How do I get past my bitterness with previous doctors, trainers, dieticians unable to help?
norman_cates
Posts: 95 Member
I has always had trouble losing weight.
Classic mesomorph.
And 4 years ago really buckled down and logged food in MFP, and tracked calorie usage using Fitbit. With the numbers saying that I was 3500-4000 calories in deficit every week. And over 4 or 5 months saw no change in weight. Nothing. And no one was able to help. They all mouthed the mantra of "calories in, calories out". And one day I was so exhausted in the gym I couldn't even lift an empty bar. And I walked out and didn't go back. I got every medical test under the sun. Thyroid, testosterone, hormones, etc etc. Nothing. And I stayed away for the last 4 years.
Over the last 4 months I've lost about 11kg. By not eating much. Appetite suppressors and metabolism enhancers. Unhealthy stuff.
This year I started back in January, slowly. So now I'm trying to find someone willing to work with me and if something isn't working in a month or some reasonable (but defined) time frame, then we change it up. Because I can't go through another 5 months of people saying "oh just wait!".
I don't believe I am a thermodynamic freak who can be in negative energy and not lose weight. Unless of course the calorie mantra is just wrong. Which I have to think it is. And that everyone it works for is self selected for success using it. And everyone else is ignored because we don't fit the paradigm. (The last few months have shown me how bitter I am about doctors, trainers and dieticians.)
I also have to accept the possibility that I was self sabotaging by eating non-logged food. Im sure I did a bit. But I TRIED to be honest. And I find it hard to believe that I could eat 3500-4000 extra calories a week without noticing.
I really need to dig out of this. But every time I start talking about it, the anger and bitterness starts welling up.
I need something that isn't the same old thing that I'm sure didn't work before. Or a commitment to change whatever it is if it isn't working.
Classic mesomorph.
And 4 years ago really buckled down and logged food in MFP, and tracked calorie usage using Fitbit. With the numbers saying that I was 3500-4000 calories in deficit every week. And over 4 or 5 months saw no change in weight. Nothing. And no one was able to help. They all mouthed the mantra of "calories in, calories out". And one day I was so exhausted in the gym I couldn't even lift an empty bar. And I walked out and didn't go back. I got every medical test under the sun. Thyroid, testosterone, hormones, etc etc. Nothing. And I stayed away for the last 4 years.
Over the last 4 months I've lost about 11kg. By not eating much. Appetite suppressors and metabolism enhancers. Unhealthy stuff.
This year I started back in January, slowly. So now I'm trying to find someone willing to work with me and if something isn't working in a month or some reasonable (but defined) time frame, then we change it up. Because I can't go through another 5 months of people saying "oh just wait!".
I don't believe I am a thermodynamic freak who can be in negative energy and not lose weight. Unless of course the calorie mantra is just wrong. Which I have to think it is. And that everyone it works for is self selected for success using it. And everyone else is ignored because we don't fit the paradigm. (The last few months have shown me how bitter I am about doctors, trainers and dieticians.)
I also have to accept the possibility that I was self sabotaging by eating non-logged food. Im sure I did a bit. But I TRIED to be honest. And I find it hard to believe that I could eat 3500-4000 extra calories a week without noticing.
I really need to dig out of this. But every time I start talking about it, the anger and bitterness starts welling up.
I need something that isn't the same old thing that I'm sure didn't work before. Or a commitment to change whatever it is if it isn't working.
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To answer the question in the post title: perhaps realize that healthcare practitioners are humans and that some humans don't get along with other humans.
Be open to experimenting with different healthcare pros until you find the right professional relationship for you. Word of mouth helps. At this point, you may not have many options since many healthcare pros are doing telephone or virtual consults only. You may also want to look into the possible psychological reasons you're eating when you do or what you do.
Speaking of which, you said "I also have to accept the possibility that I was self sabotaging by eating non-logged food. Im sure I did a bit."
This is what I'd call couched language (I'm big on the words that people chose).
Either you did log or you didn't log. There's no possibility or grey area here, my friend. And you'd never know if you had 3k, 4k or 10k extra calories over or under for the week...unless you log. Every. Single. Morsel.
That's how MFP works, for better or for worse. If this app doesn't work for you in terms of its (admittedly strict) need to log, then perhaps something like Noom may be good to try too. They have the mental health aspect as well as the logging aspect (minus the spotlight focus on calories).
Wishing you the best on your journey. Really. I hope others chime in with some insights for you too, Norman!11 -
First of all, being a mesomorph is not a thing. Even if it were, that would mean you were naturally given to putting on muscle and being athletic. Endomorphs are the fat ones. But again, it’s not a thing, it’s a made up theory which has been debunked for decades.
It’s actually more common than you might think for people to eat more calories than they realize. One study using radioactive trackers in food found that obese people in particular logged only a third of the calories they consumed. Obese people have loads of practice in self-deception. You are right that you are almost certainly not a metabolic freak. You’re just a normal person. 11 kg in 4 months - six pounds a month - is a perfectly reasonable and healthy rate of loss. There’s not such a thing as a metabolism enhancer so you can stop doing that part and take credit for losing weight the only way that ever works, eating less.
I would suggest logging accurately, logging everything, and weighing all portions including packaged foods so that you aren’t tempted to cheat. Avoid restaurants and takeouts where it’s not possible to log accurately, at least for a while. And if your Fitbit is overestimating your calorie burns, stop syncing it and record your exercise manually. Fitbits are notorious for overestimating calorie burns.12 -
Yeah I meant endomorph. Sorry. For sure I'm not mesomorph.
And your reply is typical of why I have zero confidence in trainers etc. There are many who do talk about endo, meso and ectomorph body types. And you say it's nonsense. Everyone believes something different.
And they all think they are right.
You think you are right. So, what's your proof? Where's your (relevant) research? How was it debunked? Why should I believe what YOU are saying?
Where's their research?
You probably 100% believe calories in, calories out. There are many who don't. I sure don't at the moment.
Who do we BELIEVE!! Seriously! according to any one set of trainers/dieticians, everyone else is lying or stupid.
What do we have to demand to know that someone knows they are talking about?
And of course we are all a bit different. That's why I want to KNOW that if I can as accurately as possible log all my food, drink etc intake, then the massive pain and inconvenience of doing that is GOING TO BE WORTH IT. That if I see no result, that I can look at the macronutrients and maybe adjust. And find someone who knows anything about it.
If I log everything accurately and the same thing happens, then I guarantee that people, you both included, will just shrug and go "Well, he's just done it again. He's lying to the food tracker." Because it's easier to dismiss the people who are fat as always lacking self control.
How do you two do losing weight and maintaining? If it's pretty easy for you, then we don't need to hear from you, because you do not have the same problems. If it is difficult, then do you accurately keep logs any more? Or was doing it for 3 or 4 months sufficient to work out the general shape of it. And then regular measurements to keep track of measurements.
I am steeling myself to doing this again. To measuring myself at least once a week in as many relevant ways as possible. Arms, legs waist etc etc. WEight as a very broad measure.
First though I need MFP to recover my data from 4 years ago that they have lost. (Yes, I've contacted support.) So that I can have a baseline to start from. Not your problem, but I'm very angry about it.
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Ok sure. I'm sure I ate some stuff that was not logged. I'm trying to be a bit honest about it.
Speaking of which, you said "I also have to accept the possibility that I was self sabotaging by eating non-logged food. Im sure I did a bit."
This is what I'd call couched language (I'm big on the words that people chose).
As I say, 3500-4000 calories a week of it? I don't think I'm that dishonest with myself.
It also doesn't account for other measurements not changing. Like waist measurements and so on. Expending that much energy, doing a lot of weight training, should have at least resulted in SOMETHING.
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rheddmobile wrote: »There’s not such a thing as a metabolism enhancer so you can stop doing that part and take credit for losing weight the only way that ever works, eating less.
What? Of course there are metabolism increasers. Caffeine for one. Mild sure. There are others, all the way up to the medically prescribed or illegal like the amphetamine classes.
Please explain the increase in warmth and sweating I get with this.
Appetite suppressors are something I need to find good ones for. Because I genuinely seem to be able to get by on quite small amounts of food. Where as if I leave my body to it's normal hunger, I eat WAY more than I do with appetite suppressors.rheddmobile wrote: »And if your Fitbit is overestimating your calorie burns, stop syncing it and record your exercise manually. Fitbits are notorious for overestimating calorie burns.
You mean enter the exercise and the time in MFP? In the track exercise area?
How is that more accurate than something that knows my current weight and heartrate and steps? If Fitbits were consistently overestimating by a large amount, then where is the proof and why haven't the company adjusted their algorithms?
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You sound a lot like I did a couple of years ago. I struggled to lose weight for years. I tried diet pills, tracking calories, fasting, and excessive exercise. Nothing worked. Drs gave me terrible advice, I couldn't afford a trainer. I am still trying to lose the last 15 out of 100 pounds, and it's hard. I lose a little and gain a little over and over.
There is so much conflicting information out there, it's easy to get confused and frustrated.
I would honestly recommend trying noom. I did that for a couple months and it's a bit of a different approach, one that was very helpful for me. They talk about all the things in addition to calories that affect weight loss. They break down all the science, and give sources for it.
I am almost down to my goal weight, and I still struggle sometimes, it's one of the hardest things I've ever done, but at some point all the information finally states to make sense for me. Once I finally understood what I was doing, I was able to make a few small changes, mostly to my mindset, and the weight started slowly coming off.
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Surely you have access to Google, since you are using this site. Google some actual scientific studies by actual scientists, such as the ones on the accuracy of Fitbit, and the ones on body type. Fitness tracker users have been found to lose less weight than those who don’t use them, primarily because they feel entitled to the calories they “earn,” which don’t always resemble reality.norman_cates wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »There’s not such a thing as a metabolism enhancer so you can stop doing that part and take credit for losing weight the only way that ever works, eating less.
What? Of course there are metabolism increasers. Caffeine for one. Mild sure. There are others, all the way up to the medically prescribed or illegal like the amphetamine classes.
Please explain the increase in warmth and sweating I get with this.
Appetite suppressors are something I need to find good ones for. Because I genuinely seem to be able to get by on quite small amounts of food. Where as if I leave my body to it's normal hunger, I eat WAY more than I do with appetite suppressors.rheddmobile wrote: »And if your Fitbit is overestimating your calorie burns, stop syncing it and record your exercise manually. Fitbits are notorious for overestimating calorie burns.
You mean enter the exercise and the time in MFP? In the track exercise area?
How is that more accurate than something that knows my current weight and heartrate and steps? If Fitbits were consistently overestimating by a large amount, then where is the proof and why haven't the company adjusted their algorithms?
The way you figure out what to believe is by indexing your experiences against reality. You know for a certain fact that you were eating too much in the past, since you gained weight and then failed to lose it. You know that what you describe as “unhealthy” measures actually resulted in a moderate, healthy rate of loss. It may make you sad, but that’s you actually eating at a deficit. You don’t have to trust me or a trainer to believe that. You just have to accept reality.
Yes, enter the exercise manually. It’s not inherently any more accurate, but indexed against your known rate of loss, you should be able to work out what is accurate, for you, given time.
As for caffeine that is seriously majoring in the minors. Yes, it has a tiny effect on your metabolism, far less than your margin of error when measuring your food.
Hot pepper makes people sweat because of nervous system activation. It doesn’t cause them to drop pounds. Life is not that easy. If it were, do you think the world would be full of fat people?
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rheddmobile wrote: »Surely you have access to Google, since you are using this site. Google some actual scientific studies by actual scientists, such as the ones on the accuracy of Fitbit, and the ones on body type.
Saying "just google it" is the MOST USELESS advice anyone can give. You know as well as I do that the internet is huge. Random articles are random. Please explain how I know THEY know what they are talking about. Peer reviewed and repeated research is few and far between. And often behind paywalls.
Do you have links to actual scientific articles that YOU believe? If not, then why are you saying this?
How about something?rheddmobile wrote: »The way you figure out what to believe is by indexing your experiences against reality. You know for a certain fact that you were eating too much in the past, since you gained weight and then failed to lose it. You know that what you describe as “unhealthy” measures actually resulted in a moderate, healthy rate of loss. It may make you sad, but that’s you actually eating at a deficit. You don’t have to trust me or a trainer to believe that. You just have to accept reality.
Experience against reality doesn't make sense. You experience reality, they are much the same.
Actions against reality does make sense.
See I did (I believe) index my actions against reality 4 years ago. As far as I could tell I was acting the right way. Reality was "nope, no change".
As for the last 4 months, my actions have been to eat vastly less than usual.
I can't quote what my calorie intake was over that time because I wasn't trying to measure it. But I was (and sometimes am) only eating 1 maybe 2 moderate meals a day. In the 1000 calorie range. If that.
I was 102kg at the start 4 or so months ago. According to TDEE, 2240 calories per day. I was doing WAY WAY less than that. Anyone should look at that and say that's not right to be losing weight so slowly.
Look, I appreciate the thoughts. But you are just interested in telling me how I'm wrong, without any corroboration. Which makes you no better than 90% of anyone else on the internet.
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Yep...you're angry, and it will get you nowhere. Are you using a digital food scale? What "should" be working is not. Time to try something new. Weight loss is a lot of trail and error. Either you're open to advice or you're not. If you just want to say you're doing everything right, people that know something will not post. No one wants to waste their time. I encourage you to not give up, be open to ideas that you may not agree with, and see what happens. Good Luck.
PS: I took a look at your diary, and went back a couple of weeks. There's nothing there. How are you arriving at your calorie numbers?7 -
I'm having a look thanks. Maybe I will be able to to talk to a person.I would honestly recommend trying noom. I did that for a couple months and it's a bit of a different approach, one that was very helpful for me. They talk about all the things in addition to calories that affect weight loss. They break down all the science, and give sources for it.
But you really should have mentioned that its $180 for 4 months, after a 2 week trial...
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And yet, it is right. Because reality. The sooner you stop fighting it and start accepting it, the better. And yes, look for peer-reviewed studies, they aren’t all that rare and the abstracts are not behind paywalls.norman_cates wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »Surely you have access to Google, since you are using this site. Google some actual scientific studies by actual scientists, such as the ones on the accuracy of Fitbit, and the ones on body type.
I was 102kg at the start 4 or so months ago. According to TDEE, 2240 calories per day. I was doing WAY WAY less than that. Anyone should look at that and say that's not right to be losing weight so slowly.
Or just keep doing what you’re doing now, 6 lbs a month will equal 72 lbs in a year. Changes are very good that you are eating far more than 1000 calories a day, but you don’t know, because you aren’t logging accurately.7 -
snowflake954 wrote: »Yep...you're angry, and it will get you nowhere. Are you using a digital food scale? What "should" be working is not. Time to try something new. Weight loss is a lot of trail and error. Either you're open to advice or you're not. If you just want to say you're doing everything right, people that know something will not post. No one wants to waste their time. I encourage you to not give up, be open to ideas that you may not agree with, and see what happens. Good Luck.
PS: I took a look at your diary, and went back a couple of weeks. There's nothing there. How are you arriving at your calorie numbers?
The logging I was doing was from years back.
Yes, I was using a digital scale. As far as I know, I was doing things right. The only thing I know to do better is to be ANALLY retentive and annoying. And be 110% accurate. But if it still fails then what? Seriously. I AM looking for new ideas. You say to try something new. That's EXACTLY what I'm asking for.
Something I can hold on to. So far, everyone is saying the same thing as was said to me years ago. Why should I believe it now, when it appears to have been wrong then? Again, something new would be great.
As for tracking, correct I have only just started getting back into it after some years gap after I rage quit. Or at least looking at it. But I have to establish it's worth logging 110% accurately. Will that prove anything? Or if I come up with data that contradicts your close held assumptions, will you just reject the data?
I was logging data from years ago but MFP have lost that data on the website. So I need to establish I can trust MFP with my data.
The data appears to be on my phone, but no amount of syncing will make it copy to the website. And MFP seem incapable of helping do that. So I can't trust MFP either.
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Go find a counselor.. until you learn to listen. NOBODY can help you .
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Hi Norman. I'm sorry you are feeling as you are. For too many years I have had weight issues. Doctors did those "answer all" thyroid tests, my issues came down in their view, I was eating way too much. They never did an antibody test making my issue autoimmunity. Cutting an all too long story short having reached a place with food intolerances and more being unable to go out in our garden because of the wofts of laundry residue from nextdoors washing line...................... i had to find another way to get my life back.
How many times was i told, your results are within Normal Range, what ever that is supposed to mean. According to Stop the Thyroid Madness, its a website and book, it means that years ago some hospital used the left over blood from patients tests and subjected these samples to standard thyroid testing unfortuantely the samples were devoid of key information, the accepted thyroid status of the donation let alone the status of other family members. So the outcome is........... the numbers they achieved are ranges they found. There was no indication of how the people were feeling at the different levels. The thing is, at the upper or lower levels a person could be low or high for them. All i was interested in was feeling well and right in myself. Also men do not have instances of issues at the same rate as women so men can be dismissed.
There is a tendency to see these numbers as the answer to each and every issue. The medical profession has forgotten the treatment of choise used to be by symptoms only and were descicated tissue rather than the sysnthetic versions which do not suit everyone and they folow a treatment practice which ignores the full aspect of the endocrine system. The Thyroid is the gland the pivot point which shows issues when other glands, adrenals et al, are having difficulities. western medicine often takes a simplistic aproach, the one size fits all which leaves many floundering.
General Western Medicine scoff at the functional aproach. These practitioners do the same blood tests, look at the readings they achieve and then make suggestions somethimes mendications to fill one's bodies personal gaps, true we often fall into similar groups to each other but none the less treatment is individual. I would suggest you find a functional practitioner because even if your issues are not "thyroid" related they could be endocrine related and their testing system will achieve a better understanding of your body for yourself.
Please read pages related to yourself on the Stop The Thyroid Madness website. There are many others, the list is long, look for information which is followed up with authority. One site gives 300 possible symptoms related to thyroid issues weight gain might be a common one but most of the less common ones are not atributed by modern western medicine.
Many on the now almost comatose, hyper and hypothyroid group believe in the modern western ways. On the front page of the group there is quite a bit of possibly information which could be helpful.
Take care, do what is right for you.1 -
Norman, you're a cantankerous one: I like it!
I give you credit for responding as it seems you genuinely try assessing the responses given to the paradigm you've set up for yourself.
You have every right to debunk our opinions on your perspectives regarding your health journey.
We aren't healthcare practitioners with access to your medical history nor can we stalk you 24/7/365 to verify your eating and exercise regimen. Furthermore, we're not researchers with peer-reviewed studies either.
We're a community with opinions that you can take or trash. Nothing you see here may ever fit your current paradigm.
And it doesn't even matter.
What matters to you is getting the results you seek.
Maybe it's Noom. Maybe it's a deep dive on Google Scholar (or asking a uni student in your family for their free online access to journals... usually from the campus library). Maybe it's reading everything on Suppversity (I think you'll love that blog): https://suppversity.blogspot.com
Maybe it's none of these and we don't have your answers.
Yet...
I hope you find those results in a healthy way, while being open to even more experimentation with what will consistently work for you now (as opposed to four or more years ago).3 -
norman_cates wrote: »How do you two do losing weight and maintaining? If it's pretty easy for you, then we don't need to hear from you, because you do not have the same problems. If it is difficult, then do you accurately keep logs any more? Or was doing it for 3 or 4 months sufficient to work out the general shape of it. And then regular measurements to keep track of measurements.
I am steeling myself to doing this again. To measuring myself at least once a week in as many relevant ways as possible. Arms, legs waist etc etc. WEight as a very broad measure.
First though I need MFP to recover my data from 4 years ago that they have lost. (Yes, I've contacted support.) So that I can have a baseline to start from. Not your problem, but I'm very angry about it.
I almost didn't see this part. Obviously, I can't speak for @rheddmobile. I'm not in maintenance. My goal is to lose more weight, lift more heavy stuff and end up with 24% body fat anywhere from 140-155 lbs or so.
Is it easy? No. If it was, I wouldn't be paying premium prices for two apps (MFP and 8Fit, although the latter was a mistake). Nor would I have tried Noom in autumn. Nor would my doctor have freaked me out a year ago about cholesterol and threaten to put me on meds for it unless I got healthier.
As of two weeks ago, she's still not ecstatic with my levels (even though they're much better) but she's giving me another 6 months to improve even more.
And so, Norman, I keep accurate logs and weigh in daily to be accountable...to myself. And so that I don't have to take a daily pill for the next 50+ years.
Do I slip up? Surely! Is the MFP database 100% accurate. Surely not. Are nutrition labels perfect? Let's not kid ourselves.
But we work with what we got!5 -
norman_cates wrote: »snowflake954 wrote: »Yep...you're angry, and it will get you nowhere. Are you using a digital food scale? What "should" be working is not. Time to try something new. Weight loss is a lot of trail and error. Either you're open to advice or you're not. If you just want to say you're doing everything right, people that know something will not post. No one wants to waste their time. I encourage you to not give up, be open to ideas that you may not agree with, and see what happens. Good Luck.
PS: I took a look at your diary, and went back a couple of weeks. There's nothing there. How are you arriving at your calorie numbers?
The logging I was doing was from years back.
Yes, I was using a digital scale. As far as I know, I was doing things right. The only thing I know to do better is to be ANALLY retentive and annoying. And be 110% accurate. But if it still fails then what? Seriously. I AM looking for new ideas. You say to try something new. That's EXACTLY what I'm asking for.
Something I can hold on to. So far, everyone is saying the same thing as was said to me years ago. Why should I believe it now, when it appears to have been wrong then? Again, something new would be great.
As for tracking, correct I have only just started getting back into it after some years gap after I rage quit. Or at least looking at it. But I have to establish it's worth logging 110% accurately. Will that prove anything? Or if I come up with data that contradicts your close held assumptions, will you just reject the data?
I was logging data from years ago but MFP have lost that data on the website. So I need to establish I can trust MFP with my data.
The data appears to be on my phone, but no amount of syncing will make it copy to the website. And MFP seem incapable of helping do that. So I can't trust MFP either.
Sorry, but you can't trust anyone. No one can guarantee anything. You need to believe before starting anything. What kind of world do you live in? You logged years ago and "think" you did it right. Either you did it right or you didn't. There's no middle ground. I log everyday (you can look up my diary--it's open). My goal is 1900 cal a day as a 65 yr old female, 5'11. I hit my goal fairly consistently and it's working for me. That's all I need to know. I like things simple--don't overthink everything, with "whatifs". As you're analyzing everything, why don't you just dust off that digital food scale and log accurately for a week? See what happens, maybe you'll be surprised. I hope so.4 -
hi,
first of all i share your same situation!!! My entire life I have been overweight and I've always lost and regained the same 60 pounds. And the medical community are always quick to blame EVERY.SINGLE.ISSUE. on the excess weight. So, I get it.
That said, I second everything maltedtea said, and, came here to add on, are you weighting your foods when you log? Because if you don't weight the food you might as well not log because you want have an accurate count.
you got this. and the fitfam is here to support and help.
good luckSpeaking of which, you said "I also have to accept the possibility that I was self sabotaging by eating non-logged food. Im sure I did a bit."
This is what I'd call couched language (I'm big on the words that people chose).
Either you did log or you didn't log. There's no possibility or grey area here, my friend. And you'd never know if you had 3k, 4k or 10k extra calories over or under for the week...unless you log. Every. Single. Morsel.
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Yes to everyone. at the time, I was logging using scales. I thought that was obvious. I am doing it again starting properly just today. With enforced isolation it seems a good opportunity.
I also know how and when to weight myself. I did do this for many months consistently as I said at the top.2 -
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Read around on here and you will see a trend to the threads asking for advice - the seasoned veteran posters will ask for specifics, double check information, because they do want to help! And in order to do so there is a basic amount of information needed. The questions asking about weighing food are common because people will throw a calorie count out there, but weren’t accurately weighing their food (either eyeballing, going by packaging, roughly measuring). You even mention in your OP that you TRIED to be honest. That makes a huge difference on MFP - every bite needs to be logged accurately. Believe it or not, people ctruly are trying to help.
And counseling is another recommendation because this is a weight loss forum, and with that comes some people who are not mentally or emotionally ready to do what they want or need to do (and alternately some people have a skewed perception of reality making weight loss a dangerous venture). People do want to listen, it’s hard when everything they say gets shot down though. I had a “friend” IRL that was like that in nearly every conversation and it.was.exhausting (and honestly, I had a few years of deep depression and was likely that friend for a while as well).4 -
Yeah, so in order to get anyone to talk, I have to not ask questions? Not say where it hasn't worked for me before? Not describe my problems and why I distrust?
All that's going to do is make me lie to everyone.1 -
norman_cates wrote: »Yeah, so in order to get anyone to talk, I have to not ask questions? Not say where it hasn't worked for me before? Not describe my problems and why I distrust?
All that's going to do is make me lie to everyone.
It doesn't matter if you lie to everyone or not. In the end of the day, the only "victim" of those hypothetical lies will be yourself.
I truly hope you can find some help that suits your needs, here or anywhere else.4 -
norman_cates wrote: »(snip)rheddmobile wrote: »And if your Fitbit is overestimating your calorie burns, stop syncing it and record your exercise manually. Fitbits are notorious for overestimating calorie burns.
You mean enter the exercise and the time in MFP? In the track exercise area?
How is that more accurate than something that knows my current weight and heartrate and steps? If Fitbits were consistently overestimating by a large amount, then where is the proof and why haven't the company adjusted their algorithms?
I'll try answering this one, though I can only provide limited peer-reviewed support for what I'm saying. It's mostly experiential. And maybe you already know all this. If so, I apologize in advance. Otherwise, please bear with me for a minute.
Behind all of these "calorie needs calculators", even the fitness tracker devices, is some research data, and some algorithms. Nothing - not MFP, not your Fitbit/Garmin/whatever - measures your calorie expenditures. It's all estimates.
It starts by estimating your basal metabolic rate (BMR) or resting metabolic rate (RMR) based on research data. It assumes you are exactly the same as the mean (average) of a similar population (similar age, body size, etc.). In practice, people differ in their true BMR/RMR (sometimes for reasons that are not clear). The differences between people are statistically small (small standard deviation), but individual people differ from the mean. Most are close to the mean, a few are farther from it, and a very few are quite far from it, high or low: That's the very nature of statistical estimates. More about that here, with footnote links to research: https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/
You may be able to get a better BMR/RMR reading from a sports-research practice at a local university or something like that (not from a bioelectrical impedance analyzer (BIA) device at a gym - not accurate). If you do that at a suitable lab, they will typically give you some indication whether your metabolism is close to average, or not.
Next, calculators like MFP ask you how active you are. Some calculators (MFP is one) ask about your daily life activity level, not including exercise (these are Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) estimators). Others (TDEE caluators) ask about your total activity including exercise. Based on the activity level you specify, they literally multiply your estimated BMR/RMR by a an "activity factor". You can look up the MFP multipliers in MFP, or you can see them explicitly (along with results of several research-based BMR estimating formulas) at a multi-formula TDEE site like Sailrabbit (https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/). Think about that: They're using a handful of different activity levels, each of which is described in very imprecise terms, to characterize everyone.
That's why it's an estimate, right? Still going to be close for most, further off for a few, way off for a rare few (outliers, in the technical sense).
Now, your post is implying that a fitness tracker is bound to be more accurate. Wellllll, maybe. It's a little more personalized, but it's still an estimate. It still starts with the same kind of estimate of your BMR/RMR. It's just that it layers some different estimating methods on top of that, to estimate your all-day calories.
In no way does that device measure calorie expenditure. What it does measure, and how it uses that to estimate calories, depends on the specific device. High-functioning ones may measure arm movement, impact (which it may think is steps), altitude (which it may think implies stairs/hills), heart rate, and that sort of thing. Some devices may let you tell them exactly what activity you're doing, when you're doing intentional exercise, to give a better chance at it estimating calories accurately. It's still just estimating calories.
In particular, if you don't have a tested max heart rate, or it won't let you enter one if you have it, it will assume your maximum heart rate is some simple age-based formula, like (220-age). That formula is inaccurate for a large minority of people (for reasons of genetics, primarily, not fitness). If it's wrong for you, it will think you're working out harder or not as hard as you actually are, and mis-estimate the calories. A very fit person will have a lower heart rate for the same exercise intensity as someone the same size/age but quite unfit. Many devices will estimate calories for one of those two, or both, inaccurately because of this.
To the extent the device uses heart rate, there are scenarios where it's very, very likely to overestimate calories. Strength training and HIIT are frequently in this category. Heart rate is a poor gauge of strength training calories because heart rate goes up for reasons that have nothing to do with calorie expenditure. (More about that here: https://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Azdak/view/hrms-cannot-count-calories-during-strength-training-17698). If you spend a lot of time in hot environments, or dehydrated, it will probably overestimate calories based on heart rate. HIIT tends to be overestimated because heart rate stays pretty high in the recovery intervals, even though fewer calories are being burned.
If you're relying on step-based calorie burn, but you haven't calibrated your stride length (or your device doesn't let you do that), that may be quite inaccurate, too.
Moreover, there are things that trackers tend not to see, but that burn extra calories . . . in a small number of cases, potentially hundreds of calories per day. This is technically Spontaneous Physical Activity (SPA), but a common case of it is . . . fidgeting. (You say you burn fewer calories than many people. SPA is potentially a thing you could consider, and harness.)
I could go on and on, but I won't. Bottom line: It's all estimates. They can be wrong. In a small number of people, they can be very wrong. (They tend to be very wrong for me **.)
So, I believe Rhedd (among others) is suggesting you log ultra-meticulously and ultra-honestly for a few weeks, and compare yourself to estimates from MFP (recognizing it expects you to add exercise calories separately), TDEE calculator formulas, and/or your fitness tracker's estimate . . . and see how close these are. Some methods may be closer than others, for you personally, but it's also conceivable that no method will be close at all.
If it's the latter, your own data is sufficient to guide what you need to do, going forward. (I admit, in saying this, I'm expecting you to take seriously the idea that calories are body energy in the same way that gasoline is most cars' energy, and that there'll be a relationship between energy input and energy output. But I'm saying you could be right, and that you burn gas like a Prius, super thrifty at 50-some mpg, not like a 1970 Ford Impala's 15mpg . . .er, calories, not gas
.)
After a few weeks of careful, honest logging, you will have actionable data you can use. If you choose to, and only if you can buy into that basic idea that energy isn't magically created or destroyed, i.e., 1st law of thermodynamics.
If you do have a lower calorie burn than other people of your demographics, there may be things you can do to improve the picture. You already understand that one is exercise (the sweet spot is exercise that burns a decent amount of calories, but is not fatiguing enough to sap calories out of your daily life by subtly causing you to do less or rest more). Way too many people think they need to do super-intense exhausting exercise in order to get benefits, but in weight loss scenarios, routine high intensity can actually be counterproductive. (Don't believe everything that you read about, say, HIIT and excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) a.k.a. afterburn. If you do the math, the effect is underwhelming.)
Another, of course, is that "Spontaneous Physical Activity" thing. Now, not everyone wants to start being twitchy
, but there are things you can do to consciously improve your non-exercise activity thermogenesis. There's a thead here with people sharing ideas about that:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1
The third thing - and this one is a slow and low return one - is one that you probably know, working to increase your muscle mass. Muscle tissue only burns a very few extra calories per pound daily compared to fat mass, since fat is also metabolically active: I always forget the specific number, but it's like 2-4 calories per pound per day. It's not much. Furthermore, it's quite hard/very slow to add muscle while simulataneously losing weight.
However, there is some research suggesting that fitter people automatically engage in more spontaneous physical activity, so there may be indirect benefits. Admittedly, I can't find the paper I read about this, but it's kind of common sense: For very unfit people, it's hard to do more physical stuff, even minor things (yard work, walk the dog, flip the mattress, window-shop, go to the art fair and walk around). I see this in my unfit age-mates (I'm 64). In contrast, my fitter friends of the same age do lots of things like those I listed without even thinking about it. Being fit creates a lifestyle bias toward being more active, not just in intentional exercise, but daily life.
** I have sort of the opposite issue from you. Nearly 5 years of careful food & weight logging data tells me that for reasons completely opaque to me, I burn 25-30% more calories than MFP and my good-quality fitness tracker (Garmin Vivoactive 3) estimate. (Even though these estimates are quite close for others my sex/age/size/etc.) My oncology team was concerned about this (I'm a long term cancer survivor), so sent me for scans, and my GP did other tests. I seem to be healthy and normal. I just seem to be a good li'l ol' calorie burner, for unknown reasons - that Ford Impala . I haven't had my BMR/RMR lab tested. Despite seemingly being a weird outlier, I was able to use calorie-counting to lose weight at a sensibly moderate pace, using my own data to gauge my calorie needs. When I did that, I lost weight at very close to that theoretically "3500 calories below needs = one pound lost" rate. It's just that that loss happened at a higher calorie intake than the so-called "calculators" or "trackers" were telling me.norman_cates wrote: »
I understand that you're bitter and angry. I can also understand how a long period of effort without success, and the resulting frustration, can put you there. As a consequence, you may not realize that you're coming across as hostile to and critical (in a personal way) of people who are trying, in our imperfect human way, to help you . . . as best we can.
I'm not saying it's true for you - I don't know you - but sometimes counseling is a good tool, to work through things like bitterness and anger. Our culture puts stigma on it, but that's really kind of dumb IMO. If I want my house remodeled, I'm going to hire a carpenter. If I need some help with my psychological side, I'm going to hire a counselor (and, yes, I have hired a psychologist to help me in the past, and she did).
Hoping you're able to find a productive path forward, sincerely! :flowerforyou:9 -
moonangel12 wrote: »Believe it or not, people ctruly are trying to help.
And counseling is another recommendation because this is a weight loss forum, and with that comes some people who are not mentally or emotionally ready to do what they want or need to do (and alternately some people have a skewed perception of reality making weight loss a dangerous venture). People do want to listen, it’s hard when everything they say gets shot down though. I had a “friend” IRL that was like that in nearly every conversation and it.was.exhausting (and honestly, I had a few years of deep depression and was likely that friend for a while as well).
I do think people are trying to help. The last three or four days have been awful for various reasons and it all became way too much. And yes I am thrashing around.
I'm feeling a LOT better now, a combination of yes, talking to a counsellor about a lot of stuff (not just this) and finding my old SSRI meds which I haven't needed in ages, but now... I think they are being helpful.
I am FULLY aware that I am being "that guy" that has been negative and exhausting to talk to.
I am feeling better, but it still doesn't stop my needing to ask why no one has any consistent information. At least, it seems that way. I am also in the process of using this lockdown for the next month to log EVERYTHING accurately. My exercise (as best I can with a Fitbit), my food since we can't get fast food for that time so everything is made by me or packets.
In some ways, this is actually a golden situation to test what the heck is going on with me...4 -
So, I believe Rhedd (among others) is suggesting you log ultra-meticulously and ultra-honestly for a few weeks, and compare yourself to estimates from MFP (recognizing it expects you to add exercise calories separately), TDEE calculator formulas, and/or your fitness tracker's estimate . . . and see how close these are. Some methods may be closer than others, for you personally, but it's also conceivable that no method will be close at all.
If it's the latter, your own data is sufficient to guide what you need to do, going forward. (I admit, in saying this, I'm expecting you to take seriously the idea that calories are body energy in the same way that gasoline is most cars' energy, and that there'll be a relationship between energy input and energy output. But I'm saying you could be right, and that you burn gas like a Prius, super thrifty at 50-some mpg, not like a 1970 Ford Impala's 15mpg . . .er, calories, not gas .)
After a few weeks of careful, honest logging, you will have actionable data you can use. If you choose to, and only if you can buy into that basic idea that energy isn't magically created or destroyed, i.e., 1st law of thermodynamics.
First, thank you for your INCREDIBLY long and kind post.
Although I am aware that calorie burn (and for that matter the calories stated in food) is an estimate, explaining the underlying reason why they may be inaccurate AND WHY the companies cannot account for it is very helpful.
One comment / question I would have was that I wear my fit bit all the time, so it does gather my resting heart rate at night. I assume that it plugged into these calculations to give a more accurate calorie burn?
I also believe in Thermodynamics. Which was why I was searching for other reasons for my failure to lose weight than assuming that I was a physics freak and should be immediately studied... for SCIENCE!
The thing is that the calories in, calories out equation ASSUMES that our bodies use food in exactly the same ways. But we know that's not the case. People with hypoglycemia have a reaction to sugar that excretes too much insulin and that shuttles the sugars etc into fat storage. People with diabetes have too little insulin and so can lose weiught because the insulin isn't shuttling sugars, and proteins into the right places. Like muscles, glycogen, and indeed fat storage.
I see almost no one acknowledge that. The closest is the fad diets (or lifestyle eating) like Paleo, keto, meat only diets. Many of which have no expectation to stay on.
Why remove an entire macronutrient group (carbs) if your body DOESN'T treat the parts of food differently.
If my body is incredibly efficient and can break down food into energy at a better rate than others, then I will have to eat less. None of the calories plans account for that, or seem to allow for that possibility.
Surely if you were able to guarantee that you were logging as accurately as you could, and using the standards fitness models for calorie burn, and you keep doing that. And see how your weight goes. (But also presumably take many other measurements to establish if it's muscle or fat going....)
Then you see the predicted slope of weightloss, vs the actual slope of weightloss. And it should be ridiculously easy at that point to make one change (say change how much you eat) for a few weeks, probably a month, and compare again. Your estimated energy expenditure would keep using all the same equations so even if your exercise changed, it SHOULDN'T (touch wood) count as a second variable.
I don't recall seeing ANYTHING like that ANYWHERE...
Note that I am not advocating counting calories for all our lives. That's no way to live.
But in order to discover how OUR bodies are reacting to calories etc, we need to do the experiment...
I have never seen anyone suggest it. Until now really. I don't know if that was your intent, but that's pretty much exactly what you are saying you did...
1 -
First off, glad you're feeling better, Norman!
Some of the experiments you're talking about aren't ones that can be done independently, at home. You'd need a kinesiologist, access to a Dexa scanning machine (and the expert to interpret), regular blood tests, etc.
Like, nobody's got time for all that. Unless you're a celebrity or, like, Tim Ferris and full of biohacking curiosity. (I can only imagine what he's up to in quarantine right now. I'm sure we'll get a book about it.)
Instead, as I mentioned somewhere before: we make do with what we have.
And then we expect to see a general trend towards our desired result based on reliably tracking our efforts.
For some, that's weight loss, pure and simple. For others, it's body composition (which may mean you gain, you lose, or you stay relatively the same). For others, they just want to ensure their bloodwork or other diagnostic testing results come back less sucky. And still, others have some combo of these.
Lastly, if you check the maintenance thread: there are people who are counting calories for the long-term. They may be weighing themselves regularly too. That's what works for them.
You'll need to find what, ultimately, works for you (within the parameters of generally accepted science, of course, as patiently explained in large part by @AnnPT77)2 -
norman_cates wrote: »
So, I believe Rhedd (among others) is suggesting you log ultra-meticulously and ultra-honestly for a few weeks, and compare yourself to estimates from MFP (recognizing it expects you to add exercise calories separately), TDEE calculator formulas, and/or your fitness tracker's estimate . . . and see how close these are. Some methods may be closer than others, for you personally, but it's also conceivable that no method will be close at all.
If it's the latter, your own data is sufficient to guide what you need to do, going forward. (I admit, in saying this, I'm expecting you to take seriously the idea that calories are body energy in the same way that gasoline is most cars' energy, and that there'll be a relationship between energy input and energy output. But I'm saying you could be right, and that you burn gas like a Prius, super thrifty at 50-some mpg, not like a 1970 Ford Impala's 15mpg . . .er, calories, not gas .)
After a few weeks of careful, honest logging, you will have actionable data you can use. If you choose to, and only if you can buy into that basic idea that energy isn't magically created or destroyed, i.e., 1st law of thermodynamics.
First, thank you for your INCREDIBLY long and kind post.
Although I am aware that calorie burn (and for that matter the calories stated in food) is an estimate, explaining the underlying reason why they may be inaccurate AND WHY the companies cannot account for it is very helpful.
One comment / question I would have was that I wear my fit bit all the time, so it does gather my resting heart rate at night. I assume that it plugged into these calculations to give a more accurate calorie burn?
Since you seem to be receptive, I'll take a shot at this question and some other later comments. Here again, you're just hearing my experience and opinions, based on what I've read (that I may or may not be able to find a link for ) and what I've done/experienced.
Yes, some (most?) activity trackers measure resting heart rate (although I scratch my head a little bit about what its basis is, because it isn't the lowest HR of my day, or even the lowest waking HR, but that's another side issue - I need to read some more tech docs on this stuff, if I can find the motivation ).
Yes, I expect they will use that in the calorie estimation models. So, that's good. But if the HRmax is wrong, then the results are still likely to be inaccurate, just not quite as inaccurate if resting HR was also estimated by some not-very-universally-accurate formula. If HRmax is higher than age formulas predict, think about the result: The device may think you're working out at maximum intensity, when you're barely breaking a sweat.
Now, sweat (or whatever) is not the true measure of workout intensity, either, but dig past that to try to understand what I'm trying to say. I'll use a personal example. I'm old, so 220-age is 156. If I'm in spin class (someplace I would be sometimes when not in lockdown ), it's pretty common for me to see a heart rate of 146. If the device is relying on an age-based estimate (and we assume it's specifically using 220-age, though there are others), it will think I'm redlining at about 90% of my HRmax (by heart rate reserve, the method that takes resting rate into account). Zowie! I suspect it's going to make some significant assumptions about calorie burn.
Thing is, my actual tested HRmax is around 181 (like I said before, it's not about fitness, it's mostly genetics - resting rate tned to drop with fitness improvement; max doesn't, though I've seen some data suggesting it declines more slowly with age among people who are very active). So, when I'm chugging along at 146 in spin class, I'm not redlining at all. I'm just nicely into the aerobic zone, around 72-73%. Presumably, that's going to look like a lot different intensity, and would affect ability to generate a more realistic calorie estimate.
(As an aside, I'm going to say that my gym's bikes don't have power meters, so don't measure watts, thus can't transmit watts to the Garmin. If you don't know why I'd bother to point that out, then please ignore it.)
FWIW, my device does know and use my actual HRmax, so it doesn't give me absurd calorie burns for workouts. I still take them with a grain of salt, because they're still estimates, but for types of workouts for which HR is a reasonable estimating basis, I'll consider it good enough for government work. Trouble is, most people don't know their tested max (and the max from a cardiac stress test, one for evaluating heart health, is probably not a reliable substitute - they stopped mine before I even got to age-estimated max, even though I still had enough breath to argue with them about that ).
There's a lot of confusion in the world generated by people's belief that fitness trackers measure things they don't, so are precise and accurate in calculating things they can only estimate. They work well for most people, but they're not magic oracles for all.I also believe in Thermodynamics. Which was why I was searching for other reasons for my failure to lose weight than assuming that I was a physics freak and should be immediately studied... for SCIENCE!
The thing is that the calories in, calories out equation ASSUMES that our bodies use food in exactly the same ways. But we know that's not the case. People with hypoglycemia have a reaction to sugar that excretes too much insulin and that shuttles the sugars etc into fat storage. People with diabetes have too little insulin and so can lose weiught because the insulin isn't shuttling sugars, and proteins into the right places. Like muscles, glycogen, and indeed fat storage.
I see almost no one acknowledge that. The closest is the fad diets (or lifestyle eating) like Paleo, keto, meat only diets. Many of which have no expectation to stay on.
I think you're looking at the CICO balance differently than I do. Please understand that I'm making a distinction between CICO (the balance, or equation, which is basically just a restatement of the laws of thermodynamics taken to the special case of weight management), vs. calorie counting, the set of processes some people use for weight management or to "diet". There are different methodologies for calorie counting as a weight management tool; the CICO balance is a more basic idea.
To a certain extent, calorie counting methodologies do assume that all humans have similar bodies. Statistically, all humans do. So, it's a valid statistical assumption. But there can be outliers.
For discussion purposes, think about marrying those two concepts, calorie counting and the CICO balance, in this way: You eat some stuff. That is not, strictly speaking, CI. For most people, and most foods, it's a reasonable approximation of it. "Real" CI, in this way of thinking, is what your body absorbs for use. If a person has a malabsorption disorder, for example, some of the calories/nutrients just pass through their body. You can think of that as never having been CI, or you can think of it as a weird kind of CO, but either way, it's not part of the calorie balance for that person. What matters is the usable calories they absorb, right?
It can happen with specific foods, maybe, too. There are research rumors ( ) that people generally don't absorb all the calories that are in some nuts, for example. We're putting them in our food diary, but if they're not absorbed, they don't really fully count as CI. Now, most people don't eat enough nuts to make this a huge factor, in an arithmetic sense. But, there are cases like that, that make calorie counting inexact, but don't demolish CICO. It's just the the true CI and CO are a bit subtler than the estimates.
Further, let's talk about TEF (thermic efficiency of food). Some people will tell you that CICO doesn't work, because protein has a higher TEF (takes more energy to metabolize protein vs. some other macros). But what's really going on is that the calorie "cost" of metabolizing the protein is technically part of CO. (You'll find that most full-detail research models represent TEF separately from exercise, BMR/RMR and other forms of energy output.) There's ongoing research about the TEF of various foods, and some research hints that "whole foods" may have a little higher TEF than highly processed foods.
The thing is, for people with normal well-rounded eating patterns (I.e. decent nutrition), TEF is a relatively small factor, arithmetically speaking. It is a reason why calorie counting (the methodology) is estimated and approximate, but it is not a disproving of CICO, because those calories are accounted for in the models. It's just that we don't have a way to count them with precision.
Another practical thing is that some people (seemingly) feel like they need to punish themselves for overeating, or perhaps that it's paramount that they lose years of weight gain right now, if not yesterday, so they hugely undereat, and maybe lay some kind of ultra-intense exercise program on top of that to burn even more calories doing HIIT and heavy lifting, or some other trend of the moment. They ought to burn massive numbers of calories, and lose lots of weight, theoretically. But what can happen is that they exhaust themselves, and move less, rest more (outside of exercise hours), maybe even sleep more. So, they don't lose weight as fast as they expect. To them, this is a failure of calorie counting. I guess one could think of it that way, but it's really just CICO working. Their CO has dropped in ways they don't notice or account for. (I think I mentioned that mere fidgeting can burn up to a few hundred calories a day. Exhausted people don't fidget, among other things.)
What I'm getting at, here, is that CICO is pretty much just physics, but calorie counting (any of the multiple methodologies that try to track CI and CO) is necessarily a game of estimation and (initially, at least) experimentation. Bodies are complicated, and that can mean people struggle with applying calorie counting methodologies skillfully and insightfully, but it doesn't mean "CICO doesn't work". CICO is just the thermodynamics. It works.
With respect to the insulin issue: I think it will just be simplest to say that I disagree with how you present this, and say I suspect that you believe some things that I don't, that are things often proposed by some popular writers on the subject. When I say "don't believe", I'm not saying "article of pure faith", I'm saying I think the research I've read and the experts I believe are not the same as what you've read and who you believe. I'm not going to try to convince you, I'm just going to acknowledge that, and explain my belief.
In a metabolically normal person (i.e., let's not get into diabetes or other disease states), I believe that insulin plays an important role in fat storage, among other important things. But, IMU, fat storage is not happening in a calorie deficit. At least until a person is in the throes of true starvation (and maybe even then, it just gets complicated), calories eaten (and absorbed) in a deficit get turned into CO. The deficit comes from somewhere, and under sensible circumstances (having to do with nutrition and not trying for excessively aggressive loss), the majority of the deficit is made up by burning stored fat.
When not in a deficit, the body (IMU) prefers to burn calorie intake first, and in a calorie surplus (in a person on a balanced diet, because I don't want to veer off into keto) will generally burn carb intake preferentially, and store fat intake preferentially, because that's the efficient thing that natural selection has helped us to do through millennia of food scarcity (unlike our current abundance).
Burnable energy is essentially carb-y/sugar-y stuff (glycogen and friends). Stored fat is essentially fat. The model you're suggesting is that eating carbs, even in a deficit, will encourage the body to jump through biochemical hoops to convert the carbs into fat it can store, while . . . I guess? . . . simultaneously biochemically jumping through other hoops to convert the fat into the kind of stuff the body can actually directly utilize? That doesn't make sense to me.
If one goes too far down that road, especially in the deficit scenario, it seems like saying that your body is going to store carbs as fat even when it could burn carbs or fat to make up the deficit. So, if CO is consistent, where is the fuel to power CO coming from? Protein? Converting stored protein (muscles) to burnable form is a thing bodies really prefer not to do, for obvious reasons.Why remove an entire macronutrient group (carbs) if your body DOESN'T treat the parts of food differently.
If my body is incredibly efficient and can break down food into energy at a better rate than others, then I will have to eat less. None of the calories plans account for that, or seem to allow for that possibility.
Personally, I wouldn't (and don't) remove an entire macronutrient group, because IMO and for me it isn't necessary. (I ate around 150g of carbs most days while losing, around 200g+ now, in maintenance). Diabetics (or the insulin resistant) may do better on lower carbs in some ways, or at least need to lower carbs to avoid danger, but that's a disease state.
If you're asking why people remove carbs when not diabetic or IR (or other relevant health condition), I think the answer likely falls into one of two general regions:
1. Some people do it because they find their appetite or cravings are better controlled at lower carb levels, so sustaining a calorie deficit becomes easier. In a way, that's not different from someone who finds it easier to sustain a calorie deficit from eating lots of high-fiber veggies, or a higher-fat diet, or whatever. Satiation seems to be pretty individual, and folks can experiment to find their sweet spot for satiation. Occasionally, people report better energy or more clear-headedness or something when eating lower carb, and there's no reason they shouldn't pursue it. (I don't even care whether it's placebo effect or not; placebos that work, but don't hurt you, are a fine thing. And it may be a true physical effect; if so, the range of self-reports suggest that it's not universal.)
2. At worst, they do it for roughly the same reason that some people cut out "all white foods" or "all junk food" or some other whole category that may be irrelevant: They've read somewhere that that's what they need to do, they've had a friend who did that and bragged about great results, or something like that. They may still succeed at weight loss, because cutting out stuff (especially stuff we like, and tend to overeat), tends to reduce calories, and reducing calories sufficiently far leads to weight loss.Surely if you were able to guarantee that you were logging as accurately as you could, and using the standards fitness models for calorie burn, and you keep doing that. And see how your weight goes. (But also presumably take many other measurements to establish if it's muscle or fat going....)
Then you see the predicted slope of weightloss, vs the actual slope of weightloss. And it should be ridiculously easy at that point to make one change (say change how much you eat) for a few weeks, probably a month, and compare again. Your estimated energy expenditure would keep using all the same equations so even if your exercise changed, it SHOULDN'T (touch wood) count as a second variable.
I don't recall seeing ANYTHING like that ANYWHERE...
Note that I am not advocating counting calories for all our lives. That's no way to live.
But in order to discover how OUR bodies are reacting to calories etc, we need to do the experiment...
I have never seen anyone suggest it. Until now really. I don't know if that was your intent, but that's pretty much exactly what you are saying you did...
That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to say, if I understand you correctly. And I think it's what various other people in this thread have been trying to say, too.
That is how calorie counting is really supposed to work, as a weight management method. Calorie counting, in its various variants, is all about estimates, and about using those estimates to get results, just like it was a science fair project.
The calorie "calculators" or your fitness tracker give you a calorie output estimate. You make your inputs to that calculation (age, weight, activity level, all that jazz) as accurate as you can, without overthinking.
You (or the "calculator") knock off a few hundred calories from that to create a calorie deficit. (It's still a theoretical deficit at this point, because it's based on average results from studying average people. You're an individual, not an average.)
You log your eating, as accurately as you can manage (i.e., be practical, but conscientious, use best practices, etc.). There are some inherent complications in this that make that food intake estimate somewhat imprecise, but it's going to be close enough to go on to the next steps, if those best practices are followed.
If your method for estimating calorie output didn't include intentional exercise (as with the MFP-provided goals), you estimate that separately and reasonably, add it in, and eat back some/all of it, too. This is another estimate, of course, and can introduce errors, but that still doesn't matter, because we're all about estimates and theories, still.
OK, so at this point, you have a hypothesis, and some hypothesis-testing methods (which are approximations, but close enough to be useful).
And you run the experiment. For a month to 6 weeks (men and women not in childbearing/menstruating years may be able to get away with less time), you follow that calorie goal, and log estimated intake, output, and scale weight. You strive to stay pretty consistent about meeting the goals, doing a regular exercise routine (if any), just to keep the data less noisy.
At the end of that time, if the first week or two look really whacky compared to the later weeks, you throw out the whacky weeks and just look at the later ones (because sometimes water weight is weird in the initial stages of a new way of eating, especially if exercise has changed too, and who cares about water - we care about fat).
Based on the non-whacky weeks (which should include a full menstrual cycle for premenopausal adult women, something I believe you aren't), you then calculate an average weight loss you've achieved per week.
If this loss is too slow (or is a gain, even), you adjust your calorie goal downward using the 3500 cumulative calories = a pound estimate (for example, to lose a pound more per week, eat 500 fewer calories per day). Make sure the loss rate is sensible for your current size, because being too aggressive can mess with your energy level and give you worse than expected results (not zero results, but missing the sweet spot). If the average loss is too fast (health risk!), adjust calorie goal upward.
Run the experiment again. You'll quickly figure out your typical calorie needs, in personalized form, in a limited number of repeat cycles.
Throughout, you're working with estimates. To some extent, the law of (semi-)large numbers helps you out: When you do a lot of reasonably accurate, careful estimates, the overestimates and underestimates balance each other out, to a certain extent. If your exercise routine is fairly consistent, and your eating is fairly consistent, you don't have to obsess about which one is the source of experimental error. You can just adjust the intake side to reach the point where you have a better estimate of what raw CI (count in your diary) you need to achieve a certain weight management outcome.
That's calorie counting for weight management, as practiced. Most people don't focus on the experimental side, because most people (heh) are close to average, so the estimates work well for them. If they don't work as well for you, you need to be more conscious about the experimental piece.
That's pretty much how most of the old hands here will recommend you to go about it, though: Set up your profile, believe the goals as a starting point, log carefully, adjust if necessary after 4-6 weeks. If you don't get the results you expect at first, the accepted methodology is not "keep beating your head against a wall" (let alone "give up" ). It's "double check your methods for any systematic flaws, then adjust your intake to affect your results".
Now, beyond that, you seem to care about not losing muscle. To the above, add this:
1. Get enough protein.
2. Do not try to lose weight aggressively fast.
3. Do something that challenges your muscles (optimally, a well-designed progressive strength training program, but lesser things may be adequate challenge to maintain muscle).
Those are the things that go the furthest to retain muscle while losing fat. As an aside, recognize that new strength training can also add some water retention at first, so it may take a bit of time for that to settle down and unmask fat loss that's been going on, but hidden behind it.
Now, a final quibble. To the thing I bolded in your text: Many people who've been successful with calorie counting here do move on to other methods, eventually.
But some of us - I'm one - keep logging and counting. For me, it's super easy at this point (been doing it for almost 5 years), takes only maybe 10 minutes a day. That's time well spent, for me, after 30+ years of obesity before this last 4+ at a healthy weight, with added benefits of knowing I'm keeping my nutrition on point, and letting me be confident and unworried about the occasional indulgences, because I know where I stand.
It's like having a financial budget: In the same way my financial budget gives me guidance about whether I can afford yet another new human-powered boat (or whatever ), my calorie and nutritional budget gives me clues about whether I can fit in those cheesy enchiladas with a side of guac and a big margarita, or I'd be better off sticking with the veggie fajitas, light sour cream, and iced tea, after my other "expenditures" recently.
You may not want to calorie count forever, and that's totally fine. But for some of us, it's not "no way to live", it's a way to live more healthfully and calmly.
Best wishes!
P.S. Apologies for the essay. Whoever taught me to touch type kinda created a monster. INCREDIBLY long is kinda what I do. Sorry! 5 -
Again, thank you for an incredible amount of words, and I appreciate the time this took you.
To address your last comment, no it's totally fine. I demanded (totally the right word) ideas and some level of evidence and new thoughts. You have kindly taken the time.
There are outliers, but calling them outliers is diengenous because they are pretty common.I also believe in Thermodynamics. Which was why I was searching for other reasons for my failure to lose weight than assuming that I was a physics freak and should be immediately studied... for SCIENCE!
The thing is that the calories in, calories out equation ASSUMES that our bodies use food in exactly the same ways. But we know that's not the case. People with hypoglycemia have a reaction to sugar that excretes too much insulin and that shuttles the sugars etc into fat storage. People with diabetes have too little insulin and so can lose weiught because the insulin isn't shuttling sugars, and proteins into the right places. Like muscles, glycogen, and indeed fat storage.
I see almost no one acknowledge that. The closest is the fad diets (or lifestyle eating) like Paleo, keto, meat only diets. Many of which have no expectation to stay on.
I think you're looking at the CICO balance differently than I do. Please understand that I'm making a distinction between CICO (the balance, or equation, which is basically just a restatement of the laws of thermodynamics taken to the special case of weight management), vs. calorie counting, the set of processes some people use for weight management or to "diet". There are different methodologies for calorie counting as a weight management tool; the CICO balance is a more basic idea.
To a certain extent, calorie counting methodologies do assume that all humans have similar bodies. Statistically, all humans do. So, it's a valid statistical assumption. But there can be outliers.
I have two friends who roomed together and ate the same meals. One ate more than the other and was thin and maintained or lost weight, the other was a bit chubby and gained weight.
This is 100% anecdotal in that there were no controls, no proper observations.
What isn't anecdotal is that the thin friend was diagnosed later with a condition that meant he didn't digest all his food properly.
Now that's a medical condition and so you may be right in dismissing it out of the box. But there are many people, even within the same family, who have significant differences in their weight, with the same environment. We all know the hard gainer, or the hard loser (as it were.)
You go on to discuss of course some ideas that are pretty much exactly what my concern is.
The calorie values in food are NOT the values that our bodies use. They are the values from an ash test. The food is literally burned and the carbon dioxide given off is measured. (IIRC). That's 100% caloric use.
Say the average person uses 60% of the caloric value of food. This would be the effective number that all these equations use. If my body happens to be able to utilise 75% of the caloric value of food, then I would need to eat, I think, 20% less calories for the same result.
As you say in other parts, it then comes down to the testing and experimental stage. Absolutely.
BUT, no one provides the tools to show the theoretical graph line, compared to your actual graph line. We can see our weight in MFP, and the track over time.
But there is NOT (unless I missed it) a graph showing the theoretical weight loss given what we have entered in.
That would be an extremely simple and graphic way of demonstrating how you are doing in reality, against the theoretical. And would allow adjustment pretty easily.
But i have never seen that suggested. I know that people say weigh yourself and see how you are doing. But there is nothing to compare that current, real number to.
Having a theoretical weightloss would be a doddle for any of these programs that we enter in food and exercise.
Buuuut, it does often do exactly that. Or at least, remove glucose from our bodies at a rate that drops our blood sugar below the level our brains like and so we feel hungry again.<SNIP>
When not in a deficit, the body (IMU) prefers to burn calorie intake first, and in a calorie surplus (in a person on a balanced diet, because I don't want to veer off into keto) will generally burn carb intake preferentially, and store fat intake preferentially, because that's the efficient thing that natural selection has helped us to do through millennia of food scarcity (unlike our current abundance).
Burnable energy is essentially carb-y/sugar-y stuff (glycogen and friends). Stored fat is essentially fat. The model you're suggesting is that eating carbs, even in a deficit, will encourage the body to jump through biochemical hoops to convert the carbs into fat it can store, while . . . I guess? . . . simultaneously biochemically jumping through other hoops to convert the fat into the kind of stuff the body can actually directly utilize? That doesn't make sense to me.
It's the classic high carb energy dip.
And our brain is the most demanding organ in our body and will protect itself like billy oh from lack of glucose. If the brain can't stop that dip from happening in healthy people, and even less so in hypoglycemics then why isn't this a scenario that absolutely happens.
I used cagey language above because the glucose could be shuttled to glycogen storage in muscles or liver and probably is before it goes to fat storage.
But my point about hypoglycaemia or indeed diabetes wasn't to say that this is is a reasonable mechanism to explain much, but that it was simply an example where it does have a different effect, and the parts of food are not treated the same by the body.Surely if you were able to guarantee that you were logging as accurately as you could, and using the standards fitness models for calorie burn, and you keep doing that. And see how your weight goes. (But also presumably take many other measurements to establish if it's muscle or fat going....)
Then you see the predicted slope of weightloss, vs the actual slope of weightloss. And it should be ridiculously easy at that point to make one change (say change how much you eat) for a few weeks, probably a month, and compare again. Your estimated energy expenditure would keep using all the same equations so even if your exercise changed, it SHOULDN'T (touch wood) count as a second variable.
I don't recall seeing ANYTHING like that ANYWHERE...
<snip>
But in order to discover how OUR bodies are reacting to calories etc, we need to do the experiment...
I have never seen anyone suggest it. Until now really. I don't know if that was your intent, but that's pretty much exactly what you are saying you did...That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to say, if I understand you correctly. And I think it's what various other people in this thread have been trying to say, too.
Maybe? But like everyone else it's all been couched in fuzzy vague language. "Count everything, then see how your weight is doing". Without a comparison point, that's actually a useless statement. I mean, I made that statement to make a point, so it's very much a straw man. But I don't see anything more helpful being suggested.
We KNOW MFP can do these calculations instantly because when you complete a day of meals it says "If you kept on this path, you would be XXXkg By April 30th" or similar.
But it just does that ONCE. It doesn't graph it for you. It doesn't do a running average or a best fit line for your theoretical weight loss based on your last two weeks of measurments. Unless I've missed it...
This now seems very obvious to me to have...
1 -
norman_cates wrote: »Again, thank you for an incredible amount of words, and I appreciate the time this took you.
To address your last comment, no it's totally fine. I demanded (totally the right word) ideas and some level of evidence and new thoughts. You have kindly taken the time.
There are outliers, but calling them outliers is diengenous because they are pretty common.I also believe in Thermodynamics. Which was why I was searching for other reasons for my failure to lose weight than assuming that I was a physics freak and should be immediately studied... for SCIENCE!
The thing is that the calories in, calories out equation ASSUMES that our bodies use food in exactly the same ways. But we know that's not the case. People with hypoglycemia have a reaction to sugar that excretes too much insulin and that shuttles the sugars etc into fat storage. People with diabetes have too little insulin and so can lose weiught because the insulin isn't shuttling sugars, and proteins into the right places. Like muscles, glycogen, and indeed fat storage.
I see almost no one acknowledge that. The closest is the fad diets (or lifestyle eating) like Paleo, keto, meat only diets. Many of which have no expectation to stay on.
I think you're looking at the CICO balance differently than I do. Please understand that I'm making a distinction between CICO (the balance, or equation, which is basically just a restatement of the laws of thermodynamics taken to the special case of weight management), vs. calorie counting, the set of processes some people use for weight management or to "diet". There are different methodologies for calorie counting as a weight management tool; the CICO balance is a more basic idea.
To a certain extent, calorie counting methodologies do assume that all humans have similar bodies. Statistically, all humans do. So, it's a valid statistical assumption. But there can be outliers.
No, they really aren't all that common, statistically speaking. Did you read the Examine.com article I linked earlier, about metabolic differences, with research links in support? Most people are close to the mean.
I don't have cites for you, but you can find well-controlled studies (metabolic chamber, i.e. people are literally confined for a (admittedly short) period of days, fed controlled amounts of measured food, and their every burned calorie scientifically measured - not estimated, measured). Those studies support the idea that most people fall within a fairly narrow band of calorie intake/expenditure response (with consideration explicitly given to small-percentage factors like TEF). Those kinds of gold-standard studies are uncommon and short, because they're incredibly expensive (potential research subjects don't want to spend long periods alone in metabolic chambers, equipment for monitoring is very rare/costly, etc.).
The studies that support other conclusions tend to be based on longer studies (length is good), with activity and intake self-reported (self reporting isn't good). I'm not saying people lie (though some probably do), but am saying that there's ample evidence that such free-living studies are affected by a near-universal tendency to underestimate intake, and overestimate activity. (You can find careful studies indicating that even Registered Dietitians - professionals! - underestimate their intake.)
Further, there are some excellent case studies of people who believe themselves to have a "slow metabolism", and when tested with careful food monitoring and/or doubly-labeled water tests, it's found that their metabolism is perfectly normal, it's that they're more or less in denial about what consititutes normal habits - i.e., they're overeating, and don't realize it.
Here's one, I'm sure you can find more.
https://youtu.be/KA9AdlhB18o
If you want to go way, way into this carbs vs. calories or "CICO/calorie-counting is wrong" rabbit hole, there are multiple threads over in the Debate part of the forum where you'll find well-reasoned posts on both side of the argument (plus a little snark for seasoning ), including more research study cites than you can shake a stick at. The good threads tend to be long, diffuse, and somewhat repetitive, but sometimes when we want to learn things, time investment is something that needs to happen, y'know? Insight isn't necessarily delivered in perfectly-tailored bite-sized bits! I have two friends who roomed together and ate the same meals. One ate more than the other and was thin and maintained or lost weight, the other was a bit chubby and gained weight.
This is 100% anecdotal in that there were no controls, no proper observations.
What isn't anecdotal is that the thin friend was diagnosed later with a condition that meant he didn't digest all his food properly.
Now that's a medical condition and so you may be right in dismissing it out of the box. But there are many people, even within the same family, who have significant differences in their weight, with the same environment. We all know the hard gainer, or the hard loser (as it were.)
You go on to discuss of course some ideas that are pretty much exactly what my concern is.
The calorie values in food are NOT the values that our bodies use. They are the values from an ash test. The food is literally burned and the carbon dioxide given off is measured. (IIRC). That's 100% caloric use.
Say the average person uses 60% of the caloric value of food. This would be the effective number that all these equations use. If my body happens to be able to utilise 75% of the caloric value of food, then I would need to eat, I think, 20% less calories for the same result.
As you say in other parts, it then comes down to the testing and experimental stage. Absolutely.
Yes, the calorimeter values are not fully accurate for what is absorbed, even by the average human. However, my point is that they're close enough to be useful, especially in a context where a person is capable of realizing that the calorie-needs calculators and exercise/activity estimates are estimates/approximations that need to be tested.
Also: 60% is not the number, in an overall sense, in a healthy body. Even in almonds, regarded as an extreme case, it's not that big (estimate is around 75-80% absorbed, I believe). Overall, it's numerically small. Further, it doesn't matter, unless you radically alter your diet day to day. Whatever you absorb, your little personal experiment will tell you the relationship between those "bogus" theoretical calories in, and your personal weight loss/gain rate, in a way that's close enough to be effective, for your actual average way of eating over a period of weeks.
It's possible to spend a bunch of intellectual energy arguing why something can't work because of these arithmetically relatively small discrepancies, when a better investment might be spending that cognitive bandwidth on figuring out how to make it work despite them. Because it does work, for large numbers of people. Go read the personally-written case studies in the "Success Stories" part of the forum.BUT, no one provides the tools to show the theoretical graph line, compared to your actual graph line. We can see our weight in MFP, and the track over time.
But there is NOT (unless I missed it) a graph showing the theoretical weight loss given what we have entered in.
That would be an extremely simple and graphic way of demonstrating how you are doing in reality, against the theoretical. And would allow adjustment pretty easily.
But i have never seen that suggested. I know that people say weigh yourself and see how you are doing. But there is nothing to compare that current, real number to.
Having a theoretical weightloss would be a doddle for any of these programs that we enter in food and exercise.
It's also easy to create your own spreadsheet to do that, with even pretty basic spreadsheeting skills. Moreover, there are people here who've created such spreadsheets for themselves, and are willing to share their knowledge. (I could name some, but I think you'll find them quite easily with the search function here.)
Moreover, there are free weight trending apps (Happy Scale for iOS, Libra for Android, Trendweight with a free Fitbit account, Weightgrapher, others) that do statistical projections from scale-weight values you input (daily weights under consistent conditions yields best results). These, too, are not magical oracles, but can be very useful tools for most anyone, and even moreso to someone with a basic understanding of statistics. They're kind of simplistic (usually some flavor of weighted average), but go well beyond what MFP's simple weight graph offers. (I use Libra, and have for several years.)
I think those apps are doing some of what you're describing as not existing, although your description is really not all that clear to me, frankly. Maybe try getting one of those apps, using it for a while, and see if it helps you.
As a generality, they work entirely off scale-weight observations. One uses them in a context where one knows one's calorie intake, and therefore can correlate the two datasets, either intuitively (what I do, because that works well enough for me) or with simple spreadsheets (I believe some here do this).
By the way, most of us regard that MFP "5 weeks" projection as possibly motivating for some, but as imaginative nonsense when it comes to actual predictive power for most people. I could go into why (and it isn't "calorie counting doesn't work"), but I have to admit that even power-typist me is getting a little bit tired typing stuff that's common knowledge around here, and for which relevant discussion is quite easy to find in other parts of the forums.
Buuuut, it does often do exactly that. Or at least, remove glucose from our bodies at a rate that drops our blood sugar below the level our brains like and so we feel hungry again.<SNIP>
When not in a deficit, the body (IMU) prefers to burn calorie intake first, and in a calorie surplus (in a person on a balanced diet, because I don't want to veer off into keto) will generally burn carb intake preferentially, and store fat intake preferentially, because that's the efficient thing that natural selection has helped us to do through millennia of food scarcity (unlike our current abundance).
Burnable energy is essentially carb-y/sugar-y stuff (glycogen and friends). Stored fat is essentially fat. The model you're suggesting is that eating carbs, even in a deficit, will encourage the body to jump through biochemical hoops to convert the carbs into fat it can store, while . . . I guess? . . . simultaneously biochemically jumping through other hoops to convert the fat into the kind of stuff the body can actually directly utilize? That doesn't make sense to me.
It's the classic high carb energy dip.
And our brain is the most demanding organ in our body and will protect itself like billy oh from lack of glucose. If the brain can't stop that dip from happening in healthy people, and even less so in hypoglycemics then why isn't this a scenario that absolutely happens.
I used cagey language above because the glucose could be shuttled to glycogen storage in muscles or liver and probably is before it goes to fat storage.
But my point about hypoglycaemia or indeed diabetes wasn't to say that this is is a reasonable mechanism to explain much, but that it was simply an example where it does have a different effect, and the parts of food are not treated the same by the body.Surely if you were able to guarantee that you were logging as accurately as you could, and using the standards fitness models for calorie burn, and you keep doing that. And see how your weight goes. (But also presumably take many other measurements to establish if it's muscle or fat going....)
Then you see the predicted slope of weightloss, vs the actual slope of weightloss. And it should be ridiculously easy at that point to make one change (say change how much you eat) for a few weeks, probably a month, and compare again. Your estimated energy expenditure would keep using all the same equations so even if your exercise changed, it SHOULDN'T (touch wood) count as a second variable.
I don't recall seeing ANYTHING like that ANYWHERE...
<snip>
But in order to discover how OUR bodies are reacting to calories etc, we need to do the experiment...
I have never seen anyone suggest it. Until now really. I don't know if that was your intent, but that's pretty much exactly what you are saying you did...That's EXACTLY what I'm trying to say, if I understand you correctly. And I think it's what various other people in this thread have been trying to say, too.
Maybe? But like everyone else it's all been couched in fuzzy vague language. "Count everything, then see how your weight is doing". Without a comparison point, that's actually a useless statement. I mean, I made that statement to make a point, so it's very much a straw man. But I don't see anything more helpful being suggested.
We KNOW MFP can do these calculations instantly because when you complete a day of meals it says "If you kept on this path, you would be XXXkg By April 30th" or similar.
But it just does that ONCE. It doesn't graph it for you. It doesn't do a running average or a best fit line for your theoretical weight loss based on your last two weeks of measurments. Unless I've missed it...
This now seems very obvious to me to have...
Well, if there's a classic "carb dip" and brain weirdness as a consequence (which I could dispute, but I'm getting tired), while you're calorie counting quite meticulously . . . then you know how much extra you ate, and can factor that into your personalized calorie-estimating practice, and you will still get reasonably valid data out. Or, you can observe that you're one of the people whose cravings/appetite become uncontrollable with higher carbs, and tailor your eating to control for that. Logging can be kind of cool, that way, even if only done for a few weeks to gain insights.
(That carb/sugar thing is not an affect, for me, generally. For me, my 200g+ of daily carbs, and typically 60g+ of sugars and often more (most inherent sugars BTW, not added) don't cause uncontrollable cravings or increase my appetite, and don't push good well-rounded nutrition out of my calorie-appropriate eating, so I literally don't worry about them, personally. I'm not saying that's true for everyone, but it's true for me, from 4+ years of experience logging maintenance eating (I was BMI 21-point-something this morning, usually run BMI 21/22); and I know it's true of other people here (because I believe what they say, and in some cases, I can look at a long time-slice of their diaries, and see what they eat). Of course, there are ways I could theoretically eat like a total freakin' idiot, emphasizing things that are calorie-dense but not satiating for me, and over-eat, but there are lots of nutrient-dense, satiating things I truly enjoy eating, so why in the heck would I do that?)
So, if I understand you correctly, you don't care for others' communication abilities, because they're not addressing your needs as well as you'd prefer. There have been people who responded to you (such as Rhedd) whom I've seen around here for a long time, and I suspect I have a general idea of how a lot of the MFP old hands think about this. The process I outlined is the standard, recommended process by experienced people writing in the forums, one that many people, people who've succeeded at this, will try to communicate . . . however imperfectly.
The thing is, we get super tired and burned out from arguing with people who have gone off someplace and "read all the books" or "looked at dozens of web sites" and think they understand the methods of calorie counting (and its CICO underpinnings) better than we do. (Might they be right? Sure. But that's not the point of this paragraph. This paragraph is about mutual empathy, kind of.)
So, burned out people tend to short-cut comments . . . especially in a context where some open-minded new folks do read advice, go off and read the "Most Helpful Posts" sections in "Getting Started" and "General Health, Fitness, and Diet", decide to give it a fair minded try, and succeed; and in a context where we not only see many people succeed over time, but even see some come back to post "I don't know why I bought into all that popular BS about why calorie counting and weight loss was bound to fail but I'm glad I decided to try it for myself anyway."
It may not work for everyone, but we know it can work for a lot of people who actually sincerely try to make it work. It's human to be more patient with people who are polite and generous back at us (or make the effort of pretending to be), rather than being critical of our pathetic efforts, y'know?
Over time, trying to be clear and specific in a personal, custom-written way for everyone who wants to argue . . . is really, really tiring. Some people give up and stop posting in the forums altogether, but often there's a period where they just give correct but less patiently-written advice. They're humans, contributing their time for not only zero return to them personally, but sometimes only to get criticism and even abuse by people who don't believe them, or don't understand them. It gets old.
You're not the only person who feels bitter and frustrated, nor are you the only person who's entitled to feel that way.
I have to admit, I'm getting a little burned out here, myself. I like to help people here, because the payoff has been so huge for me personally, but I'm sure you understand that this has been literally several hours of my time, trying to be clear and specific.
Please read the things I linked in my first post (including the linked footnotes, where not paywalled - and where paywalled, read the abstracts), and think about them, in an open-minded way. Read the "Most Helpful Posts" in the forum areas I suggested, in the same way. Look for posts here (there's a search function) about weight trending apps, or personal tracking spreadsheets, or other specific things of interest to you. If needed, ask some questions - also in an open-minded way - on specific points (vs. asking for grand philosophical arguments), in the forums, with thread titles that clearly indicate the nature of the specific information you're seeking. If you don't like a reply, maybe ask politely for clarification rather than telling people they're not being helpful, or are just wrong. Maybe even try to fairly paraphrase what they said, and ask if that's what they meant, or can clarify if they didn't. Treat people who reply as if they were actual people, spending time they don't need to spend, trying to help you . . . even if they're not succeeding at an A+ level to start with.
Or, if you don't want to do some of those kinds of things, that's OK. It's totally fine for you to run your experiment, and see what happens. (Though you may then insulate yourself from useful community insights about common sources of error, and therefore increase odds that you'll confirm your seeming incoming bias that "calorie counting doesn't work".) Or, you can short-cut that whole idea, and settle into your seeming premise that calorie counting can't work because reasons, and go on with whatever methodologies you like, that may work better for you.
That's your choice, your time, all totally fine.
Regardless, I wish you much success in your weight loss efforts, and in overall life!5
This discussion has been closed.
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