A Calorie REALLY ISN'T a Calorie

SanteMulberry

"...I think that this one line perfectly captures everything irrational about your posts: you are so bizarrely and irrationally anti-carb, you simply read "carbs" as "excess calories" or something..."

I have explained my position on this to you before, Jonnythan. I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy. I fail to see how that is such a difficult concept for you. In order to get proper nutrition, I must cut all non-nutritive calories. Now does THIS finally make sense to you or should I just give up?

PaleoPath4Lyfe

Whilst TEF is generally not worth worrying about the point David Despain makes in the article I linked is an excellent one - you are more likely to get at the higher end of the maximum deliverable calories as shown on a food label etc the more processing the food has undergone.

Therefore a whole food, minimally "processed" diet is more likely to deliver less calories than a diet higher in junk food although they may have both been calculated as say 2,000 calories or whatever the target figure is by the individual based on food labels etc.

As a result there is a greater buffer against miscalculation and you have to be more careful the more processed foods you are consuming to ensure preserving your deficit.

Now someone pass me the steak tartare...

This is the food lifestyle philosophy that I follow. When I eat whole, minimally processed foods, I lose weight almost effortlessly. When I eat easy to digest, overly processed, pre-prepared foods, I gain weight very easily.
Also, if I eat overly processed foods, I do not feel or look my best.

I don't give a fig if there are studies out there to prove or disprove the effectiveness of primarily eating whole foods for fitness and health. I use my own body as my lab and I see the results, which is proof enough for me to convince me to keep doing what I am doing.

I do find it amusing whenever the discussions here go to processed foods, and most of us know that what is being referred to is junky foods like bologna, hot dogs, chips, pillowy white bready items, etc... folks have to get all nit-picky about "All food is processed in some way, unless you are eating it raw and not washing, or peeling, or chopping it before eating it." We all know full well what most folks are referring to when they say "processed foods."

^^^THIS^^^ It is important to point out to the Pop-Tart crowd that, while they, like Jonnythan might be burning LOTS of calories by playing tennis or weight-lifting or whatever, many others are incapable of burning calories at that rate because of disability. Those who have been conditioned to "hyper-eat" (in Kessler's terminology) and are seriously obese, often can not even walk around the block, let alone burn calories playing tennis. It is necessary for them to avoid the foods that they have been conditioned to "hyper-eat" in order to recover from what is a very serious illness. Once they recover from their addiction, and drastically reduce their weight, likely some of them will be able to indulge in eating some empty foods again, provided they maintain a strict hand on it and are dedicated exercisers. Otherwise, they will find themselves right back in the mess that they escaped. I know so many seriously obese people who have fallen off the wagon, not because they just could no longer control themselves and ate what they knew they shouldn't, but, instead, convinced themselves that a "few cookies won't wreck my diet--I'll just stay in my calorie allotment." Three packages of cookies later, just like the alcoholic surveying the empty bottles on "the day after", they beat themselves up and figure they might as well give up and give in to their addiction. If they had the willpower to resist eating excessive amounts of those foods, they would have done so a long time ago. Abstinence is the best course for most people who are seriously obese.

I have a serious problem with you using such a broad brush to paint people as so pathetically lacking willpower that they need you to scare them away from "processed" food for their own good.

If people don't want to eat certain things, fine. But trying to convince everyone that certain things are automatically bad, when they are not, because they're all just so pathetic and helpless they can't help but binge on them, is stupid.

Ahh--a new tactic born of desperation! What is pathetic is the stubborn defense of food that was deliberately engineered to trap people into overeating it. Would you insist that crack cocaine "is part of a normal healthy lifestyle" and that anyone who questions it is just trying to "demonize it" and that anyone who warns kids about its dangers is attempting to "scare them away from it for their own good". Your line of reasoning would only make sense if you owned stock in or worked for a big food conglomerate. I cannot imagine another reason for it being so important to you that you keep insisting that everyone must eat junk food or risk out-of-control eating on one hand and then accuse others, who advise against eating junk food, of judging those same people to be "pathetically lacking in willpower". You are the one who implied that they must inevitably succumb to the lures of junk food. I find that laughably inconsistent.

Yea you sound like you would be aroundthemulberrybush's brother.

lol @ pinning the blame on processed foods. Yes processed foods have crap satiety. but it wasnt meant to overeat or trap them. nothing is addicting and the evidence against it is crap.

We are not in a world of blind consumption anymore. We know what calories are and we can measure them. If you cant control your caloric intake and "get trapped" then it becomes survival of the fittest and you already lost

Even those CREATING the junk foods have admitted to formulating them in a way that makes them hard to stop eating (or thinking about) by intentionally using what they know about our brains' reward centers.

This is what humans have been doing for millennia to food. We add foods to other foods, spices to other foods, heat and flame to foods to make tem taste better. Just because a company does it in the modern era does not suddenly make that age old process evil, malicious or dastardly. Are master chefs evil because they've learned and perfected how to create food masterpieces in the exact same way? The level of tin foil hattery in this thread is getting ridiculous.

I think the difference would be adding food, spices...etc. rather than chemicals.

I am beginning to think that people truly don't understand that taking a piece of raw meat or raw vegetables and seasoning with herbs and spices, maybe some type of sea salt and pepper is VERY DIFFERENT from the companies that MANUFACTURE food in a factory.

For some reason they think it is all created equal and it is not.

jonnythan

A calorie may or may not be a calorie, but a person avoiding (even unnecessarily) fast food or very processed foods isn't an eating disorder, at least not as defined by the DSM. Something people often forget when discussing diagnoses is that there must be clinical (significant) impairment in some kind of functioning (essentially causing real harm in a person's life.) If a person unnecessarily avoids fast food, it's an inconvenience he or she is bringing on himself. If a person avoids these foods and suffers emotional anguish or is terrified of social gatherings because of it, then we are talking disordered, possibly something like EDNOS. (I say possibly because it could be more caused by some other disorder.)

I eat my food in less than 15 minutes. Tyson Diced Grilled Chicken / Rotisserie from the supermarket + steamers. Done. I don't cook, just use my microwave. No excuses these days for anyone to not eat healthy. If you look carefully you can find convenient healthy food.

OMG, do you really think that packaged or supermarket rotisserie chicken is eating healthy?????

I can't wait for you to tell us why it's not.

PaleoPath4Lyfe

"...I think that this one line perfectly captures everything irrational about your posts: you are so bizarrely and irrationally anti-carb, you simply read "carbs" as "excess calories" or something..."

I have explained my position on this to you before, Jonnythan. I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy. I fail to see how that is such a difficult concept for you. In order to get proper nutrition, I must cut all non-nutritive calories. Now does THIS finally make sense to you or should I just give up?

I would give up.................They seem to think that calories means everything, when in turn calories really mean nothing.

When you are eating for health and well being, calories don't mean jack crap. It is the quality of the food that means something, not the quantity in an arbitrary number.

You know this already............too bad others are stuck in their old, outdated mindset.

jonnythan

I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy.

Total nonsense.

Open your diary, and let's talk about the calories you can "afford."

Acg67

"...I think that this one line perfectly captures everything irrational about your posts: you are so bizarrely and irrationally anti-carb, you simply read "carbs" as "excess calories" or something..."

I have explained my position on this to you before, Jonnythan. I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy. I fail to see how that is such a difficult concept for you. In order to get proper nutrition, I must cut all non-nutritive calories. Now does THIS finally make sense to you or should I just give up?

I would give up.................They seem to think that calories means everything, when in turn calories really mean nothing.

When you are eating for health and well being, calories don't mean jack crap. It is the quality of the food that means something, not the quantity in an arbitrary number.

You know this already............too bad others are stuck in their old, outdated mindset.

LOL, so if someone is obese and just switched to "healthy" foods, but kept caloric intake the exact same, they'd be healthier? Oddly enough blood markers of health tend to improve from weight loss regardless of what foods were eaten, weight loss requires a calorie deficit

KatLifter

OMG, do you really think that packaged or supermarket rotisserie chicken is eating healthy?????

I can't wait for you to tell us why it's not.

No, really. Why do you see rotisserie chicken as unhealthy?
Fat in the dark meat? <gasp!>

PaleoPath4Lyfe

I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy.

Total nonsense.

Open your diary, and let's talk about the calories you can "afford."

How is it total nonsense. You don't know his / her health status.

You are so ridiculous it is pathetic. Just because you believe in following an arbitrary number to "lose weight" and don't give a heck about your health and well being in regards to proper nutrition, doesn't mean that other people don't.

Why don't you just leave this poster alone. It is bordering on just plain harrasment now.

Acg67

Whilst TEF is generally not worth worrying about the point David Despain makes in the article I linked is an excellent one - you are more likely to get at the higher end of the maximum deliverable calories as shown on a food label etc the more processing the food has undergone.

Therefore a whole food, minimally "processed" diet is more likely to deliver less calories than a diet higher in junk food although they may have both been calculated as say 2,000 calories or whatever the target figure is by the individual based on food labels etc.

As a result there is a greater buffer against miscalculation and you have to be more careful the more processed foods you are consuming to ensure preserving your deficit.

Now someone pass me the steak tartare...

This is the food lifestyle philosophy that I follow. When I eat whole, minimally processed foods, I lose weight almost effortlessly. When I eat easy to digest, overly processed, pre-prepared foods, I gain weight very easily.
Also, if I eat overly processed foods, I do not feel or look my best.

I don't give a fig if there are studies out there to prove or disprove the effectiveness of primarily eating whole foods for fitness and health. I use my own body as my lab and I see the results, which is proof enough for me to convince me to keep doing what I am doing.

I do find it amusing whenever the discussions here go to processed foods, and most of us know that what is being referred to is junky foods like bologna, hot dogs, chips, pillowy white bready items, etc... folks have to get all nit-picky about "All food is processed in some way, unless you are eating it raw and not washing, or peeling, or chopping it before eating it." We all know full well what most folks are referring to when they say "processed foods."

^^^THIS^^^ It is important to point out to the Pop-Tart crowd that, while they, like Jonnythan might be burning LOTS of calories by playing tennis or weight-lifting or whatever, many others are incapable of burning calories at that rate because of disability. Those who have been conditioned to "hyper-eat" (in Kessler's terminology) and are seriously obese, often can not even walk around the block, let alone burn calories playing tennis. It is necessary for them to avoid the foods that they have been conditioned to "hyper-eat" in order to recover from what is a very serious illness. Once they recover from their addiction, and drastically reduce their weight, likely some of them will be able to indulge in eating some empty foods again, provided they maintain a strict hand on it and are dedicated exercisers. Otherwise, they will find themselves right back in the mess that they escaped. I know so many seriously obese people who have fallen off the wagon, not because they just could no longer control themselves and ate what they knew they shouldn't, but, instead, convinced themselves that a "few cookies won't wreck my diet--I'll just stay in my calorie allotment." Three packages of cookies later, just like the alcoholic surveying the empty bottles on "the day after", they beat themselves up and figure they might as well give up and give in to their addiction. If they had the willpower to resist eating excessive amounts of those foods, they would have done so a long time ago. Abstinence is the best course for most people who are seriously obese.

I have a serious problem with you using such a broad brush to paint people as so pathetically lacking willpower that they need you to scare them away from "processed" food for their own good.

If people don't want to eat certain things, fine. But trying to convince everyone that certain things are automatically bad, when they are not, because they're all just so pathetic and helpless they can't help but binge on them, is stupid.

Ahh--a new tactic born of desperation! What is pathetic is the stubborn defense of food that was deliberately engineered to trap people into overeating it. Would you insist that crack cocaine "is part of a normal healthy lifestyle" and that anyone who questions it is just trying to "demonize it" and that anyone who warns kids about its dangers is attempting to "scare them away from it for their own good". Your line of reasoning would only make sense if you owned stock in or worked for a big food conglomerate. I cannot imagine another reason for it being so important to you that you keep insisting that everyone must eat junk food or risk out-of-control eating on one hand and then accuse others, who advise against eating junk food, of judging those same people to be "pathetically lacking in willpower". You are the one who implied that they must inevitably succumb to the lures of junk food. I find that laughably inconsistent.

Yea you sound like you would be aroundthemulberrybush's brother.

lol @ pinning the blame on processed foods. Yes processed foods have crap satiety. but it wasnt meant to overeat or trap them. nothing is addicting and the evidence against it is crap.

We are not in a world of blind consumption anymore. We know what calories are and we can measure them. If you cant control your caloric intake and "get trapped" then it becomes survival of the fittest and you already lost

Even those CREATING the junk foods have admitted to formulating them in a way that makes them hard to stop eating (or thinking about) by intentionally using what they know about our brains' reward centers.

This is what humans have been doing for millennia to food. We add foods to other foods, spices to other foods, heat and flame to foods to make tem taste better. Just because a company does it in the modern era does not suddenly make that age old process evil, malicious or dastardly. Are master chefs evil because they've learned and perfected how to create food masterpieces in the exact same way? The level of tin foil hattery in this thread is getting ridiculous.

I think the difference would be adding food, spices...etc. rather than chemicals.

ETA: But, that's not what this thread/the link are about.

LOLLERCOASTER, can you name these chemical free spices etc?

PaleoPath4Lyfe

OMG, do you really think that packaged or supermarket rotisserie chicken is eating healthy?????

I can't wait for you to tell us why it's not.

No, really. Why do you see rotisserie chicken as unhealthy?
Fat in the dark meat? <gasp!>

First of all, grocery store chickens come from factory farms...........this means that they have been confined, fed vegetarian and heavy soy diets (which chickens are NOT vegetarians) and the meat and skin is full of Omega 6 which causes the imbalances which lead to inflammation.

Also, these rotisserie chickens are also pumped full of vegetable oils, sugary marinades and crap which is not healthy either.


I do not eat any grocery store meats and I rarely eat out anymore. There are a handful of restaurants in St Louis that cater to the Farm to Table and serve local and in season foods on their menu, these are the restaurants I will eat at.

I haven't stepped foot in a grocery store to purchase FOOD items in over 2 years now.

Sarauk2sf

It must be nice to be in a position to only eat completely 'healthy' foods while the rest of the peons eat a terrible diet that apparently will be causing all sorts of health problems.

ETA: I wonder what health markers would be like if you compared a significantly overweight person that only ate totally 'healthy' according to some extreme definition v a healthy weight person who ate a balanced diet with a variety of foods but ate some mass produced foods or non-organic produce.

jonnythan

I haven't stepped foot in a grocery store to purchase FOOD items in over 2 years now.

And yet you're the one that has a spouse that currently has some sort of serious food-related disorder. Hmm.

PaleoPath4Lyfe

"...I think that this one line perfectly captures everything irrational about your posts: you are so bizarrely and irrationally anti-carb, you simply read "carbs" as "excess calories" or something..."

I have explained my position on this to you before, Jonnythan. I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy. I fail to see how that is such a difficult concept for you. In order to get proper nutrition, I must cut all non-nutritive calories. Now does THIS finally make sense to you or should I just give up?

I would give up.................They seem to think that calories means everything, when in turn calories really mean nothing.

When you are eating for health and well being, calories don't mean jack crap. It is the quality of the food that means something, not the quantity in an arbitrary number.

You know this already............too bad others are stuck in their old, outdated mindset.

LOL, so if someone is obese and just switched to "healthy" foods, but kept caloric intake the exact same, they'd be healthier? Oddly enough blood markers of health tend to improve from weight loss regardless of what foods were eaten, weight loss requires a calorie deficit

Once again, here you are to just argue proving no point.

You know as well as I do that simple blood markers are not the only indication of good health. But you are trying to argue, so you make a stupid comment.

PaleoPath4Lyfe

A calorie may or may not be a calorie, but a person avoiding (even unnecessarily) fast food or very processed foods isn't an eating disorder, at least not as defined by the DSM. Something people often forget when discussing diagnoses is that there must be clinical (significant) impairment in some kind of functioning (essentially causing real harm in a person's life.) If a person unnecessarily avoids fast food, it's an inconvenience he or she is bringing on himself. If a person avoids these foods and suffers emotional anguish or is terrified of social gatherings because of it, then we are talking disordered, possibly something like EDNOS. (I say possibly because it could be more caused by some other disorder.)

I eat my food in less than 15 minutes. Tyson Diced Grilled Chicken / Rotisserie from the supermarket + steamers. Done. I don't cook, just use my microwave. No excuses these days for anyone to not eat healthy. If you look carefully you can find convenient healthy food.

OMG, do you really think that packaged or supermarket rotisserie chicken is eating healthy?????

OMG, do you really think that a supermarket rotisserie chicken is unhealthy?

Yes, it is known that pre-cooked foods from a supermarket deli are NOT healthy and rather disgusting.

Factory farmed chickens that are pumped full of god knows what..........I am getting nauseous just thinking about it.

jonnythan

You know as well as I do that simple blood markers are not the only indication of good health. But you are trying to argue, so you make a stupid comment.

Well let's talk about other indications of good health. Want to list some for us, and tell us how to use those markers to determine whether we're healthy or not?

Sarauk2sf

A calorie may or may not be a calorie, but a person avoiding (even unnecessarily) fast food or very processed foods isn't an eating disorder, at least not as defined by the DSM. Something people often forget when discussing diagnoses is that there must be clinical (significant) impairment in some kind of functioning (essentially causing real harm in a person's life.) If a person unnecessarily avoids fast food, it's an inconvenience he or she is bringing on himself. If a person avoids these foods and suffers emotional anguish or is terrified of social gatherings because of it, then we are talking disordered, possibly something like EDNOS. (I say possibly because it could be more caused by some other disorder.)

I eat my food in less than 15 minutes. Tyson Diced Grilled Chicken / Rotisserie from the supermarket + steamers. Done. I don't cook, just use my microwave. No excuses these days for anyone to not eat healthy. If you look carefully you can find convenient healthy food.

OMG, do you really think that packaged or supermarket rotisserie chicken is eating healthy?????

OMG, do you really think that a supermarket rotisserie chicken is unhealthy?

Yes, it is known that pre-cooked foods from a supermarket deli are NOT healthy and rather disgusting.

Factory farmed chickens that are pumped full of god knows what..........I am getting nauseous just thinking about it.

Nice for you to be on that pedestal - maybe vertigo is causing the nausea.

KatLifter

I do not eat any grocery store meats and I rarely eat out anymore. There are a handful of restaurants in St Louis that cater to the Farm to Table and serve local and in season foods on their menu, these are the restaurants I will eat at.

I haven't stepped foot in a grocery store to purchase FOOD items in over 2 years now.

That sounds exhausting. What do you buy at the grocery store if not food? Also, what exactly can you link to be the benefit of the strict farm to table?
Paleolithic people also had cancer and tumors that we see in our modern lifestyle?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130605-neandertal-neanderthal-bone-tumor-penn-croatia-science/

Acg67

"...I think that this one line perfectly captures everything irrational about your posts: you are so bizarrely and irrationally anti-carb, you simply read "carbs" as "excess calories" or something..."

I have explained my position on this to you before, Jonnythan. I simply cannot "afford" empty carbs in my calorie allotment if I am to stay healthy. I fail to see how that is such a difficult concept for you. In order to get proper nutrition, I must cut all non-nutritive calories. Now does THIS finally make sense to you or should I just give up?

I would give up.................They seem to think that calories means everything, when in turn calories really mean nothing.

When you are eating for health and well being, calories don't mean jack crap. It is the quality of the food that means something, not the quantity in an arbitrary number.

You know this already............too bad others are stuck in their old, outdated mindset.

LOL, so if someone is obese and just switched to "healthy" foods, but kept caloric intake the exact same, they'd be healthier? Oddly enough blood markers of health tend to improve from weight loss regardless of what foods were eaten, weight loss requires a calorie deficit

Once again, here you are to just argue proving no point.

You know as well as I do that simple blood markers are not the only indication of good health. But you are trying to argue, so you make a stupid comment.

So if "calories don't mean jack crap" just the nutrient density of the foods, then you could eat unlimited amounts of said foods and you'd be "healthy"? So who is the one making stupid comments?

Yes, it is known that pre-cooked foods from a supermarket deli are NOT healthy and rather disgusting.

Factory farmed chickens that are pumped full of god knows what..........I am getting nauseous just thinking about it.

My supermarket deli has jamon serrano, prosciutto di parma and many other non disgusting pre cooked foods. As for not healthy, read the studies that correlate it with negative health consequences and pay attention to intake.

jonnythan

You know as well as I do that simple blood markers are not the only indication of good health. But you are trying to argue, so you make a stupid comment.

Just looked at your posting history. I'm not sure you're in any position to be telling us all how unhealthy we are.

mommabenefield

Why do people invest so much emotion and energy into these discussions? It always ends up like this: A bunch of monkeys flinging poop at each other and running in circles trying to screech louder than all the other monkeys. Just sayin'.

^^^^ this!!!





LOL