Are All Calorie Sources the Same?

13

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  • Unknown
    Unknown
    This content has been removed.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    Ensmardj wrote: »
    3dogsrunning wrote: »
    Ensmardj wrote: »
    It is true that all calories are the same, but you must take into consideration the macros. If you hit 2.000 calories with 200+ Grams of fat or sugar, that means that you are not eating healthy at all. My fitness Pal is a great app that will DO help you losing body fat or weight (whatever you wanna call it, but have in mind that losing body fat, and weight are two very different things,) but you still have to eat a little bit clean. You can either have 2.000 calories by eating light/low fat/low sugar/or whatever it is on the market Ice cream, burgers, and fries, or hit those 2.000 calories with whole foods like oatmeal, white eggs, peanut butter, fruits, vegetables, cooked meats, etc that will help you to lose weight. It's just a matter of how bad you want things. You either want to lose weight, or eat that burger with fries, and have ice cream or donuts latter on.

    What has been helping me to reach my goal is eating 500 calories below of what MFP told me to eat every day, and of course, watching my fats, sugars, protein, and sodium intake. If I go over my limits in any of these 4 Macros I call it a cheat day, and if at the end of the week (which is the day I track my progress) I haven't lose any body fat, I know for damn sure that it was my fault (Even though not all days were cheat days) and need to change the way I eat.

    Hope this help you. Keep grinding!

    @Ensmardj - sugars and sodium are not macros. Fat, protein and carbs are macros ( alcohol is technically a 4th macro)

    Yep, messed up some Macros with Micros. Good catch

    Sugar isn't a micro either. It's a carb.
  • upoffthemat
    upoffthemat Posts: 679 Member

    RichardD83 wrote: »
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    If you are in a deficit you will lose weight. If you are dumping lots of sugar in your system but are still a deficit you lose weight. It can't be laid down as fat because the body cannot conjure energy from thin air. Glycemic index has no bearing on weight loss if calories are kept constant. There is so much misinformation

    If there is too much sugar in your blood stream doesn't insulin convert it to fat? Isn't this the based for diabetes?

    Too much sugar in your bloodstream isn't the basis for diabetes. There are two types of diabetes, but both of them actually result in the body not properly utilizing/manufacturing insulin to regulate blood sugar. But in neither of them does it actually cause fat. Sugar can be a problem for a diabetic, but it doesn't cause diabetes. T1 diabetes isn't caused by any behavior, whereas T2 diabetes can occur with no real causation, but the most common reason for it is obesity, but certainly not the only reason. One thing the diabetes association doesn't list as a cause of diabetes is sugar.
  • bellabonbons
    bellabonbons Posts: 705 Member
    I love sweets and I include desserts in my calories every day. Sticking to my calorie allotment I lose weight easily. If you're not losing weight you might want to have your thyroid checked.
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    Ensmardj wrote: »
    It is true that all calories are the same, but you must take into consideration the macros. If you hit 2.000 calories with 200+ Grams of fat or sugar, that means that you are not eating healthy at all. My fitness Pal is a great app that will DO help you losing body fat or weight (whatever you wanna call it, but have in mind that losing body fat, and weight are two very different things,) but you still have to eat a little bit clean. You can either have 2.000 calories by eating light/low fat/low sugar/or whatever it is on the market Ice cream, burgers, and fries, or hit those 2.000 calories with whole foods like oatmeal, white eggs, peanut butter, fruits, vegetables, cooked meats, etc that will help you to lose weight. It's just a matter of how bad you want things. You either want to lose weight, or eat that burger with fries, and have ice cream or donuts latter on.

    What has been helping me to reach my goal is eating 500 calories below of what MFP told me to eat every day, and of course, watching my fats, sugars, protein, and sodium intake. If I go over my limits in any of these 4 Macros I call it a cheat day, and if at the end of the week (which is the day I track my progress) I haven't lose any body fat, I know for damn sure that it was my fault (Even though not all days were cheat days) and need to change the way I eat.

    Hope this help you. Keep grinding!

    There is no situation in a person without medical conditions who needs to lose weight, where weight loss is not fat loss.
    I have ice cream, fries, burgers, pizza and whatever the hell I want on a regular basis in moderation and within my calories and I lost and lose just fine, so that's wrong statement #2
    And false statement #3 is thinking the change within one week is saying anything at all. You're probably crash dieting if the actual loss every week is higher than possible fluctuations that can happen from day to day.
  • jessiethe3rd
    jessiethe3rd Posts: 239 Member
    fmcm8uxletx1.jpeg

    Not all weightloss is the same.

    I do not care what anyone on here says about calorie defict. 182 pounds at 20% bodyfat vs 182 at 12% bodyfat is a very big difference. Take it from someone who had just over 18% bodyfat and lost 100 pounds. I was a smaller fat person.

    Macros matter!
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    jessiethe3rd wrote: »
    fmcm8uxletx1.jpeg

    Not all weightloss is the same.

    I do not care what anyone on here says about calorie defict. 182 pounds at 20% bodyfat vs 182 at 12% bodyfat is a very big difference. Take it from someone who had just over 18% bodyfat and lost 100 pounds. I was a smaller fat person.

    Macros matter!

    That's not what the OP is asking. Of course the quality of food is important. He is asking if he would gain weight on a deficit if he ate sugar, which he wouldn't. To reiterate: all calories are the same, but not all foods have the same nutritional density.

    When choosing foods it's important to look at the overall nutrition not a single food out of context. No doubt a kitkat is not as nutritionally dense as sauteed vegetables, but today I had meat and mushroom crepes with sour cream for breakfast and salmon with a large plate of sauteed vegetables for lunch then had a 2-finger kitkat for a snack. This is still a balanced day in retrospect, even though it had a food many people would not consider optimal. Now if I ate nothing but kitkat (or nothing but eggplant for that matter) my day wouldn't be as balanced.

  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,267 Member
    in for later
  • WinoGelato
    WinoGelato Posts: 13,454 Member
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    HarperWinterberry wrote: »
    No, not all calories are the same. If you got all of your daily calories from table sugar and drank nothing else but water, it would kill you.

    So? Eating any one thing would kill you. This isn't what this discussion is about. No one is advocating eating nothing but sugar. Take your straw men to your own threads and don't hijack and derail a good thread where a person is asking questions because he genuinely wants to learn. I hope no one gets sucked into a useless semantics war.

    I'm just catching up on this thread and thought the exact same thing as you, the OP was getting good information and was starting to better understand how weight loss works when the derailing involving a ridiculous straw man argument began...

    OP I hope you will come back and share your stats: height, weight, goal weight, exercise routine, etc and open your diary. People will be happy to help you understand why you aren't losing weight.

    Oh and for what it's worth, I'm a 5'2 female and lost most of my weight eating 1700 cals including plenty of sugar.
  • randomtai
    randomtai Posts: 9,003 Member
    Wow :noway:
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,242 Member
    markrgeary1 wrote: »
    If all calories are not the same the definition of "calorie" needs to be changed. It's a unit of energy, it doesn't know or care where it came from.

    I think the key word is 'sources'. A calorie is a unit of measurement, but sources of calories differ wildly.
  • extra_medium
    extra_medium Posts: 1,525 Member
    HarperWinterberry wrote: »
    The question is are all calories the same? NO, they are not.

    that's the question in the title, if you read the post it goes a bit deeper than that.
  • extra_medium
    extra_medium Posts: 1,525 Member
    amusedmonkey wrote: »
    HarperWinterberry wrote: »
    Well, it's been great fun, guys. I'm off on holiday now.

    I know you'll all miss me greatly and think of me whenever you eat added sugar.

    Please, take the time to do your own research. You'll be glad you did. xx

    Finally people will get to ask questions without their threads being hijacked. I hope you don't drink too much added water on your holiday, because it would certainly kill you quicker than any sugar would.

    water strips away nutrients because it washes them off the foods you already ate. think about it, it's good science.
  • MissusMoon
    MissusMoon Posts: 1,900 Member
    EvgeniZyntx wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    HarperWinterberry wrote: »
    If you got all of your daily calories from table sugar and water, here is what would happen to you:

    1. First, and rather immediately, there would be a marked drop in the efficiency of your white blood cells, which would immediately compromise your immune system. Your immune system would be unable to recover so long as you continued consuming all of your daily calories from table sugar. You have now increased your risk of catching any viruses or bacteria you may encounter. But, don't worry. You probably aren't going to live long enough to die from something that you catch.

    2. Next, your pancreas and adrenal glands will kick into overdrive. Your hormones will begin to become unbalanced and you'll start to feel extremely fatigued. You will not recover from this fatigue so long as you continue eating this way.

    3. In order to metabolize all of the sugar you're consuming, your body will be forced to draw from its own nutrient reserves. If you don't have enough nutrients reserved (and you won't for long) you will then become unable to metabolize your own fat reserves. You will lose magnesium quickly (required for about 300 enzyme activities, give or take) and you'll lose chromium. You're really going to notice it when you lose your chromium, as it's a trace element that regulates, among other hormones, your insulin. This is when you'll begin to notice a change in your mental state and some will begin to have difficulty breathing.

    4. At this point, it's only a matter of days for before your system completely shuts down.

    As you continue to insist that the refined sugar is helping to keep you alive , consider this:

    During the processing of sugarcane into refined sugar, here's what gets removed: chromium (93%), manganese (89%), cobalt (98%), copper (83%), zinc (98%) and magnesium (98%) . If you had eaten raw sugarcane instead of table sugar, you'd have lived a bit longer.

    And consider this, too: All of the fruit you eat includes the minerals your body requires for you to metabolize them. This is one of the primary reasons the sugar in whole fruit doesn't damage your body the way added sugar does. Fruit doesn't strip nutrients from your body.

    I would contest that you would die from kwashiorkor - severe protein deficiency - faster than you would deplete body stores of nutrients. While things like chromium deficiency can occur, they are vanishingly rare - the first documented case being someone who had been on IV fluids for almost four years.

    Even with nutrient depletion, you'd live much longer on the sugar & water diet than you would on the water-only diet.

    The "sugar suppresses immune function" came from a single study in the 1970s, focused on a single subset of white blood cells, and has never been successfully replicated - and in fact other researchers have reached the opposite conclusion, that sugar intake stimulates increased immune activity.

    What is fantastic is that these people claim that sugar BOTH suppressed the immune system and causes inflammation. :huh:

    #nobiology

    That's a great catch. I hadn't even processed that glaringly obvious contradiction. Wow.
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
    EvgeniZyntx wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    HarperWinterberry wrote: »
    If you got all of your daily calories from table sugar and water, here is what would happen to you:

    1. First, and rather immediately, there would be a marked drop in the efficiency of your white blood cells, which would immediately compromise your immune system. Your immune system would be unable to recover so long as you continued consuming all of your daily calories from table sugar. You have now increased your risk of catching any viruses or bacteria you may encounter. But, don't worry. You probably aren't going to live long enough to die from something that you catch.

    2. Next, your pancreas and adrenal glands will kick into overdrive. Your hormones will begin to become unbalanced and you'll start to feel extremely fatigued. You will not recover from this fatigue so long as you continue eating this way.

    3. In order to metabolize all of the sugar you're consuming, your body will be forced to draw from its own nutrient reserves. If you don't have enough nutrients reserved (and you won't for long) you will then become unable to metabolize your own fat reserves. You will lose magnesium quickly (required for about 300 enzyme activities, give or take) and you'll lose chromium. You're really going to notice it when you lose your chromium, as it's a trace element that regulates, among other hormones, your insulin. This is when you'll begin to notice a change in your mental state and some will begin to have difficulty breathing.

    4. At this point, it's only a matter of days for before your system completely shuts down.

    As you continue to insist that the refined sugar is helping to keep you alive , consider this:

    During the processing of sugarcane into refined sugar, here's what gets removed: chromium (93%), manganese (89%), cobalt (98%), copper (83%), zinc (98%) and magnesium (98%) . If you had eaten raw sugarcane instead of table sugar, you'd have lived a bit longer.

    And consider this, too: All of the fruit you eat includes the minerals your body requires for you to metabolize them. This is one of the primary reasons the sugar in whole fruit doesn't damage your body the way added sugar does. Fruit doesn't strip nutrients from your body.

    I would contest that you would die from kwashiorkor - severe protein deficiency - faster than you would deplete body stores of nutrients. While things like chromium deficiency can occur, they are vanishingly rare - the first documented case being someone who had been on IV fluids for almost four years.

    Even with nutrient depletion, you'd live much longer on the sugar & water diet than you would on the water-only diet.

    The "sugar suppresses immune function" came from a single study in the 1970s, focused on a single subset of white blood cells, and has never been successfully replicated - and in fact other researchers have reached the opposite conclusion, that sugar intake stimulates increased immune activity.

    What is fantastic is that these people claim that sugar BOTH suppressed the immune system and causes inflammation. :huh:

    #nobiology


    But, But, But...

    This is basic 101 stuff!
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
    EvgeniZyntx wrote: »
    rankinsect wrote: »
    HarperWinterberry wrote: »
    If you got all of your daily calories from table sugar and water, here is what would happen to you:

    1. First, and rather immediately, there would be a marked drop in the efficiency of your white blood cells, which would immediately compromise your immune system. Your immune system would be unable to recover so long as you continued consuming all of your daily calories from table sugar. You have now increased your risk of catching any viruses or bacteria you may encounter. But, don't worry. You probably aren't going to live long enough to die from something that you catch.

    2. Next, your pancreas and adrenal glands will kick into overdrive. Your hormones will begin to become unbalanced and you'll start to feel extremely fatigued. You will not recover from this fatigue so long as you continue eating this way.

    3. In order to metabolize all of the sugar you're consuming, your body will be forced to draw from its own nutrient reserves. If you don't have enough nutrients reserved (and you won't for long) you will then become unable to metabolize your own fat reserves. You will lose magnesium quickly (required for about 300 enzyme activities, give or take) and you'll lose chromium. You're really going to notice it when you lose your chromium, as it's a trace element that regulates, among other hormones, your insulin. This is when you'll begin to notice a change in your mental state and some will begin to have difficulty breathing.

    4. At this point, it's only a matter of days for before your system completely shuts down.

    As you continue to insist that the refined sugar is helping to keep you alive , consider this:

    During the processing of sugarcane into refined sugar, here's what gets removed: chromium (93%), manganese (89%), cobalt (98%), copper (83%), zinc (98%) and magnesium (98%) . If you had eaten raw sugarcane instead of table sugar, you'd have lived a bit longer.

    And consider this, too: All of the fruit you eat includes the minerals your body requires for you to metabolize them. This is one of the primary reasons the sugar in whole fruit doesn't damage your body the way added sugar does. Fruit doesn't strip nutrients from your body.

    I would contest that you would die from kwashiorkor - severe protein deficiency - faster than you would deplete body stores of nutrients. While things like chromium deficiency can occur, they are vanishingly rare - the first documented case being someone who had been on IV fluids for almost four years.

    Even with nutrient depletion, you'd live much longer on the sugar & water diet than you would on the water-only diet.

    The "sugar suppresses immune function" came from a single study in the 1970s, focused on a single subset of white blood cells, and has never been successfully replicated - and in fact other researchers have reached the opposite conclusion, that sugar intake stimulates increased immune activity.

    What is fantastic is that these people claim that sugar BOTH suppressed the immune system and causes inflammation. :huh:

    #nobiology

    I think they're confusing 'causing inflammation' with 'inducing an inflammatory response'. A bit of putting the cart before the horse.

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