I’m about to reveal the biggest and most counterproductive weight loss myth ever told. Pay close attention. What you are about to read could literally mean the difference between successfully losing weight and getting fatter than ever.

The myth in question is perpetrated by diet “experts” of all stripes. It is a cause of untold frustration and misery among dieters. It distracts people from doing what they really need in order to lose weight, and instead causes them to focus on the irrelevant.

So what is this myth?

It is the widely held belief that calories do not count or are of only minor importance when it comes to weight loss. Make no mistake: If you wish to lose weight, calories are everything! To successfully lose weight, you must burn more calories in a given time period than you take in, no matter what diet you are following.

Despite this, diet authors commonly advise us to forget about counting calories! No wonder most people fail dismally in their weight loss efforts!

The flippant disregard for calories began with the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet campaign. Millions were led to believe by health authorities that dietary fat was the true cause of obesity. Cutting fat and replacing it with carbohydrate was the key to getting slim, it was claimed. Ironically, the original reasoning given for this claim was the fact that a gram of dietary fat contained over twice as many calories as a gram of protein or carbohydrate.

Unfortunately, the anti-fat campaign backfired — big time!

Folks all around the world became convinced that, so long as they kept their fat intake low, they could eat as many carbohydrate-rich foods as they wished and not gain weight. The result of this madness can now be observed all around us. Three decades of low-fat mania has helped produce the fattest and most diabetic population the world has ever seen.

As people began to realize the low-fat diet was a failure, they increasingly turned towards its polar opposite: the low-carbohydrate diet. Beginning in the late 1990s, a string of best-selling low-carbohydrate diet books began hitting the shelves. A common theme among these authors was that a high-protein, high-fat diet allowed you to eat all you wanted without putting on weight. The true culprits of weight gain, claimed these authors, were carbohydrates and insulin. They enthusiastically urged their readers to forget about counting calories and instead focus on cutting carbohydrates.

The most influential of these low-carbohydrate “gurus” was undoubtedly the late Dr. Atkins. In his best-selling Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, he claimed that on a low-carbohydrate diet “you could eat, say, 2,000 calories and still begin losing pounds and inches,” but “if you were consuming 2,000 calories on a low-fat diet, you might not lose weight, and you might actually gain weight. The metabolic advantage is that burning fat takes more energy so you expend more calories.”

According to Atkins, this means that, “There is no need to count calories. The Atkins Nutritional Approach counts grams of carbohydrates instead of calories.”

Atkins’ claim that you can lose weight on a low-carbohydrate diet but gain weight on a high-carbohydrate diet containing the exact same amount of calories is utterly wrong. Time and time again, tightly controlled metabolic ward studies have shown no difference in the rate of weight loss on high- or low-carbohydrate diets of identical caloric content. Nor do these diets have differing effects on the subjects’ metabolic rates.

In these studies, the subjects were confined to a research facility and under the constant supervision of researchers. They had access only to the food provided by researchers, which was carefully prepared to ensure equal calorie intake during both the high- and low-carbohydrate diets. These studies repeatedly demonstrate that, at identical calorie intakes, there is no difference in weight loss on different diets. Perhaps not surprisingly, these studies are largely ignored by those who promote the fallacious “metabolic advantage” theory.

Some of you reading this may strongly protest what I have just written, insisting that you were never able to lose weight on a high-carbohydrate diet but did indeed lose weight on a low-carbohydrate diet.

I don’t doubt you.

But you need to know that you did not lose weight because of any “metabolic advantage” of low-carbohydrate diets, you lost weight because increased fat and protein intakes, and reduced carbohydrate intakes, can all exert appetite-suppressing effects. In clinical studies, protein has repeatedly been shown to be the most satiating macronutrient of all. Fat, meanwhile, causes the release of a satiating hormone known as cholecystekinin, while low-carbohydrate intakes help alleviate the roller coaster blood sugar swings that play havoc on your appetite.

Because you are eating previously “forbidden” foods, like steak and eggs, that do such a great job of filling you up, you may feel like you are eating more than before. However, if you have lost weight since you began eating this way, then the reality is that you are eating fewer calories.

Unfortunately, not everyone who adopts a low-carbohydrate diet will experience this unintentional reduction in caloric intake. This is especially the case among those who have been convinced to only count “grams of carbohydrates instead of calories.”

Even the folks from Atkins and the office of Dr. Agatston (author of The South Beach Diet) had to admit there was a problem when their staff started getting calls and questions online from disappointed dieters who couldn’t understand why they weren’t losing weight. The problem? According to a USA Today report, “Dieters are eating too many of these new low-carb protein bars, muffins and brownie mixes, which are low in carbohydrates but often high in calories.”

If you want to lose weight, then you must consume fewer calories than what you expend. You must create a calorie deficit, either by reducing your caloric intake, increasing your physical activity level or both. All the fancy diet plans in the world won’t change this inescapable requirement.

[Ed. Note: Anthony Colpo is an independent researcher, physical conditioning specialist and author. Learn more about Anthony's latest book, The Fat Loss Bible, by clicking here.]

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