Can I eat as much broccoli as I want, regardless of max caloric intake?

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  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,966 Member
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    pinuplove wrote: »
    So it counts against you when you consume it (towards your daily allowance), but how do we factor in how many calories it takes to digest it? It seems like our formula (daily allowance + exercise - consumed) doesn't factor this in...

    The calories burned while digesting are part of your bmr - the number of calories you'd burn lying in bed doing nothing all day. It's majoring in the minors to worry about that. Count all the calories you eat and eat the calories the MFP guided setup gave you. Stick to that a few weeks, reevaluate if necessary. And so on and so forth.

    Actually, TEF (thermic effect of food) is not part of BMR. But it should be roughly accounted for in the maintenance rate that MFP calculates as part of setting your calorie goal. And, definitely, worrying about it is majoring in the minors.
  • pinuplove
    pinuplove Posts: 12,874 Member
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    pinuplove wrote: »
    So it counts against you when you consume it (towards your daily allowance), but how do we factor in how many calories it takes to digest it? It seems like our formula (daily allowance + exercise - consumed) doesn't factor this in...

    The calories burned while digesting are part of your bmr - the number of calories you'd burn lying in bed doing nothing all day. It's majoring in the minors to worry about that. Count all the calories you eat and eat the calories the MFP guided setup gave you. Stick to that a few weeks, reevaluate if necessary. And so on and so forth.

    Actually, TEF (thermic effect of food) is not part of BMR. But it should be roughly accounted for in the maintenance rate that MFP calculates as part of setting your calorie goal. And, definitely, worrying about it is majoring in the minors.

    Thanks for the correction :smile: Accounted for in maintenance was probable more what I was reaching for. I knew it was there somewhere!
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,966 Member
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    pinuplove wrote: »
    pinuplove wrote: »
    So it counts against you when you consume it (towards your daily allowance), but how do we factor in how many calories it takes to digest it? It seems like our formula (daily allowance + exercise - consumed) doesn't factor this in...

    The calories burned while digesting are part of your bmr - the number of calories you'd burn lying in bed doing nothing all day. It's majoring in the minors to worry about that. Count all the calories you eat and eat the calories the MFP guided setup gave you. Stick to that a few weeks, reevaluate if necessary. And so on and so forth.

    Actually, TEF (thermic effect of food) is not part of BMR. But it should be roughly accounted for in the maintenance rate that MFP calculates as part of setting your calorie goal. And, definitely, worrying about it is majoring in the minors.

    Thanks for the correction :smile: Accounted for in maintenance was probable more what I was reaching for. I knew it was there somewhere!

    :smile:
    Yeah, I figured that was what you had in mind. It's just that we see people really misunderstand terms like BMR (such as all the people who want to calculate their deficit from their BMR instead of their actual maintenance), so I thought it wouldn't hurt to clarify for lurkers.
  • feisty_bucket
    feisty_bucket Posts: 1,047 Member
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    Be cautious, because if you eat too much broccoli, you may become a Broccoli Person.

    samuel-l-jackson-broccoli.jpg
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,127 Member
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    You might be right that 1lb/week might not be appropriate. I'm already lean (5'8" / 141lbs) but want to get the weight down before my Fall marathon, as each pound equates to roughly a minute gained/lost over the entire 26.2. I'm 10 weeks out and want to lose 6 pounds, so 1lb/week is the only way to hit that goal and still have time to stabilize so I'm not depleted going into the race. However, I run a lot (90-100 miles per week), so my hunger is ravenous. I'll tinker with this a few more days and see how it goes, maybe .5lb/week (like you said) would be more appropriate.

    Where did you get the idea that each pound equates to a minute added? If you lose too fast and your body starts to canabolize muscle, I'm pretty sure that equation doesn't work out.

    Not to mention the effect of fatigue from under-nutrition.

    OP, even if being lighter would theoretically make you faster, doing an aggressive cut to get lighter is likely to have negative effects that offset any potential positive effects. Eat a healthy, moderate, well-balanced diet, maybe with a slight calorie deficit (no more than 250 calories below (daily-activity maintenance calories + exercise calories).

    Under-nutrition will torpedo your training, and your race performance.

    Fuel your training, fuel your race.
  • psychod787
    psychod787 Posts: 4,088 Member
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    Be cautious, because if you eat too much broccoli, you may become a Broccoli Person.

    samuel-l-jackson-broccoli.jpg

    That's a bad mother veggie!
  • Noreenmarie1234
    Noreenmarie1234 Posts: 7,493 Member
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    So many woo posts like this today lol
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,565 Member
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    So many woo posts like this today lol

    Weird Wednesday?
  • L1zardQueen
    L1zardQueen Posts: 8,754 Member
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    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    So many woo posts like this today lol

    Perseids caused it? ;)

    And a little ISS probably :)
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,991 Member
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    Broccoli is not a negative calorie food - there is no such thing.

    However for most people it is unlikely to matter if you eat it without logging it - unless it is huge amounts, it is not going to be enough calories to derail you.

    There are things I don't log eg lettuce - sure, if I ate 10 kg of it, the calories would matter.
    But the 25 g or so that goes into one sandwich - too tiny to worry about logging IMO.

    I would probably have same view of 1/2 cup of broccoli.
  • fitoverfortymom
    fitoverfortymom Posts: 3,452 Member
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    After inputting my info, it said I'd normally want to eat 2,000 calories per day. So with the goal of losing 1lb per week it's down to 1,500 calories per day. I run 2-3 hours per day (auto-synced over from Strava, very cool!), so it allows me to eat an additional 1,600-2,400 calories. It probably sounds like a lot though, even though I'm starving lol!

    That's a pretty high calorie burn for 1-2 hour run. I run about 45 minutes to an hour and a half most days and burn about 100 calories per mile, which is pretty typical.
  • LKArgh
    LKArgh Posts: 5,179 Member
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    So I just started using myfitnesspal to count my calories yesterday, as I'm trying to lose 1lb per week (for performance reasons.) It was a tough day, I was constantly hungry and thinking about food. By night time, I only had a few calories left to intake so I found myself googling foods that were low in calories and high in satiation. An article came up about broccoli, how it's low calorie (30 calories per cup), but that it takes 80 calories to burn a cup of ingested broccoli.

    Does this mean then that you can eat an unlimited amount of broccoli, and that you'll actually be burning more calories by doing so? All while allowing yourself to feel full? It sounds too good to be true, so I thought I'd ask...


    No, you will not keep losing weight as you eat broccoli, but it has so few calories per cup, that you are not going to gain weight by eating broccoli, you would be sick and running to the bathroom long before that :)
  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
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    After inputting my info, it said I'd normally want to eat 2,000 calories per day. So with the goal of losing 1lb per week it's down to 1,500 calories per day. I run 2-3 hours per day (auto-synced over from Strava, very cool!), so it allows me to eat an additional 1,600-2,400 calories. It probably sounds like a lot though, even though I'm starving lol!

    That's a pretty high calorie burn for 1-2 hour run. I run about 45 minutes to an hour and a half most days and burn about 100 calories per mile, which is pretty typical.

    I agree with you're rule of thumb formula. However, you don't know how far he's running though.

    If he ran 9m miles for about 2.5hours he'd be burning the 1600 (by your formula) it's giving him by running 16 miles.

    However, that said what my HRM (chest strap) feeds into Strava generally overestimates calories burned IMHO and this seems to be backed up be research.

    The study below indicated that sports watches often over estimate calories burned while being accurate on actual HR.


    http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/05/fitness-trackers-accurately-measure-heart-rate-but-not-calories-burned.html

  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    So it counts against you when you consume it (towards your daily allowance), but how do we factor in how many calories it takes to digest it? It seems like our formula (daily allowance + exercise - consumed) doesn't factor this in...

    Count that as zero.

    This is like asking how many calories do I burn spreading butter.