Welcome to Debate Club! Please be aware that this is a space for respectful debate, and that your ideas will be challenged here. Please remember to critique the argument, not the author.
Does calories in vs calories out really matter?
Replies
-
While I don't have my spreadsheet right in front of me, I know that my calorie deficit in the past 90 days is approximately -60,000. 90 days ago I weighed 206.4 Today I weigh 188.4. That's 18 pounds lost in 3 months.
I've been carefully tracking my net calories during most of the past 90 days. From my weight at the start of this tracking, my calorie deficit has predicted my weight with better than 99% accuracy more than 90% of the time. For the remainder of the time, the accuracy was better than 98%. By the way -60000/3500 is -17.14 lb I should have lost in the past 90 days if my approximate calorie deficit of -60000 were a precise number. I don't claim or pretend to eat "clean". I don't claim or pretend to eat "keto". I don't claim or pretend to eat "lchf". I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.3 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.2 -
I love how everyone assumes I don't weigh or measure my food haha. No, here's the deal:
I meticulously weighed my food, ate all organic, such as like I mentioned (yogurt, beans, seeds, etc) and was good about getting my macros in and still coming in under my calorie goal. In 2 years of eating like that I maintained and oftentimes gained weight, I hit my high this year.
Now this year, I became very very depressed and had little appetite, I stayed below my calorie goal while eating Subway and McDonalds almost every day because I was too depressed to cook. I lost 30lbs in 6 weeks.
As a reminder: I stayed below my 1,300 calorie goal the entire time while depressed, and, well, I'd say 90% of the time while eating healthily.0 -
JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.1 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.0 -
I will also add that my system has always worked very strangely and my friends call me backwards: caffeine makes me sleepy, eating sugar makes my glucose go down, and my heartrate and blood pressure go up in deep sleep and often go down during activity. Doctors hate me, my body always does the opposite of what they think it will
0 -
Mary_Anastasia wrote: »I love how everyone assumes I don't weigh or measure my food haha. No, here's the deal:
I meticulously weighed my food, ate all organic, such as like I mentioned (yogurt, beans, seeds, etc) and was good about getting my macros in and still coming in under my calorie goal. In 2 years of eating like that I maintained and oftentimes gained weight, I hit my high this year.
Now this year, I became very very depressed and had little appetite, I stayed below my calorie goal while eating Subway and McDonalds almost every day because I was too depressed to cook. I lost 30lbs in 6 weeks.
As a reminder: I stayed below my 1,300 calorie goal the entire time while depressed, and, well, I'd say 90% of the time while eating healthily.
I think the bigger argument to be made is consistency of diet. Did you eat the same thing for a given period of time and compare it against an equally length of period with different foods? In real life situations we rarely eat the same thing for a month and then convert for another month and do a comparison. So while you may have periods of fast foods where you lost and periods of non fast foods and didnt lose, the bigger question would then be based on time frames for normalized comparison. And within that you would have to maintain equivalent macros to rule out alterations in glycogen levels.0 -
Mary_Anastasia wrote: »I love how everyone assumes I don't weigh or measure my food haha. No, here's the deal:
I meticulously weighed my food, ate all organic, such as like I mentioned (yogurt, beans, seeds, etc) and was good about getting my macros in and still coming in under my calorie goal. In 2 years of eating like that I maintained and oftentimes gained weight, I hit my high this year.
Now this year, I became very very depressed and had little appetite, I stayed below my calorie goal while eating Subway and McDonalds almost every day because I was too depressed to cook. I lost 30lbs in 6 weeks.
As a reminder: I stayed below my 1,300 calorie goal the entire time while depressed, and, well, I'd say 90% of the time while eating healthily.
In this example (someone weighing their food, hitting a specific calorie goal regularly, and maintaining weight and then completely switching their diet to different foods, hitting the same goal, and losing weight), I would think that incorrect database entries may be an issue and that you were still eating more than you thought while eating yogurt, beans, and seeds because the database entries you were choosing were giving you incorrect calorie data.
But it also sounds like you were eating much less while you were eating Subway and McDonalds (losing 30 pounds in six weeks) is quite a lot. You were eating less, so you lost weight. This isn't surprising -- it is what I would expect to see.3 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
Really?
Research review: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/index.php/free-content/free-content/volume-1-issue-7-insulin-and-thinking-better/insulin-an-undeserved-bad-reputation/
Read under the heading "Myth: Carbohydrate Is Singularly Responsible For Driving Insulin". The studies addressed both amount and timing.3 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.0 -
Gianfranco_R wrote: »What kind of question is this? That's like asking if it's really that important to know how to operate a car to get your drivers license. It's the ONLY thing that matters. Eat too much, you're not losing a dang thing.
There are plenty of people who do not believe in CICO, including many doctors like Dr. Fung.
Yep, here is his take on cico:
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/first-law-thermodynamics-irrelevant/
"I studied biochemistry in university and took a full year course on thermodynamics. At no point did we ever discuss the human body or weight gain/ loss."
I'm guessing he did not get stellar marks in his biochem or thermo class.
I majored in biochemistry and genetics, and the biochem classes were more about differences and similarities in processes between prokaryotes/eukaryotes, plant/animal, you get the idea. Not so much that was tied particularly to humans except by default as members of the animal kingdom.
Physics classes never mentioned any applicability to the human body. I took first-year physics and physical chemistry (intersection of physics and chemistry). Presumably explicitly connecting these things to human physiology as part of the classwork is the kind of thing you'd get in medical school, not so much in undergrad where you're taught the broader principles unless you take something specifically oriented that way like human physiology or human nutrition.
That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
So you find it plausible that a person who is competent enough and puts in enough effort to pass a class that is an entire semester worth of macromolecules and metabolic pathways never realizes that it applies to humans because the professor did not explicitly announce that humans are animals? I am not buying it.
I am also highly skeptical that an introductory thermodynamics class did not at least briefly cover energy transfer in biological systems.
No, I don't. Thus:That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
My point is that the statement may very well be factual. It's the kind of tactic frequently used when you know damn well there are holes in your story but you don't have anything solid to back them up. Use the truth and make it sound like it means more than or something different than it does.
I mean, what difference does it make if some class you took didn't teach certain verifiable facts. Does it mean they aren't true or are meaningless, or does it mean that either your class was sub-standard or those facts weren't relevant to the goal of the class?
As for your last statement, we didn't have a 'thermodynamics' class available so I can't really say. In my classwork, thermodynamics came up in undergrad multiple times as part of:
physics (not connected to biology),
chemistry (not connected to biology),
biochemistry (connected to biology),
physical chemistry (not connected to biology),
organic chemistry (both biological and non-biological)
I got your point. Since you claim to be well-educated in biochemistry, I was asking if you found Fung's account plausible, so thanks for the confirmation. I agree the actual content of his course syllabus is rather immaterial, as I also understand that it is possible that his account is true. However, I believe it is near the same probability of being true as the hypothetical person who claims to watch the entire World Series without understanding they were watching baseball.
As an electrical engineer, I find his account of taking a year of thermodynamics and not making the connection that the human body is a thermodynamic system to be laughable. His entire article demonstrates a gross misunderstanding (or perhaps, misrepresentation) of thermodynamic fundamentals. I likewise have to conclude that he is intelligent enough to persuade laypeople of his arguments, though I also perceive his motivation to most likely be profit oriented at the expense of his own cognitive dissonance.
Sadly, I'd find that to be more plausible. I work in a major health care system in research. I've heard the nonsense about 'the laws of thermodynamics don't really apply because a body/cell culture is not a closed system' more than once from people with degrees that ought to indicate a higher level of knowledge (MD, PhD). Presumably, all of them had at least the classwork I had in undergrad at some point*. Maybe they scraped by with Cs and Ds?
Oh, and before you make any assumptions about me being well-educated in biochemistry, I am. But I've not worked in the field in any meaningful way in nearly 20yrs, so the education has largely degenerated to: 'I remember something about this or that - let's go look it up and make sure my memory isn't faulty'.
*Except perhaps physical chemistry.0 -
Gianfranco_R wrote: »What kind of question is this? That's like asking if it's really that important to know how to operate a car to get your drivers license. It's the ONLY thing that matters. Eat too much, you're not losing a dang thing.
There are plenty of people who do not believe in CICO, including many doctors like Dr. Fung.
Yep, here is his take on cico:
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/first-law-thermodynamics-irrelevant/
"I studied biochemistry in university and took a full year course on thermodynamics. At no point did we ever discuss the human body or weight gain/ loss."
I'm guessing he did not get stellar marks in his biochem or thermo class.
I majored in biochemistry and genetics, and the biochem classes were more about differences and similarities in processes between prokaryotes/eukaryotes, plant/animal, you get the idea. Not so much that was tied particularly to humans except by default as members of the animal kingdom.
Physics classes never mentioned any applicability to the human body. I took first-year physics and physical chemistry (intersection of physics and chemistry). Presumably explicitly connecting these things to human physiology as part of the classwork is the kind of thing you'd get in medical school, not so much in undergrad where you're taught the broader principles unless you take something specifically oriented that way like human physiology or human nutrition.
That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
So you find it plausible that a person who is competent enough and puts in enough effort to pass a class that is an entire semester worth of macromolecules and metabolic pathways never realizes that it applies to humans because the professor did not explicitly announce that humans are animals? I am not buying it.
I am also highly skeptical that an introductory thermodynamics class did not at least briefly cover energy transfer in biological systems.
No, I don't. Thus:That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
My point is that the statement may very well be factual. It's the kind of tactic frequently used when you know damn well there are holes in your story but you don't have anything solid to back them up. Use the truth and make it sound like it means more than or something different than it does.
I mean, what difference does it make if some class you took didn't teach certain verifiable facts. Does it mean they aren't true or are meaningless, or does it mean that either your class was sub-standard or those facts weren't relevant to the goal of the class?
As for your last statement, we didn't have a 'thermodynamics' class available so I can't really say. In my classwork, thermodynamics came up in undergrad multiple times as part of:
physics (not connected to biology),
chemistry (not connected to biology),
biochemistry (connected to biology),
physical chemistry (not connected to biology),
organic chemistry (both biological and non-biological)
I got your point. Since you claim to be well-educated in biochemistry, I was asking if you found Fung's account plausible, so thanks for the confirmation. I agree the actual content of his course syllabus is rather immaterial, as I also understand that it is possible that his account is true. However, I believe it is near the same probability of being true as the hypothetical person who claims to watch the entire World Series without understanding they were watching baseball.
As an electrical engineer, I find his account of taking a year of thermodynamics and not making the connection that the human body is a thermodynamic system to be laughable. His entire article demonstrates a gross misunderstanding (or perhaps, misrepresentation) of thermodynamic fundamentals. I likewise have to conclude that he is intelligent enough to persuade laypeople of his arguments, though I also perceive his motivation to most likely be profit oriented at the expense of his own cognitive dissonance.
Sadly, I'd find that to be more plausible. I work in a major health care system in research. I've heard the nonsense about 'the laws of thermodynamics don't really apply because a body/cell culture is not a closed system' more than once from people with degrees that ought to indicate a higher level of knowledge (MD, PhD). Presumably, all of them had at least the classwork I had in undergrad at some point*. Maybe they scraped by with Cs and Ds?
*Except perhaps physical chemistry.
Interesting piece about the status of nutrition education in medical schools: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430660/1 -
Mary_Anastasia wrote: »I love how everyone assumes I don't weigh or measure my food haha. No, here's the deal:
I meticulously weighed my food, ate all organic, such as like I mentioned (yogurt, beans, seeds, etc) and was good about getting my macros in and still coming in under my calorie goal. In 2 years of eating like that I maintained and oftentimes gained weight, I hit my high this year.
Now this year, I became very very depressed and had little appetite, I stayed below my calorie goal while eating Subway and McDonalds almost every day because I was too depressed to cook. I lost 30lbs in 6 weeks.
As a reminder: I stayed below my 1,300 calorie goal the entire time while depressed, and, well, I'd say 90% of the time while eating healthily.
30 pounds in 6 weeks is 5 pounds per week, is a 2500 calorie deficit per week. That's the math, that's how much more energy was leaving your body than entering if 30 pounds was all bodyfat. Changing the thing you eat will not magically make your body expel energy for no reason.4 -
stevencloser wrote: »Mary_Anastasia wrote: »I love how everyone assumes I don't weigh or measure my food haha. No, here's the deal:
I meticulously weighed my food, ate all organic, such as like I mentioned (yogurt, beans, seeds, etc) and was good about getting my macros in and still coming in under my calorie goal. In 2 years of eating like that I maintained and oftentimes gained weight, I hit my high this year.
Now this year, I became very very depressed and had little appetite, I stayed below my calorie goal while eating Subway and McDonalds almost every day because I was too depressed to cook. I lost 30lbs in 6 weeks.
As a reminder: I stayed below my 1,300 calorie goal the entire time while depressed, and, well, I'd say 90% of the time while eating healthily.
30 pounds in 6 weeks is 5 pounds per week, is a 2500 calorie deficit per week. That's the math, that's how much more energy was leaving your body than entering if 30 pounds was all bodyfat. Changing the thing you eat will not magically make your body expel energy for no reason.
You obviously didn't read this...Mary_Anastasia wrote: »I will also add that my system has always worked very strangely and my friends call me backwards: caffeine makes me sleepy, eating sugar makes my glucose go down, and my heartrate and blood pressure go up in deep sleep and often go down during activity. Doctors hate me, my body always does the opposite of what they think it will
So there you go...
I didn't know snow was in the forecast...9 -
She should offer her body to science then.4
-
for weight loss CICO is all that matters , trust me. Few months back , I went to several nutritionists and the only thing that worked was CI<CO. I used to eat healthy foods .. chicken , fruit , veggies , nuts and I did not track my calories.. this resulted in no weight loss. I found out about CICO and decided to give it a try .. I ate mcdonalds , pizza , chocolate , burgers and all my favorite foods DAILY but tracked my calories and made sure I stayed below my calorie goal. Guess what ? Lost all 10kg and got to my ideal weight. I am not saying that it's healthy to do like I did , but I am not willing to give up junk food . For weight loss it's simple : Smaller portions.5
-
Gianfranco_R wrote: »What kind of question is this? That's like asking if it's really that important to know how to operate a car to get your drivers license. It's the ONLY thing that matters. Eat too much, you're not losing a dang thing.
There are plenty of people who do not believe in CICO, including many doctors like Dr. Fung.
Yep, here is his take on cico:
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/first-law-thermodynamics-irrelevant/
"I studied biochemistry in university and took a full year course on thermodynamics. At no point did we ever discuss the human body or weight gain/ loss."
I'm guessing he did not get stellar marks in his biochem or thermo class.
I majored in biochemistry and genetics, and the biochem classes were more about differences and similarities in processes between prokaryotes/eukaryotes, plant/animal, you get the idea. Not so much that was tied particularly to humans except by default as members of the animal kingdom.
Physics classes never mentioned any applicability to the human body. I took first-year physics and physical chemistry (intersection of physics and chemistry). Presumably explicitly connecting these things to human physiology as part of the classwork is the kind of thing you'd get in medical school, not so much in undergrad where you're taught the broader principles unless you take something specifically oriented that way like human physiology or human nutrition.
That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
So you find it plausible that a person who is competent enough and puts in enough effort to pass a class that is an entire semester worth of macromolecules and metabolic pathways never realizes that it applies to humans because the professor did not explicitly announce that humans are animals? I am not buying it.
I am also highly skeptical that an introductory thermodynamics class did not at least briefly cover energy transfer in biological systems.
No, I don't. Thus:That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
My point is that the statement may very well be factual. It's the kind of tactic frequently used when you know damn well there are holes in your story but you don't have anything solid to back them up. Use the truth and make it sound like it means more than or something different than it does.
I mean, what difference does it make if some class you took didn't teach certain verifiable facts. Does it mean they aren't true or are meaningless, or does it mean that either your class was sub-standard or those facts weren't relevant to the goal of the class?
As for your last statement, we didn't have a 'thermodynamics' class available so I can't really say. In my classwork, thermodynamics came up in undergrad multiple times as part of:
physics (not connected to biology),
chemistry (not connected to biology),
biochemistry (connected to biology),
physical chemistry (not connected to biology),
organic chemistry (both biological and non-biological)
I got your point. Since you claim to be well-educated in biochemistry, I was asking if you found Fung's account plausible, so thanks for the confirmation. I agree the actual content of his course syllabus is rather immaterial, as I also understand that it is possible that his account is true. However, I believe it is near the same probability of being true as the hypothetical person who claims to watch the entire World Series without understanding they were watching baseball.
As an electrical engineer, I find his account of taking a year of thermodynamics and not making the connection that the human body is a thermodynamic system to be laughable. His entire article demonstrates a gross misunderstanding (or perhaps, misrepresentation) of thermodynamic fundamentals. I likewise have to conclude that he is intelligent enough to persuade laypeople of his arguments, though I also perceive his motivation to most likely be profit oriented at the expense of his own cognitive dissonance.
Sadly, I'd find that to be more plausible. I work in a major health care system in research. I've heard the nonsense about 'the laws of thermodynamics don't really apply because a body/cell culture is not a closed system' more than once from people with degrees that ought to indicate a higher level of knowledge (MD, PhD). Presumably, all of them had at least the classwork I had in undergrad at some point*. Maybe they scraped by with Cs and Ds?
*Except perhaps physical chemistry.
Interesting piece about the status of nutrition education in medical schools: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430660/
I've seen that one. It's depressing.0 -
stevencloser wrote: »She should offer her body to science then.
Totally...0 -
Mary_Anastasia wrote: »My calories goal: 1,300 calories.
When I stay below this with foods like: yogurt, beans, seeds, salads -> I gain weight!!
When I stay below this with foods like: McDonald's, mashed potatoes, quesadilla, Subway -> I lose weight.
I have no frickin' clue why.
How do you measure the calories in your salad dressing?
That sounds like a really nitpicky question. But you'd be shocked (at least, I was) how many calories are in a yummy dressing.3 -
Gianfranco_R wrote: »What kind of question is this? That's like asking if it's really that important to know how to operate a car to get your drivers license. It's the ONLY thing that matters. Eat too much, you're not losing a dang thing.
There are plenty of people who do not believe in CICO, including many doctors like Dr. Fung.
Yep, here is his take on cico:
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/first-law-thermodynamics-irrelevant/
"I studied biochemistry in university and took a full year course on thermodynamics. At no point did we ever discuss the human body or weight gain/ loss."
I'm guessing he did not get stellar marks in his biochem or thermo class.
I majored in biochemistry and genetics, and the biochem classes were more about differences and similarities in processes between prokaryotes/eukaryotes, plant/animal, you get the idea. Not so much that was tied particularly to humans except by default as members of the animal kingdom.
Physics classes never mentioned any applicability to the human body. I took first-year physics and physical chemistry (intersection of physics and chemistry). Presumably explicitly connecting these things to human physiology as part of the classwork is the kind of thing you'd get in medical school, not so much in undergrad where you're taught the broader principles unless you take something specifically oriented that way like human physiology or human nutrition.
That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
So you find it plausible that a person who is competent enough and puts in enough effort to pass a class that is an entire semester worth of macromolecules and metabolic pathways never realizes that it applies to humans because the professor did not explicitly announce that humans are animals? I am not buying it.
I am also highly skeptical that an introductory thermodynamics class did not at least briefly cover energy transfer in biological systems.
No, I don't. Thus:That said, it's not any kind of decent reason to suggest that CICO is irrelevant
My point is that the statement may very well be factual. It's the kind of tactic frequently used when you know damn well there are holes in your story but you don't have anything solid to back them up. Use the truth and make it sound like it means more than or something different than it does.
I mean, what difference does it make if some class you took didn't teach certain verifiable facts. Does it mean they aren't true or are meaningless, or does it mean that either your class was sub-standard or those facts weren't relevant to the goal of the class?
As for your last statement, we didn't have a 'thermodynamics' class available so I can't really say. In my classwork, thermodynamics came up in undergrad multiple times as part of:
physics (not connected to biology),
chemistry (not connected to biology),
biochemistry (connected to biology),
physical chemistry (not connected to biology),
organic chemistry (both biological and non-biological)
I got your point. Since you claim to be well-educated in biochemistry, I was asking if you found Fung's account plausible, so thanks for the confirmation. I agree the actual content of his course syllabus is rather immaterial, as I also understand that it is possible that his account is true. However, I believe it is near the same probability of being true as the hypothetical person who claims to watch the entire World Series without understanding they were watching baseball.
As an electrical engineer, I find his account of taking a year of thermodynamics and not making the connection that the human body is a thermodynamic system to be laughable. His entire article demonstrates a gross misunderstanding (or perhaps, misrepresentation) of thermodynamic fundamentals. I likewise have to conclude that he is intelligent enough to persuade laypeople of his arguments, though I also perceive his motivation to most likely be profit oriented at the expense of his own cognitive dissonance.
Sadly, I'd find that to be more plausible. I work in a major health care system in research. I've heard the nonsense about 'the laws of thermodynamics don't really apply because a body/cell culture is not a closed system' more than once from people with degrees that ought to indicate a higher level of knowledge (MD, PhD). Presumably, all of them had at least the classwork I had in undergrad at some point*. Maybe they scraped by with Cs and Ds?
*Except perhaps physical chemistry.
Interesting piece about the status of nutrition education in medical schools: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430660/
I would agree. There was only one physician (NP) with any knowledge of nutrition and stressed the importance of exercise and maintaining good health. He stressed this for two reasons:
1. As medical professionals we need to lead by example and it is frankly insulting to be told what one should do when the person stating it is not following the advice.
2. 2. In a mass casualty or emergency situation you will need to perform at your peak, which you cannot do if you are out of shape.0 -
The type of food does not matter for weight loss itself. If it did, I would not be close to 100lbs lost. Pms can be a hell of a time with chocolate and cheese puffs.
Before anyone else jumps on the "UNHEALTHY! INFLAMMATION!!" bandwagon, my blood panels are optimal and I aced my physical.
Weight loss is all about calories. If it is not working for you, you need to reevaluate where you're going wrong:
Calories in:- Are you logging everything you ingest including the oils and condiments used for cooking. Some spice blends have calories. Are you logging all drinks that aren't diet soda or water? Logging milk? Are you being honest?
- Are you using the correct database entries? Do you check them against your food packaging?
- Are you using generic entries? They can be notoriously off. Same goes for green checkmark items. Don't trust those
- Are you weighing ALL your food? That includes pre-packaged items (which can be off by around 20%). Eggs in a carton don't weigh the same. Some bread slices can differ. Pre packaged and pre weighed items should be weighed for total accuracy. Protein bars can be higher or lower in weight than the package states. Protein powder can as well.
- Are you logging cheat meals/cheat days. Some cheat meals/days can actually wipe out a weekly deficit.
- Are you adding your own recipes to the recipe builder or just choosing a generic entry? Generic entries were created by someone else and possibly have different amount of ingredients in them. Use your own.
Calories out:- How are you figuring your exercise calories? MFP database calories are quite inflated, as are those from exercise machines. Aim to eat back ⅓ to ½ of those exercise calories back to keep your deficit. I even eat ½ of my fitbit recorded exercise calories back as I have the HR model (it picks up my anxiety due to elevated heart rate).
stevencloser wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »bercyn1291 wrote: »It is agreed upon that quality of the food matters in faster weight loss but ideally calories out-calories in should determine how much weight you lose. Please share your experience.
Calories in vs. calories out are ALL that matters for weight loss.
Quality of food matters for health.
Faster weight loss is usually unhealthy weight loss. Obese people can lose quickly, but the rest of us risk lean muscle mass. When our bodies don't have fuel.....they will catobolize existing lean muscle. High quality food does not make us immune.
Not immune, but you can eat in ways in crash diets that severely limit LBM loss. I think a lot of the "zomg I lost muscle" stuff comes from people thinking that they are less fat than they actually are. I have yet to see before and after DEXAs of anyone who went on a short term crash, that suffered from notable catabolism in the process. Sure, if they drag it out over months, things can get pretty bad.
There is a proposed maximum rate of fat loss per day based on amount of fat there is on a body as the fat cells can apparently only release their content so fast, so going above and beyond that for your rate of loss would necessarily involve muscle.
@stevencloser may you point me to some information on this, please? I am very interested in researching this further. Thank you.
SingingSingleTracker wrote: »It's all right HERE.
YES!!!!! Absolutely THIS!2 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.
Read the studies I linked above. You'll find that you're mistaken.2 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.
Read the studies I linked above. You'll find that you're mistaken.
The study you linked doesn't address my point at all because both meals contained both carbs and protein.
Can you find a study to compare 0 carb and 30g+ protein with a separate 30g+ carb 0 protein?
Because I have to measure and obtain insulin manually (unlike most people, I don't make any of my own), I've become really good at understanding how different types of foods affect BG over the decades that I've had to do this. For the years I've been wearing a CGM, I've become even better at seeing the minute to minute changes.
But, if the explanation is that glucagon is released with protein, then perhaps that is a function not happening unless insulin is also released. In my case, I can make glucagon, just not insulin (or amylin). I'll acknowledge that it is possible that in a normal person, insulin is released and therefore causes hypoglycemia because protein doesn't raise glucose as quickly. To counter-act impending hypoglycemia, glucagon is released. I can consider that plausible, perhaps. It sounds pretty inefficient, though, for an evolved species like homo sapiens.0 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.
Read the studies I linked above. You'll find that you're mistaken.
The study you linked doesn't address my point at all because both meals contained both carbs and protein.
Can you find a study to compare 0 carb and 30g+ protein with a separate 30g+ carb 0 protein?
Because I have to measure and obtain insulin manually (unlike most people, I don't make any of my own), I've become really good at understanding how different types of foods affect BG over the decades that I've had to do this. For the years I've been wearing a CGM, I've become even better at seeing the minute to minute changes.
But, if the explanation is that glucagon is released with protein, then perhaps that is a function not happening unless insulin is also released. In my case, I can make glucagon, just not insulin (or amylin). I'll acknowledge that it is possible that in a normal person, insulin is released and therefore causes hypoglycemia because protein doesn't raise glucose as quickly. To counter-act impending hypoglycemia, glucagon is released. I can consider that plausible, perhaps. It sounds pretty inefficient, though, for an evolved species like homo sapiens.
Further down the page in this paragraph, he links to a study indicating that beef stimulates just as much insulin secretion as brown rice - but only the abstract is available free, the actual study is behind a paywall at AJCN:...The fact is that protein is a potent stimulator of insulin secretion, and this insulin secretion is not related to changes in blood sugar or gluconeogenesis from the protein. In fact, one study found beef to stimulate just as much insulin secretion as brown rice. The blood sugar response of 38 different foods could only explain 23% of the variability in insulin secretion in this study. Thus, there's a lot more that's behind insulin secretion than just carbohydrate...
As far as it sounding inefficient, there are other highly inefficient processes that occur in homo sapiens - de novo lipogenesis being the first one that comes to mind.1 -
As a physical chemist who generally tells other specialists that I'm a theoretical biophysical chemist (and a member of the Biophysical Society, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science), I'm rather shocked to read that physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and physical chemistry are "not connected to biology".
I wonder what all these years spent studying the mechanisms of energy production, the protein-protein and protein-substrate interactions were about if not biology? And that doesn't even touch my time working in cancer biology, immunology & microbiology labs. Not biology? You perhaps studied as an undergrad, but I don't think you made the obvious connections very well.
Also, a specific course in thermodynamics is generally a part of the physical chemistry sequence. Not to mention getting a lot of attention in graduate level physical chemistry / chemical engineering / materials science / biomechanical engineering / (et al)Physiology is physiology and physics is physics - Jason Fung
I swear this ridiculous piece of nonsense is going into my future lectures. It'll make a nice laugh, probably equivalent to introducing chemistry to freshmen with Captain Planet (Fire! Air! Earth! Water! Heart!) \
All physiology is ruled by chemistry. All chemistry is ruled by physics. The math is beautiful, even if our understanding is imperfect.18 -
Mary_Anastasia wrote: »I will also add that my system has always worked very strangely and my friends call me backwards: caffeine makes me sleepy, eating sugar makes my glucose go down, and my heartrate and blood pressure go up in deep sleep and often go down during activity. Doctors hate me, my body always does the opposite of what they think it will
You really are a special snowflake. Eating in a caloric surplus doesn't make you lose weight though.4 -
cerise_noir wrote: »The type of food does not matter for weight loss itself. If it did, I would not be close to 100lbs lost. Pms can be a hell of a time with chocolate and cheese puffs.
Before anyone else jumps on the "UNHEALTHY! INFLAMMATION!!" bandwagon, my blood panels are optimal and I aced my physical.
Weight loss is all about calories. If it is not working for you, you need to reevaluate where you're going wrong:
Calories in:- Are you logging everything you ingest including the oils and condiments used for cooking. Some spice blends have calories. Are you logging all drinks that aren't diet soda or water? Logging milk? Are you being honest?
- Are you using the correct database entries? Do you check them against your food packaging?
- Are you using generic entries? They can be notoriously off. Same goes for green checkmark items. Don't trust those
- Are you weighing ALL your food? That includes pre-packaged items (which can be off by around 20%). Eggs in a carton don't weigh the same. Some bread slices can differ. Pre packaged and pre weighed items should be weighed for total accuracy. Protein bars can be higher or lower in weight than the package states. Protein powder can as well.
- Are you logging cheat meals/cheat days. Some cheat meals/days can actually wipe out a weekly deficit.
- Are you adding your own recipes to the recipe builder or just choosing a generic entry? Generic entries were created by someone else and possibly have different amount of ingredients in them. Use your own.
Calories out:- How are you figuring your exercise calories? MFP database calories are quite inflated, as are those from exercise machines. Aim to eat back ⅓ to ½ of those exercise calories back to keep your deficit. I even eat ½ of my fitbit recorded exercise calories back as I have the HR model (it picks up my anxiety due to elevated heart rate).
stevencloser wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »bercyn1291 wrote: »It is agreed upon that quality of the food matters in faster weight loss but ideally calories out-calories in should determine how much weight you lose. Please share your experience.
Calories in vs. calories out are ALL that matters for weight loss.
Quality of food matters for health.
Faster weight loss is usually unhealthy weight loss. Obese people can lose quickly, but the rest of us risk lean muscle mass. When our bodies don't have fuel.....they will catobolize existing lean muscle. High quality food does not make us immune.
Not immune, but you can eat in ways in crash diets that severely limit LBM loss. I think a lot of the "zomg I lost muscle" stuff comes from people thinking that they are less fat than they actually are. I have yet to see before and after DEXAs of anyone who went on a short term crash, that suffered from notable catabolism in the process. Sure, if they drag it out over months, things can get pretty bad.
There is a proposed maximum rate of fat loss per day based on amount of fat there is on a body as the fat cells can apparently only release their content so fast, so going above and beyond that for your rate of loss would necessarily involve muscle.
@stevencloser may you point me to some information on this, please? I am very interested in researching this further. Thank you.SingingSingleTracker wrote: »It's all right HERE.
YES!!!!! Absolutely THIS!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15615615
This is where it comes from.
Hypophagia = fancy term for undereating.1 -
midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.
Read the studies I linked above. You'll find that you're mistaken.
The study you linked doesn't address my point at all because both meals contained both carbs and protein.
Can you find a study to compare 0 carb and 30g+ protein with a separate 30g+ carb 0 protein?
Because I have to measure and obtain insulin manually (unlike most people, I don't make any of my own), I've become really good at understanding how different types of foods affect BG over the decades that I've had to do this. For the years I've been wearing a CGM, I've become even better at seeing the minute to minute changes.
But, if the explanation is that glucagon is released with protein, then perhaps that is a function not happening unless insulin is also released. In my case, I can make glucagon, just not insulin (or amylin). I'll acknowledge that it is possible that in a normal person, insulin is released and therefore causes hypoglycemia because protein doesn't raise glucose as quickly. To counter-act impending hypoglycemia, glucagon is released. I can consider that plausible, perhaps. It sounds pretty inefficient, though, for an evolved species like homo sapiens.
Further down the page in this paragraph, he links to a study indicating that beef stimulates just as much insulin secretion as brown rice - but only the abstract is available free, the actual study is behind a paywall at AJCN:...The fact is that protein is a potent stimulator of insulin secretion, and this insulin secretion is not related to changes in blood sugar or gluconeogenesis from the protein. In fact, one study found beef to stimulate just as much insulin secretion as brown rice. The blood sugar response of 38 different foods could only explain 23% of the variability in insulin secretion in this study. Thus, there's a lot more that's behind insulin secretion than just carbohydrate...
As far as it sounding inefficient, there are other highly inefficient processes that occur in homo sapiens - de novo lipogenesis being the first one that comes to mind.
Really, it shouldn't shock anyone, given that consuming protein for repair and/or growth would be completely pointless in the absence of carbs, if protein didn't elicit it's own insulin response.0 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.
Read the studies I linked above. You'll find that you're mistaken.
The study you linked doesn't address my point at all because both meals contained both carbs and protein.
Can you find a study to compare 0 carb and 30g+ protein with a separate 30g+ carb 0 protein?
Because I have to measure and obtain insulin manually (unlike most people, I don't make any of my own), I've become really good at understanding how different types of foods affect BG over the decades that I've had to do this. For the years I've been wearing a CGM, I've become even better at seeing the minute to minute changes.
But, if the explanation is that glucagon is released with protein, then perhaps that is a function not happening unless insulin is also released. In my case, I can make glucagon, just not insulin (or amylin). I'll acknowledge that it is possible that in a normal person, insulin is released and therefore causes hypoglycemia because protein doesn't raise glucose as quickly. To counter-act impending hypoglycemia, glucagon is released. I can consider that plausible, perhaps. It sounds pretty inefficient, though, for an evolved species like homo sapiens.
Further down the page in this paragraph, he links to a study indicating that beef stimulates just as much insulin secretion as brown rice - but only the abstract is available free, the actual study is behind a paywall at AJCN:...The fact is that protein is a potent stimulator of insulin secretion, and this insulin secretion is not related to changes in blood sugar or gluconeogenesis from the protein. In fact, one study found beef to stimulate just as much insulin secretion as brown rice. The blood sugar response of 38 different foods could only explain 23% of the variability in insulin secretion in this study. Thus, there's a lot more that's behind insulin secretion than just carbohydrate...
As far as it sounding inefficient, there are other highly inefficient processes that occur in homo sapiens - de novo lipogenesis being the first one that comes to mind.
Really, it shouldn't shock anyone, given that consuming protein for repair and/or growth would be completely pointless in the absence of carbs, if protein didn't elicit it's own insulin response.
I am not sure why it's that surprising either. Protein causes your body to release glucagon, which has a response on blood sugar, which releases insulin so the body can take in amino acids. Proteins like whey, are very fast acting. And that insulin response from whey, is one of the reason's it got so much attention in the lifting community. Insulin, mechanical stress and leucine activates mTOR, which is responsible for muscle protein synthesis.2 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »midwesterner85 wrote: »JeromeBarry1 wrote: »...I'm not going to denounce keto and lchf, but I will point out that adherents to these plans get the benefit of TEF and have a more complicated calculation in tracking their net calories.
If they're truly eating LCHF/keto, there's absolutely no benefit of TEF (which is a drop in the bucket anyway). Protein elicits an insulin response very similar to carbohydrates, so it can interfere with ketosis. Protein levels on LCHF diets are usually kept to the low/moderate side, skewing in favor of fats. And the TEF of fat is the lowest of all the macronutrients.
No, not very similar. There is an insulin response, but timing and amount are both quite different.
It would depend on the type of protein and type of carbohydrate for comparison. Many proteins do have a very similar response as carbs. I will see if i can find the study but i was quite amazed.
I'm sure if you find an extremely slow-absorbing carb and an extremely fast-absorbing protein, then remove outside factors such as pairing with other macros, bio-availability of amylin, etc.; you might be able to find some that are similar in those extremes. But if you take a random protein and a random carb, the comparison is nowhere near the same.
Read the studies I linked above. You'll find that you're mistaken.
The study you linked doesn't address my point at all because both meals contained both carbs and protein.
Can you find a study to compare 0 carb and 30g+ protein with a separate 30g+ carb 0 protein?
Because I have to measure and obtain insulin manually (unlike most people, I don't make any of my own), I've become really good at understanding how different types of foods affect BG over the decades that I've had to do this. For the years I've been wearing a CGM, I've become even better at seeing the minute to minute changes.
But, if the explanation is that glucagon is released with protein, then perhaps that is a function not happening unless insulin is also released. In my case, I can make glucagon, just not insulin (or amylin). I'll acknowledge that it is possible that in a normal person, insulin is released and therefore causes hypoglycemia because protein doesn't raise glucose as quickly. To counter-act impending hypoglycemia, glucagon is released. I can consider that plausible, perhaps. It sounds pretty inefficient, though, for an evolved species like homo sapiens.
Further down the page in this paragraph, he links to a study indicating that beef stimulates just as much insulin secretion as brown rice - but only the abstract is available free, the actual study is behind a paywall at AJCN:...The fact is that protein is a potent stimulator of insulin secretion, and this insulin secretion is not related to changes in blood sugar or gluconeogenesis from the protein. In fact, one study found beef to stimulate just as much insulin secretion as brown rice. The blood sugar response of 38 different foods could only explain 23% of the variability in insulin secretion in this study. Thus, there's a lot more that's behind insulin secretion than just carbohydrate...
As far as it sounding inefficient, there are other highly inefficient processes that occur in homo sapiens - de novo lipogenesis being the first one that comes to mind.
Really, it shouldn't shock anyone, given that consuming protein for repair and/or growth would be completely pointless in the absence of carbs, if protein didn't elicit it's own insulin response.
I am not sure why it's that surprising either. Protein causes your body to release glucagon, which has a response on blood sugar, which releases insulin so the body can take in amino acids. Proteins like whey, are very fast acting. And that insulin response from whey, is one of the reason's it got so much attention in the lifting community. Insulin, mechanical stress and leucine activates mTOR, which is responsible for muscle protein synthesis.
To be fair, protein has always been the "common sense" macro that was completely misunderstood. Back in thef early days of VLCD experimentation, muscle wasting was a problem due to a primarily carbohydrate test diet. Then they tried adding fat. Then finally, as it turned out, protein was the most protein sparing macro. Gee, whoddathunkit?0
This discussion has been closed.
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 393.4K Introduce Yourself
- 43.8K Getting Started
- 260.2K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.9K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.5K Fitness and Exercise
- 426 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.5K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 153K Motivation and Support
- 8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.7K MyFitnessPal Information
- 24 News and Announcements
- 1.1K Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.6K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions