If this is true, why don't we become incredibly fat or skinny over time? It would require incredible precision to maintain weight. But a lot of people seem to be able to do it with no effort...
The reason why this is not true is simple: our organism is not a closed system, so this thermodynamics truism does not apply. We are able, for example, to excrete nutrients without digesting them. Our organism is way too complex for this bromide to have any merit.
Because the amount you require for maintenance is proportional to your bodyweight. If you eat more than you need, you become fatter. As you become fatter, the amount of calories you need for maintenance goes up as well.
The calories in/calories out theory explains weight stability perfectly. Thermodynamics is sufficient, no complex theories required. I do the math here: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2011/weight_stability.html
"Calories eaten per day" is not a free variable. It's governed by a control loop within the brain. In a healthy person, appetite adjusts to compensate for calorie surplus or deficit. We have an epidemic because that control loop is getting damaged. People have a hard time discussing this because they treat it as a moral issue. But it's clear that recruiting our frontal cortex to count calories should not be necessary -- every mammal needs to automatically maintain homeostasis, and does so just fine in its natural environment.
And "calories burned per lb bodyweight" is also not a simple constant. It has been observed swinging significantly. A starving person's metabolism will slow dramatically to conserve energy. An overfed (healthy) person's metabolism will ramp up and favor burning the excess over storing it.
So of course we can't cheat thermodynamics, and of course eating less matters. But how to eat less is an animal behavioral question, governed by biochemistry.
As for the rest of your post, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. The human brain is made of biochemistry, so therefore choosing to eat less is a biochemistry problem? Um, sure, I guess.
In practice, it's good enough for a fat guy trying to get thin. It might not be good enough for a heavyweight trying to get down to cruiserweight without losing strength.
I mean, we do. One of the big tricks here is that your basal metabolic rate is not a constant. As your weight increases you burn more energy than before simply existing. If you're running a very slight caloric surplus this will be neutralized as your weight increases, thus stabilizing you.
The degree of "incredible precision" it takes to maintain weight is akin to the incredible precision it takes to ride a bike, a.k.a. not particularly incredible but challenging to some.
In terms of weight gain or loss, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. That's why there are fad diets that have and do work for people that each cut different things. Low carbs in one. Low protein in another. The Cookie Diet for chrissakes. They work because the common thread between them is caloric restriction.
Now, if you consume nothing but 2000 calories of Ice Cream every day, you will surely develop some nutritional issues. And yes that totally will affect your overall health. But that's something different than what the GP was discussing (though that may well have been your entire point which is fair.)
One interesting thing I picked up from a Pollan talk on NPR (but have not yet read the underlying research myself) is that there is some evidence that in one way all calories are not the same: The mechanics of digestion is affected by the texture and composition of the food. So 100 calories of crunch granola seems to be metabolized differently than 100 calories of soft chewy brownie. But the affect here is how many calories are extracted from the input.
My source for this is a lot of reading and my own personal experiences going from 6'2, 210 and flabby to 170 and toned, cutting down from 36" waist to 32", from XL shirts to Medium in the process. I did this primarily over 14 months and did quite a bit of experimentation in there (Fruit cleanses, Juice cleanses, egg white protein supplements -- as i'm not a fan of protein powders), and for the 6 months since, as I've maintained weight and increased muscle tone.
The composition of my diet has changed but the pattern has held the same and I believe the pattern is what has had the most effect for me. Without realizing it, I devised a diet that other people call "intermittent fasting." I consume, literally, 95% of my calories in 6 hours between 2PM and 8PM (when I have my lunch, dinner and dessert). I had no idea that this was a "thing" and not just something peculiar to myself. It works beautifully for me. I gym in the morning 3 days a week. I feel healthy and skinny and look good in tight clothing and finally, finally at age 30 feel good about myself physically.
Also, random internet sites suggest a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie. For example:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/06/when-a-calorie...
I couldn't gain a pound of weight no matter how much crap I ate, right up to about the age of 25. So I ate anything at any time, all the time. I then proceeded to gradually gain 40 pounds over seven years, from 150 to 190 (at a 6'2" height), as my metabolism slowed.
I lived off of sugar, all the time. And pasta carbs.
You'll find that some of the formerly skinny types that keep up that rubbish diet, will end up remaining slightly thinner than most except for some out-of-place looking weight gain in the mid section. That's the lucky scenario. The unlucky scenario is you give yourself diabetes or your metabolism really lets out and you just explode to twice your size.
Did you actually religiously track your calories in/out?
The out of place weight gain in the mid section is actually a really good warning of future heart problem. So even that lucky scenario is not as lucky as it appears.
Oh, and I lost that weight and more simply by - duh - eating less than my body needed. It's not an exact science, but it does work. If you don't think it does, you either have a very rare medical condition, or (sorry for the tough news) just need to eat less and exercise more, like everybody else.
Yeah, and if you want to reduce your chance of auto accidents, limit the amount of gasoline you put in your car.
I'm a bit sorry to come across as rude, but this advice and then your later dismissal of ketogenic diets reflects the extraordinary ignorance that inflicted us with the food pyramid and war on fat 40 years ago.
Understanding and controlling the insulin cycle is key to understanding nutrition and its role in weight control. I tried "eating less" for years before I gave a low carb diet a try and permanently changed the way I ate and thought about food.
If you had actually read the article about which you added a comment, then you would have read a process of discovery paralleled by myself and an extraordinary number of others.
Atkins and even others before him explained the problems with carbohydrates, especially simple ones, decades ago. Calling low carb eating (you can't eliminate all carbs) a fad at this point is either ignorant or just mocking.
I'm a bit sorry to come across as rude, but this advice and then your later dismissal of ketogenic diets reflects the extraordinary ignorance that inflicted us with the food pyramid and war on fat 40 years ago.
I'm not sure how I dismissed ketogenic diets (I was on one for a year!) besides calling them a 'fad', which they certainly are.
Understanding and controlling the insulin cycle is key to understanding nutrition and its role in weight control. I tried "eating less" for years before I gave a low carb diet a try and permanently changed the way I ate and thought about food.
This is definitely important! But it might not be necessary, as proven by the fact that people have lost significant amounts of weight without doing so.
If you had actually read the article about which you added a comment, then you would have read a process of discovery paralleled by myself and an extraordinary number of others.
I did read the article, and I'm not sure why you assumed otherwise. Most of my comment runs in parallel with the post (particularly being conscientious about what you do with your body.), though I don't think a process of discovery which leads one to assume multivitamins are 'snake oil' is particularly flawless.
Secondly, I disagree with your assessment of anything I said as "vitriol". If it's vitriol to call someone's statement ignorant or point out that they're committing the very act they're complaining about through that ignorance, then I would claim that you're confusing "vitriol" with "directness".
There is so much pseudo-science on every side of this debate that I'm against just about anybody who takes an absolutist position in the way you have.
Personally, from my own research and experimentation in my own diet, I firmly believe that weight is an I/O issue though good health is more complex than that.
While Atkins never specifically advocated for calorie restriction, it strikes me as common sense that some portion of new Atkins dieters experience positive results due to calorie restriction. It can be difficult to replace the number of calories in pastas, pizza, etc, in part just based on caloric density.
It's also confused by the fact that Atkins and other (if not "fad" then "theme" might be a better word?) diets have to change both physical, calorie I/O issues, and mental issues to truly be effective long term. While I truly believe that for weight loss, 2000 calories of fast food is the same as 2000 calories of lean protein, fruits and veg, after the period of strict control (the "diet") the person eating 2000 calories of fast food has not done much to truly change their habits and mindset.
I, personally, have accomplished a lot by intermittent fasting (didn't know it had a name until later, to me it was just about not eating as much during the day in favor of a bigger dinner) and learning that it's OK to feel not-full. And to learn the difference between hunger and feeling not-full. I went from 210 to 170 and lost 55 pounds!! of fat during the process. I have a big dinner (usually 50% of my daily caloric intake) and dessert every night (another 20%). That's complimented by a lunch of around 25% of my daily intake. Very infrequent snacking. No breakfast, even on Gym days, and no soft drinks only water, aside from alcoholic beverages.
Atkins dieters experience positive results due to calorie restriction
When you're on a low carb diet, your carb cravings are reduced or go away. You tend to eat less.
It seems like you wanted to be snarky about the analogy I made but you didn't really understand it.
More importantly, I'm not trying to be a critic on your writing style, which is why I have 1 sentence about the analogy followed by paragraphs about your larger point.
Looking at the mental portion of this, the learning to eat less and better, your comments about atkins..."tend to eat less" reminds me of exactly what I say about my strategy of "intermittent fasting." (Which is a phrase I didn't learn until recently, well after I've lost the weight). What I mean is, in both cases, behavioral changes lead to eating less.
And I firmly, 100% believe that THAT is the primary mechanism that worked for me. Not changes to insulin levels effecting metabolism. But specifically: I eat far less than I used to. Far less. And THAT is why I've lost weight. And intermittent fasting helps me to accomplish that the way Atkins does to followers of that diet, ditto Paleo, ditto the Cookie Diet, etc.
Most importantly: I hope everybody acknowledges that there's mountains of contradictory research and a lot of complicated science here that nobody really understands. All we know for sure is what has worked for us, not even always why, and we are on very thin ice advocating to others what they should do.
First link briefly covers the insulin response second link is general information regarding insulin.
http://www.spinalhealth.net/insulin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin
See the Gary Taube youtube link elsewhere in this thread for a great deal more information.
mountains of contradictory research
Not really. There's mountains of research and then public policy officials and non-scientist nutritionists that have let the food industry provide guidelines and cheap foods that aren't really good for us.
As Gary Taube points out in the video link, the science is old news. The puzzling thing is why the science has been ignored for so long.
But most of what I've learned about weight gain/loss and nutrition I've learned from books and research that look at the subject from a macro level.
The summation of everything I've read on the subject -- and I read a lot through my year long experience of losing weigh and changing almost entirely how I thought about food -- and my own experiences make me believe firmly that this is primarily an I/O issue.
And as much as you say "the science is settled and I am right" it's contradicted by a lot of smart people who study this and admit essentially 'the science of nutrition is immature and in many times conclusions are contradictory.' The most recent time I heard that was just last week in the same Pollan NPR interview I mentioned elsewhere. (Though i think this was a re-broadcast, not sure the original broadcast date)
To be clear, here's my take:
1. Primarily an I/O issue. Everything else is a distant 2nd place.
2. How much of the equation is I/O? I don't know. 75%? 50%? It's not the whole story, though, I don't think. Our bodies are adaptive and complex.
3. There are no silver bullets and anybody peddling one is probably wrong (not to say they are entirely without merit.)
4. Nutrition is a science that is not nearly as well understood as most people think.
At the end of the day, here's what I know from going on and off low-carb eating for the last ten years.
I eat carbs, I crave carbs, I binge eat, I gain lots of weight. Contrarily: I stop eating carbs, I lose the cravings, I eat moderately, salads even look satisfying, I lose weight.
Oh, for those of you who are fans of the Security Now podcast, Steve Gibson went into geeky detail in his switch to a low carb diet: https://www.grc.com/health/lowcarb-podcasts.htm
Maybe we've been talking past each other or maybe you just see this differently than I do.
I see a difference between the physical mechanism of weight gain and the mental part of hunger and eating.
Your comment here is something I can totally agree with: When you eat carbs, you crave them and binge eat and over eat and gain weight.
For you, eating carbs leads you to increase your input too much. Now this could be insulin like you insist, or it could just be bad habit. Either way, it's what I consider "mental." Because even if blood sugar issues with carbs triggers the hunger, you're still choosing to satisfy it by eating.
But there's some basic science behind the thermodynamics of weight gain and weight loss that cannot be waved away IMO.
Also, worth noting that carbs do not trigger me to over eat. They are and have been a staple in my diet and I cut them from my lunch meal entirely for reasons of caloric restriction and eat them liberally at my dinner meal. I load UP on carbs at dinner. And still, I don't eat again for at least 18 hours.
1) it's impossible to gain weight while in ketosis
2) the first time you go into ketosis, it has magical fat-burning effects that are lost after you go out of ketosis and back in
3) that ketosis is in fact magical in any way, and in any way better than simply -moderating- carb intake (as opposed to cutting it to 50g or under, and giving up delicious things that you enjoy).
Fact is, plenty of people have tried it as a magic bullet and eaten copious amounts of cheese and bacon only to find that, surprise, fats are insanely calorie-dense and things like salt can still happily make you hungry enough to overeat.
On the positive side, trying keto also permanently changed the way I felt about food - I permanently reduced my carb intake, increased protein and fat, and have a much better understanding of how high-carb foods create 'hunger'. And it happens to work very well for some people, which is awesome.
A fad is a short-lived craze. Generally it's something that's done for fashion/popularity sake, but has little underlying benefit or scientific basis. Atkins published in the 1970's. Low carb diets have been popular for almost a decade now - and the evidence for their efficacy appears to be mounting. It's no longer a fad.
Regarding your points:
1) I've never heard that claim and I've been on some form or other of a low carb diet for the last ten years. 2) Magical? Hardly. The first time I forced my body into ketosis was the most difficult, though. When my metabolism switched to burning fat, I woke up that day feeling very different. That difference was a bit euphoric. 3) Being in ketosis isn't like being pregnant. There are varying degrees - hence the spectrum of colors on the ketostix. That said, there is a slippery slope where indulging "delicious things" can quickly lead to carb cravings that wreck your low carb eating regimen. Some people are better off just avoiding the treats because it makes sticking with their eating plan easier.
Not entirely. Try eating 2,000 calories of pasta versus 2,000 calories of chicken. It'll do immensely different things to your body.
IF and keto are valid. Liquid diet is nutty. keto isn't exactly "eat lots of fat" -- it's avoiding > 30-60g carbs per day (and honestly, mostly sugars. carbs with fiber delivery (e.g. vegetables and limited fruits) are okay) while seeking out, but not adding "lots," of complementary fat (like avoiding fat free things because fat free just means "we added more sugar to compensate for removing fat").
If you have a limited memory capacity, just remember: fat doesn't make you fat. Your body turns sugar and things that metabolize into sugar (carbs, breads, pastas, rice) into fat. Your body doesn't take what you eat and just glue it inside of you. Food is like the input of a program generating very specific outputs. You can't feed the function "Add two numbers" 1 and 1 and end up with anything but 2. You (probably[1]) can't feed yourself carbs and carbs and carbs and end up with anything but lardass.
[1]: Though, people are different. We have basic guidelines, but a lot is still genetics. I know people who basically live off pasta, chocolate, and smoothies and still weigh 130 pounds without workout out significantly.
True, and it's why the low fat (== high sugar) marketing has done nothing to curb the obesity trends.
> Your body turns sugar and things that metabolize into sugar (carbs, breads, pastas, rice) into fat.
True. Keep in mind that (most) excess amino acids also get converted to carbs, and then to fat.
You need a specific chain reaction for getting the molecules you could use to move your body, mainly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_triphosphate
You need to make the molecules that make this reaction possible, for every sugar, fat or protein, it is different. Those supplies you need to fabricate or get in your food. Some are very common(inexpensive), some are not. E.g you will need oligoelements, or vitamins.
Not only that, but those substances need to be able to share the same space, not react with other substances, or being toxic to other parts of the cell. Some of them are and need other substances to carry them safely.
You also need other substances to carry them around. Some of them have water affinity, some not.
The output of the reactions also need to be non toxic and some of the are over certain concentration. Some sugars output metabolic reactions produce toxic materials. At high rates you need your body to protect the arteries from acidic conditions with cholesterol layers and so on.
Also what you need to fabricate has a delay. You can't fabricate your supplies instantly, so you have a control system, normally a series of PID controllers(we copied them from nature) to decide how much to fabricate given your normal diet.
So if you eat pizza every single day and caramelize all the sugars, and denaturalize the proteins , like you do at 200C plus, your body will get used to it.
There are fads, but there is also scientific knowledge people ignore. It is frustrating that people that ignore so much try to give advice to others.
You see medicine doctors talk in 2013 about calories, they have knowledge in some areas but are ignorant in others, mainly chemistry and biochemistry, they won't admit that.
>>For anyone reading this post and inspired to lose weight, I recommend you keep the following basic tenets in mind when researching a plan/regimen...
--
There is something important to point out here, which is that the basic tenets you listed are simple, but they are not easy. If they were, everyone would follow them.
Most people don't actually want to lose weight. Rather, they want to already have lost weight. So they look for shortcuts that will get them there. That is why there is such a massive signal-to-noise issue in the fitness world. Fad diets and magic pills are invented because people are willing to pay for them.
People are fat because eating is a big part of their lives. They eat several huge meals everyday, plus snacks, and often times when they are eating one meal they are dreaming about and planning their next one. On top of this, food has become a "social currency" for them. Being able to cook delicious, unhealthy food at a family BBQ is seen as an admirable skill, and bringing a box of donuts to the office in the morning is seen as a way to score points with coworkers.
In order to lose weight they need to reverse that and make exercising and not eating an equally big part of their lives. They need to count calories, watch what they eat, do heavy workouts at the gym (none of this lift-pink-dumbbells or walk-on-the-treadmill-while-texting-friends bullshit), strictly regulate their sleep and wake-up times, and more. It is NOT supposed to be easy. It is supposed to be HARD. And as with all hard endeavors, success is a matter of discipline. Unfortunately most people don't have that.
I agree completely, though I would phrase it as "most people don't want to be healthy: they want to be thin."
On top of this, food has become a "social currency" for them.
This is something I struggle with a lot (and I say this sipping a latte) -- so much of socializing revolves around food, it sucks to be the guy/gal who refuses the donut or orders a salad at the pizza place. Not to mention the black hole that is alcohol (though in my case, I'm more than willing to take the extra few pounds of fat if it means enjoying my whiskey and beer.)
In order to lose weight they need to reverse that and make exercising and not eating an equally big part of their lives. ... And as with all hard endeavors, success is a matter of discipline.
Absolutely. There are dozens of anecdotes about people who lose a serious amount of weight, hit their target, and then slowly regain all the weight because that's what happens when you're 160 pounds and you go back to eating junk. To use a poor metaphor, personal fitness isn't like an MMO where once you hit max level you stay there -- you've got to take care of yourself or else you'll wind up back at level 1.
I see this all the time on HN and like most things, there is truth in it, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
First and foremost, calories matter. Let's get that out of the way. They matter in that, yes, weight gain comes from eating calories in excess, loss from a deficit...normally (we'll get to that in a minute).
However, this is where everyone should be reading the rest very carefully, details matter here.
For one, if the ONLY thing you care about is number on the scale, eat at a deficit and you'll lose weight.
BUT, if you care about the type of weight you are losing (ie. losing fat vs fat/muscle vs muscle), you HAVE to care about the macronutrient ratios of those calories. For instance, I'm an athlete, recreational bodybuilder/powerlifter and fitness model. I work very, very hard for muscle gains. I don't want to lose muscle when I diet down for a show, competition or photo shoot. If I only cared about calories, I would QUICKLY catabolize my muscle. I need to keep my protein high, fat pretty high and the rest of my calories can come from carbs. In practice, depending on my goal at the time, I implement one of a variety of PSMF (protein sparring modified fast) & CKD (cyclic keto diet, which is Keto with carb refeeds) or TKD (targeted keto diet, which is eating carbs around workouts).
The problem with "just care about calories" is that very few people actually want that as the goal. Most people want to lose FAT, not muscle when they lose weight. If all you understand is calories, yes you'll lose weight, but you'll be losing fat and muscle. Most people, and I would guess everyone reading this, would rather keep whatever muscle they have, they need to understand how to SPARE their muscle when losing weight.
And if someone is overweight there is a very high chance they are or are becoming insulin resistant. If this is the case, Keto is actually appropriate for them.
Before I got into this world seriously, I just thought it was calories, like most people who haven't spent the time to understand the workings of the body. I literally wasted years trying to get lean with just a calories approach. It doesn't work that way.
Regarding ketogenic diets, there are so many results and it seems to work so much better than what "they" have been telling us that the idea that this is a "fad" starts to sound a bit silly. Actually, some proponents of ketogenic diets are backing their claims with explanatory models, instead of simple epidemiological studies (which are, in my opinion, the lowest form of Science).
Check out this talk if you want to know more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4
edit: this talk provides some convincing arguments against your assumption #1.
True. For those who find it a pain to use one, I recommend sticking with it for a few months at least initially. After a while, your mind gets attuned to the idea of how much food is enough for you to be satiated. So don't obsess about getting every calorie in, it is easy especially if you are reading online communities to see people freaking.
2. Being active isn't necessarily crucial to losing weight, but it is crucial to being more healthy. In particular, lifting weights will help your overall physique even if you're eating at a caloric deficit -- but the most important activity is the one that you like enough to make a habit. (Mine is biking, and occasionally soccer.)
I don't like the go weight lift or run recommendation for a person who has never run or hates the gym. Most are there because of systemic lifestyle issues. The best way to do that is to start at the core, hang out more with active people, doing entertaining things that also get out outdoors. After a while of doing that, I feel like you will naturally gravitate towards taking care of your body.
> There are a lot of huge fads right now -- in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day), ketogenic diet (eat lots of fat, eat no carbs), and liquid diets (drink lots of things) seem to be the rage. The reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body and diligent about treating it well.
It's funny. I spent a while doing lean gains. A couple of months were rather painful in terms of having to spend most of my time eating cottage cheese and tuna, finding it difficult to have dinner with friends. I was hitting all the marks though, then I got bored of it. A few months ago, I did something simple by being more mindful when I ate. I didn't particularly try to avoid any food group but I focused more on savoring it than as something to keep my mouth occupied while I listened to a friend or something. That got me way down on the scale than anything.
But satiation is a built-in feature of your body. A healthy human body counts calories automatically, and governs appetite and metabolism appropriately to keep body weight in a narrow target range.
A calorie counting app is basically a prosthetic replacement for the part of your brain that's supposed to be doing the job automatically. And it's much inferior to the real thing.
Many people can at least remember a time in their youth when their weight was extremely stable, despite widely varying inputs. That's how it feels when your metabolic control systems are all functioning correctly. Many people assume that this ability naturally disappears with age -- but it seems much more likely that the system simply breaks down due to years of exposure to a very unhealthy environment.
It's not just the human body, but the mind as well.
Sometimes I'd get engrossed in a piece of work or reading something interesting and forget to eat for hours. Then I'd get hunger pangs, and eat some sugary crap or something laden in saturated fat (this often happened late in the evenings. Eating late in the evening is a terrible habit, as the carbs in your food is more likely to metabolise to fat.)
Now I find by simply calorie counting (MyFitnessPal is amazing, free, scans barcodes, you enter your goals etc.) and planning meals so that I have x4 relative low calorie meals (typically 400-600 calories) in a day, with no hunger pangs. I never feel like reaching for that 1200+ calorie pizza at 10pm anymore. It's simple, no bullshit, you don't have to massively overhaul your diet or starve yourself. Anyone could do it if they put their mind to it. I'm about a month into this new regime and I'm never going back.
This is a typical symptom of impaired blood sugar control. If you need four meals a day to keep the hunger pangs away, you're on the road to type 2 diabetes. With a healthy metabolism, you can go all day without eating, with no discomfort and no loss of function (so long as you've been eating well in prior days).
> I'm about a month into this new regime and I'm never going back.
Study after study says that calorie counting diets work great for the first several months, up to a year.
And then by year five, only a tiny fraction of people are still doing it, and the rest have gained back all their weight and then some.
Maybe you will beat the odds. I do think that many HN readers are more likely than the general population to succeed this way -- geeks are better at living inside number-based systems of rules. Good luck.
That's...a bit of an extreme way of looking at it.
Four small, low-calorie, healthy meals. Snacks, more like. For example, a day could look like:
- Breakfast: x2 small boiled eggs, cup of green tea, 1 teaspoon sugar
- Mid-morning: Banana, cup of coffee
- Dinner: Chicken and pasta meal (brown pasta)
- Evening snack: toasted ham and cheese sandwich (wholemeal bread)
This will comfortably last me the day without hunger pangs. I won't necessarily strictly follow this every single day, this is a rough guide. The overall point is regularly spaced out meals, before I get ravenous and eat crap food, with as little processed food and sugar as possible.
> Study after study says that calorie counting diets work great for the first several months, up to a year. And then by year five, only a tiny fraction of people are still doing it, and the rest have gained back all their weight and then some. Maybe you will beat the odds. I do think that many HN readers are more likely than the general population to succeed this way -- geeks are better at living inside number-based systems of rules. Good luck.
I don't think of it as a calorie counting diet. The whole point of calorie counting is a temporary measure (perhaps for a month or two total), more as a mental trick to make me realise the shit I was shovelling absently mindedly into my body every day. After a few weeks, I'll be able to roughly gauge the calories simply by memory, and hopefully be in a good habit of small regular healthy meals by then.
Satiation seems to always lag when people age and their metabolism gets slower. It can also be trained for allowing more or less eating before it fires a signal. And a consequence is that you can train it to make it correct again, but it requires a conscient intervention.
Yes, but the important question is why. Why do an increasing fraction of people have broken metabolic feedback systems, and what can they do to fix them?
If we had cybernetic calorie counters that worked as reliably as glasses, it wouldn't be a big deal. But in practice, only a minority of people manage to stick to a calorie counting regime over the long term. And even the ones who succeed have to fight the battle their whole lives. It never becomes automatic.
That is why I think it's a mistake to pin people's hopes on calorie counting, when there is a lot of fascinating science about how to fix the built-in automatic system instead (see for example http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/, written by a biochemist who researches obesity and metabolism).
I saw a documentary on tv a while back, it contained some research that showed that overeating can break your ability to feel full.
Keto is backed up by a ton of science and real-world success. Just visit the keto subreddit and spend a few hours perusing, http://reddit.com/r/keto.
Another reason is that most fads are effectively big lists of restrictions on what you are allowed to eat. Since finding things to eat becomes harder you often end up reducing the total calorie count as a side effect.
As a former chemistry student(I did not finish it, because I made engineering instead), I tell you you are oversimplificating how the body works.
With a machine you could talk about calories because the way an engine works is so simple. Fuel, oxidant+Energy init reaction->Output + Energy out.
Not so with the body. There are different processes the body uses to get energy, and it is very complex.
E.g When you eat sugary drinks you put immense amounts of sugar in the blood, very fast which are dangerous(if insulin is not released you die), so the priority of the body is getting this sugar out of the bloodstream, converting it to fat. At the same time your liver could not process anything else as the rate it has to work to get rid of the sugar is too high.
Countries like the US of America or Central Europe has an obesity epidemic problem, and what changed the most was food. 40 years ago Germans or Americans ate more than 8 kilos of butter and other natural fats per year. Now it is way less.
You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.)
Obviously this is true on some level but it's truth doesn't seem establish any automatic or definite cause-and-effect relationship between the amount of food a given person eats and their weight gain or loss. Some people may indeed find their consumption determine weight gain or loss. Fine but don't assume your experience will automatically carry to others.
I recall current research has shed light on some complexities of this. Perhaps someone has a link.
FYI that is incorrect. Intermittent fasting simply refers to eating your calories in condensed time windows. For example, Lean Gains suggests eating 2-3 meals in an 8 hour window.
Yes, there are a lot of varying information out there, and a lot of those are conflicting. Case in point: just look at how many replies you got where people are disagreeing with you and each other about your recommendations... ;)
For anyone reading this post and inspired to lose weight, I recommend you keep the following basic tenets in mind when researching a plan/regimen:
1. You lose weight by eating less calories than your body uses. (As a corollary, you almost definitely consume more calories than you think you do. Get a calorie-counting app.)
2. Being active isn't necessarily crucial to losing weight, but it is crucial to being more healthy. In particular, lifting weights will help your overall physique even if you're eating at a caloric deficit -- but the most important activity is the one that you like enough to make a habit. (Mine is biking, and occasionally soccer.)
There are a lot of huge fads right now -- in particular, intermittent fasting (eat once per day), ketogenic diet (eat lots of fat, eat no carbs), and liquid diets (drink lots of things) seem to be the rage. The reason fads can be successful usually have less to do with the specific mechanics and minutiae of their gospel and more to do with the fact that you're conscientious about what you're putting into your body and diligent about treating it well.