While true, that statement is useless. It doesn't take into account the effect insulin has on the ability one has to actually take in those fewer calories. It also doesn't take into account metabolic pathways that allow one to eat more of certain kinds of foods than others.

The scientific literature is pretty clear (once you filter out the government propaganda that caused 300 million people to be unwitting participants in a dietetic experiment):

If you[1] want to loose weight and be healthier, screw calories and worry about insulin (full stop!)

There is nothing that more closely predicts insulin reaction than the number of carbs you are eating. Cut out all the simple carbs (which includes the bags of sugar we've cultivated as most fruit) and focus on fats, protein and very complex carbs and you will lose weight. More importantly, nothing has been shown to affect metabolic disorder[2] as positively.

I look at it like this: what do we use to fatten cattle up before we slaughter them? It's corn. Now look at every nutrition label to see what is in it. Is it surprising we are fat, too?

1. The body is incredibly complex. There are people who will respond better on other diets. So take any general study with a grain of salt and experiment on yourself to find what works!

2. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, heat disease, hypoglycemia, type 2 diabetes, gout, and others have all been lumped together into a disorder that strongly appears to be the result of hyperinsulenimia (eg too much insulin in the blood stream).

If I put 10 gallons into my tank every day, but use 11 gallons daily.. I'm "using up" gas. That's all that matters.

Of course, there are many, many, many tweaks to be made, but for the majority of people, who need to lose a massive amount of weight, if they eat less calories than they use, they will lose weight. End.

What the basic calorie-in-calorie-out equation doesn't take into account is that it is a biological imperative to eat. That means you have to find the way to balance those calories that overcomes that.

Some people (usually the people espousing "it's just a calorie") have a metabolism that, for whatever reason, either doesn't cause them to be hungry or allows them to eat whatever. Great for them.

For those of us who struggle daily with this issue, "willpower" isn't enough. We need to find the way that overcomes the biological, hormonal imperative that drives people to eat.

And just saying "cut calories" does not work. Three percent of obese people will manage to lose weight by dieting. Do you think they are just "too ignorant" to "get" the equation? Or are they just "too lazy" to do what needs to be done? Because I know that neither is the case.

Edit: The other component, which really screws up an "engine" analogy, is that your "engine" becomes more efficient the less you feed it. If you need 1500 calories a day today and so start eating 1300 calories a day, soon, your engine will only take 1300 calories a day to run. Great, bump up the exercise so you burn 200 calories a day. Soon, your engine only needs 1100 calories a day and you feel lethargic all the time.

Your body is not an car motor.

On a side note, I'd love to hear what sort of issues you have with maintaining?

All the problems can be summed up with "crappy carbs". It's actually a long story about what started me down that path (dealing with health issues), but I've actually put back on some weight (around 40 pounds...it's easy to be blind to oneself :().

What I've found is that when I start eating carb-rich food, my ability to stop snacking on carb-rich foods goes to zero. So I've cycled between maintaining where I eat a low-glycemic diet and not doing that and gaining. When I spoke of "biological imperative", I mean me: when I eat carbs, I can't stop. I never get full. I'm sure I'd be a Type 2 diabetic in about 5 years if I didn't make this change.

A few weeks ago, I dumped the crappy carbs again. I'm back full-on low-carb and have lost about half of that[1]. This time, I'm going to learn from my mistakes. :) I'm going to follow the Atkins notion of gradually increasing carbs until you find your "critical carbohydrate level". Since I've bounced back and forth, I figure realizing that fact will be helpful in my long-term maintenance.

1. Yes, a very large percentage of this is water. I'm OK with that. :)

I've attended hundreds of Weight Watchers meetings over many years and I've personally seen at least 1000 people go from being completely helpless with weight loss to losing somewhere between 50-200lbs each. It's a great achievement.

> What the basic calorie-in-calorie-out equation doesn't take into account is that it is a biological imperative to eat.

I didn't say eating less calories than you burn is mentally easy. It takes discipline and hard work, no doubt about it. We all have slip-ups and set backs along the way, which is all part of it. Nothing worth doing is easy.

> And just saying "cut calories" does not work. Three percent of obese people will manage to lose weight by dieting. Do you think they are just "too ignorant" to "get" the equation? Or are they just "too lazy" to do what needs to be done? Because I know that neither is the case.

In my experience watching at least a thousand people lose a massive amount of weight, every single one of them did it by slowly reducing their calorie intake, and increasing their activity to burn more calories. Why did they need WW for that? There are a variety of reasons, though I think Number 1 is that people honestly don't know fries, coke, burgers, chocolate, alcohol, etc. aren't food and you shouldn't eat them regularly. They are so enormously calorie dense they mess everything up.

Reason number 2 is simply being completely and utterly overwhelmed by the contradictory and complicated information about weight loss, causing them to give up completely. This is evidenced by the > 200 comments here.

> Your "engine" becomes more efficient the less you feed it.

Of course it does!

So next week/month will be a different intake/burn than last week/month. It's a constant process to make sure you're eating less than you take in. Although, again being honest here, anyone that is 100lbs+ overweight can likely just cut out one enormous calorie dense food (soda or fast food for a lot of people) and they will lose weight for a long time before they need to re-jig the equation, because they've been eating an enormous number of calories for a very long time.

Don't be confused and think I said it's an easy process to achieve. Many people find it one of the hardest things they will ever do in their lives. I said it's a simple process to understand.

Maybe it just is that complicated (not that I view the above as complicated, I just don't view it as simple as you make it).

> If I put 10 gallons into my tank every day, but use 11 gallons daily.. I'm "using up" gas. That's all that matters.

Imagine an engine that behaves differently depending on the type of fuel is put in it. One type of fuel causes the engine to move slower and burn less gas per unit time. So you may continue to put in your 10 gallons a day with this new fuel, but you'll notice a surplus building up because it only burns say 5 gallons a day because of this change. The output you get from the engine varies depending on what is put in it.

That's what the parent was describing. Calories in and calories out are not independent variables despite how they are treated in some research and most popular media. The type and amount of "calories in" affect your energy level (calories out) and hunger level (ability to limit your caloric intake).

Of course, that's why you have to constantly Analyze how much fuel your body is burning, and reduce the rate accordingly.

> The type and amount of "calories in" affect your energy level (calories out) and hunger level (ability to limit your caloric intake).

Indeed, though again, that doesn't impact the basic statement:

If you eat less energy less than you burn, you will lose weight.

From things I've read [1] it seems that the vast majority of people consume more calories than they 'burn' but only in some people is it converted to unwanted weight gain. The real question, as many people have been referring to, is how do you determine whether your body hangs onto the extra calories as weight or simply disposes of it.

Saying "If you eat less energy than you burn, you will lose weight" is certainly true, but is akin to saying: "If you never get in a car your chances of dying in a car accident are significantly reduced." It's true...but not really helpful or meaningful.

1 - http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259

Very bad analogy.

It's more like saying "If you burn more gas each day than you put in, you'll eventually start burning up your reserve tank, (until you run out)."

> but not really helpful or meaningful.

It's extremely helpful and meaningful. For the massive majority of people that are overweight, they simply need to eat less calories. Not less food. Less calories. The original article here is showing what 200 calories looks like, so it's extremely helpful for people trying to eat less of them.

You would be shocked how many people have no idea a mountain of apples is equal to a small amount of alcohol, etc. Once they learn this, they lose weight.

Source: I lived with two girls who lost over 100lbs each at Weight Watchers, one of them became a WW representative, and for years I went to meetings with her as moral support. Over the years I've personally seen at least 1000 people go from being completely helpless with weight loss to losing somewhere between 50-200lbs each. All they did was eat less calories than they were burning. Nothing else. (WW obfuscates that with their points system, but it's just calories/50)

http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/23/study-the-best-and-wor...

Put a stop to this myth. The type of food actually matters!

I don't even care if the keep drinking coke and eating fries, as long as they cut their calorie intake somewhat, down to below what they are using, they will lose weight. Period.

Losing weight at that point is the most important thing.

Once they've done that for a while, their body adapts and they'll have to cut more calories, as an ongoing process. In years, they will have lost a lot of weight, and they will have to cut things like Coke and fries, but that's years down the road.

For now, they need to eat less calories. Fullstop.

The point that you are missing is that this is not necessarily true. In fact, the converse may be true; that obese people require less calories to maintain their weight because they live a more sedentary lifestyle.

> I don't even care if the keep drinking coke and eating fries, as long as they cut their calorie intake somewhat, down to below what they are using, they will lose weight. Period.

> Once they've done that for a while, their body adapts and they'll have to cut more calories, as an ongoing process. In years, they will have lost a lot of weight, and they will have to cut things like Coke and fries, but that's years down the road.

And they will be literally starving, dealing with the effects of malnutrition, and have almost no energy to complete daily tasks. Switching to healthier sources of nutrition first will provide the energy the person needs as well as the ability to control caloric intake, which greatly enhances the chances of success.

You seem to have made up your mind about a subject you know little about. This isn't a simple single-variable equation.

A body burns more calories for every pound of fat it has to maintain, even if sitting on the couch all day.

> You seem to have made up your mind about a subject you know little about.

Read my other comments here. I've personally witnessed at least a thousand people lose 50-200lbs each over the years due to my involvement with Weight Watchers. I think I have a good idea of what is required for people to lose weight.

What's your experience?

I guess that's handy, actually.

I do want to point out I'm not using them to indicate "end of conversion" or "shutup" or anything like that, I'm using them to indicate that is the end of my solution/problem... as in there are no if/buts or maybes.

I think one of the reasons people fail at weight loss is because of the conventional wisdom of low-fat (read: low-flavor) diets combined with low-effectiveness exercises like running. It's pseudo-scientific crock. If you've tried the CW and failed, try something else. Have a couple of slices of bacon instead of that plain breadstick (and avoid the urge to blow your calorie budget by slathering it in butter!) and instead of spending hours on a treadmill do high-intensity weightlifting 3x30 min a week. For your average sedentary Aeron-chair dweller, that's going to be a far more likely path to success.

Which means you have to adapt and eat (ever) less calories.

This still doesn't make things terribly complex, and getting the basics down will help a lot.

The key to weight loss is sticking to your diet. That means adopting a diet that's easy to stick to. In my opinion, ketogenic diets are easier to stick to (for typical people) for two reasons:

1) there are lots of tasty, filling, foods that fit into the diet; 2) meat/dairy aren't peddled to bulk-up entrees in the same way as carbs (e.g. free tortilla chips and salsa) so cost forces some discipline;

Re: 1. Say you're at a restaurant and want to order a salad. On a low-fat diet, you might have some grilled chicken with bland greens with no dressing and a bread-stick. On the "eat less" diet, you might just leave a quarter of the food untouched and starting at you. On a keto diet, you can slather an ounce of caesar dressing on that salad in exchange for just leaving aside the croutons and breadstick. The first option fills you up, but isn't tasty. The second option leaves you a little hungry. The third option fills you up (because you eat all the greens, which take up volume) and is tasty (because even greens are tasty with caesar dressing).

YMMV, but pretending it's just a simple math equation is stupid and sets people up for failure. It is math, but it's a complex optimization problem. Each food item has two associated values: satisfaction and calories. The goal is to optimize satisfaction at a given calorie budget.

I think on a satisfaction per calorie basis, carb-y foods often lose unless you put fat/sugar in them. What would you rather have for breakfast? A two-egg omelet with an ounce of shredded Parmesan cheese, or a plain bagel (both 280-300 calories)?

I am saying people need to eat less calories.

They are not the same thing.

Also, anyone trying to lose weight does not need to be eating in restaurants. Obviously this is very difficult for many people, due to convenience, etc. but I suggest that if people can cut down their restaurant visits by 1 a week, they will likely lose weight.

People here seem to think I was saying the process of losing weight is easy, which I did not say. The method is simple to understand, but the execution is often the most difficult thing many people will do in their lives.

Your satisfaction from food isn't simply proportional to the weight or calorie content of the food. Foods aren't created equally in terms of how satisfying they are per calorie. My point is that the conventional wisdom of eating lots of bread/pasta is counter-productive simply because they're not very satisfying. A cheesy omelet isn't more or less food than a plain bagel, but for a similar calorie count I'm a lot happier 2 hours later. That's the essence of my point.

> Also, anyone trying to lose weight does not need to be eating in restaurants.

I live in New York and so pretty much only eat in restaurants (nobody here cooks). On a keto diet it's no big deal. Restaurants make money by selling you tons of carbs to inflate entree sizes. If you don't eat carbs, there actually aren't all that many ways to blow your calorie budget. If I'm at a restaurant, I can easily order a big steak and steamed veggies and mushrooms, or fish/chicken with a fatty sauce and keep within ~600-700 calories. The restaurant has no financial incentive to give me a lot of these expensive ingredients, so they don't. Psychologically, it's a lot easier to feel satisfied cleaning your plate of those things than leaving half your huge plate of pasta uneaten.

Simply reducing calories but eating mostly carbohydrates will cause the body to lose more muscle than fatty tissue. People will lose total weight, but they will not improve their health.

My sister (an M.D.) did an autopsy of a very skinny girl, who ate nothing but redbull sodas and similar stuff, who died of starvation, who looked VERY skinny, but her inner body was full of fatty tissue, with small organs and weak muscles, all because she wanted to be thin and only did calorie counting.

So please stop disseminating that harmful information, so we can save other girls like her from her fate.

Dieting has all sorts of psychological and physical factors that vastly complicated the picture.

It is exactly that simple, it's just not easy.

> Dieting has all sorts of psychological and physical factors that vastly complicated the picture.

They make the task more difficult, they don't make the task more complicated.

I'm not saying that eating less calories than you burn is easy for people with weight issues, but it is a very simple concept to understand and work towards.

Something can only be seen as difficult if you have a clear view of the task at hand. Chopping wood or solving equations might be difficult. Something is complicated when the mind needs many different tactics to solve a problem. Solving equations and the understanding and acting upon multiple feedback loops is difficult.

People suffering from weight problems often cannot comprehend their whole problem. Understanding the products that are eaten will focus on perception, therefor clarifying over time the big picture. It's like asking a gambler to calculate the odds of every bet he makes. Soon, the math becomes more important than the winning, thus freeing the sufferer from the emotions that are attached to food.

Another way of seeing the complications involved with food problems is by understanding that most of the food we eat nowadays is processed. For example, we tend to eat the carbs but not the fibers. This unbalances millions of years of natural evolution and allows for exorbitant high levels of insulin without feeling saturated. Counter-acting these processes that happen partly inside and partly outside our mind is a complicated process that takes years or decades of someones life.