This verge article says calorie counting is bad science?

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  • IcanIwill1
    IcanIwill1 Posts: 137 Member
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    Weight Watchers is based on weighing and measuring your food and limiting the number of servings per day/week etc. Essentially, they have done the calorie counting for you.
    Not true, not everybody eats the kind of food they supposedly weigh and measure.
    Egusi soup or ewa agoyin the kind of foods I know and eat, has never been weighed and measured by ww
    Using an esoteric, patented formulae, so as to hold the unwary captive, is the whole point.

    Give a fish vs Teach how to fish
  • corgicake
    corgicake Posts: 846 Member
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    The title is the best part. Article itself consists of a mauling of straw men supported by "authority" (if I were using this word more loosely, it would probably be censored). Quoting the head honcho of a fad diet company on nutrition? Just no.
  • tennisdude2004
    tennisdude2004 Posts: 5,609 Member
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    The title is the best part. Article itself consists of a mauling of straw men supported by "authority" (if I were using this word more loosely, it would probably be censored). Quoting the head honcho of a fad diet company on nutrition? Just no.

    I'm not sure calorie counting classes as a fad diet?
  • IcanIwill1
    IcanIwill1 Posts: 137 Member
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    The title is the best part. Article itself consists of a mauling of straw men supported by "authority" (if I were using this word more loosely, it would probably be censored). Quoting the head honcho of a fad diet company on nutrition? Just no.
    Thank you.
    They say a squirrel is a rat with good PR.
    Weight watchers is just a fad diet company with good PR.
  • Ang108
    Ang108 Posts: 1,711 Member
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    Haven't we had a very long discussion on the same article just a few days ago, or is this the same one ?
    Things kind of blur together with people posting on the same subject over and over again...
  • annesoucy57
    annesoucy57 Posts: 24
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    What I read in the article focus on the fact that the tools used are not accurate, we see posts about not loosing weight no matter what that tend to prove that it is true for some.

    Calorie counting can fluctuate depending on your source, I have verified the same food on different calculator and get different results. Same for exercise overestimation etc. That being said it does not make it a useless tool.

    I use to count religiously calories and gradually reduce the tracking, why simply because after a year of doing it, I have learned portion control. I do not disagree about the scale being an indicator and adjusting depending on what it shows. It is a lot easier to adjust my food intake when the I see a small fluctuation than wait to have an excess of 20 pounds to loose. I know weight can vary from one day to the next due to water fluctuation and because of it I do adjust my sodium intake (sensitive to it). more often than not I know when I overeat while I am doing it. I cannot sit in front of a bag of chip, eat it and make myself beleive that there will be no consequences. There is a lot of common sense in loosing weight.

    I found a lot of use in calorie counting to see what food were better for me, but again once you learn you have the knowledge to go on with your life without depending on a tool.

    Whatever works do it and to each his ways of getting the results.
  • 43mmmgoody21
    43mmmgoody21 Posts: 146 Member
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    Bad science-- except precise calorie counting works. If someone is not getting the results they want (and are not willing to spend 5-10 minutes a day tracking) then they have no right to complain.

    With MFP the process is even easier.
  • tedrickp
    tedrickp Posts: 1,229 Member
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    Well to be fair, this thread title is misleading. The Verge article says that calorie counting LEADS to bad science/bad gadgets, and they present some pretty great examples. i.e. the wearable gadget that claims to be able to auto track calorie intake, or the app that allows you to take a picture of your plate of food and then it estimates calories.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    The title is the best part. Article itself consists of a mauling of straw men supported by "authority" (if I were using this word more loosely, it would probably be censored). Quoting the head honcho of a fad diet company on nutrition? Just no.
    Thank you.
    They say a squirrel is a rat with good PR.
    Weight watchers is just a fad diet company with good PR.
    50+ years is a long fad.
  • tennisdude2004
    tennisdude2004 Posts: 5,609 Member
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    The title is the best part. Article itself consists of a mauling of straw men supported by "authority" (if I were using this word more loosely, it would probably be censored). Quoting the head honcho of a fad diet company on nutrition? Just no.
    Thank you.
    They say a squirrel is a rat with good PR.
    Weight watchers is just a fad diet company with good PR.
    50+ years is a long fad.

    The time limit for fads is 52 years - I did hear WW is on it's way out next year, so it may not make the official diet grade!
  • jymmeh
    jymmeh Posts: 33 Member
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    Bump to read later. At work now :-(
  • IbelieveinAmerica
    IbelieveinAmerica Posts: 2
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    I didn't read the article, but this website which does use calorie counting seems to be very helpful for many people. It's my second day so far and I find it really useful to keep track of my calorie count and also the foods I eat. It's really like a food journal online, but it does all of the counting for you. :)
  • QuietBloom
    QuietBloom Posts: 5,413 Member
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    Counting calories is what I have done for 420 days, I'd say it's worked rather well dont you think? Haha

    You just cant bother listening to every "scientific" article about what's good or bad, over the last 30 years science has changed its mind 100 times about what food is bad for you and what isn't! I grew up being told that eggs were bad for you, a few weeks ago a lady at work was showing me this article talking about how fruit can "ruin your diet", because SHOCKINGLY - fruit actually has calories! So that's why my mentality has just been to try and eat better overall, some days I eat junk, some days I eat super healthy, but every day I am eating healthier than how I ate before I started.

    Also a random note about late night calories - just log them as part of the next day, that way you are still accounting for them but you dont have to go back and change your diary for that day and its still possible to stay under your calorie goal for both days :)

    That was my response to the article as well. "Tell it to the people who have lost considerable amounts of weight through calorie counting."

    Also, while gadgets carry their own amount of error, it does not render them useless anymore than calorie counting is rendered useless by a certain degree of error. Personally, I have found the FitBit to be a very helpful tool, though it UNDERESTIMATES my calories burned slightly because I carry less body fat and more muscle than the average woman of my height and weight. But it still gives me a good ballpark estimate of output, just like calorie counting gives me a good ballpark estimate of intake. From there, you have to use your brain (what a concept!) to make the necessary adjustments.
  • marklpotter
    marklpotter Posts: 11 Member
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    The only way to lose weight, period, is to take in less fuel than you expend. The debate about calorie counting isn't new and there are plenty of studies on both sides that can be trotted out to prove points. The article in question has both seemingly reliable and questionable resources. The cite a nutritionist, which is not a protected term, as an authority which is always questionable, I don't have time ti check the actual qualifications of the other experts this morning but since anyone can call themselves a nutritionist those citations, in an of themselves, carry no weight at all.

    As far the science goes, counting calories isn't an exact science but calories in/calories out is. If you underestimate then you're not going to lose weight and you can make changes. Devices aren't an exact science either but they're getting better and better and the amount of information we have about food and how it affects us is at an all time high.

    I, personally, think that counting calories is a good start to shedding excess poundage but it's just a start. For folks like me, in an entirely sedentary job there are issues with needing to work the body so you are adding muscle while gaining fat and so on. I think that articles, like this one, do more harm than good. Most "science" reporting is crap and if you go read the actual papers you find that "science" news gets about half of it right. People will take the headline as gospel, not read the article, and decide counting calories is a bad idea and end up not having a starting point to find out how much they really eat or how bad their food actually is for them. If I was eating a 4k calorie diet and dropped to a 3lk calorie diet as a sedentary person my diet would, very likely, still be unhealthy but I'd have cut 1/4 of my daily intake!

    As far as different types of calories being different, the science on that is really too new to make any sort of call. Every diet around latches on to these claims and in turn claims their diet has the right kind of calories. I bet that the type of calories matters less than it's made out to by some corners of the fitness world. I'd wager that balancing protein/fats/carbs is much more important than actually worrying about the type of calories your eating. Shooting for a healthy lifestyle should be the overall goal.

    Devices are a different story. They are getting better and better but there is also a lot of snake oil out there in the device market. With the sheer amount of information we have about our bodies, devices can't help but get better. I personally see no reason to go beyond an HRM for working out and counting calories, at least for now. I'm not sure what I'd do with the information overload some devices offer. Always research your devices heavily before purchasing but if you want , for instance, a FitBit then there's really no reason not to get one.

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