I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had far from the best luck with my own diet throughout the years. I can’t really say that I’ve ever gone on an official diet, but I’ve had my periods of trying to seriously watch what I eat. 

If I eat a healthier meal for breakfast and lunch, then I can afford to go a little crazy for dinner. But if I eat a heavy breakfast with fast food for lunch, I need to be careful around dinner. Always watching to make sure I keep my daily calorie consumption in check. After all, calorie counting is the way to go…or is it?

In this society, we’ve been told by numerous sources that weight management is simply a matter of focusing on how many calories we consume and making sure we burn at least as much if not more to be healthy. But the question that I want to pose is this: is this method of calorie statistics really the right way to go?

Recent studies seem to indicate that excess stomach fat and is linked with poor digestion and other stomach disorders such as frequent gas, nausea, and diarrhea. There are many sources that confirm this connection.

I realize there’s always a lot of controversy and skepticism when it comes to such “revelations,” but think about it. If you’re concerned about your health, specifically weight and/or diet, do you ever notice other digestive issues such as heartburn, indigestion, or even fatigue? This might be telling you that your stomach and intestines are having a tough time digesting the food you’ve recently eaten. Many nutritional sources recommend dietary changes like fruit smoothies and vitamin supplements as good methods of helping to correct this problem, along with being active, of course.

In other words, it seems we’ve been led astray with all this talk about calorie counting. I mean, we all would agree that eating fresh fruits like strawberries and raspberries is a better choice than eating fast food, but why? Is it simply because fast food has more calories, cholesterol, and fat? Not necessarily. 

It appears that the real reason is because, unlike fast food, fruit contain natural vitamins and minerals that help build a stronger digestive tract, thus helping the body to properly digest the food and better enabling it to convert it into energy rather than store it away as fat. So essentially, digestion is the key to weight management. The better our digestion, the more calories get burned.