calories in calories out...are you sure?

brittneysegel

Ok so its making sense....thank you!

Im just still confused that even when I weigh and measure which im pretty addicted to my scale im losing only when my cards go down and calories are not touched. Hmmmm

Do you wear a heart rate monitor when you work out or do you just use MFP's estimate for calories burned? because if you are eating back some of your calories burned then that could maybe be it?

yarwell

I thought it was pretty accepted science that insulin sensitivity issues can change the metabolism of many (not all) carbs enough to cause weight gain? Is it not, really?

I'm sure there's a spectrum of opinions, Dr Jason Fung has series of videos that walk through this in a logical manner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpllomiDMX0

The two camps appear to me to be:-

Hormone controlled: high carbs = high insulin = drives fat into adipose tissue hence need to eat more to supply calorie burn while storing fat.

Calorie controlled: people eat too much relative to their calorie burn (for some reason) and then the excess is stored as fat.

The key difference seems to be that in the first case the people do what their bodies dictate - ie eat because hormones tell them too - and in the second case its greed and sloth with overeating relative to exercise and bodily needs.

yarwell

All I'm really trying to emphasize is that the caveat of medical exceptions probably includes more folks than know it.

Indeed. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/11/2427.long found that "The prevalence of insulin resistance in obese adolescents was 52.1% (95% CI 44.5–59.8)." and "Weight status was by far the most important determinant of insulin resistance, accounting for 29.1% of the variance in HOMA-IR." - so from that we can see that insulin issues are at least a 50/50 possibility in the young obese.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/12/3320 shows between 25 and 50% of adults with normal glucose metabolism to be insulin resistant.

Using data from the nurses helath study McAuley found that "A total of 75 (42%) people in our sample met the criteria for insulin resistance." http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/24/3/460.full

So when overweight and obese people ask for help perhaps the advice should cover those with insulin resistance issues, rather than simply providing caveats that dismiss potentially half the recipients.

mmapags

People with insulin issues are the people with insulin-issue weight gain...

That's backwards - people with weight-gain issues end up with insulin issues. You don't fix the weight issue by working on insulin, you fix the insulin issue by fixing the weight problem.

ding, ding! We have a winner!!

It probably sounds backwards because you think one or the other is true as if they were mutually exclusive.

OK, instead of giving another source that folks may or may not use for discussion, let me ask a simple question that isn't covered by genetics or being fat to start with. How about in normal-weight PCOS subjects? Where did the insulin sensitivity come from?

Or normal weight diabetics, of course, for that matter, although I can see that a genetic argument works better there, definitely.

Did you miss the part where I replied stating "Or genetic predisposition"? These folks are the exception not the rule. There are not many. There are some. Weight and specifically body fat % is the single most determinant factor in cases of insulin resistance in non genetically individuals. You are attempting to major in the minor. That is probably a discussion for another thread.

mmapags

All I'm really trying to emphasize is that the caveat of medical exceptions probably includes more folks than know it. The diagnosis of PCOS usually takes longer than it should, etc. More folks are going towards diabetes than know it. That sort of thing. It's not going to hurt to watch the high glycemic carbs, so that's always nice to know. There's not exactly a lot of risk involved if someone wants to try it

Well, firstly the whole high/ low glycemic idea is fairly useless for all but diabetics and others with a recognized medical syndrome. The reason being that carbs are generally not consumed in a vacuum over the course of a day in a reasonably well balanced diet. There is usually fats and proteins also being consumed and that changes the glycemic index of the carbs.

Secondly, it is the overconsumption of carbs, along with over-consumption overall that causes non-genetic insulin resistance issues. Essentially, taking in more energy that the body can process. I agree that it makes sense to watch the consumption of carbs.......and fats and protein. Be intelligent. Manage your total calories and your macronutrients. Do that and the likelihood you will not have insulin resistance issues short of a genetic one. That certainly hedges the risk. Overconsumption, in total and of any macronutrient is a bad idea.

cafeaulait7

All I'm really trying to emphasize is that the caveat of medical exceptions probably includes more folks than know it.

Indeed. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/11/2427.long found that "The prevalence of insulin resistance in obese adolescents was 52.1% (95% CI 44.5–59.8)." and "Weight status was by far the most important determinant of insulin resistance, accounting for 29.1% of the variance in HOMA-IR." - so from that we can see that insulin issues are at least a 50/50 possibility in the young obese.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/12/3320 shows between 25 and 50% of adults with normal glucose metabolism to be insulin resistant.

Using data from the nurses helath study McAuley found that "A total of 75 (42%) people in our sample met the criteria for insulin resistance." http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/24/3/460.full

So when overweight and obese people ask for help perhaps the advice should cover those with insulin resistance issues, rather than simply providing caveats that dismiss potentially half the recipients.

Excellent research citing. The quotes are so nice; I shouldn't be so lazy myself

It's a good discussion, y'all. I'm not ignoring the other posts and appreciate the discussion. My responses would just be re-covering what has already been discussed or cited, so I think we're good.

Edit: To be clear, maybe I need to overtly point out that PCOS isn't known to be genetic as far as I'm aware. But it is a medical condition (one of the most common gynecological conditions), so it just falls under that caveat. I agree with those who pointed that out.

Maggiedoll84

I understand the whole it's just water thing, but what about people who go "low carb" and they lose like 100 lbs.. is that 100 lbs of "just water" b/c I've seen people who eat high calories but low carbs and lose tons of weight. Although it's not what I am trying to do, the whole "it's just water thing" confuses the heck out of me!

No, 100 pounds certainly isn't water weight. But a lot of people will get onto a particular diet that causes them to let go of excess water weight, and it gives an "instant gratification" that feels like success from the beginning, which can certainly be helpful. (Side note: Remember that salt makes you retain water, too. So a lot of simply healthy diets will have a similar effect. Fresh foods don't have added salt, and most foods marketed as being healthy/diet friendly have lower sodium content than their "normal" counterparts.)

When you cut way down on sugars and starches, you end up eating more vegetables, proteins, and fats. All those things tend to be much more physically satisfying and take longer to digest than the carbs would. So usually even if you're not actually counting calories, you still end up eating fewer calories on a low-carb diet than you would have otherwise.
Usually when you start *any* diet you become more aware of what you're eating than you were before, so a lot of people see benefits from a healthy diet simply because of that. If you're overeating and you start considering the nutritional properties of what you're eating when you weren't before, you're probably going to start eating fewer calories. (There are certainly exceptions, particularly if there's a physiological and/or psychological problem.)

The whole "will alone" schtick is rarely the answer. A healthy diet doesn't leave your body starving. Perhaps it is for some people, but we have no way of knowing if it's healthy or not just because they've lost weight. Maintaining the willpower to just eat less if your *body* wants you to eat more tends to be connected to an eating disorder.
And "will" is incredibly hard to pin down and declare what can and can't be simply willed. I can stop the hiccups by concentrating properly on not hiccuping (and have never encountered any other hiccup cure that worked for me) but I certainly wouldn't declare that anybody who didn't have that particularly bizarre ability was simply weak-willed and needed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps or whatever the current line of choice is.

Stage14

All I'm really trying to emphasize is that the caveat of medical exceptions probably includes more folks than know it. The diagnosis of PCOS usually takes longer than it should, etc. More folks are going towards diabetes than know it. That sort of thing. It's not going to hurt to watch the high glycemic carbs, so that's always nice to know. There's not exactly a lot of risk involved if someone wants to try it

Actually, for most Type 2 diabetics, lowering their carbs doesn't mean eating on a "low carb" diet in the way we think of. My husband has a pretty severe case of T2, and his diet aims for under 150 carbs, which is only about 37 less than his MFP account initially told him not considering the diabetes. It is not nearly as severe as Atkins or South Beach. So, while I agree that there is nothing wrong with limiting certain types of carbs, that is not really the same thing as going on a specifically designed and marketed
low carb diet.

ladymiseryali

I found that once I lowered my carbs, the weight came off finally. So yea, for some people, it's about a calorie deficit AND adjusting one's macros.

Iwishyouwell

They will try and scream that I could eat a 3000 calories of poptarts and it'll have the same weight loss properties as 3000 calories of spinach and salmon.

I've been around here for a long time and read a lot of forum posts and threads and as far as I can tell, I never read where anyone made that statement. Ever. I'd check my reading comprehension if I were you.

Your childish rudeness aside...

Isn't a calorie a calorie? Not taking into account personal health and nutrition (which Jonny wisely mentioned), shouldn't I, according to the theory that all calories are equal, be able to eat 3000 kcal in poptarts and lose the exact same amount if I ate that same 3k in salmon and spinach? Which was entirely the crux of my point, since this thread is questioning whether "calories in calories out" encompasses the totality of weight loss (note: not nutrition or overall health).

jonnythan

They will try and scream that I could eat a 3000 calories of poptarts and it'll have the same weight loss properties as 3000 calories of spinach and salmon.

I've been around here for a long time and read a lot of forum posts and threads and as far as I can tell, I never read where anyone made that statement. Ever. I'd check my reading comprehension if I were you.

Your childish rudeness aside...

Isn't a calorie a calorie? Not taking into account personal health and nutrition (which Jonny wisely mentioned), shouldn't I, according to the theory that all calories are equal, be able to eat 3000 kcal in poptarts and lose the exact same amount if I ate that same 3k in salmon and spinach? Which was entirely the crux of my point, since this thread is questioning whether "calories in calories out" encompasses the totality of weight loss (note: not nutrition or overall health).

For weight loss 3000 calories is 3000 calories.

Weight is not all that matters. No one says it is.

darkangel45422

Actually, carbs ARE important. The OP has specifically stated that, everything else being the same, weight only was lost when carbs were cut. Isn't it more likely that carbs matter than that the OP was doing something else differently when the OP has specifically stated all else was the same?

Carbs are nothing but energy; unlike protein and fat, which are used for other purposes within the body as well, carbs do nothing but fuel us. And they're entirely unnecessary since you can use fat as fuel (thus why our bodies store excess glucose as fat). I believe only the brain needs actual glucose (or ketones if you're in ketosis), and the liver can produce pretty much whatever your body actually needs. So it makes perfect sense that if you're eating fewer carbs you'd be more likely to lose weight than with more carbs since your body would resort to using fat cells for fuel rather than the glucose swimming in your blood from the carbs.

Not saying you need to cut carbs to lose weight; obviously people have had success eating carbs and tons of them. But there's a lot of information showing that not all calories are made the same; it's NOT just calories in calories out.

mmapags

They will try and scream that I could eat a 3000 calories of poptarts and it'll have the same weight loss properties as 3000 calories of spinach and salmon.

I've been around here for a long time and read a lot of forum posts and threads and as far as I can tell, I never read where anyone made that statement. Ever. I'd check my reading comprehension if I were you.

Your childish rudeness aside...

Isn't a calorie a calorie? Not taking into account personal health and nutrition (which Jonny wisely mentioned), shouldn't I, according to the theory that all calories are equal, be able to eat 3000 kcal in poptarts and lose the exact same amount if I ate that same 3k in salmon and spinach? Which was entirely the crux of my point, since this thread is questioning whether "calories in calories out" encompasses the totality of weight loss (note: not nutrition or overall health).

For weight loss 3000 calories is 3000 calories.

Weight is not all that matters. No one says it is.

Further proof that this poster may want to consider working on reading comprehension.

Mr_Knight

The OP has specifically stated that, everything else being the same, weight only was lost when carbs were cut.

If "everything else" was the same, that means the OP cut calories.

Hence no mystery on subsequent weight loss.

Iwishyouwell

They will try and scream that I could eat a 3000 calories of poptarts and it'll have the same weight loss properties as 3000 calories of spinach and salmon.

I've been around here for a long time and read a lot of forum posts and threads and as far as I can tell, I never read where anyone made that statement. Ever. I'd check my reading comprehension if I were you.

Your childish rudeness aside...

Isn't a calorie a calorie? Not taking into account personal health and nutrition (which Jonny wisely mentioned), shouldn't I, according to the theory that all calories are equal, be able to eat 3000 kcal in poptarts and lose the exact same amount if I ate that same 3k in salmon and spinach? Which was entirely the crux of my point, since this thread is questioning whether "calories in calories out" encompasses the totality of weight loss (note: not nutrition or overall health).

For weight loss 3000 calories is 3000 calories.

Weight is not all that matters. No one says it is.

I love that you are throwing the poor "reading comprehension" insult around...

When I am merely addressing the point of THIS thread. The OP of this thread enquired as to whether the "calories in calories out" equation was so simple, saying that they lowered carbs and the scale moved again.

This thread was never about "nutrition", or any other "matters". The OP inquired about macronutrients and calories specifically. I kept the conversation to the original topic brought up by the OP, you create a straw man, and then accuse me of having poor reading comprehension because I refuse to play with said straw man.

Now, moving again beyond the childish rudeness and back to the point of THIS thread...

Will 3000 kcal of poptarts cause the same amount of weight loss as 3000 kcal of salmon and spinach? If it indeed true that all calories are equal, would this be the case for, lets try this again, weight loss?

jonnythan

They will try and scream that I could eat a 3000 calories of poptarts and it'll have the same weight loss properties as 3000 calories of spinach and salmon.

I've been around here for a long time and read a lot of forum posts and threads and as far as I can tell, I never read where anyone made that statement. Ever. I'd check my reading comprehension if I were you.

Your childish rudeness aside...

Isn't a calorie a calorie? Not taking into account personal health and nutrition (which Jonny wisely mentioned), shouldn't I, according to the theory that all calories are equal, be able to eat 3000 kcal in poptarts and lose the exact same amount if I ate that same 3k in salmon and spinach? Which was entirely the crux of my point, since this thread is questioning whether "calories in calories out" encompasses the totality of weight loss (note: not nutrition or overall health).

For weight loss 3000 calories is 3000 calories.

Weight is not all that matters. No one says it is.

I love that you are throwing the poor "reading comprehension" insult around...

When I am merely addressing the point of THIS thread. The OP of this thread enquired as to whether the "calories in calories out" equation was so simple, saying that they lowered carbs and the scale moved again.

This thread was never about "nutrition", or any other "matters". The OP inquired about macronutrients and calories specifically. I kept the conversation to the original topic brought up by the OP, you create a straw man, and then accuse me of having poor reading comprehension because I refuse to play with said straw man.

Now, moving again beyond the childish rudeness and back to the point of THIS thread...

Will 3000 kcal of poptarts cause the same amount of weight loss as 3000 kcal of salmon and spinach? If it indeed true that all calories are equal, would this be the case for, lets try this again, weight loss?

I didn't say anything about reading comprehension. Don't conflate me with others please.

Anyway, yes weight loss will be about the same eating Pop Tarts versus spinach and salmon at the same calorie intake. How much of that loss is fat will differ a bit.

Knitwit116

A calorie is a calorie, but your body will do different things with a calorie (store, or burn it) depending on what it's effect is on your insulin. Insulin is the key to fat storage, that's why lowcarbers may have an easier time losing more weight. They turn off the fat storage hormone. So all calories are not equal. Go to Dr. Peter Attiea's site, he will explain the science in great detail. Or read. "Good Caloreis Bad Calores." There is an actual study, where low carb dieters burned an extra 300 calories per day than a low-fat group eating the exact same calories. And lost more weight. And lowered their triglycerides, and blood pressure, and raised their good HDL cholesterol. It's hard science, believe me. Just try it and experiment with yourself.

"The traditional model of obesity, the so called “calories-in-calories-out” model, says that obesity is caused by the energy input terms exceeding the energy output terms. While it is mathematically true that someone who has gained weight has consumed more energy than they have expended, using the First Law to explain why someone gains weight is of little help. The First Law is descriptive but not explanative.”

The mistake most folks make when using the First Law to explain weight gain (versus using the First Law to describe weight gain) is that they lose sight of the fact that these variables – input, Resting energy expenditure, Thermic effect of food (TEF) – the amount of energy required to process and digest food, and activity energy expenditure – are linked. They are dependent on each other. They don’t exist in isolation.

Proponents of the Alternative Hypothesis (more fat less carbs) argue that intake (i.e., food) plays a role on hormones and enzymes in the body that have a resulting impact on energy output, and even subsequent input. For example, eating one food over another can increase or decrease appetite, increase or decrease REE, increase or decrease AEE, and even impact TEF. While the effect on each of these may be modest in isolation, even small changes over the course of days can result in significant changes over months or years."
http://eatingacademy.com/books-and-articles/good-science-bad-interpretation

Mr_Knight

A calorie is a calorie, but your body will do different things with a calorie (store, or burn it) depending on what it's effect is on your insulin.

No, no, no, no, no.

That Taubsian fantasy has been disproven over and over and over and over again.

Knitwit116

"Energy density (calories) of food does matter, for sure, but what matters much more is what that food does in and to our bodies.  Will the calories we consume create an environment in our bodies where we want to consume more energy than we expend?  Will the calories we consume create an environment in which our bodies prefer to store excess nutrients as fat rather than mobilize fat?  These are the choices we make every time we put something in our mouth.

Our bodies are complex and dynamic systems with more feedback loops than even the most elaborate Tianhe-1A computer.  This means that two people can eat the exact same things and do the exact same amount of exercise and yet store different amounts of fat.  Does it mean they have violated the First Law of Thermodynamics?  Of course not.

Similarly, genetically identical twins can eat different macronutrient diets (i.e., differing amounts of fat, protein, carbohydrates) of the same number of calories, while doing a constant amount of exercise, and accumulate different amounts of fat.  Does this violate the First Law of Thermodynamics?  Nope.

What you eat (along with other factors, like your genetic makeup, of course) impacts how your body partitions and stores fat. Insulin, while not the only factor involved in this process, is probably at the top of the list.  When you eat foods that have the double whammy of increasing insulin levels AND increasing your cell’s resistance to insulin, your body prioritizes fat storage over fat utilization.  Remember the great medical disconnect – no one disputes that insulin is the most singularly important hormone for causing fat cells to accumulate fat.  Somehow the dispute centers on what causes people (full of billions of fat cells) to accumulate fat.

All calories are not created equally:  The energy content of food (calories) matters, but it is less important than the metabolic effect of food on our body." -from Peter Attia, M.D.