Ep 72. Should Teens Count Calories to Lose Weight?

Should teens count calories to get to a healthy weight? It sounds like a smart plan, but for growing bodies and developing minds, it's more complicated than it seems.

In this episode, I walk you through:

• The pros and cons of calorie counting in teens
• Real-world examples from my work with adolescents
• What the research actually says about tracking calories
• When it might help—and when it might harm
• What to try instead: like the plate method and habit tracking

Whether you're a teen, a parent, or someone who supports adolescents, this episode offers clarity, compassion, and practical tools. Let's build healthy habits without obsession.

Do you worry your teen is gaining weight quickly or seems hungry all the time?
Are you afraid this could lead to prediabetes or diabetes later in life?

That’s why I created the “Healthy Weight Starts with Healthy Habits": A 7-Day Hormone Reset Program for Teens.

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I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach. 
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Transcript

 Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss 14 podcast. This is Dr. Jenny Ery, and on today's episode, I'm going to talk about calorie. Counting. It may sound like a smart way to control the weight, but for teenagers, especially for puberty, it's a little bit more complicated.

I'll walk you through the benefits, the risks, and what the research says, and plus I'll say what I've seen actually work for long-term success with the teens that I have worked with. . Should teens count calories to lose weight? It sounds like a smart move, but I've seen it backfire so many times.

This is Dr. Janet Ory and I'm passionate about helping teens reach a healthy weight in a safe and realistic way. In this episode, I will break down what are the pros, the cons of counting calories, and what does the research shows about calorie counting in teenagers. Now, if you are a teen or you are a parent of a teen who's trying to get to a healthy weight, then this episode is for you, and I hope this will be helpful.

Now, first of all, let me just start by saying what is calorie counting? And I. What are some of the methods that teenagers and adults use to count calories? Calories is simply put as a way to track how many calories you eat every day and the more calories you eat, the it is more likely to gain weight if you eat more than the necessary calories.

That your body needs according to your requirements. So if a certain teenager needs 2000 calories per day and they consume 3000 instead, then by consuming an extra 1000 calories every day, that's gonna lead to weight gain. Now what are the question that comes in mind is how many calories is appropriate for a teenager?

The all the teenagers are not the same. The calories that every teenager needs in order to sustain their weight, or even if they wanna lose weight or if then if they wanna gain weight. That depends on what is their current height, their current weight, how much activity they're doing where, which stage they're in, puberty, if they're still growing or if there's not growing.

Those are factors that play a role into what are the specific caloric requirements of a certain teenager. So we can have two boys that are both 14 years of age, one. Plays basketball three hours every day and is still growing, is early in puberty and still growing. The other one is a 14-year-old boy who spends his time watching video games and he has had relatively early puberty and has now stopped growing.

Those two boys don't have the same caloric requirements, so if you wanna. Know how many calories you as a teenager you need, or how many if your, how many calories your teenager needs. I would highly recommend you meet with a registered dietician that can take into account all these factors and then give you an estimate.

Roughly speaking, I would say. Between two and 3000 calories is what most teenagers require. And in general, girls require less calories than boys. So teenage boys require more calories than girls. Now, the way that. Teenagers use to count calories or what they can do if they do wanna count calories, they can use certain apps that can track how much they eat.

And it will give you the caloric requirement. One of them is. My Fitness Pal, there are many more available online. So what you do is you go, you put your foot in, you put the quantity, and then it gives you the calories. You can even set a goal of what your calories you wanna consume every day.

And based on that, you can have at the end of the day, you will know whether you consumed enough or you consumed more than what you needed. Another way to do it is to just write it down in a piece of paper, keep a journal and write, this is what I ate. And then a color. Do the calories yourself at the end.

If you keep doing it many times, you start to. Know how many calories are in certain foods and some people just keep a log mentally. They don't write it anywhere. They just remember what they ate and they just keep it on their head. Now, the goal of this, as I said, if a teenager counts calories to stay below a certain threshold and then.

The hope is that by doing that, they will be able to lose weight and get to a healthier weight if they are on the heavier side. Now, what are some of the pros of counting calories in teenagers? The number one, in my opinion is that it can help our teenagers build awareness about the food that they're eating and whether that has a lot of calories or less calories.

For example, a teenager can find out that whether you have one piece of cake or whether you have one piece of broccoli to satisfy your, like hunger. If you need a quick snack, there is a big difference in terms of the calories. By doing this more and more, you build awareness. The second thing is that teenagers learn about the importance of portion control.

They notice that if they put two cups or three cups or two plates instead of one plate, they realize what is the effect of the portion control in the amount of the calories that they are eating. The third thing, the third thing that measuring calories can do for teenagers is that they can, it can potentially reduce overeating and especially of ultra processed snacks.

If the teenagers realize that this is going to get them to go overboard, their sets limits for the day. Another thing that is good with measuring calories is that it gives a sense of control. Like a lot of teenagers who feel overwhelmed, who don't know what to eat, they're frustrated, they don't know if they're doing a good job.

It gives them like a rule to follow. They feel that they can choose what they wanna eat as long as they maintain under. A certain number. So it provides some structure to work with and some teenagers like to work under this structure. Now, another thing that, measuring calories can do for teenagers is that when it is done under supervision by a coach or a dietician, it can be nice way to kickstart the Healthy habits lifestyle.

This is like one of the first steps is easy to follow. They know what they need to do and they start doing it and that way. They can, again, feel more motivated and feel more confident that they're actually following something that they wanna do. They follow the path and eventually they will get the results that they want.

I. Okay. Now, what are the negatives of counting calories in teenagers? Because it's not only positives, there can be negatives too. The main negative is that there is risk of disordered eating. Now, what does disordered eating mean? Disordered eating means that are patterns of eating that are not healthy, like for example.

Skipping meals intentionally, even though when you are hungry, can be a disordered eating pattern. Skipping breakfast when you actually want to eat breakfast because you're hungry. That's an unhealthy pattern If a teenager's goes to exercise excessively. Because they had bad meal, like a big meal, and they want to burn calories to balance what they ate.

That's a an example of a disorder eating. So sometimes this, focus with calorie, with strict caloric count can increase these kind of behaviors. And another negative effect is that it can create some anxiety by teenagers around the numbers of the calories that they have consumed. They may start counting excessively.

A third negative effect of measuring calories is that it doesn't take into account the hunger signals so that the teenagers can focus only on how much they ate, and if. They're hungry, the kind of ignore that. Or if they're hungry, they may still choose something that has calories to meet their caloric requirement, but not necessarily to meet their hunger signals in their body.

For example, they might end up and have a bag of chips that has 200 calories instead of having something that is more nutritious, let's say like Greek yogurt and an egg, which can have the same calories, but it is way more filling and it can satisfy the hunger better than a bag of chips.

Another negative effect of of calories is that it does really not take into account the quality of the food. As I mentioned the example before like eating 200 calories from chips and 200 calories from fish or from chicken, even though it's the same amount, it's not the same in terms of satisfying the hunger.

Caloric caloric counting does not take into account the quality of the food. It just focus on quantity and numbers, and so therefore that may not be necessarily the best approach. And finally, let's be honest about this. Everybody, including adults and teenagers, don't look food the perfect way.

Mistakes are very common and oftentimes we tend to under estimate the amount of calories or the quantity that we are. Consuming or we may not count mindless snacks that we may eat. We may not actually include that in the caloric counting because we say, oh, that's just a small cake.

It doesn't count. Or that's just a small plate when in fact it's a big plate. So a lot of inaccuracies in the caloric counting can make this method less. Beneficial and not, and people may not get the results that they want because they don't log the calories, this the right way. So to summarize, they're both negatives and positives when it comes to counting calories in teenagers.

And the question is, what is the answer? Should calories should teen, so what is the answer? Should teenagers count calories or they should not? The answer like many other answers is, it depends. It's not as straightforward. Yes or not. Measuring calories is just a tool, it's a learning tool that can be beneficial when a teenager tries to get most of the benefits without as much negative effects as possible. So the best way to do caloric count would be if it's usually short term, it's hard to be like long lived. It can be supported by a professional to see if there are, the, it's mainly used as a tool to build a wor awareness around what is healthy eating and whether the overall pattern is within the expected terms or not.

Usually it is very hard to keep caloric restriction for a long time. And it also has the risk of rebound the effect, like especially with those diets that are very strict. I. They create a sense of starvation, and then at the end of the diet there is rebound weight gain when teenagers start to eat again.

Normally. So in my opinion, we should see this exercise of. Counting calories more as how can we build the skills around what is healthy? Not the numbers, but how to recognize hunger, and what is the different options? How does that makes us feel

In my opinion? What is another approach that can be better is the, for example, the plate method.

It's much easier where half of the plate is with veggies, A quarter of the plate is protein and a quarter of the plain has whole grains. Again we try to use one regular plate and, we also track habits like how much fruits and vegetables I ate, how much protein, how much water, how many servings of vegetables.

We also wanna focus on overall lifestyle, which does not include only. Food because getting into a healthy lifestyle and maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle also requires that teenagers also sleep enough hours, they exercise more, they have less stress, and they feel that this is sustainable and not restrictive.

And they focus on this for a long term. So next time when you try to eat something, notice how that meal make you feel. Did it make you feel good afterwards or did it make you feel that you over I. Ate and you're staffed and you are heavy and you are tired. You don't wanna you don't feel well or you feel sad or you feel upset and all those things.

There is also certain foods that are more beneficial to teenagers that naturally have more insulin resistance. So choosing options that minimize the insulin resistance of puberty can be beneficial. And so if you're putting the effort, do it in a way that is in alignment with your puberty, not against it.

So to summarize, calorie counting can help some teenagers, but it may not be beneficial for all teenagers. If you are measuring calories or if your teenager is measuring calories and that does not lead to obsession with it and you actually are able to have a healthy relationship with food and not a strict set of rules, then that would be a good way to do it.

And also if. It is progress, like doing better one day than you did yesterday. That is also important, if you use it as a method to keep a log of what is going on and how your habits and how your nutrition improves over time, that is also very helpful. So I hope this was helpful. If you watch this on YouTube, please don't forget to like and subscribe and you can also download my free resources for 30 recipes lifestyle for teens.com/recipes.

If you want a quick start on 30 recipes that are high in protein and can be ready in less than 30 minutes for teenagers. Talk to you soon. Take care. Bye.