All calories may not be equal

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Replies

  • DebSozo
    DebSozo Posts: 2,578 Member
    I only "count" while losing and don't while on maintenance. But if someone must count and weigh on maintenance, then I can respect that.
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  • DebSozo
    DebSozo Posts: 2,578 Member
    edited August 2016
    leajas1 wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    SLLRunner wrote: »
    Mentali wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Let me be clear, the OCD comment was aimed at those who stress over weighing a pre-packaged, single serving yogurt just incase the calories are off by +/- 5-10kcal. Those who weigh restaurant food and pick apart meals "just incase".

    Counting calories is one thing but that is just not normal behaviour.

    The point about pre-packaged stuff being potentially off was a response to a poster who was claiming that it was better to change one's diet to be all packaged single-serving stuff vs. to have to weigh. IMO, saying you must use pre-packaged to count properly is way more neurotic than weighing one's foods*, and once you weigh it's not much of a hassle to weigh everything you put in a bowl or on a plate or use in cooking.

    *If I were going to make such judgments, but I personally think it's wrong to do so.

    I was that poster.

    Bottom line - the vast majority of people fail at diets, whether they count calories or don't count calories.

    My suggestion was that in order to make calorie counting easier for newbies, it would be much better to eat pre-packaged foods (including things like single-serve yogurts, cans of tuna fish and soup) or foods where you don't have to weigh or measure anything (like an egg).

    It's hard enough to start any diet (which is why most people fail). Making newbies weigh and measure and obsess over calories on Day 1 makes the situation even worse, and will result in more failure.

    The people here on this site who say its easy to weigh, measure and count remind me of vegans who say it's easy to be a vegan. Both are not easy.

    You've revealed one of your hidden assumptions here - that the failure of newbies is disproportionately related to being overwhelmed by weighing of food. I would say it's far more likely that the failure of newbies is disproportionately related to not being able to eat everything they want in the portions that they want, which is not resolved by limiting them to specific foods (that will still be off by hundreds of calories).

    In fact, you contradicted your own assumption at the start by saying that most people fail at diets regardless of counting calories. So why would counting calories in a way that severely restricts your eating solve the problem?

    You missed the point. If you want more people to join the fraternity of calories counters, it is suggested that they start out eating pre-packaged food, eggs, etc.

    And another thought - You are more likely to get an accurate count that way (add 10% to the label if you want to), than doing it on your own.

    And another thought - Weigh and measuring yogurt because it's in a large container? How about keeping an empty single-serve container, and scooping the yogurt from the large container into the single-serve container? No counting necessary.

    Now I'm wondering if you are serious or not.

    Fraternity of calorie counters? What is that?

    Did we forget to show you the secret handshake? Message me and I'll fill you in. You did go through the initiation, right?

    The one where you bathe in coke and get the secret motto written on your forehead in twinkie creme?

    Exactly how many grams of Coke and Twinkie creme are used in this ceremony? It sounds amazing.

    Now people are linking OCD and religion? This seems a natural progression.

    FYI They are kidding around.
  • ouryve
    ouryve Posts: 572 Member
    edited August 2016
    This is getting silly. I started out on mfp reading packets and weighing what I normally eat. What i normally eat is a mixture of packaged and cooked from scratch. It wasn't hard. I basically learnt that the big pile of Jersey royals was all of 125kcal and not in need of cutting back, for example. DH did the same and learnt that unless he seriously cut back his bread consumption, he'd never stay within his daily target.

    If you buy a single serving ready meal, it's a little pointless weighing it unless it seems really out as the proportions of many of the ingredients vary widely, anyhow. Plus, I might, say, serve myself a couple of tablespoons of fried rice, but only eat half of it, to mop up some sauce, then pick the road out of the rest and eat those. I find it safer to (over) estimate what I eat as a proportion of the packet. Being pernickety about weighing everything only works for foods that are pretty homogeneous.

    (Edit, I leave the road on the side of my plate, but do eat the peas, if there's no tarmac embedded in them. Stupid autocorrect)
  • ouryve
    ouryve Posts: 572 Member
    edited August 2016
    And the kids have ocd tendencies as part of their asd. It's hellish, sometimes.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    VividVegan wrote: »
    Don't know if the following OCD comment(s) was referring to my original one (that implied my diagnosed and struggle with OCD and MFP) but basically people with OCD often obsess about small things. Just like when I joined MFP and started counting every calorie, I double checked everything and became obsessive over it and its been time consuming. My step-mother has been helping me break this cycle of obsessing over things for years. She's a psychologist with a PHD. With me, the less I know, the better. It didn't hurt my progress before joining MFP anyways. My first 50 pound loss or so was completely intuitive. Have lost a few from MFP but no doubt, its harder (IMO).

    Nope, I don't give pushback to people who actually have OCD and say that weighing triggers them.

    It's people who throw around internet diagnoses for conditions they don't understand who get pushback.
  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    SLLRunner wrote: »
    Have any of you people with OCD ever considered it is just a nutrient deficiency?

    To whom are you referring? I don't believe I've seen anyone here say they have OCD.

    Nice try. You're trying to make me obesseively look at all the posts to tally who does or doesn't have OCD. I see what you did there.

    You can't tell who has OCD from reading their posts. Was this a joke?
  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    I was trying to make two points:

    1) If calorie counting, weighing and measuring is too difficult or you just don't want to do it, start off with packaged foods, eggs, etc. that just requires counting.

    2) I never said counting, weighing and measuring is OCD. I said a LIFETIME of counting, weighing and measuring is OCD. You've been counting, weighing and measuring for a year and you reached your goal. That one year has trained you how to eat. And as I said above, if you gain two pounds, start counting, measuring and weighing again to lose the two pounds.

    Sheesh!

    You failed on both counts.

    1) Using pre-packaged foods could very well lead someone to over eat. Most pre-packaged foods I've weighed are well over their stated calories counts, especially my eggs--which are consistently an egg and half. With a small deficit when I was close to my goal weight, everything mattered.

    2) Since no one here has been calorie counting since the day their were born, to refer to your "lifetime" term, this point is completely irrelevant. Unless you now want to debate how many years constitutes a "lifetime," it's done.

    It's a shame you're still tossing around OCD like it's an insult and not a mental illness with which people must live. Please stop.
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  • Psychgrrl
    Psychgrrl Posts: 3,177 Member
    Hornsby wrote: »
    I was trying to make two points:

    1) If calorie counting, weighing and measuring is too difficult or you just don't want to do it, start off with packaged foods, eggs, etc. that require no counting, weighing and measuring.

    2) I never said counting, weighing and measuring is OCD. I said a LIFETIME of counting, weighing and measuring is OCD. You've been counting, weighing and measuring for a year and you reached your goal. That one year has trained you how to eat. And as I said above, if you gain two pounds, start counting, measuring and weighing again to lose the two pounds.

    Sheesh!

    Yes, you have said all that and you are still wrong.

    Like I said, some of us have more goals than a healthy weight that require as much accuracy as we can accomplish. That's not OCD. That's being dedicated to something you ENJOY and working towards goals.

    So when you have a salad with lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, olives, etc., you actually ENJOY weighing and measuring each of them.

    Really?

    I actually enjoy weighing them. I also weigh and log all my beverages. I enjoy watching my trends, seeing the numbers. And I COMPLETELY enjoyed losing 80 lbs doing it. No stress, no brain strain....in maintenance for the last four months, and I'm still weighing, logging, and enjoying doing so...and still not OCD.

    Me too! I love stats and numbers! Not a calorie counting fraternity, more like a geeky math club. #proudmember :wink:
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  • DebSozo
    DebSozo Posts: 2,578 Member
    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    SLLRunner wrote: »
    Have any of you people with OCD ever considered it is just a nutrient deficiency?

    To whom are you referring? I don't believe I've seen anyone here say they have OCD.

    Nice try. You're trying to make me obesseively look at all the posts to tally who does or doesn't have OCD. I see what you did there.

    You can't tell who has OCD from reading their posts. Was this a joke?

    I'm not going to go tally and count who has OCD from their posts. As gonetothedogs19 points out, if I pay attention to all those little details, I'd have OCD myself. I'm not falling for SLLRunner's trick to have me give myself OCD.

    This still makes no sense to me. You're not going to "give yourself" OCD by counting post, calories, stamps, pennies, petals, butterflies or anything else. Please stop mocking a mental illness.

    Well of course you can't from counting calories. Everyone's math is off by a factor of 1,000 anyway.

    1000 is exaggerated. I've read that people underestimate ~170 calories a day. That can impact if there is a small deficit
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  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    Psychgrrl wrote: »
    SLLRunner wrote: »
    Have any of you people with OCD ever considered it is just a nutrient deficiency?

    To whom are you referring? I don't believe I've seen anyone here say they have OCD.

    Nice try. You're trying to make me obesseively look at all the posts to tally who does or doesn't have OCD. I see what you did there.

    You can't tell who has OCD from reading their posts. Was this a joke?

    I'm not going to go tally and count who has OCD from their posts. As gonetothedogs19 points out, if I pay attention to all those little details, I'd have OCD myself. I'm not falling for SLLRunner's trick to have me give myself OCD.

    This still makes no sense to me. You're not going to "give yourself" OCD by counting post, calories, stamps, pennies, petals, butterflies or anything else. Please stop mocking a mental illness.

    Well of course you can't from counting calories. Everyone's math is off by a factor of 1,000 anyway.

    Are you referring to the study that says people underestimate by 1,000 calories? Not the same as being off by a factor of 1,000.

    http://www.bbc.com/news/health-36988065
    http://www.behaviouralinsights.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/16-07-12-Counting-Calories-Final.pdf
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  • grinning_chick
    grinning_chick Posts: 765 Member
    Hornsby wrote: »
    Do people not cook from recipes anymore? Is that not basically basically counting calories? Or is just the input of the food into the app the OCD part?

    Weighing ingredients to make a cake is OCD.

    You must have never tried/will never try to cook any of the recipes Modernist Cuisine puts out. Or lurked the uber-serious baking forums to scrape recipes/troubleshoot baking problems. Everything is in grams and/or Baker's percentages.