In today's age of fast information, with nutrition advice available at the click of a button, the idea of calorie counting seems so old fashioned that it's just a relic from the past, with no relevance today. Is that perception true though...?

Well, the idea that calorie counting is old, yes that is undoubtedly true. Compared to the fad diets, which only really started in the last 20 to 30 years, the 60 year old idea of calorie counting seems positively ancient!

Relevance wise though, calorie counting is alive and well, very much so, and in fact is not only holding its own against the fad diets, but is starting to gain popularity over them. A lot of the people who have quiet, long term, healthy weight loss, are on programs which combine calorie counting and basic nutrition.

That works as well today as it ever did, and it's something often missing in the latest best sellers, which go in and out of favour.

Another reason for the enduring success of calorie counting, is that it doesn't lean on starvation or deprivation. You can eat anything you want - including the kind of treats you'd think a diet would reject. Of course it's all to do with moderation, and a calorie counting plan just means that if you have a burger or cream cake, the calories it contains have to be taken into effect.

Plus, if you become aware of the calories you consume, you also become aware of the calories you burn, and the more you become aware of the number of calories you burn with a half hour walk, the less you are inclined to eat a cake which contains an hour walk's worth of calories!

This means your mind set changes.

So unlike many modern diet plans where you have to suffer for a week or ten days, and then go back to what you ate before (which of course has no long term benefit whatsoever), the heightened awareness means you just don't want the bad foods any more, or at least you choose the healthiest version of them.

So, calorie counting - old? Yes indeed.

Calorie counting - old fashioned and irrelevant? Absolutely not!