Is counting calories all wrong?

sijomial

estherdragonbat wrote: »

Funnily enough, this turned up in my inbox yesterday: https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/metabolic-damage/

Metabolic damage isn't really everything I thought it was...

Good article thanks for sharing that.

The subject of AT comes up periodically in the Maintaining Weight forum (came up yesterday as it happens) and experience like mine isn't unusual of having some AT following their weight loss phase and then it reversing during maintenance. Not by some special intervention, just by living my life. After a couple of months I had to raise my daily calorie goal to prevent slow weight loss. My metabolism wasn't broken by my weight loss phase, it worked as it should, it didn't heal when it picked up again. It just adapted to different situations.

A common theme of confidence tricksters in the weight loss arena is to take something normal/expected/just the way your body works and make it sound scary. A bit like insulin rising after eating, normal, expected, how your body is supposed to react to food - it's a good thing. But lets call it insulin SPIKES - yeek, that sounds scary, I don't want spikes in my body..... If you link those "spikes" to that bad boy sugar you are now building an evil empire.
Let's just ignore that insulin doesn't just rise following carb ingestion - that's a bit inconvenient so let's gloss over that part and hope people don't think too deeply about it. Pretty safe assumption sadly.

So lets restrict eating windows to reduce the number of spikes, ignoring of course that those spikes may now larger to deal with probably bigger meals - SPIKES instead of spikes. And if the reduced feeding window happens to allow someone to restrict their calories and lose weight then the idea that it was the evil insulin all along gets validated.
Yay! It wasn't my fault I got fat by eating too much - it was insulin to blame.

ceiswyn

Oh noes! After two and a half years of restricting calories, my metabolic damage is so terrible that I... have a TDEE slightly above MFP's estimate for me...

...

...you do you. Just don't be surprised when proselytizing junk 'science' fails to garner support among people with actual knowledge and experience.

zeejane03

rfrenkel77 wrote: »

Let me restate that. His ideas are not costing ME any money. That stated, how much is the dieobesity costing the world in money and lives

I lost the extra weight and improved all my health markers, including normalizing a pre-diabetic glucose number, for free. I just learned how CICO works and then applied it to my meal times. Been maintaining now for years, also for free.

The dieting industry is a multi-billion dollar industry because of people like Fung. They make weight management seem so complicated that people feel that they can't do it on their own and that's a lie.

magnusthenerd

rfrenkel77 wrote: »

Sounds like a tu quo que. So let's say dieobesity costs infinity billion dollars a second. Does it follow that Fung is allowed to make stuff up with little to no actual empirical study, even if all of it only costs the time of those that fall for it?

Whatever he he made up is working.

You don't actually have the justification for that. Look, I can do a rain dance, and it could rain. It does not follow necessarily that rain dances cause rain.
Even better, I could light a fire to the rain spirits in the sky, and it could rain. In fact, adding dust to the atmosphere can promote clouds to release rain. It still doesn't follow that I can claim that I appeased the sky spirits with warmth and that caused raining, even though lighting a fire can be shown to cause rain.

In science, a good principle is Occam's Razor - do not multiple entities unnecessarily. This principle avoids attributing results to things beyond the minimum needed and creating false narratives. We already know that in all metabolic ward studies to date I'm aware of, calories digested versus calories used in metabolic processes accounts for the flux in non-transient (not just water weight / bloating) mass.
So if you want to show a metabolic ward study where someone manages to lose mass without a calorie deficit, great. Then we have some evidence. Until then, just asserting weight loss happened, therefore Fung is not justified. We already have a beyond adequate explanatory mechanism.

garystrickland357

Always fascinates me when people are so keen to give all the credit for their success to someone like Fung or whatever fad diet trend (ahem ACV) they think was responsible for their weight loss.

You are losing weight and that’s great. You are doing it because YOU created a calorie deficit.

Are you reading at all or trying to take on board some of the info that people are sharing about why there is nothing magical about (insert preferred WOE here)? That doesn’t mean people think you need to stop doing it, just that they want you to have an objective, unbiased understanding of what is ultimately responsible for your weight loss.

This^^^^ applies to so many folks I know in real life - they have some short term success but ultimately don't know why. Then in the long run they are often not successful and don't know why either.

GottaBurnEmAll

garystrickland357 wrote: »

This^^^^ applies to so many folks I know in real life - they have some short term success but ultimately don't know why. Then in the long run they are often not successful and don't know why either.

This is a really great point.

One of the problems with obscuring the mechanics of weight loss leads to difficulties in maintaining weight loss.

If you understand the underlying principles of how all this really works instead of having your head filled with buzz words, slogans, and other gobbledygook, if what you've been doing stops being a good fit for you and your life circumstances, you can adapt.

I honestly have to wonder how much of a factor not having some ability to adapt inherent in one's way of eating is in the overall failure rates of ongoing weight maintenance.

GottaBurnEmAll

I can't edit my posts right now, but that should say inherent in way of eating/beliefs about weight loss.

mph323

My weight-loss chart looks very similar to the one @The_Enginerd posted. I would guess that we have very little in common in how and what we eat, except for the fact that we both monitored our calories in and out to create a deficit while losing and a balance while maintaining. As far as meal timing goes, my schedule is the opposite of IF. I eat a number of smaller meals throughout the day with snacks in between.

I could say that my body "let go of the fat because it knew that it wasn't going to starve before the next meal", and assert that frequent feeding keeps my metabolism up because there's always fuel available (this idea was popular back in the day, and has probably gone around a few times since then). Here's a study that proves it! https://www.dukehealth.org/blog/small-frequent-meals-are-better-your-metabolism Dr. Muoio says it's true!

Except, well, b.s. We've seen success stories from hundreds of people on the boards, who lost weight eating in every way imaginable. The only thing they have in common is that they ate in a calorie deficit while losing, and are eating in a calorie balance to maintain.

FitFamilyGuy

The_Enginerd wrote: »

A week and a half is not long enough to draw a general trend or determine the efficacy of a diet. Water weight easily masks fat loss in the short term. I have a 5 lb range.

I've changed the way I eat over the course of 8 years of food logging, with activity levels and exercise regiments ranging from sedentary, to lifting weights, to 60+ MPW of running over that time. I followed different macro nutrient mixes and calorie goals over that time according to what my goals were as I went through a bulk/cut while trying to build strength to cutting down my weight to my running race weight. The only constant thing I've done in that time is meticulously and honestly track my food and exercise and use a food scale to be honest with my portions. My weight has tracked right along with my calorie intake.

Agreed!
My differences to what you say. 26 years or experiments and staying very fit. Tracked weight and calories really well for about 3 of 5 years.
Hormonal effects play a role but it seems much, much less of a role than energy balance. I really wonder why there is a big debate. That's my opinion backing up yours anyway.