Calories are Calories!

trisha329

Well said, Angie! I must admit, when I first read your original post, I was thinking, "Whaaat???" I get what you were trying to say now. But I think because of the confusion, a lot of good points were brought up!

hellokatee

I don't think anyone was sincerely angry with you, Angie. We were all just under the impression that you thought you could eat WHATEVER you want within your calorie limit and still lose weight and be healthy. We wouldn't want you going around thinking you'd look skinny and fit after living off a very small amount of junk food for months! Not only was everyone trying to help you, but they were also trying to prevent others from reading your post (which admittedly lacked a few important details about choosing healthy foods!) and thinking that THEY could eat whatever they wanted! Many of us know what it takes to get the weight off, and that is something we want to share with others. A lot of us have been large our entire lives, and we know what kind of behaviors got us there and KEPT us there. One of those things is definitely clinging to foods that we know are bad for us just because it fits into our "DIET." Pure instinct lead us to cry "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" very loudly when we read this. Because we have most of us been there... And not only do we never want to go back, we want to help everyone who is there now join us on our journey towards health and fitness!

I think we have all gotten out point across here. Cutting calories is only half the battle!

johnphays

Exactly, my father wasn't overweight by any means, but he died from sudden heart failure because of WHAT he was eating, not how much. The TYPES of things you're putting into your body are just as important as the calorie count, if not more so.

The basic weight loss computation is this: Take your base metabolic rate (BMR, not to be confused with BMI), add to that however many calories you burn that day, that's your total daily burn. Take 15-20% of that, subtract it off the total, and that is how many daily calories you should aim for as far as eating. Then make sure those calories are from healthy foods that do good things for your body, as opposed to bad things such as raising your glycemic index, clogging your arteries, etc...THAT is how you'll see results!

MacMadame

i know so many ppl who skip breakfast, nibble on lunch... then BAM FEAST ON DINNER. if a calorie was a calorie those ppl would have no problem! would they??? cuz technically that person above probably had 1500

Maybe, maybe not. You can easily eat 3000 calories doing this. I used eat about 2200 calories a day and I definitely ate most of them between 3pm and midnight.

some poor soul will search "is a calorie a calorie?!"
and they will see this thread!

and instead of eating healthy, they wont! thats why im so heated lol

If someone is going to eat unhealthy because some people on the internet said it was okay, they have deeper issues than their weight. :laugh: We are all adults here and should be able to express our opinions without worrying that we will "give permission" to people who want to be stupid. If people want to be stupid, they will be and that's their issue not ours.

All I can tell you is that I didn't get my body by eating cake and cheeseburgers....just saying

I have biceps to die for and 18% body fat and I do eat those things. Not every day, but once in a while. Most experts say you can eat healthy 80% of the time and be healthy. I think there is a place for all kinds of food in the diet. The place for some of them may be very small and very infrequent, but it's there, if you enjoy them and want to make a place for them.

Btw, clinical data doesn't support that belief that most of us have that eating saturated fat leads to cardiac disease. Most people who have cardiac disease either are overweight (thus over-working their heart) or have a genetic tendency to clogged arteries or both.

I have no real science to back me up but this is what I have found to be true over the past 5 years.

There actually is some science to back this up. While weight loss is about calories in vs. calories out as its bottom line, some people are sensitive to white carbs and those will slow down their metabolism. So, if that is you, when you eat processed carbs, your calories out goes down without you realizing it. So now your calories in is greater than your calories out when it seems like nothing has changed.

This is also why diets get less effective over time. Because yo-yo dieting lowers your metabolism and long-term dieting lowers your metabolism. So does getting older. You can combat all these things with exercise and other things, but it does need to be factored in. If your BMR gets lower, then your total calories in needs to be lower too.

antiadipose

i realize exactly what u meant by this thread. and im really sorry i was a monster. i really meant no harm.

im just completely surrounded by bad eaters. my parents' pill counter/weekly-holder-thingy has about 10 pills a day. NO EXAGGERATION.
both of my parents have had heart surgery!

im only 21! i want them to see my future children grow.
in no way in hell do i wanna lose a single pound. im maintaining.
i have been 145 before, now im 120. i feel great.

but i eat healthy so that i never have to go through what my parents go through.

diabetes, BP, cholesterol, heart disease, lack of energy, chronic pain =/

again sorry i was a monster.... it kinda just hit home with me.

antiadipose

Btw, clinical data doesn't support that belief that most of us have that eating saturated fat leads to cardiac disease. Most people who have cardiac disease either are overweight (thus over-working their heart) or have a genetic tendency to clogged arteries or both.

and what in the world kinda data shows that?!?!?!?!

antiadipose

Btw, clinical data doesn't support that belief that most of us have that eating saturated fat leads to cardiac disease. Most people who have cardiac disease either are overweight (thus over-working their heart) or have a genetic tendency to clogged arteries or both.

and what in the world kinda data shows that?!?!?!?!

found this nyu med article u might wanna check out regarding saturated fats and CAD (coronary artery dx) =]

http://www.med.nyu.edu/patientcare/library/article.html?ChunkIID=11986

and another from harvard med

http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/children/adolescenthealth/articles/aa_cholesterol_and_triglycerides.aspx

again... to the OP im seriously not trying to attack ur thread. but some things are just plain WRONG.

goodnight.

imagymrat

i know so many ppl who skip breakfast, nibble on lunch... then BAM FEAST ON DINNER. if a calorie was a calorie those ppl would have no problem! would they??? cuz technically that person above probably had 1500

Maybe, maybe not. You can easily eat 3000 calories doing this. I used eat about 2200 calories a day and I definitely ate most of them between 3pm and midnight.

some poor soul will search "is a calorie a calorie?!"
and they will see this thread!

biceps to die for at 18% body fat eh? good for tooting your horn there, why the size of your biceps matter I have no idea. My point was the less crap you eat the more your body is willing to show it's true potential..nosh on your burger and enjoy, but i'd rather have my chicken breast. Oh and thought i'd mention i'm at 10.9% body fat, I'd show a pic of my biceps to die for, only I don't think they'd fit in my DP...lol! my pic is almost a year old, i've come a long way...since were tooting horns here..TOOT TOOT!

and instead of eating healthy, they wont! thats why im so heated lol

If someone is going to eat unhealthy because some people on the internet said it was okay, they have deeper issues than their weight. :laugh: We are all adults here and should be able to express our opinions without worrying that we will "give permission" to people who want to be stupid. If people want to be stupid, they will be and that's their issue not ours.

All I can tell you is that I didn't get my body by eating cake and cheeseburgers....just saying

I have biceps to die for and 18% body fat and I do eat those things. Not every day, but once in a while. Most experts say you can eat healthy 80% of the time and be healthy. I think there is a place for all kinds of food in the diet. The place for some of them may be very small and very infrequent, but it's there, if you enjoy them and want to make a place for them.

Btw, clinical data doesn't support that belief that most of us have that eating saturated fat leads to cardiac disease. Most people who have cardiac disease either are overweight (thus over-working their heart) or have a genetic tendency to clogged arteries or both.

I have no real science to back me up but this is what I have found to be true over the past 5 years.

There actually is some science to back this up. While weight loss is about calories in vs. calories out as its bottom line, some people are sensitive to white carbs and those will slow down their metabolism. So, if that is you, when you eat processed carbs, your calories out goes down without you realizing it. So now your calories in is greater than your calories out when it seems like nothing has changed.

This is also why diets get less effective over time. Because yo-yo dieting lowers your metabolism and long-term dieting lowers your metabolism. So does getting older. You can combat all these things with exercise and other things, but it does need to be factored in. If your BMR gets lower, then your total calories in needs to be lower too.

MacMadame

Btw, clinical data doesn't support that belief that most of us have that eating saturated fat leads to cardiac disease. Most people who have cardiac disease either are overweight (thus over-working their heart) or have a genetic tendency to clogged arteries or both.

and what in the world kinda data shows that?!?!?!?!

found this nyu med article u might wanna check out regarding saturated fats and CAD (coronary artery dx) =]

http://www.med.nyu.edu/patientcare/library/article.html?ChunkIID=11986

and another from harvard med

http://www.mgh.harvard.edu/children/adolescenthealth/articles/aa_cholesterol_and_triglycerides.aspx

That isn't clinical data. That's a general information article written for lay people that just repeats the "saturated fat causes heart disease" myth that the medical community has been pounding for ages even though the studies don't support it.

This article talks about the recently published meta-study that looked at 20 previous studies and determined there is no link between saturated fat intake and heart disease:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-against-cardio

Some excerpts from this article:

"Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does."

"The finding joins other conclusions of the past few years that run counter to the conventional wisdom that saturated fat is bad for the heart because it increases total cholesterol levels. That idea is “based in large measure on extrapolations, which are not supported by the data,” Krauss says."

"One problem with the old logic is that “total cholesterol is not a great predictor of risk,” says Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Although saturated fat boosts blood levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, it also increases “good” HDL cholesterol."

"In 2008 Stampfer co-authored a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that followed 322 moderately obese individuals for two years as they adopted one of three diets: a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet based on American Heart Association guidelines; a Mediterranean, restricted-calorie diet rich in vegetables and low in red meat; and a low-carbohydrate, nonrestricted-calorie diet. Although the subjects on the low-carb diet ate the most saturated fat, they ended up with the healthiest ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol and lost twice as much weight as their low-fat-eating counterparts."

I think all of this makes sense. Heart disease and obesity in this country started skyrocketing when processed foods became a staple in our diets. In the meantime, we had this emphasis on eating low fat which has just made it worse because now people are eating foods high in sugar in order to avoid fat.

edorice

this may be true but I can tell you from experience that 1200 calories of fat/sugar and white carbs DOES look differnent on my body than 1200 calories of lean meat/greens/fruits and veggies.

I agree. A test was done on these twin sisters that only ate candy bars. Their hair was falling out, teeth rotten, they were malnourished and overall disgusting. If you want to believe that a diet of 1500 calories of crap is going to run your body the same as 1500 calories of quality foods then you are misinformed. Just as a 7 series BMW would crap out on 87 octane fuel. Crap in/crap out. Simple as that. Calories ARE NOT created equal.

A treat once in awhile is just fine. But at some point you need to decide if you want to fuel your temple like a Dodge Neon or fuel it like a BMW.