carbs are my enemy

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  • ForecasterJason
    ForecasterJason Posts: 2,577 Member
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    Hornsby wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »
    earlnabby wrote: »
    Don't be an a@@. You know very well it is a Brit term for making it go away.

    Trust me to join the conversation at this point. :p But I will say I agree with earlnabby. lol

    I noticed a lot of the conversation stated as a fact that "overeating leads to weight gain."

    What I don't understand is how do people, like myself, my husband and my sons overeat all our lives and not gain weight.

    My husband and sons eat constantly and never gain weight. I was the same up until I was 50 (I am too scared to say "until I reached menopause age.") Now I have to be a lot more careful as I have found the weight creeping on slowly over the years. Funny that, weight seems to shift, stall, creep, increase but is mighty hard to lose.

    Anyway, what I want to know is, "after eating like a pig for over 50 years why aren't I the size of a house instead of just 5 kilos overweight if the statement about overeating is fact?

    Because you don't.

    There are people who eat all day long and are still within their maintenance number. My boyfriend is one, for example. He eats a lot. He eats a lot of high calorie foods. He doesn't, however, eat over maintainece when the calories are averaged out over a week.

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.
    I agree with what you're saying, but it's all about perception. I mean, just a week ago I was talking to a friend in person, and she couldn't believe when I said I eat cake and cookies often and yet she can see how skinny I am. I understand that some of us who can just eat and eat without gaining are still eating around maintenance, but it means our maintenance is much higher than normal, and/or our bodies are more efficient at burning calories. So therefore, it appears as though we are in a calorie surplus.

    No sir. Fact and perception are not one in the same. The appearance of a calorie surplus does not make it a surplus. It doesn't matter what appears to be. The only thing that matters is what is

    Your maintenence is probably not higher than normal..it is simply higher than her maintenance. Also, being able to eat cake and cookies is not really a good yard stick with which to measure your calorie in being higher than hers.
    Yes, I know, but for some people it's just hard to believe that some can eat a lot and not gain.

    Also, in proportion to my activity level, I'm reasonably certain that my maintenance calories is higher per pound than most other guys. My overall lifestyle is sedentary with less than 90 minutes of exercise a week, but I'm maintaining on 18 calories per pound of bodyweight. I don't think a lot of sedentary guys can do that without gaining.

    You keep talking like you're scoring some points, but... hey A+ for effort if it makes you feel better. You might as well be whistling into the wind. You just keep proving the opposite point you're trying to make.

    Of course a sedentary person is going to put on weight compared to a person who gets exercise, even a small amount of exercise can make a difference.

    You keep trying to make yourself out to be some freak of nature. You know what? You're not. There are variances in metabolic rates and some people have faster metabolisms than others, but they all, barring medical conditions, average near each other for similar age/height/weight/gender groups.
    In reality, all I normally get for exercise these days is about 50-60 minutes of weight training a week. A lot of people that do weight training are doing a lot more than that. And on a typical day, I only get about 3500 steps in each day. I literally spend almost my whole day just sitting at a computer. I do think there are a lot of other skinny people that can/are doing something similar, though. But I don't think it's exactly normal. Before I started doing some weight training, I was doing about 45 minutes of cardio a week and maintaining on 16-17 calories per pound (same sedentary lifestyle). Even my own family members (who live with me) found it hard to believe how I can eat what I do and still stay so skinny.

    37 years old. 175 lbs. 20+ calories per pound. You aren't that different, bro.
    What's your activity lifestyle like? Chances are it's higher than mine.

    Even if his activity is higher than yours... it doesn't matter. The math for you works out. You're not an anomaly. Your eating/activity level is at maintenance.
    From other posts I've seen, I still feel confident that overall, maintenance levels for most guys on MFP (assuming the same activity level) are lower. Also, if I actually got the U.S. recommended amount of exercise (cardio plus at least the amount of weight lifting I do), I think it's reasonable that my maintenance would actually be up to 21-22 calories per pound of bodyweight. And that's with my (non-exercise) 3500 steps per day lifestyle.

    DUDE, it goes by gender/age/weight/height. It takes variables into account.

    You are not a special snowflake. Sorry to disappoint. And sorry, 2000 calories is not a freak amount for a guy.
    Ok, well do you agree that 2200 calories is about right for a 20 year old guy of average size with the kind of lifestyle I have? Because if that's accurate, then I can say that I'm that maintaining on that amount even though I'm a lot smaller than average. Obviously, I know that a lot of guys my age can maintain at a lot more, but that's with a higher activity level.

    You keep upping your calories consumed and lowering the amount of exercise you get every time you post. What exactly are you trying to prove?

    The original information you gave? The numbers all worked out just fine. You. are. maintaining.
    I don't recall specifically saying 2000 calories before. The first time I posted my activity level, I was saying I got "no more" than that, and then clarified what it truly is. My point was that if you take a large group of 20 year old guys with my activity level, I think it's likely that the average maintenance would not be quite as high as 18 calories per pound. Check out this thread. http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10035252/2650-calories-a-day/p1
    The OP's maintenance is not even close to 4600 calories, and he's actually younger than me. Also, there are other guys who posted in that thread whose maintenance levels are certainly lower than 18 calories per pound despite being more active than me.

    You gave a different calorie figure per pound upstream. That's where I got the 2000 from once you gave your weight.

    Go online and look up a TDEE calculator. There are variables. MEN don't work all as one group. The calculation for calories needed to maintain weight depend on a number of variables including gender, weight, height, age, and activity level.

    You do not single-handedly defy the laws of thermodynamics. Sorry.
    I've inputted my stats into multiple TDEE calculators before and most of them underestimate by a good 100-200 calories. Also, I wasn't trying to suggest at all that I'm eating a surplus and not gaining. I realize what I'm eating is maintenance. But based on what I'm eating per pound of bodyweight to maintain, I think of it as my metabolism simply being "faster" than average.

  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
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    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.

    Now who do I believe? - MrM or countless articles that state "As is often the case when science is dummied down, it becomes wrong. Such is the case in the distortion of the Law of Thermodynamics which has been simplified into the popular wisdom: “Calories in = calories out.” This simplistic adage has become something “everyone knows” to be true. It’s behind widely held beliefs that managing our weight is simply a matter of balancing calories eaten and exercise. While that’s been used to sell a lot of calorie-reduced diets and calorie-burning exercise programs for weight loss; sadly, it’s also been used to support beliefs that fat people “most certainly must be lying” about their diets and activity levels, because otherwise their failure to lose weight would seem to “defy the Law of Thermodynamics.”

    While it might seem inconceivable, this simplified maxim is little more than superstition and urban legend. To realize this fact requires us to first go back to physics class and fill in the missing parts of the first Law of Thermodynamics.

    The first Law of Thermodynamics, or energy balance, basically states that in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

    The human body is not a machine. There are countless, wildly varying, variables (external and internal) involved and that affect the efficiencies of a system and for which we have no control over. Understanding this helps to explain why calories cannot be balanced like a cheque book, and why people never seem to gain or lose precisely as calculated.

    Balance in an open system, like the human body, is when all energy going into the system equals all energy leaving the system plus the storage of energy within the system. But energy in any thermodynamic system includes kinetic energy, potential energy, internal energy, and flow energy, as well as heat and work processes.

    In other words, in real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn according to those exercise charts. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Add to that, to put it simply, each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.

    Calories eaten and calories used in voluntary movement are only two small parts of energy balance and are meaningless by themselves, unless all of the other variables are controlled for, as our metabolism… which they can never be as they aren’t under our control.


    Now obviously I don't have a great knowledge of physics but I am tying to learn as I go along and MrM does not have the answers that make a lot of sense to me. Basically, the body is a very complex machine and there are other factors involved in gaining and losing weight.

    Can you please provide the link to that article? If it isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific database (which I'm sure it isn't), it holds no value or accuracy.

    junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

    Lol. Gale, "junkfoodscience.blogspot.com" is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific database.

    That's where LenaGee's 'information' came from

    Oh I know! Just telling him that that is not a peer-reviewed site :) However, dozens of people have told him that since he started appearing in the forums and he still hasn't grasped the concept of what 'peer-reviewed' means!

    Gale, the following are acceptable sources of information:
    1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
    2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
    3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
    4. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
    5. http://www.cdc.gov
    6. http://www.who.int/en/
    7. https://clinicaltrials.gov
    8. http://www.nih.gov
    9. http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
    10. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
    It's a discussion board, not a research paper. If someone wants to post something that they find interesting, that's acceptable.

    Message board posts do require a Works Cited page. You are not the first college student to try to tell everyone how to post, what is acceptable, etc.

    What you deem acceptable and what people feel like doing may be two different things.

    It's a discussion board topic involving the scientific field of nutrition, not a who-wore-it-best side-by-side celebrity outfit comparison. So yes, people can post their opinions and post sources they find interesting, but if they are going to make declarative statements about the science behind diet and nutrition, they need to have a more reliable source than "some guy's blog."

    Just because one has an opinion doesn't mean that opinion should be given the same weight as the opinion of another poster who can actually discuss the science behind weight loss. Which is how we ended with one poster telling us that diet can change genetic diseases, then backtracking and admitting that he hasn't taken biology in 20 years and doesn't understand the science behind gene mutation (which he just argued diet could change) when he was confronted by people who actually work in scientific fields.

    I'm not sure why people get so upset when the discussion is elevated to examining the existing research and looking at things from an objective viewpoint. Critical thinking is not the enemy.
    They really don't need more than some ding-dong's blog. They can have their opinion and post it. They're not required to source their posts and if someone else doesn't find it "acceptable", that person is going to have to find a way to live with the fact that people posting to discussion boards will sometimes post things they don't agree with and/or things that are wrong.

    If they cannot find a way to live with that, the Internet will drive them bonkers.

    No, nobody has to give it any weight.

    Anyone who has a serious interest will take a more scholarly pursuit than a message board...or they'll pay someone who has for their advice.

    If people want to ask for sources, fine by me. I don't begrudge anyone their pursuit of knowledge.

    On the flip side, it's just not that big a deal if someone is wrong online.

    That's my (unsourced, subjective) opinion.

    I will not be receiving any more private messages from our new Board Policeperson (who has a "DEGREE", dontchaknow) as I blocked her after the first one, but I also will not be falling in line and sourcing my posts.

    I may just have opinions and not cite them. I'm a wild and crazy girl.

    I'm sorry that you have had an issue with someone sending you PMs, but the rest of us are not involved in those exchanges, so I'm not sure what purpose telling us about them serves other than trying to stir up drama. You said you blocked them, so if there are other issues between you and this individual, the next step is to contact the mods.

    If you don't want to provide sources, that's fine, but don't expect people to give what you have to say any weight or to consider you a reliable, knowledgable poster on the subject. Therein lies the rub for most of the posters offering unsupported claims on the forum.
  • FatFreeFrolicking
    FatFreeFrolicking Posts: 4,252 Member
    edited December 2014
    Options
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.

    Now who do I believe? - MrM or countless articles that state "As is often the case when science is dummied down, it becomes wrong. Such is the case in the distortion of the Law of Thermodynamics which has been simplified into the popular wisdom: “Calories in = calories out.” This simplistic adage has become something “everyone knows” to be true. It’s behind widely held beliefs that managing our weight is simply a matter of balancing calories eaten and exercise. While that’s been used to sell a lot of calorie-reduced diets and calorie-burning exercise programs for weight loss; sadly, it’s also been used to support beliefs that fat people “most certainly must be lying” about their diets and activity levels, because otherwise their failure to lose weight would seem to “defy the Law of Thermodynamics.”

    While it might seem inconceivable, this simplified maxim is little more than superstition and urban legend. To realize this fact requires us to first go back to physics class and fill in the missing parts of the first Law of Thermodynamics.

    The first Law of Thermodynamics, or energy balance, basically states that in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

    The human body is not a machine. There are countless, wildly varying, variables (external and internal) involved and that affect the efficiencies of a system and for which we have no control over. Understanding this helps to explain why calories cannot be balanced like a cheque book, and why people never seem to gain or lose precisely as calculated.

    Balance in an open system, like the human body, is when all energy going into the system equals all energy leaving the system plus the storage of energy within the system. But energy in any thermodynamic system includes kinetic energy, potential energy, internal energy, and flow energy, as well as heat and work processes.

    In other words, in real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn according to those exercise charts. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Add to that, to put it simply, each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.

    Calories eaten and calories used in voluntary movement are only two small parts of energy balance and are meaningless by themselves, unless all of the other variables are controlled for, as our metabolism… which they can never be as they aren’t under our control.


    Now obviously I don't have a great knowledge of physics but I am tying to learn as I go along and MrM does not have the answers that make a lot of sense to me. Basically, the body is a very complex machine and there are other factors involved in gaining and losing weight.

    Can you please provide the link to that article? If it isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific database (which I'm sure it isn't), it holds no value or accuracy.

    junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

    Lol. Gale, "junkfoodscience.blogspot.com" is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific database.

    That's where LenaGee's 'information' came from

    Oh I know! Just telling him that that is not a peer-reviewed site :) However, dozens of people have told him that since he started appearing in the forums and he still hasn't grasped the concept of what 'peer-reviewed' means!

    Gale, the following are acceptable sources of information:
    1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
    2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
    3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
    4. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
    5. http://www.cdc.gov
    6. http://www.who.int/en/
    7. https://clinicaltrials.gov
    8. http://www.nih.gov
    9. http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
    10. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
    It's a discussion board, not a research paper. If someone wants to post something that they find interesting, that's acceptable.

    Message board posts do require a Works Cited page. You are not the first college student to try to tell everyone how to post, what is acceptable, etc.

    What you deem acceptable and what people feel like doing may be two different things.

    It's a discussion board topic involving the scientific field of nutrition, not a who-wore-it-best side-by-side celebrity outfit comparison. So yes, people can post their opinions and post sources they find interesting, but if they are going to make declarative statements about the science behind diet and nutrition, they need to have a more reliable source than "some guy's blog."

    Just because one has an opinion doesn't mean that opinion should be given the same weight as the opinion of another poster who can actually discuss the science behind weight loss. Which is how we ended with one poster telling us that diet can change genetic diseases, then backtracking and admitting that he hasn't taken biology in 20 years and doesn't understand the science behind gene mutation (which he just argued diet could change) when he was confronted by people who actually work in scientific fields.

    I'm not sure why people get so upset when the discussion is elevated to examining the existing research and looking at things from an objective viewpoint. Critical thinking is not the enemy.
    They really don't need more than some ding-dong's blog. They can have their opinion and post it. They're not required to source their posts and if someone else doesn't find it "acceptable", that person is going to have to find a way to live with the fact that people posting to discussion boards will sometimes post things they don't agree with and/or things that are wrong.

    If they cannot find a way to live with that, the Internet will drive them bonkers.

    No, nobody has to give it any weight.

    Anyone who has a serious interest will take a more scholarly pursuit than a message board...or they'll pay someone who has for their advice.

    If people want to ask for sources, fine by me. I don't begrudge anyone their pursuit of knowledge.

    On the flip side, it's just not that big a deal if someone is wrong online.

    That's my (unsourced, subjective) opinion.

    I will not be receiving any more private messages from our new Board Policeperson (who has a "DEGREE", dontchaknow) as I blocked her after the first one, but I also will not be falling in line and sourcing my posts.

    I may just have opinions and not cite them. I'm a wild and crazy girl.

    I'm sorry that you have had an issue with someone sending you PMs, but the rest of us are not involved in those exchanges, so I'm not sure what purpose telling us about them serves other than trying to stir up drama. You said you blocked them, so if there are other issues between you and this individual, the next step is to contact the mods.

    If you don't want to provide sources, that's fine, but don't expect people to give what you have to say any weight or to consider you a reliable, knowledgable poster on the subject. Therein lies the rub for most of the posters offering unsupported claims on the forum.

    She made a number of assumptions about me and insulted me on numerous occasions. I sent her a PM clarifying those assumptions. She didn't like that her comments suddenly became irrelevant after learning about my education, work experience, etc. And at the end, I simply told her she made herself look like an idiot (because that's what assuming does). I never called her anything so don't fall for her antics :)

    ETA: The mods aren't going to do anything except tell her to stop causing drama, as she has been posting in numerous threads telling people they'll get a PM from me "name calling and bragging." Extremely childish if you ask me.
  • blktngldhrt
    blktngldhrt Posts: 1,053 Member
    Options
    tigersword wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »
    Exception, the difference when you cut out carbs is amazing and your body thanks you for it and punishes you for lapsing. I have had a social weekend eating at Chinese restaurants and at a friend's home and I have had the worst time trying to sleep. My head hurts, I feel foggy and I can't wait to return to normal eating. I am actually craving healthy food. Now please people, don't tell me there is no such thing as good or bad food because I will give you the address of this restaurant and you can check it out for yourselves. :p

    Rachylouise, I hope you are still hanging in there in amongst all the "interesting discussions" about shifting weight and goodness know what. For the record, in Australia we use the term "shift" in relation to weight as well.

    Funny, that's how I feel after a day of NOT eating carbs. Might be something to do with it being our primary food source for the last few million years...

    The funny thing about all this is that I limit carbs myself. I'm a moderate carber, I feel best if I keep them around 100g (net) a day and get them mostly from beans and dairy rather than grains. But that's just me. I have autoimmune conditions and a generally inflammatory bunch of nonsense to deal with, so I eat to feel well and eat what I enjoy.

    I feel as fine as I ever did on super low carb. In fact, I'm in less pain now because I exercise. I'm more satisfied with my food than I was on super low carb. I don't crave the stuff I don't eat either. If I do want something I don't normally eat, I have a small amount of it and then go on with my normal way of eating and I feel fine.

    The only difference in my life now is that I eat less than I ate before coming to MFP. There's my problem with some of the low carbers in this thread. There's no magic to cutting carbs. If you feel better eating that way for whatever reason? More power to you. That's great. But for weight loss? It's still all about how many low-carb calories you're eating.

    Haha. It is funny. I am super low carb. I eat about 18g of carbs a day (that's my max unless I exercise and eat back some). I still have to eat at a deficit to lose weight. There's no magic here.

    Although, I have to admit as a hypoglycemic who suffered for a good while..it feels like magic. But that's just because I feel amazing now compared to before. Not because magic..but because my pancreas doesn't have much to overreact to anymore and my blood glucose isn't dropping into the 50s on a daily basis.

    I have a question for you… I, too, am hypoglycemic. I overproduce insulin which causes my blood sugar to crash. I used to eat 200+ grams of carbs and my blood glucose was going from 160 to 40 mg/dL in less than 45 minutes. I have cut back tremendously and typically eat between 110-160 grams now. I am still experiencing crashes so I know I need to cut back more. However, every time I try to eat below 75 grams, I am dizzy, weak, confused, shaky, and feel like I'm going to pass out if I don't eat or drink something high in carbs. If I do not eat at least 100 grams of carbs, I cannot keep my blood glucose at a level which I can function normally. Did you experience this?

    When you dropped your carbs, did you up your fats?

    I did experience all of those things on a daily basis before I decreased carbs. Those are the symptoms of your blood glucose dropping which in turn signals you to eat more carbs to bring it back up again.

    Heres what happened. I've been hypoglycemic for twelve years. Doing the low glycemic load thing worked for me until after I had my daughter. Then even that wasn't working. I felt awful all the time: dizzy, shaky, brain fog, irritability, fatigue, extreme carb cravings, all of that not so fun stuff. Lows multiple times a day. Couldn't be physically active without lows. After failing to figure it out for myself I went to an endocrinologist. He said i had two choices. I could cut way back in carbs or take a prescription carb blocker (acarbose). I wasn't sure so he prescribed it anyway. The first day I took it, I felt amazing. The only drawback was that if i consumed a lot of carbs..the pill would make me feel sick. I never had any of the problems with it that the doctor had warned about. So..my glucose levels were better during the day but I was still going into the 60s right after dinner. I began to eat less carbs. Then I started looking into low carb ways of eating and found keto. I stopped the acarbose and went keto. There were a few issues that were cleared up with broth and pickles. I haven't had a low sugar episode since.. Sans the time I had 6 vodka diets at my cousins wedding and woke up to a 48.

    I would see an endocrinologist if you haven't already. But..those are the two things that helped me..acarbose and keto.

    Yeah..thats a book. You can always message me if you want. No two people are the same. Someone's pancreas may be screwed up more..but they're all reacting to carbs.
  • blktngldhrt
    blktngldhrt Posts: 1,053 Member
    edited December 2014
    Options
    tigersword wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »
    Exception, the difference when you cut out carbs is amazing and your body thanks you for it and punishes you for lapsing. I have had a social weekend eating at Chinese restaurants and at a friend's home and I have had the worst time trying to sleep. My head hurts, I feel foggy and I can't wait to return to normal eating. I am actually craving healthy food. Now please people, don't tell me there is no such thing as good or bad food because I will give you the address of this restaurant and you can check it out for yourselves. :p

    Rachylouise, I hope you are still hanging in there in amongst all the "interesting discussions" about shifting weight and goodness know what. For the record, in Australia we use the term "shift" in relation to weight as well.

    Funny, that's how I feel after a day of NOT eating carbs. Might be something to do with it being our primary food source for the last few million years...

    The funny thing about all this is that I limit carbs myself. I'm a moderate carber, I feel best if I keep them around 100g (net) a day and get them mostly from beans and dairy rather than grains. But that's just me. I have autoimmune conditions and a generally inflammatory bunch of nonsense to deal with, so I eat to feel well and eat what I enjoy.

    I feel as fine as I ever did on super low carb. In fact, I'm in less pain now because I exercise. I'm more satisfied with my food than I was on super low carb. I don't crave the stuff I don't eat either. If I do want something I don't normally eat, I have a small amount of it and then go on with my normal way of eating and I feel fine.

    The only difference in my life now is that I eat less than I ate before coming to MFP. There's my problem with some of the low carbers in this thread. There's no magic to cutting carbs. If you feel better eating that way for whatever reason? More power to you. That's great. But for weight loss? It's still all about how many low-carb calories you're eating.

    Haha. It is funny. I am super low carb. I eat about 18g of carbs a day (that's my max unless I exercise and eat back some). I still have to eat at a deficit to lose weight. There's no magic here.

    Although, I have to admit as a hypoglycemic who suffered for a good while..it feels like magic. But that's just because I feel amazing now compared to before. Not because magic..but because my pancreas doesn't have much to overreact to anymore and my blood glucose isn't dropping into the 50s on a daily basis.

    Do you get to eat any fruit or veggies being that low carb?

    Not too many fruits. I do eat avocado and berries (I've recently had berries in my chia pudding for breakfast and in Cheesecake squares on Thanksgiving). I have vegetables with lunch and dinner everyday (and breakfast too if I make an omlette). Things like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, green beans, spaghetti squash, zucchini, Cucumber, etc. are pretty low carb.

    Eta: my diary is open. I should eat more veggies. If I switched things around (like not eating 5g of carbs in nuts) it wouldn't be an issue to fit more.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,159 Member
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    https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dXdxa9ojok

    Per this research discussed maybe not all types of carbs are our enemy?
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    Options
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dXdxa9ojok

    Per this research discussed maybe not all types of carbs are our enemy?

    There are not enough facepalm gifs on the internet for this.

  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,626 Member
    Options
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.

    Now who do I believe? - MrM or countless articles that state "As is often the case when science is dummied down, it becomes wrong. Such is the case in the distortion of the Law of Thermodynamics which has been simplified into the popular wisdom: “Calories in = calories out.” This simplistic adage has become something “everyone knows” to be true. It’s behind widely held beliefs that managing our weight is simply a matter of balancing calories eaten and exercise. While that’s been used to sell a lot of calorie-reduced diets and calorie-burning exercise programs for weight loss; sadly, it’s also been used to support beliefs that fat people “most certainly must be lying” about their diets and activity levels, because otherwise their failure to lose weight would seem to “defy the Law of Thermodynamics.”

    While it might seem inconceivable, this simplified maxim is little more than superstition and urban legend. To realize this fact requires us to first go back to physics class and fill in the missing parts of the first Law of Thermodynamics.

    The first Law of Thermodynamics, or energy balance, basically states that in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

    The human body is not a machine. There are countless, wildly varying, variables (external and internal) involved and that affect the efficiencies of a system and for which we have no control over. Understanding this helps to explain why calories cannot be balanced like a cheque book, and why people never seem to gain or lose precisely as calculated.

    Balance in an open system, like the human body, is when all energy going into the system equals all energy leaving the system plus the storage of energy within the system. But energy in any thermodynamic system includes kinetic energy, potential energy, internal energy, and flow energy, as well as heat and work processes.

    In other words, in real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn according to those exercise charts. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Add to that, to put it simply, each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.

    Calories eaten and calories used in voluntary movement are only two small parts of energy balance and are meaningless by themselves, unless all of the other variables are controlled for, as our metabolism… which they can never be as they aren’t under our control.


    Now obviously I don't have a great knowledge of physics but I am tying to learn as I go along and MrM does not have the answers that make a lot of sense to me. Basically, the body is a very complex machine and there are other factors involved in gaining and losing weight.

    Can you please provide the link to that article? If it isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific database (which I'm sure it isn't), it holds no value or accuracy.

    junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

    Lol. Gale, "junkfoodscience.blogspot.com" is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific database.

    That's where LenaGee's 'information' came from

    Oh I know! Just telling him that that is not a peer-reviewed site :) However, dozens of people have told him that since he started appearing in the forums and he still hasn't grasped the concept of what 'peer-reviewed' means!

    Gale, the following are acceptable sources of information:
    1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
    2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
    3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
    4. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
    5. http://www.cdc.gov
    6. http://www.who.int/en/
    7. https://clinicaltrials.gov
    8. http://www.nih.gov
    9. http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
    10. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
    It's a discussion board, not a research paper. If someone wants to post something that they find interesting, that's acceptable.

    Message board posts do require a Works Cited page. You are not the first college student to try to tell everyone how to post, what is acceptable, etc.

    What you deem acceptable and what people feel like doing may be two different things.

    It's a discussion board topic involving the scientific field of nutrition, not a who-wore-it-best side-by-side celebrity outfit comparison. So yes, people can post their opinions and post sources they find interesting, but if they are going to make declarative statements about the science behind diet and nutrition, they need to have a more reliable source than "some guy's blog."

    Just because one has an opinion doesn't mean that opinion should be given the same weight as the opinion of another poster who can actually discuss the science behind weight loss. Which is how we ended with one poster telling us that diet can change genetic diseases, then backtracking and admitting that he hasn't taken biology in 20 years and doesn't understand the science behind gene mutation (which he just argued diet could change) when he was confronted by people who actually work in scientific fields.

    I'm not sure why people get so upset when the discussion is elevated to examining the existing research and looking at things from an objective viewpoint. Critical thinking is not the enemy.
    They really don't need more than some ding-dong's blog. They can have their opinion and post it. They're not required to source their posts and if someone else doesn't find it "acceptable", that person is going to have to find a way to live with the fact that people posting to discussion boards will sometimes post things they don't agree with and/or things that are wrong.

    If they cannot find a way to live with that, the Internet will drive them bonkers.

    No, nobody has to give it any weight.

    Anyone who has a serious interest will take a more scholarly pursuit than a message board...or they'll pay someone who has for their advice.

    If people want to ask for sources, fine by me. I don't begrudge anyone their pursuit of knowledge.

    On the flip side, it's just not that big a deal if someone is wrong online.

    That's my (unsourced, subjective) opinion.

    I will not be receiving any more private messages from our new Board Policeperson (who has a "DEGREE", dontchaknow) as I blocked her after the first one, but I also will not be falling in line and sourcing my posts.

    I may just have opinions and not cite them. I'm a wild and crazy girl.

    I'm sorry that you have had an issue with someone sending you PMs, but the rest of us are not involved in those exchanges, so I'm not sure what purpose telling us about them serves other than trying to stir up drama. You said you blocked them, so if there are other issues between you and this individual, the next step is to contact the mods.

    If you don't want to provide sources, that's fine, but don't expect people to give what you have to say any weight or to consider you a reliable, knowledgable poster on the subject. Therein lies the rub for most of the posters offering unsupported claims on the forum.
    I don't expect anyone to give anything they read here any serious weight. I would hope they don't. Message boards aren't the place to find reliable answers.

    If you needed reliable info, I'd be the first person to tell you to find it elsewhere and not listen to me or anyone else! I'm not a dietitian and don't pretend to be one. Totally NOT and expert and don't even wish to be confused with one in any way.

    No rub there! I invite everyone to either study it themselves or pay someone who has. :)
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    Options
    tigersword wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »
    Exception, the difference when you cut out carbs is amazing and your body thanks you for it and punishes you for lapsing. I have had a social weekend eating at Chinese restaurants and at a friend's home and I have had the worst time trying to sleep. My head hurts, I feel foggy and I can't wait to return to normal eating. I am actually craving healthy food. Now please people, don't tell me there is no such thing as good or bad food because I will give you the address of this restaurant and you can check it out for yourselves. :p

    Rachylouise, I hope you are still hanging in there in amongst all the "interesting discussions" about shifting weight and goodness know what. For the record, in Australia we use the term "shift" in relation to weight as well.

    Funny, that's how I feel after a day of NOT eating carbs. Might be something to do with it being our primary food source for the last few million years...

    The funny thing about all this is that I limit carbs myself. I'm a moderate carber, I feel best if I keep them around 100g (net) a day and get them mostly from beans and dairy rather than grains. But that's just me. I have autoimmune conditions and a generally inflammatory bunch of nonsense to deal with, so I eat to feel well and eat what I enjoy.

    I feel as fine as I ever did on super low carb. In fact, I'm in less pain now because I exercise. I'm more satisfied with my food than I was on super low carb. I don't crave the stuff I don't eat either. If I do want something I don't normally eat, I have a small amount of it and then go on with my normal way of eating and I feel fine.

    The only difference in my life now is that I eat less than I ate before coming to MFP. There's my problem with some of the low carbers in this thread. There's no magic to cutting carbs. If you feel better eating that way for whatever reason? More power to you. That's great. But for weight loss? It's still all about how many low-carb calories you're eating.

    Haha. It is funny. I am super low carb. I eat about 18g of carbs a day (that's my max unless I exercise and eat back some). I still have to eat at a deficit to lose weight. There's no magic here.

    Although, I have to admit as a hypoglycemic who suffered for a good while..it feels like magic. But that's just because I feel amazing now compared to before. Not because magic..but because my pancreas doesn't have much to overreact to anymore and my blood glucose isn't dropping into the 50s on a daily basis.

    Do you get to eat any fruit or veggies being that low carb?

    Not too many fruits. I do eat avocado and berries (I've recently had berries in my chia pudding for breakfast and in Cheesecake squares on Thanksgiving). I have vegetables with lunch and dinner everyday (and breakfast too if I make an omlette). Things like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, green beans, spaghetti squash, zucchini, Cucumber, etc. are pretty low carb.

    Eta: my diary is open. I should eat more veggies. If I switched things around (like not eating 5g of carbs in nuts) it wouldn't be an issue to fit more.

    Thankyou for taking the time to reply. I would love to go lower carb, but I eat loads of fruit. I'm somewhat addicted I think!

  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,159 Member
    Options
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dXdxa9ojok

    Per this research discussed maybe not all types of carbs are our enemy?

    There are not enough facepalm gifs on the internet for this.

    Perhaps but please watch before reply. This video is more for thought for these that will watch it before replying. :)
  • PeachyCarol
    PeachyCarol Posts: 8,029 Member
    Options
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dXdxa9ojok

    Per this research discussed maybe not all types of carbs are our enemy?

    There are not enough facepalm gifs on the internet for this.

    Perhaps but please watch before reply. This video is more for thought for these that will watch it before replying. :)

    I cannot take anything from Dr. Mercola seriously. Also? It says right on the tin that it's going to demonize sugar. Are you feeling bored tonight that you're pulling out this trope?



  • ForecasterJason
    ForecasterJason Posts: 2,577 Member
    edited December 2014
    Options
    MrM27 wrote: »
    Hornsby wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »
    earlnabby wrote: »
    Don't be an a@@. You know very well it is a Brit term for making it go away.

    Trust me to join the conversation at this point. :p But I will say I agree with earlnabby. lol

    I noticed a lot of the conversation stated as a fact that "overeating leads to weight gain."

    What I don't understand is how do people, like myself, my husband and my sons overeat all our lives and not gain weight.

    My husband and sons eat constantly and never gain weight. I was the same up until I was 50 (I am too scared to say "until I reached menopause age.") Now I have to be a lot more careful as I have found the weight creeping on slowly over the years. Funny that, weight seems to shift, stall, creep, increase but is mighty hard to lose.

    Anyway, what I want to know is, "after eating like a pig for over 50 years why aren't I the size of a house instead of just 5 kilos overweight if the statement about overeating is fact?

    Because you don't.

    There are people who eat all day long and are still within their maintenance number. My boyfriend is one, for example. He eats a lot. He eats a lot of high calorie foods. He doesn't, however, eat over maintainece when the calories are averaged out over a week.

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.
    I agree with what you're saying, but it's all about perception. I mean, just a week ago I was talking to a friend in person, and she couldn't believe when I said I eat cake and cookies often and yet she can see how skinny I am. I understand that some of us who can just eat and eat without gaining are still eating around maintenance, but it means our maintenance is much higher than normal, and/or our bodies are more efficient at burning calories. So therefore, it appears as though we are in a calorie surplus.

    No sir. Fact and perception are not one in the same. The appearance of a calorie surplus does not make it a surplus. It doesn't matter what appears to be. The only thing that matters is what is

    Your maintenence is probably not higher than normal..it is simply higher than her maintenance. Also, being able to eat cake and cookies is not really a good yard stick with which to measure your calorie in being higher than hers.
    Yes, I know, but for some people it's just hard to believe that some can eat a lot and not gain.

    Also, in proportion to my activity level, I'm reasonably certain that my maintenance calories is higher per pound than most other guys. My overall lifestyle is sedentary with less than 90 minutes of exercise a week, but I'm maintaining on 18 calories per pound of bodyweight. I don't think a lot of sedentary guys can do that without gaining.

    You keep talking like you're scoring some points, but... hey A+ for effort if it makes you feel better. You might as well be whistling into the wind. You just keep proving the opposite point you're trying to make.

    Of course a sedentary person is going to put on weight compared to a person who gets exercise, even a small amount of exercise can make a difference.

    You keep trying to make yourself out to be some freak of nature. You know what? You're not. There are variances in metabolic rates and some people have faster metabolisms than others, but they all, barring medical conditions, average near each other for similar age/height/weight/gender groups.
    In reality, all I normally get for exercise these days is about 50-60 minutes of weight training a week. A lot of people that do weight training are doing a lot more than that. And on a typical day, I only get about 3500 steps in each day. I literally spend almost my whole day just sitting at a computer. I do think there are a lot of other skinny people that can/are doing something similar, though. But I don't think it's exactly normal. Before I started doing some weight training, I was doing about 45 minutes of cardio a week and maintaining on 16-17 calories per pound (same sedentary lifestyle). Even my own family members (who live with me) found it hard to believe how I can eat what I do and still stay so skinny.

    37 years old. 175 lbs. 20+ calories per pound. You aren't that different, bro.
    What's your activity lifestyle like? Chances are it's higher than mine.

    Even if his activity is higher than yours... it doesn't matter. The math for you works out. You're not an anomaly. Your eating/activity level is at maintenance.
    From other posts I've seen, I still feel confident that overall, maintenance levels for most guys on MFP (assuming the same activity level) are lower. Also, if I actually got the U.S. recommended amount of exercise (cardio plus at least the amount of weight lifting I do), I think it's reasonable that my maintenance would actually be up to 21-22 calories per pound of bodyweight. And that's with my (non-exercise) 3500 steps per day lifestyle.

    Why do you harp so much on these insignificant ideas and details. All you really should be focusing on is eat, lifting, sleeping, repeating. And not giving out advice in the gaining weight forum because that's out of your league.


    Eat, lift, sleep...............repeat!!!!
    Probably because (based on what I've posted in this thread about calorie needs per pound of bodyweight) I'm living proof that some people do have fast metabolisms, despite those who say it doesn't exist.

    ETA: I did not flag your post.
  • FatFreeFrolicking
    FatFreeFrolicking Posts: 4,252 Member
    Options
    MrM27 wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.

    Now who do I believe? - MrM or countless articles that state "As is often the case when science is dummied down, it becomes wrong. Such is the case in the distortion of the Law of Thermodynamics which has been simplified into the popular wisdom: “Calories in = calories out.” This simplistic adage has become something “everyone knows” to be true. It’s behind widely held beliefs that managing our weight is simply a matter of balancing calories eaten and exercise. While that’s been used to sell a lot of calorie-reduced diets and calorie-burning exercise programs for weight loss; sadly, it’s also been used to support beliefs that fat people “most certainly must be lying” about their diets and activity levels, because otherwise their failure to lose weight would seem to “defy the Law of Thermodynamics.”

    While it might seem inconceivable, this simplified maxim is little more than superstition and urban legend. To realize this fact requires us to first go back to physics class and fill in the missing parts of the first Law of Thermodynamics.

    The first Law of Thermodynamics, or energy balance, basically states that in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

    The human body is not a machine. There are countless, wildly varying, variables (external and internal) involved and that affect the efficiencies of a system and for which we have no control over. Understanding this helps to explain why calories cannot be balanced like a cheque book, and why people never seem to gain or lose precisely as calculated.

    Balance in an open system, like the human body, is when all energy going into the system equals all energy leaving the system plus the storage of energy within the system. But energy in any thermodynamic system includes kinetic energy, potential energy, internal energy, and flow energy, as well as heat and work processes.

    In other words, in real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn according to those exercise charts. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Add to that, to put it simply, each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.

    Calories eaten and calories used in voluntary movement are only two small parts of energy balance and are meaningless by themselves, unless all of the other variables are controlled for, as our metabolism… which they can never be as they aren’t under our control.


    Now obviously I don't have a great knowledge of physics but I am tying to learn as I go along and MrM does not have the answers that make a lot of sense to me. Basically, the body is a very complex machine and there are other factors involved in gaining and losing weight.

    Can you please provide the link to that article? If it isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific database (which I'm sure it isn't), it holds no value or accuracy.

    junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

    Lol. Gale, "junkfoodscience.blogspot.com" is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific database.

    That's where LenaGee's 'information' came from

    Oh I know! Just telling him that that is not a peer-reviewed site :) However, dozens of people have told him that since he started appearing in the forums and he still hasn't grasped the concept of what 'peer-reviewed' means!

    Gale, the following are acceptable sources of information:
    1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
    2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
    3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
    4. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
    5. http://www.cdc.gov
    6. http://www.who.int/en/
    7. https://clinicaltrials.gov
    8. http://www.nih.gov
    9. http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
    10. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
    It's a discussion board, not a research paper. If someone wants to post something that they find interesting, that's acceptable.

    Message board posts do require a Works Cited page. You are not the first college student to try to tell everyone how to post, what is acceptable, etc.

    What you deem acceptable and what people feel like doing may be two different things.

    It's a discussion board topic involving the scientific field of nutrition, not a who-wore-it-best side-by-side celebrity outfit comparison. So yes, people can post their opinions and post sources they find interesting, but if they are going to make declarative statements about the science behind diet and nutrition, they need to have a more reliable source than "some guy's blog."

    Just because one has an opinion doesn't mean that opinion should be given the same weight as the opinion of another poster who can actually discuss the science behind weight loss. Which is how we ended with one poster telling us that diet can change genetic diseases, then backtracking and admitting that he hasn't taken biology in 20 years and doesn't understand the science behind gene mutation (which he just argued diet could change) when he was confronted by people who actually work in scientific fields.

    I'm not sure why people get so upset when the discussion is elevated to examining the existing research and looking at things from an objective viewpoint. Critical thinking is not the enemy.
    They really don't need more than some ding-dong's blog. They can have their opinion and post it. They're not required to source their posts and if someone else doesn't find it "acceptable", that person is going to have to find a way to live with the fact that people posting to discussion boards will sometimes post things they don't agree with and/or things that are wrong.

    If they cannot find a way to live with that, the Internet will drive them bonkers.

    No, nobody has to give it any weight.

    Anyone who has a serious interest will take a more scholarly pursuit than a message board...or they'll pay someone who has for their advice.

    If people want to ask for sources, fine by me. I don't begrudge anyone their pursuit of knowledge.

    On the flip side, it's just not that big a deal if someone is wrong online.

    That's my (unsourced, subjective) opinion.

    I will not be receiving any more private messages from our new Board Policeperson (who has a "DEGREE", dontchaknow) as I blocked her after the first one, but I also will not be falling in line and sourcing my posts.

    I may just have opinions and not cite them. I'm a wild and crazy girl.

    I'm sorry that you have had an issue with someone sending you PMs, but the rest of us are not involved in those exchanges, so I'm not sure what purpose telling us about them serves other than trying to stir up drama. You said you blocked them, so if there are other issues between you and this individual, the next step is to contact the mods.

    If you don't want to provide sources, that's fine, but don't expect people to give what you have to say any weight or to consider you a reliable, knowledgable poster on the subject. Therein lies the rub for most of the posters offering unsupported claims on the forum.

    She made a number of assumptions about me and insulted me on numerous occasions. I sent her a PM clarifying those assumptions. She didn't like that her comments suddenly became irrelevant after learning about my education, work experience, etc. And at the end, I simply told her she made herself look like an idiot (because that's what assuming does). I never called her anything so don't fall for her antics :)

    ETA: The mods aren't going to do anything except tell her to stop causing drama, as she has been posting in numerous threads telling people they'll get a PM from me "name calling and bragging." Extremely childish if you ask me.

    Then play their game. Report her to the mods.


    FFF, my friend, I've enjoyed reading your posts the past 2 days. Srs.

    I do my best to please you ;)
  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
    Options
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.

    Now who do I believe? - MrM or countless articles that state "As is often the case when science is dummied down, it becomes wrong. Such is the case in the distortion of the Law of Thermodynamics which has been simplified into the popular wisdom: “Calories in = calories out.” This simplistic adage has become something “everyone knows” to be true. It’s behind widely held beliefs that managing our weight is simply a matter of balancing calories eaten and exercise. While that’s been used to sell a lot of calorie-reduced diets and calorie-burning exercise programs for weight loss; sadly, it’s also been used to support beliefs that fat people “most certainly must be lying” about their diets and activity levels, because otherwise their failure to lose weight would seem to “defy the Law of Thermodynamics.”

    While it might seem inconceivable, this simplified maxim is little more than superstition and urban legend. To realize this fact requires us to first go back to physics class and fill in the missing parts of the first Law of Thermodynamics.

    The first Law of Thermodynamics, or energy balance, basically states that in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

    The human body is not a machine. There are countless, wildly varying, variables (external and internal) involved and that affect the efficiencies of a system and for which we have no control over. Understanding this helps to explain why calories cannot be balanced like a cheque book, and why people never seem to gain or lose precisely as calculated.

    Balance in an open system, like the human body, is when all energy going into the system equals all energy leaving the system plus the storage of energy within the system. But energy in any thermodynamic system includes kinetic energy, potential energy, internal energy, and flow energy, as well as heat and work processes.

    In other words, in real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn according to those exercise charts. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Add to that, to put it simply, each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.

    Calories eaten and calories used in voluntary movement are only two small parts of energy balance and are meaningless by themselves, unless all of the other variables are controlled for, as our metabolism… which they can never be as they aren’t under our control.


    Now obviously I don't have a great knowledge of physics but I am tying to learn as I go along and MrM does not have the answers that make a lot of sense to me. Basically, the body is a very complex machine and there are other factors involved in gaining and losing weight.

    Can you please provide the link to that article? If it isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific database (which I'm sure it isn't), it holds no value or accuracy.

    junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

    Lol. Gale, "junkfoodscience.blogspot.com" is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific database.

    That's where LenaGee's 'information' came from

    Oh I know! Just telling him that that is not a peer-reviewed site :) However, dozens of people have told him that since he started appearing in the forums and he still hasn't grasped the concept of what 'peer-reviewed' means!

    Gale, the following are acceptable sources of information:
    1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
    2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
    3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
    4. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
    5. http://www.cdc.gov
    6. http://www.who.int/en/
    7. https://clinicaltrials.gov
    8. http://www.nih.gov
    9. http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
    10. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
    It's a discussion board, not a research paper. If someone wants to post something that they find interesting, that's acceptable.

    Message board posts do require a Works Cited page. You are not the first college student to try to tell everyone how to post, what is acceptable, etc.

    What you deem acceptable and what people feel like doing may be two different things.

    It's a discussion board topic involving the scientific field of nutrition, not a who-wore-it-best side-by-side celebrity outfit comparison. So yes, people can post their opinions and post sources they find interesting, but if they are going to make declarative statements about the science behind diet and nutrition, they need to have a more reliable source than "some guy's blog."

    Just because one has an opinion doesn't mean that opinion should be given the same weight as the opinion of another poster who can actually discuss the science behind weight loss. Which is how we ended with one poster telling us that diet can change genetic diseases, then backtracking and admitting that he hasn't taken biology in 20 years and doesn't understand the science behind gene mutation (which he just argued diet could change) when he was confronted by people who actually work in scientific fields.

    I'm not sure why people get so upset when the discussion is elevated to examining the existing research and looking at things from an objective viewpoint. Critical thinking is not the enemy.
    They really don't need more than some ding-dong's blog. They can have their opinion and post it. They're not required to source their posts and if someone else doesn't find it "acceptable", that person is going to have to find a way to live with the fact that people posting to discussion boards will sometimes post things they don't agree with and/or things that are wrong.

    If they cannot find a way to live with that, the Internet will drive them bonkers.

    No, nobody has to give it any weight.

    Anyone who has a serious interest will take a more scholarly pursuit than a message board...or they'll pay someone who has for their advice.

    If people want to ask for sources, fine by me. I don't begrudge anyone their pursuit of knowledge.

    On the flip side, it's just not that big a deal if someone is wrong online.

    That's my (unsourced, subjective) opinion.

    I will not be receiving any more private messages from our new Board Policeperson (who has a "DEGREE", dontchaknow) as I blocked her after the first one, but I also will not be falling in line and sourcing my posts.

    I may just have opinions and not cite them. I'm a wild and crazy girl.

    I'm sorry that you have had an issue with someone sending you PMs, but the rest of us are not involved in those exchanges, so I'm not sure what purpose telling us about them serves other than trying to stir up drama. You said you blocked them, so if there are other issues between you and this individual, the next step is to contact the mods.

    If you don't want to provide sources, that's fine, but don't expect people to give what you have to say any weight or to consider you a reliable, knowledgable poster on the subject. Therein lies the rub for most of the posters offering unsupported claims on the forum.
    I don't expect anyone to give anything they read here any serious weight. I would hope they don't. Message boards aren't the place to find reliable answers.

    If you needed reliable info, I'd be the first person to tell you to find it elsewhere and not listen to me or anyone else! I'm not a dietitian and don't pretend to be one. Totally NOT and expert and don't even wish to be confused with one in any way.

    No rub there! I invite everyone to either study it themselves or pay someone who has. :)

    I think it depends on the discussion. There are really good discussions here on the forums which I would consider to have reliable information. Particularly the discussions where the posters involved have not only discussed the topic but have cited various sources that pertain to the topic. There's lots of good information to be had and new sources of information to discover in those threads. Steve Troutman has done some excellent threads, and there have been several weight training threads (I know, not everyone's thing) that have had some great information, even though they've gotten into specifics that are not relevant to where I am. I've also picked up a lot of tips and information from the running threads, even though I'm far from elite with my whopping two 5k races worth of experience.

    I don't think the issues lies with people not being experts, but rather the general reaction that they tend to have when someone questions the veracity of their statements. Instead of simply sharing how they arrived at their conclusion and admitting that their conclusion isn't supported by the data, we end up with people being offended that anyone dare question them because they went to college/lost a certain amount of weight/know how to google/ran a race under a certain time/can do more pull-ups than any other woman in the gym and possibly the world (now with youtube video!). Then what could be a good discussion with information sharing and education turns into a dumpster fire. But at least we get gifs.
  • FatFreeFrolicking
    FatFreeFrolicking Posts: 4,252 Member
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    tigersword wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »
    Exception, the difference when you cut out carbs is amazing and your body thanks you for it and punishes you for lapsing. I have had a social weekend eating at Chinese restaurants and at a friend's home and I have had the worst time trying to sleep. My head hurts, I feel foggy and I can't wait to return to normal eating. I am actually craving healthy food. Now please people, don't tell me there is no such thing as good or bad food because I will give you the address of this restaurant and you can check it out for yourselves. :p

    Rachylouise, I hope you are still hanging in there in amongst all the "interesting discussions" about shifting weight and goodness know what. For the record, in Australia we use the term "shift" in relation to weight as well.

    Funny, that's how I feel after a day of NOT eating carbs. Might be something to do with it being our primary food source for the last few million years...

    The funny thing about all this is that I limit carbs myself. I'm a moderate carber, I feel best if I keep them around 100g (net) a day and get them mostly from beans and dairy rather than grains. But that's just me. I have autoimmune conditions and a generally inflammatory bunch of nonsense to deal with, so I eat to feel well and eat what I enjoy.

    I feel as fine as I ever did on super low carb. In fact, I'm in less pain now because I exercise. I'm more satisfied with my food than I was on super low carb. I don't crave the stuff I don't eat either. If I do want something I don't normally eat, I have a small amount of it and then go on with my normal way of eating and I feel fine.

    The only difference in my life now is that I eat less than I ate before coming to MFP. There's my problem with some of the low carbers in this thread. There's no magic to cutting carbs. If you feel better eating that way for whatever reason? More power to you. That's great. But for weight loss? It's still all about how many low-carb calories you're eating.

    Haha. It is funny. I am super low carb. I eat about 18g of carbs a day (that's my max unless I exercise and eat back some). I still have to eat at a deficit to lose weight. There's no magic here.

    Although, I have to admit as a hypoglycemic who suffered for a good while..it feels like magic. But that's just because I feel amazing now compared to before. Not because magic..but because my pancreas doesn't have much to overreact to anymore and my blood glucose isn't dropping into the 50s on a daily basis.

    I have a question for you… I, too, am hypoglycemic. I overproduce insulin which causes my blood sugar to crash. I used to eat 200+ grams of carbs and my blood glucose was going from 160 to 40 mg/dL in less than 45 minutes. I have cut back tremendously and typically eat between 110-160 grams now. I am still experiencing crashes so I know I need to cut back more. However, every time I try to eat below 75 grams, I am dizzy, weak, confused, shaky, and feel like I'm going to pass out if I don't eat or drink something high in carbs. If I do not eat at least 100 grams of carbs, I cannot keep my blood glucose at a level which I can function normally. Did you experience this?

    When you dropped your carbs, did you up your fats?

    I did experience all of those things on a daily basis before I decreased carbs. Those are the symptoms of your blood glucose dropping which in turn signals you to eat more carbs to bring it back up again.

    Heres what happened. I've been hypoglycemic for twelve years. Doing the low glycemic load thing worked for me until after I had my daughter. Then even that wasn't working. I felt awful all the time: dizzy, shaky, brain fog, irritability, fatigue, extreme carb cravings, all of that not so fun stuff. Lows multiple times a day. Couldn't be physically active without lows. After failing to figure it out for myself I went to an endocrinologist. He said i had two choices. I could cut way back in carbs or take a prescription carb blocker (acarbose). I wasn't sure so he prescribed it anyway. The first day I took it, I felt amazing. The only drawback was that if i consumed a lot of carbs..the pill would make me feel sick. I never had any of the problems with it that the doctor had warned about. So..my glucose levels were better during the day but I was still going into the 60s right after dinner. I began to eat less carbs. Then I started looking into low carb ways of eating and found keto. I stopped the acarbose and went keto. There were a few issues that were cleared up with broth and pickles. I haven't had a low sugar episode since.. Sans the time I had 6 vodka diets at my cousins wedding and woke up to a 48.

    I would see an endocrinologist if you haven't already. But..those are the two things that helped me..acarbose and keto.

    Yeah..thats a book. You can always message me if you want. No two people are the same. Someone's pancreas may be screwed up more..but they're all reacting to carbs.

    Thanks for the reply!

    I did not increase fats… that was probably the issue.

    I have been seeing an endocrinologist for two years and take Metformin to lower my insulin levels.

    I'm going to send you a FR.
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,626 Member
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    MrM27 wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    kgeyser wrote: »
    Kalikel wrote: »
    LeenaGee wrote: »

    Like MrM said..physics. You MUST overeat to gain weight. This is fact.

    Now who do I believe? - MrM or countless articles that state "As is often the case when science is dummied down, it becomes wrong. Such is the case in the distortion of the Law of Thermodynamics which has been simplified into the popular wisdom: “Calories in = calories out.” This simplistic adage has become something “everyone knows” to be true. It’s behind widely held beliefs that managing our weight is simply a matter of balancing calories eaten and exercise. While that’s been used to sell a lot of calorie-reduced diets and calorie-burning exercise programs for weight loss; sadly, it’s also been used to support beliefs that fat people “most certainly must be lying” about their diets and activity levels, because otherwise their failure to lose weight would seem to “defy the Law of Thermodynamics.”

    While it might seem inconceivable, this simplified maxim is little more than superstition and urban legend. To realize this fact requires us to first go back to physics class and fill in the missing parts of the first Law of Thermodynamics.

    The first Law of Thermodynamics, or energy balance, basically states that in a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed or transferred.

    The human body is not a machine. There are countless, wildly varying, variables (external and internal) involved and that affect the efficiencies of a system and for which we have no control over. Understanding this helps to explain why calories cannot be balanced like a cheque book, and why people never seem to gain or lose precisely as calculated.

    Balance in an open system, like the human body, is when all energy going into the system equals all energy leaving the system plus the storage of energy within the system. But energy in any thermodynamic system includes kinetic energy, potential energy, internal energy, and flow energy, as well as heat and work processes.

    In other words, in real life, balancing energy includes a lot more than just the calories we eat and the calories we burn according to those exercise charts. The energy parts of the equation include: calories consumed; calories converted to energy and used in involuntary movement; calories used for heat generation and in response to external environmental exposures and temperatures; calories used with inflammatory and infectious processes; calories used in growth, tissue restoration and numerous metabolic processes; calories used in voluntary movement; calories not absorbed in the digestive tract and matter expelled; calories stored as fat, and fat converted in the liver to glucose; and more. Add to that, to put it simply, each variable affects the others, varies with mass and age, involves complex hormonal and enzyme regulatory influences, and differs in efficiency.

    Calories eaten and calories used in voluntary movement are only two small parts of energy balance and are meaningless by themselves, unless all of the other variables are controlled for, as our metabolism… which they can never be as they aren’t under our control.


    Now obviously I don't have a great knowledge of physics but I am tying to learn as I go along and MrM does not have the answers that make a lot of sense to me. Basically, the body is a very complex machine and there are other factors involved in gaining and losing weight.

    Can you please provide the link to that article? If it isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific database (which I'm sure it isn't), it holds no value or accuracy.

    junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html

    Lol. Gale, "junkfoodscience.blogspot.com" is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific database.

    That's where LenaGee's 'information' came from

    Oh I know! Just telling him that that is not a peer-reviewed site :) However, dozens of people have told him that since he started appearing in the forums and he still hasn't grasped the concept of what 'peer-reviewed' means!

    Gale, the following are acceptable sources of information:
    1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
    2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
    3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/
    4. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
    5. http://www.cdc.gov
    6. http://www.who.int/en/
    7. https://clinicaltrials.gov
    8. http://www.nih.gov
    9. http://www.apa.org/index.aspx
    10. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
    It's a discussion board, not a research paper. If someone wants to post something that they find interesting, that's acceptable.

    Message board posts do require a Works Cited page. You are not the first college student to try to tell everyone how to post, what is acceptable, etc.

    What you deem acceptable and what people feel like doing may be two different things.

    It's a discussion board topic involving the scientific field of nutrition, not a who-wore-it-best side-by-side celebrity outfit comparison. So yes, people can post their opinions and post sources they find interesting, but if they are going to make declarative statements about the science behind diet and nutrition, they need to have a more reliable source than "some guy's blog."

    Just because one has an opinion doesn't mean that opinion should be given the same weight as the opinion of another poster who can actually discuss the science behind weight loss. Which is how we ended with one poster telling us that diet can change genetic diseases, then backtracking and admitting that he hasn't taken biology in 20 years and doesn't understand the science behind gene mutation (which he just argued diet could change) when he was confronted by people who actually work in scientific fields.

    I'm not sure why people get so upset when the discussion is elevated to examining the existing research and looking at things from an objective viewpoint. Critical thinking is not the enemy.
    They really don't need more than some ding-dong's blog. They can have their opinion and post it. They're not required to source their posts and if someone else doesn't find it "acceptable", that person is going to have to find a way to live with the fact that people posting to discussion boards will sometimes post things they don't agree with and/or things that are wrong.

    If they cannot find a way to live with that, the Internet will drive them bonkers.

    No, nobody has to give it any weight.

    Anyone who has a serious interest will take a more scholarly pursuit than a message board...or they'll pay someone who has for their advice.

    If people want to ask for sources, fine by me. I don't begrudge anyone their pursuit of knowledge.

    On the flip side, it's just not that big a deal if someone is wrong online.

    That's my (unsourced, subjective) opinion.

    I will not be receiving any more private messages from our new Board Policeperson (who has a "DEGREE", dontchaknow) as I blocked her after the first one, but I also will not be falling in line and sourcing my posts.

    I may just have opinions and not cite them. I'm a wild and crazy girl.

    I'm sorry that you have had an issue with someone sending you PMs, but the rest of us are not involved in those exchanges, so I'm not sure what purpose telling us about them serves other than trying to stir up drama. You said you blocked them, so if there are other issues between you and this individual, the next step is to contact the mods.

    If you don't want to provide sources, that's fine, but don't expect people to give what you have to say any weight or to consider you a reliable, knowledgable poster on the subject. Therein lies the rub for most of the posters offering unsupported claims on the forum.
    I don't expect anyone to give anything they read here any serious weight. I would hope they don't. Message boards aren't the place to find reliable answers.

    If you needed reliable info, I'd be the first person to tell you to find it elsewhere and not listen to me or anyone else! I'm not a dietitian and don't pretend to be one. Totally NOT and expert and don't even wish to be confused with one in any way.

    No rub there! I invite everyone to either study it themselves or pay someone who has. :)

    So if you think the message board isn't a place for reliable answers and you hope no one believes anything anyone says on MFP then he why do you insist on giving advice in the forum? Why bother?
    1. Why not? I learn things from reading other people's opinions. So I post mine, too. When I need reliable, accurate medical or nutritional advice, I ask people who are experts. I hope everyone is able to do that. If not, they can receive both opinions and sourced posts from people like you, who like to source their posts. Then they can do the best they can with that.

    2. I never messaged a moderator about you. If someone did, it wasn't me. I've reported some of your posts, but not always. You have done the "J'ACCUSE!" thing about me reporting them when I haven't, but you haven't blamed me on some occasions when I did. Never typed up and sent a message, though God knows if anyone on this forum had reason to do it, it would be me. You rarely let a post of mine go by without insulting me, personally. But it wasn't me who typed something up and sent it off. If you heard differently, you heard wrong. That's all truth. I have no reason to lie.

    3. I never address anything you say, as I know you will only come back with more personal insults and I generally got bored with that. However, it is Christmas, so I've replied to you in this thread and giving you the opportunity to rip me to shreds.

    To quote a well-loved Christmas movie, "It's Christmas, Theo! It's a time of miracles! So be of good cheer..." and go ahead and insult me.

    My gift. I won't even hit the report button. :)

This discussion has been closed.