Are all calories the same?
spaghettiburger
Posts: 13 Member
Does it matter what you eat as long as you're within calorie limit set by mfp? I was losing weight for the first 4 days then went up .2 lbs then another 1 lb even though I've been eating my net calorie limit 1240.
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Replies
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You're asking the wrong question. you should be asking "are all pounds on the scale the same?" Not exactly. Some pounds are pounds of fat, some pounds are pounds of water, some pounds are pounds of lean body mass, some pounds are pounds of waste in your digestive tract. If you were consistent in the accuracy in which you were counting your calories, then some of the variation you're seeing on the scale is due to the amount of water or digestive weight you're carrying around. The scale doesn't know the difference.16
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A calorie is a unit of energy. So yes, a calorie is a calorie. The sources of the calorie aren't, though. And weight loss isn't linear, so it could be related to your food (heavier carb intake will have you retaining water) or another reason. But you would have had to eat about 4000 calories over maintenance to have gained that much fat.5
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So if I'm retaining more water weight, what are the foods doing that? Sugar? Bread? If I try to eliminate those and swap for veggies, would it make a difference? I mean I know I'd feel fuller from eating a bunch of veggies as compared to 1 cookie but I feel like I'd rather eat that damn cookie and feel hungry than forcing veggies.4
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Carbs or sodium. But water weight also comes from starting a new exercise routine, where you're at in your menstrual cycle, lack of sleep, stress, etc.3
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If you reduce the sweets you eat you will lose the cravings for them! My advice is to incorporate veggies, explore different ways to prepare, any maybe you will start liking veggies more. Water weight in any given day can swing a few lbs. as long as you didnt go up like 5lbs dont worry about it. Losing weight is about being consistent over a long period of time.14
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I know I'm impatient. It's frustrating that 3 days ago I was a pound lighter and I'm starting to worry the scale is not going to continue to budge downwards even though I'm logging everything, particularly scanning the barcodes, and meeting my calories. It makes me want to give up and go back to my before habits if the weights not moving, you know? 2 -
Take a look at this thread, it will help you understand what's happening better. http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10084670/it-is-unlikely-that-you-will-lose-weight-consistently-i-e-weight-loss-is-not-linear4
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spaghettiburger wrote: » I know I'm impatient. It's frustrating that 3 days ago I was a pound lighter and I'm starting to worry the scale is not going to continue to budge downwards even though I'm logging everything, particularly scanning the barcodes, and meeting my calories. It makes me want to give up and go back to my before habits if the weights not moving, you know?
How much weight are you trying to lose?
It's important to have realistic expectations.
Weight loss goes up and down for a number of reasons. A lot of people use a trend weight app to help smooth out the spikes in weight loss - bit seriously 3 days is nothing in the grand scheme of weight loss. If you're going to give up that easily, perhaps you're not ready to commit to this?5 -
Stop weighing until you feel smaller. The scale is affecting your mood and desire to do what’s good for your body. When I start a new weight loss plan I don’t weigh for about one month. Then I don’t obsess over the scale and just focus on eating better and moving more.0
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One of the first questions I ever asked on here was about controlling water weight and here's what I learned after losing 55 pounds: give up on the idea that you can control your body's natural fluctuations. That sounds harsh, but you're going to have good weigh ins and bad weigh ins and weigh ins you can't possibly explain. The random gains are going to happen no matter how good you are or how you try to stop them. And they'll continue once you reach your goal and move into maintenance. Weird weigh ins will be a fact of life forever. The sooner you can embrace them and learn to laugh them off the happier you'll be. If one bad weigh in is enough to make you give up then I don't know what to tell you. They happen. They suck. We all hate them. But sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders and move on.15
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I just want to make sure I'm doing this right before waiting for a while to fix what I may be doing wrong. Like I don't want to waste a month and see no progress because I'm eating the wrong type of foods. I'm under the assumption it doesn't matter what I'm eating as long as I stay within my calorie limit.2
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Salt happens. Mense happens. Don't worry about it.1
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spaghettiburger wrote: »I just want to make sure I'm doing this right before waiting for a while to fix what I may be doing wrong. Like I don't want to waste a month and see no progress because I'm eating the wrong type of foods. I'm under the assumption it doesn't matter what I'm eating as long as I stay within my calorie limit.
If your activity level and specifications are correct. If you are an average person. If you are logging correctly. If you are keeping to your desired deficit. THEN, over a period of 6-8 weeks or longer, you will, ON AVERAGE see the results you are expecting to see.
The answer to not "wasting" a month is not making things so difficult that you have to worry about a "wasted" month.
I mean... we all hope to be around next month, right? At least I am!
So trying something new could not possibly have been "wasted"!
At the very least we will have learned something--am-I-right?
Just to be crystal clear: If you eat the correct amount of calories consisting of 100% SNICKERS BARS, you may start suffering from malnutrition down the road, but you WILL lose weight according to your caloric deficit. If you eat the correct amount of calories consisting of 100% STEAMED WILD ALASKAN SALMON STEAKS, you may start suffering from malnutrition down the road, but you WILL lose weight according to your caloric deficit over a period of several weeks (you will actually lose a bit of extra water weight initially compared to eating 100% snickers bars, but your rate of loss over a period of time will equalise, and you will regain that extra water weight as soon as you re-introduce sufficient carbs)
You could even eat a combination of steamed wild Alaskan salmon steaks and snickers bars and you could even add some of the foods and combinations suggested at https://www.choosemyplate.gov/ or similar... and you would still lose or gain weight over the long term according to your caloric balance.
Many people find that using a weight trend application helps them out with the concept of disregarding daily weight fluctuations.4 -
I just didn't know if a calorie is a calorie. Weight watchers has a lot of success with there point system taking into account their calories, fat, and protein. So it made me wonder if eating 100% snickers bars or whatever junk to be at my goal calorie limit would work the best.
And I mean you never know what tomorrow will bring0 -
Nutritionally, no. But a calorie is the exact same thing no matter what food it's in.0
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You might also be weighting yourself too frequently. I'd space it out to once a week at least. There's a lot of fluctuations that can go on during a day and it also makes you obsessive in watching the scale daily and might stress you out and raise cortisol if you see any increase in the scale. I get that you don't want to waste time but it's best to see this as a sustainable lifestyle change rather than a quick starving fleeting diet. If you think you might be eating the wrong type of foods you can ask around more specifically around that.0
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spaghettiburger wrote: »I just didn't know if a calorie is a calorie. Weight watchers has a lot of success with there point system taking into account their calories, fat, and protein. So it made me wonder if eating 100% snickers bars or whatever junk to be at my goal calorie limit would work the best.
And I mean you never know what tomorrow will bring
A calorie is a calorie. As explained above - calories are a unit of measurement so it is the same as asking if an inch of string is the same as an inch of lead pipe. The measurement is the same but the substance it's measuring has a lot of differences.
Same with food - the nutritional profile and how filling foods are has nothing to do with calories. Those things are very different from food to food.
Yes you can lose weight eating any foods you want while staying within your calorie deficit. Do you really desire to eat a diet primarily of junk foods? Or even a diet of nothing but snickers as you ask here? Does that seem appealing and like a wise decision to you?6 -
Pav8888 mentioned the snickers. I think you missed that point. I'm not eating 100% snickers. I was asking if I'm going to see the same results on the scale overtime if I eat a cookie for 100 calories versus an apple + nuts for 100 calories for example. Like both options have different nutritional content in them. Is it that specific nutrients that I'd be missing out on for having a sweet or carbs instead of choosing salads while still staying within my calorie limit going to affect my weight loss. I get in the short term day to day it could be water weight but I'm thinking longer term.0
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spaghettiburger wrote: »Pav8888 mentioned the snickers. I think you missed that point. I'm not eating 100% snickers. I was asking if I'm going to see the same results on the scale overtime if I eat a cookie for 100 calories versus an apple + nuts for 100 calories for example. Like both options have different nutritional content in them. Is it that specific nutrients that I'd be missing out on for having a sweet or carbs instead of choosing salads while still staying within my calorie limit going to affect my weight loss. I get in the short term day to day it could be water weight but I'm thinking longer term.
Calories are king for weight loss; health, body composition, satiety, etc. are variable based on the nutrition contained in those calories.0 -
spaghettiburger wrote: »Pav8888 mentioned the snickers. I think you missed that point. I'm not eating 100% snickers. I was asking if I'm going to see the same results on the scale overtime if I eat a cookie for 100 calories versus an apple + nuts for 100 calories for example. Like both options have different nutritional content in them. Is it that specific nutrients that I'd be missing out on for having a sweet or carbs instead of choosing salads while still staying within my calorie limit going to affect my weight loss. I get in the short term day to day it could be water weight but I'm thinking longer term.
They won't affect your weight loss in the long run, but it could affect your health and the sustainability of your weight loss.
For weight loss - meet your calorie allowance and log accurately.
For satiety and good nutrition - eat a balanced diet that meets your nutritional requirements and helps you feel full. An overall healthy diet doesn't necessarily exclude junk food, it's just a case of moderating it to ensure you're getting everything else you need.3 -
spaghettiburger wrote: »So if I'm retaining more water weight, what are the foods doing that? Sugar? Bread? If I try to eliminate those and swap for veggies, would it make a difference? I mean I know I'd feel fuller from eating a bunch of veggies as compared to 1 cookie but I feel like I'd rather eat that damn cookie and feel hungry than forcing veggies.
Your body is comprised of 50-65% water...there are certainly things like sodium and whatnot that can affect water weight...but it naturally fluctuates as well...it's not fat, so stop worrying about it.
Weight loss isn't a linear function, and body weight isn't static...you have to look at trends over time...you don't have remotely enough data points to do any kind of meaningful analysis.
This isn't mine, but this is what weight loss looks like for pretty much everyone...
The blue is the weigh in to weigh in numbers...the red is the trend...the red line over time is what is important...3 -
spaghettiburger wrote: »Pav8888 mentioned the snickers. I think you missed that point. I'm not eating 100% snickers. I was asking if I'm going to see the same results on the scale overtime if I eat a cookie for 100 calories versus an apple + nuts for 100 calories for example. Like both options have different nutritional content in them. Is it that specific nutrients that I'd be missing out on for having a sweet or carbs instead of choosing salads while still staying within my calorie limit going to affect my weight loss. I get in the short term day to day it could be water weight but I'm thinking longer term.
I didn't miss the point, I'm trying to clarify your intentions. A lot of people come here believing that certain foods are always and completely "bad" and other foods are always and completely "good" and they mix up the concept of calories, nutrition, and satiety and then muddy it by assigning the good/bad qualifiers to it.
People say, just like in your thread, that Calories are what matter for weight loss, and that as a unit of measurement, a calorie is just a calorie. And then they further clarify but that for health and satiety, other factors like the macro/micro nutrient profile of foods varies and that this is obviously very important too.
You seem to still be a little confused, asking if it there are differences in choosing certain foods over others - I would have to ask, "are you ALWAYS going to choose a snicker over an apple?" Just like you are saying of course you aren't going to eat only snickers, and I suspected as much, I would ask - why are you comparing a snickers to an apple in the first place? Do you eat the exact same things every single day? Probably not. Some days you might choose the apple, and some days you might choose the snickers, and both can provide benefits to your diet depending on the rest of your day.
I'm copying over a great post from another thread, and tagging @AnvilHead who wrote it for credit..
Don't forget to consider context and dosage within your diet (far too many people ignore these concepts).
It sounds simple enough to say "kale is better than a donut", and in some contexts that would be correct. But a diet consisting of entirely kale or entirely donuts would be equally bad (in fact, I'd argue that the diet consisting of entirely donuts would be better because you'd be lacking essential fats eating nothing but kale).
Don't judge foods by themselves as "good" or "bad". Consider their place within the overall diet and aim for well-rounded nutrition consisting mostly of nutrient-dense foods, but with room for treats/less nutritious foods you enjoy. As Eric Helms said, "Once our nutrient needs are met, we don't get extra credit for consuming more nutritious food".7 -
spaghettiburger wrote: »Does it matter what you eat as long as you're within calorie limit set by mfp? I was losing weight for the first 4 days then went up .2 lbs then another 1 lb even though I've been eating my net calorie limit 1240.
1240 net calories...........how did you measure this number?
If you food intake is measured incorrectly......if you calorie burn estimates are inflated, then you are not at 1240 net calories.
Daily weight fluctuations are meaningless. Water weight fluctuates for many reasons - higher sodium day, sore muscles, hormones.....even your bathroom visits affect the scale.
You can eat anything you want for weight loss, but you may want to make changes for long term health. If I eat a higher % of "junky" calories and eating fewer calories altogether....I'm going to be hungry. Getting more "bang for my calorie buck".....more protein and more fiber, will help be stay full longer.0 -
diannethegeek wrote: »One of the first questions I ever asked on here was about controlling water weight and here's what I learned after losing 55 pounds: give up on the idea that you can control your body's natural fluctuations. That sounds harsh, but you're going to have good weigh ins and bad weigh ins and weigh ins you can't possibly explain. The random gains are going to happen no matter how good you are or how you try to stop them. And they'll continue once you reach your goal and move into maintenance. Weird weigh ins will be a fact of life forever. The sooner you can embrace them and learn to laugh them off the happier you'll be. If one bad weigh in is enough to make you give up then I don't know what to tell you. They happen. They suck. We all hate them. But sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders and move on.
So much this.
Unless you're an elite professional athlete in a weight class sport, there's no benefit to controlling for water weight fluctuations.0 -
spaghettiburger wrote: »Does it matter what you eat as long as you're within calorie limit set by mfp? I was losing weight for the first 4 days then went up .2 lbs then another 1 lb even though I've been eating my net calorie limit 1240.
1240 net calories...........how did you measure this number?
If you food intake is measured incorrectly......if you calorie burn estimates are inflated, then you are not at 1240 net calories.
Daily weight fluctuations are meaningless. Water weight fluctuates for many reasons - higher sodium day, sore muscles, hormones.....even your bathroom visits affect the scale.
You can eat anything you want for weight loss, but you may want to make changes for long term health. If I eat a higher % of "junky" calories and eating fewer calories altogether....I'm going to be hungry. Getting more "bang for my calorie buck".....more protein and more fiber, will help be stay full longer.
I'm trying to introduce noise to this question. So I'm using cookies as an example. I am trying to eat a balanced diet but the root of it was that I started at 166.6 and went these weights per day (before I get this, same time in AM, naked, after peeing, etc)
166.6, 166.0, 165.4, 165.0, 164.2, 164.0, 164.2 165.0, 165.0, 165.2
So I'm trying to ask, which some have already answered, is it that I'm eating white rice over brown rice or using a hamburger bun instead of lettuce for a bun type food choices but still within my calorie limits that's causing me to see the weight to go back up and not moving downwards. Of course I want to see progress. It's a reward for sticking with my calorie limits and saying no to additional eating.
And the difference between eating junky food versus "heathy" food is how I feel well I'm ok with that consequence for now if I don't have to theoretically eat a hamburger without a bun. My whole point here is that I'm not trying to drastically change my diet to unrealistic means where then I start binging because I didn't have 1 cookie and then get into cravings later. I rather do portion control. But if it means that I'm not losing weight because I'm eating white rice over brown rice then I'll eat the damn brown rice.
Anyway, the net calories mean the food minus exercise. I already know exercise is generally overestimating calories so I try to ignore mfp and do 100-300 calories instead of 400-600 calories eating back the exercise calories.0 -
I made a typo.. I'm ***not** trying to introduce noise into my original question1
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spaghettiburger wrote: »spaghettiburger wrote: »Does it matter what you eat as long as you're within calorie limit set by mfp? I was losing weight for the first 4 days then went up .2 lbs then another 1 lb even though I've been eating my net calorie limit 1240.
1240 net calories...........how did you measure this number?
If you food intake is measured incorrectly......if you calorie burn estimates are inflated, then you are not at 1240 net calories.
Daily weight fluctuations are meaningless. Water weight fluctuates for many reasons - higher sodium day, sore muscles, hormones.....even your bathroom visits affect the scale.
You can eat anything you want for weight loss, but you may want to make changes for long term health. If I eat a higher % of "junky" calories and eating fewer calories altogether....I'm going to be hungry. Getting more "bang for my calorie buck".....more protein and more fiber, will help be stay full longer.
I'm trying to introduce noise to this question. So I'm using cookies as an example. I am trying to eat a balanced diet but the root of it was that I started at 166.6 and went these weights per day (before I get this, same time in AM, naked, after peeing, etc)
166.6, 166.0, 165.4, 165.0, 164.2, 164.0, 164.2 165.0, 165.0, 165.2
So I'm trying to ask, which some have already answered, is it that I'm eating white rice over brown rice or using a hamburger bun instead of lettuce for a bun type food choices but still within my calorie limits that's causing me to see the weight to go back up and not moving downwards. Of course I want to see progress. It's a reward for sticking with my calorie limits and saying no to additional eating.
And the difference between eating junky food versus "heathy" food is how I feel well I'm ok with that consequence for now if I don't have to theoretically eat a hamburger without a bun. My whole point here is that I'm not trying to drastically change my diet to unrealistic means where then I start binging because I didn't have 1 cookie and then get into cravings later. I rather do portion control. But if it means that I'm not losing weight because I'm eating white rice over brown rice then I'll eat the damn brown rice.
Anyway, the net calories mean the food minus exercise. I already know exercise is generally overestimating calories so I try to ignore mfp and do 100-300 calories instead of 400-600 calories eating back the exercise calories.
I'm sorry, but you've lost 1.4 pounds over 10 days. What's the problem? Seriously, stop focusing on the day to day minutia and look at overall trends.8 -
Food choice will not make a significant difference over the long term on the same caloric intake.4
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spaghettiburger wrote: »spaghettiburger wrote: »Does it matter what you eat as long as you're within calorie limit set by mfp? I was losing weight for the first 4 days then went up .2 lbs then another 1 lb even though I've been eating my net calorie limit 1240.
1240 net calories...........how did you measure this number?
If you food intake is measured incorrectly......if you calorie burn estimates are inflated, then you are not at 1240 net calories.
Daily weight fluctuations are meaningless. Water weight fluctuates for many reasons - higher sodium day, sore muscles, hormones.....even your bathroom visits affect the scale.
You can eat anything you want for weight loss, but you may want to make changes for long term health. If I eat a higher % of "junky" calories and eating fewer calories altogether....I'm going to be hungry. Getting more "bang for my calorie buck".....more protein and more fiber, will help be stay full longer.
I'm trying to introduce noise to this question. So I'm using cookies as an example. I am trying to eat a balanced diet but the root of it was that I started at 166.6 and went these weights per day (before I get this, same time in AM, naked, after peeing, etc)
166.6, 166.0, 165.4, 165.0, 164.2, 164.0, 164.2 165.0, 165.0, 165.2
So I'm trying to ask, which some have already answered, is it that I'm eating white rice over brown rice or using a hamburger bun instead of lettuce for a bun type food choices but still within my calorie limits that's causing me to see the weight to go back up and not moving downwards. Of course I want to see progress. It's a reward for sticking with my calorie limits and saying no to additional eating.
And the difference between eating junky food versus "heathy" food is how I feel well I'm ok with that consequence for now if I don't have to theoretically eat a hamburger without a bun. My whole point here is that I'm not trying to drastically change my diet to unrealistic means where then I start binging because I didn't have 1 cookie and then get into cravings later. I rather do portion control. But if it means that I'm not losing weight because I'm eating white rice over brown rice then I'll eat the damn brown rice.
Anyway, the net calories mean the food minus exercise. I already know exercise is generally overestimating calories so I try to ignore mfp and do 100-300 calories instead of 400-600 calories eating back the exercise calories.
I'm sorry, but you've lost 1.4 pounds over 10 days. What's the problem? Seriously, stop focusing on the day to day minutia and look at overall trends.
This is the EXACT reason I did not want to include unnecessary info into this question. The amount of weight loss is not the problem here. I am seeing my weight go back up and it's been stable there for 3 days. Refer to my original question where I'm asking does it matter what I'm eating as long as I'm sticking with my calorie limit to see weight loss.1 -
spaghettiburger wrote: »spaghettiburger wrote: »Does it matter what you eat as long as you're within calorie limit set by mfp? I was losing weight for the first 4 days then went up .2 lbs then another 1 lb even though I've been eating my net calorie limit 1240.
1240 net calories...........how did you measure this number?
If you food intake is measured incorrectly......if you calorie burn estimates are inflated, then you are not at 1240 net calories.
Daily weight fluctuations are meaningless. Water weight fluctuates for many reasons - higher sodium day, sore muscles, hormones.....even your bathroom visits affect the scale.
You can eat anything you want for weight loss, but you may want to make changes for long term health. If I eat a higher % of "junky" calories and eating fewer calories altogether....I'm going to be hungry. Getting more "bang for my calorie buck".....more protein and more fiber, will help be stay full longer.
I'm trying to introduce noise to this question. So I'm using cookies as an example. I am trying to eat a balanced diet but the root of it was that I started at 166.6 and went these weights per day (before I get this, same time in AM, naked, after peeing, etc)
166.6, 166.0, 165.4, 165.0, 164.2, 164.0, 164.2 165.0, 165.0, 165.2
So I'm trying to ask, which some have already answered, is it that I'm eating white rice over brown rice or using a hamburger bun instead of lettuce for a bun type food choices but still within my calorie limits that's causing me to see the weight to go back up and not moving downwards. Of course I want to see progress. It's a reward for sticking with my calorie limits and saying no to additional eating.
And the difference between eating junky food versus "heathy" food is how I feel well I'm ok with that consequence for now if I don't have to theoretically eat a hamburger without a bun. My whole point here is that I'm not trying to drastically change my diet to unrealistic means where then I start binging because I didn't have 1 cookie and then get into cravings later. I rather do portion control. But if it means that I'm not losing weight because I'm eating white rice over brown rice then I'll eat the damn brown rice.
Anyway, the net calories mean the food minus exercise. I already know exercise is generally overestimating calories so I try to ignore mfp and do 100-300 calories instead of 400-600 calories eating back the exercise calories.
Have you come across the so-called Twinkie diet guy yet: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html
Or the teacher who lost weight eating only McDonalds: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-lose-weight-eating-only-mcdonalds-2015-10
Or here on MFP Dvdgzz's excellent post: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10348650/cico-still-skeptical-come-inside-for-a-meticulous-log-that-proves-it/p1
There are numerous other n=1 tests that have been carried out and reported on. You might find some of them helpful to see that it really is just the calories and not the labels we put on food that cause weight loss.3
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