorie determines how much conversion is even possible.
Caloric goals should be personalized, include type and quantity, and — more specifically — look at the amount per pit stop.

You now have what you need to relook at your nutrition choices, and rethink your approach if you’ve been following a caloric-deficit approach or a caloric-total one.

I’d love to hear how this is helping you and if you would like any further clarifications or resources.

How many calories do you really need?

Comments