True or False? A Calorie is a Calorie is a Calorie.

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  • asdowe13
    asdowe13 Posts: 1,951 Member
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    @Paige, have you had 4 kids and are you over 40? It's easy being young, enjoy it while you can.

    WTF does this prove/disprove?

    There are plenty of women over 40 with 4 kids that have never had the need to lose weight or been overweight.

    This statement is silly.
  • asdowe13
    asdowe13 Posts: 1,951 Member
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    MissyLaRae wrote: »
    Paige682 wrote: »
    MissyLaRae wrote: »
    Um not at all. I'm a high carb low fat vegan (no animal products at all) and I'm down 16 pounds in 6 weeks eating 2500-3000 calories a day.

    NOT all calories are equal. Fat calories are the worst you can eat. A diet high in milk and mean is the worst you could possibly have.

    If you are going to make outrageous claims, please post scientific evidence to back them up.

    There is a ton of scientific data to back up a nutritious plant based diet. Meat & Dairy is not healthy. It's not an outrageous claim and no I'm not going to do your research for you. I've invested years into finding the right lifestyle that works for me and done a lot of research into diet myself.

    I personally eat 2500-3000 calories every single day for the past 6 weeks and my weight loss is currently at 16 pounds. I have a sedentary lifestyle as an author and walk 20 minutes a day weather permitting. So with little to no exercise I am losing weight. That isn't to say it's right for you, but if I was eating 2500-3000 calories of fat from animal products I most likely would be gaining weight, according to MFP I should be.

    Please provide some of this scientific data.

    I'm pretty sure you can't provide any viable data.

  • PRMinx
    PRMinx Posts: 4,585 Member
    edited October 2014
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    Deleted forum glitch.
  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
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    MissyLaRae wrote: »
    Um not at all. I'm a high carb low fat vegan (no animal products at all) and I'm down 16 pounds in 6 weeks eating 2500-3000 calories a day.

    NOT all calories are equal. Fat calories are the worst you can eat. A diet high in milk and mean is the worst you could possibly have.

    you really need to go back to the beginning of the threat...and stop lying about how much you eat and lose...lol

    According to her profile, she has 79 of 95 lb to go, so those numbers could be correct based on her stats. Higher calorie goals and higher weekly losses are not uncommon for those with higher amounts of weight to lose.
  • yopeeps025
    yopeeps025 Posts: 8,680 Member
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    adowe wrote: »
    @Paige, have you had 4 kids and are you over 40? It's easy being young, enjoy it while you can.

    WTF does this prove/disprove?

    There are plenty of women over 40 with 4 kids that have never had the need to lose weight or been overweight.

    This statement is silly.

    Come on now you know what they are saying. I'm not because I would not say such a idiotic statement.
  • QueenBishOTUniverse
    QueenBishOTUniverse Posts: 14,121 Member
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    MissyLaRae wrote: »
    Paige682 wrote: »
    MissyLaRae wrote: »
    Um not at all. I'm a high carb low fat vegan (no animal products at all) and I'm down 16 pounds in 6 weeks eating 2500-3000 calories a day.

    NOT all calories are equal. Fat calories are the worst you can eat. A diet high in milk and mean is the worst you could possibly have.

    If you are going to make outrageous claims, please post scientific evidence to back them up.

    There is a ton of scientific data to back up a nutritious plant based diet. Meat & Dairy is not healthy. It's not an outrageous claim and no I'm not going to do your research for you. I've invested years into finding the right lifestyle that works for me and done a lot of research into diet myself.

    I personally eat 2500-3000 calories every single day for the past 6 weeks and my weight loss is currently at 16 pounds. I have a sedentary lifestyle as an author and walk 20 minutes a day weather permitting. So with little to no exercise I am losing weight. That isn't to say it's right for you, but if I was eating 2500-3000 calories of fat from animal products I most likely would be gaining weight, according to MFP I should be.

    In science, the person making the claims is responsible for providing the evidence to back it. Actually, you don't even get to the "conclusions" section of your analysis until AFTER presenting your research methods and data. And then other scientists get to go over your data and conclusions and determine if they agree with your analysis or if they believe there are flaws in your findings.

    So now that we've cleared that up, we already know what *your* conclusion is, please present us with your research and data.

    Otherwise, this is your opinion and holds no more weight or worth then any other individual's opinion and should be dismissed as such.
  • PRMinx
    PRMinx Posts: 4,585 Member
    edited October 2014
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    @Paige, have you had 4 kids and are you over 40? It's easy being young, enjoy it while you can.

    LOL. That has nothing to do with being Paleo or not Paleo.

    There are many, many examples of people on MFP who have lost a ton of weight after children and over 40 that eat bread, pasta, tortillas and crackers.

    It's not an "enjoy it while you're young." I am how I am because I started to realize I was gaining weight and I did something about it before it became a bigger project. I eat at a deficit or at maintenance on most days and I work my *kitten* off at the gym doing a combination of cardio and heavy lifting. I'm up at 5 most days of the work week to fit it in. If I have a bad month of logging and debauchery, I shake it off and I get right back on the wagon. So, yeah, let's not undermine hard work and self-awareness because it fits your theory more easily.

  • QueenBishOTUniverse
    QueenBishOTUniverse Posts: 14,121 Member
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    adowe wrote: »
    @Paige, have you had 4 kids and are you over 40? It's easy being young, enjoy it while you can.

    WTF does this prove/disprove?

    There are plenty of women over 40 with 4 kids that have never had the need to lose weight or been overweight.

    This statement is silly.

    Yup, I have several on my friends list.
  • TitikiOoh
    TitikiOoh Posts: 40 Member
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    A calorie *is* a calorie, it's a measurement of energy. That is the simple answer. But our bodies are not that simple. The research is rarely conclusive on anything, and it changes with the trends. But here's a good place to start finding scientific papers on nutrition and weight loss.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
  • xmichaelyx
    xmichaelyx Posts: 883 Member
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    kgeyser wrote: »
    Yes, a calorie is a calorie. Too many calories from any source (carbs, fat, or protein) will be stored as fat. The grams of fat in your food are not automatically stored as fat.

    Excess calories of one macro are not better than excess calories of another macro. Excess calories cause weight gain.

    This is true: As long as you're only talking about weight loss/gain, a calorie is a calorie.

    But if all calories were created equal, I wouldn't need to eat because I'd get everything I need from beer and a good multivitamin.

    If you don't eat protein, you will die. If you don't eat fat, you will die. If you don't eat carbs, you'll be fine.

  • asdowe13
    asdowe13 Posts: 1,951 Member
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    xmichaelyx wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Yes, a calorie is a calorie. Too many calories from any source (carbs, fat, or protein) will be stored as fat. The grams of fat in your food are not automatically stored as fat.

    Excess calories of one macro are not better than excess calories of another macro. Excess calories cause weight gain.

    This is true: As long as you're only talking about weight loss/gain, a calorie is a calorie.

    But if all calories were created equal, I wouldn't need to eat because I'd get everything I need from beer and a good multivitamin.

    If you don't eat protein, you will die. If you don't eat fat, you will die. If you don't eat carbs, you'll be fine.

    I'm pretty sure if you eat zero carbs, you'll die.

  • Paul_Collyer
    Paul_Collyer Posts: 160 Member
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    Anecdotal but I find cutting sugar within the MFP framework helps. Started again post summer with a target of losing the last 7-8kg needed and I am on 40:30:30 Carb, Fat and Protein although the Fat is edging up beyond that on most weeks. I try to fit as much fruit as possible into that diet which means a lot of low carb dinners to meet the macros. It is working better than earlier this year when I was less interested in tracking sugar, for example having it in my tea instead of Stevia as I do now. And if anything I am eating slightly more calories this time around.
  • threnjen
    threnjen Posts: 687 Member
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    But a Calorie is a unit of measure for energy. A gram of carbs yields roughly 4 Calories for the body. Protein about 4, fat about 9. They are just different sources of income. It's like if you have 3 different jobs, when it came time to pay bills you really wouldn't care about anything other than if there was enough money in your account. In a month's time you have to make a certain amount from the combination of the 3 jobs in order to pay bills. It doesn't matter which job brought in the most money.
    Just want to say I like your analogy :)
  • QueenBishOTUniverse
    QueenBishOTUniverse Posts: 14,121 Member
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    xmichaelyx wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Yes, a calorie is a calorie. Too many calories from any source (carbs, fat, or protein) will be stored as fat. The grams of fat in your food are not automatically stored as fat.

    Excess calories of one macro are not better than excess calories of another macro. Excess calories cause weight gain.

    This is true: As long as you're only talking about weight loss/gain, a calorie is a calorie.

    But if all calories were created equal, I wouldn't need to eat because I'd get everything I need from beer and a good multivitamin.

    If you don't eat protein, you will die. If you don't eat fat, you will die. If you don't eat carbs, you'll be fine.

    Ok, this statement is technically true albeit somewhat misleading. As another poster mentioned up thread, your body can not process calories from alcohol so it is not a an appropriate calorie source for energy for your body.

    As for the statement about the necessity of protein, also true, but it doesn't technically have to do with the necessity of calories for energy. Protein isn't really a *good* macromolecule for energy. While it does have the same basic Carbon Oxygen and Hydrogen backbone that all organic molecules are formed from, it does not have the abundance of carbon-hydrogen bonds that carbs and lipids have available.

    Also, the protein molecules have additional parts which include Nitrogen and sometimes Sulfur, so you can ONLY obtain those extra parts by consuming protein molecules. Your body can not simply rearrange carbs or lipids to make proteins in the way that it can rearrange carbs in to lipids and vice versus. So yes, you MUST consume a certain amount of protein, while carbs and lipids are somewhat interchangeable.
  • VeryKatie
    VeryKatie Posts: 5,933 Member
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    Honestly, the amount of difference it makes is probably small enough that it won't matter.
  • Michifan
    Michifan Posts: 95 Member
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    A calorie would be a calorie if the caloric measurements we used were more accurate - but they are not. An apple can theoretically have +/- different caloric counts based on its ripeness, size and the location it was picked.

    Also a calorie of some nutrients play different roles than calories of other nutrients.

    If you ate 1,000 calories of just chocolate every day, you'd lose weight if you were used to a higher calorie count, but over time your body would struggle to manage with just a chocolate based diet.

    A calorie = A calorie because of math. But X calories in food 1 and X calories in food 2 are not necessarily equal in any measure that matters other than the perfect measurement of their caloric count in a lab.

  • k8blujay2
    k8blujay2 Posts: 4,941 Member
    edited October 2014
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    I'm sorry... but I thought a calorie was just a unit to measure energy... you know like a Joule... or a Pascal or a Watt..

    Definition of a Calorie: The calorie equals the amount of thermal energy necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 Celsius degree, at a pressure of 1 atm.

    ETA: atm stands for atmospheres which is a unit of pressure.
  • lorib642
    lorib642 Posts: 1,942 Member
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    xmichaelyx wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Yes, a calorie is a calorie. Too many calories from any source (carbs, fat, or protein) will be stored as fat. The grams of fat in your food are not automatically stored as fat.

    Excess calories of one macro are not better than excess calories of another macro. Excess calories cause weight gain.

    This is true: As long as you're only talking about weight loss/gain, a calorie is a calorie.

    But if all calories were created equal, I wouldn't need to eat because I'd get everything I need from beer and a good multivitamin.

    If you don't eat protein, you will die. If you don't eat fat, you will die. If you don't eat carbs, you'll be fine.

    Ok, this statement is technically true albeit somewhat misleading. As another poster mentioned up thread, your body can not process calories from alcohol so it is not a an appropriate calorie source for energy for your body.

    As for the statement about the necessity of protein, also true, but it doesn't technically have to do with the necessity of calories for energy. Protein isn't really a *good* macromolecule for energy. While it does have the same basic Carbon Oxygen and Hydrogen backbone that all organic molecules are formed from, it does not have the abundance of carbon-hydrogen bonds that carbs and lipids have available.

    Also, the protein molecules have additional parts which include Nitrogen and sometimes Sulfur, so you can ONLY obtain those extra parts by consuming protein molecules. Your body can not simply rearrange carbs or lipids to make proteins in the way that it can rearrange carbs in to lipids and vice versus. So yes, you MUST consume a certain amount of protein, while carbs and lipids are somewhat interchangeable.

    Thank you. Veering OT I know there are essential fatty acids are there essential nutrients you can only get from carbs?