Question about calories and macros!

eringrace95_

All these vegans I know keep telling me they eat as many calories they want in a day and don't restrict their calories and they still have managed to keep a good figure and lose weight.

My question is, how/is this accurate? I've lost 42lbs in the past year with the only restriction being a 500 cal deficit from my TDEE so I'm trying to wrap my head around the concept of eating however many calories they want??

Sorry I hope this make sense hahaha

eringrace95_

Coming from a CICO mindset for weight loss I'm trying to assess the validity

beautifulwarrior18

False, se pa vre, es falso, not true. If you eat more calories than your body can burn in a day it store the calories as fat. What type of food you eat is not going to do anything to change that. I doubt the people saying this are consuming 5,000 calories a day. It's very likely that because they don't eat any animal by byproduct that their diet is very high in vegetables which are very low in terms of calorie density (meaning you can eat a lot and not consume a lot of calories). They likely can eat what seems like a metric ton of food and not gain weight because they're not consuming more than their TDEE. It's not because they're eating as many calories as they want to. If they're losing weight they're eating less than they burn in a day. There's a reason when eating healthy you're encouraged to eat more vegetables, especially leafy greens. Yes they're full of great nutrients, but more importantly you can eat a *kitten* load of them and not consume a lot of calories.

jennifer_417

Typically, (not all of course) most vegan foods will be lower in calories, so it's entirely possible they are eating satisfying amounts of calories and maintaining their weight.

Vegan foods don't have any magical weight loss properties over any other types of food.

eringrace95_

beautifulwarrior18 wrote: »

False, se pa vre, es falso, not true. If you eat more calories than your body can burn in a day it store the calories as fat. What type of food you eat is not going to do anything to change that. I doubt the people saying this are consuming 5,000 calories a day. It's very likely that because they don't eat any animal by byproduct that their diet is very high in vegetables which are very low in terms of calorie density (meaning you can eat a lot and not consume a lot of calories). They likely can eat what seems like a metric ton of food and not gain weight because they're not consuming more than their TDEE. It's not because they're eating as many calories as they want to. If they're losing weight they're eating less than they burn in a day. There's a reason when eating healthy you're encouraged to eat more vegetables, especially leafy greens. Yes they're full of great nutrients, but more importantly you can eat a *kitten* load of them and not consume a lot of calories.

Thank you very much for the response! That makes a lot of sense

eringrace95_

jennifer_417 wrote: »

Typically, (not all of course) most vegan foods will be lower in calories, so it's entirely possible they are eating satisfying amounts of calories and maintaining their weight.

Vegan foods don't have any magical weight loss properties over any other types of food.

Thanks for the reply!!