A calorie is a calorie, right?

WinKitty

If I eat 200 calories in my morning coffee, or 200 calories of carrots, they're still calories and I should be able to burn them off the same, or no? I mean, I know the preferred 200 calories are the carrots, because they're good for you and you can eat more of them, but won't it all burn off the same way if you're exercising everyday?

Gettinfit2

My body discriminates against calories. 200 calories of cookies will linger around and seek to have more of the same. However, 200 calories of fruit helps my plumbing and discourages me from eating the 200 calories of cookies.

tammy200678

I would like to know this too my coffee is about the same in the morning

McKayMachina

Not necessarily. In terms of calories, yes. It's all heat energy.

In terms of how your body processes it, no. The way your body processes fats is different from how it processes carbs which is different from how it processes proteins...etc.

You can lose weight eating 1200 calories of nothing but Twinkies*. But, obviously, your body has other nutritional needs.

But as far as quantification of calories, yeah. A calorie is a calorie.

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* Twinkie Diet Helps Nutrition Professor Lose 27 Pounds
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

chrisaydin

http://teamanimal.net/2011/03/29/optimization/

read that & you tell me.

hamsmash

yes a calorie represents the same energy content wherever it comes from. the difference are the little nuances like how full it makes you feel, and nutrient content.

WinKitty

http://teamanimal.net/2011/03/29/optimization/

read that & you tell me.

First, I want to say, that that guy's legs creep me out. Sorry. Knee-jerk. However, that is a wonderful link to keep around. The author of that post is exactly correct and doesn't use any foo-foo bullsh*t. I'm sure his post DID p*ss a few people off, but I think that's exactly the answer I was looking for, along with all of your other answers.

Thank you all. I just feel like I've hit a bump in the road and by process of elimination, can only believe it's food-TYPE related. This is going to be hard for me, but as that blog said, it shows commitment if you're willing to do that for the sake of your body and your fitness.

louloup

I am not an expert but I believe that some veggies are negative cals which means that it takes more energy to process the food than there are actually in the food ie celery.

So IMO I would say that 200 cals worth of say celery is very different from 200 cals of chocolate.

In saying that though I believe everything in moderation so have a bit of what you fancy and lots of healthy fruits and veggies

mexiana

http://teamanimal.net/2011/03/29/optimization/

read that & you tell me.

Very true! I started off well with the calorie portion of it, now I'm working on ways to rid those useless/processed calories. I buy "naturally more" peanut butter that ONLY has peanuts, wheat germ, flaxseed oil, cane sugar, egg whites, honey and flaxseed. I stopped using mayo in my tuna, I now use spinach and artichoke hummus. I no longer eat boxed cereal for breakfast (look at the ingredients, I don't care how healthy it's advertised, can you pronounce every ingredient?? Probably not.) I have oatmeal (that i cook on the stove, not instant) with blueberries, cinnamon, honey and vanilla. It's hard to do I'm not gonna lie. It's expensive and you really have to look for alternatives in this world where so much is processed with crap ingredients... but isn't your body worth it? The BIGGEST reason to not eat the junk, it ONLY MAKE YOU CRAVE MORE JUNK!!!!

chrisaydin

Very true! I started off well with the calorie portion of it, now I'm working on ways to rid those useless/processed calories. I buy "naturally more" peanut butter that ONLY has peanuts, wheat germ, flaxseed oil, cane sugar, egg whites, honey and flaxseed. I stopped using mayo in my tuna, I now use spinach and artichoke hummus. I no longer eat boxed cereal for breakfast (look at the ingredients, I don't care how healthy it's advertised, can you pronounce every ingredient?? Probably not.) I have oatmeal (that i cook on the stove, not instant) with blueberries, cinnamon, honey and vanilla. It's hard to do I'm not gonna lie. It's expensive and you really have to look for alternatives in this world where so much is processed with crap ingredients... but isn't your body worth it? The BIGGEST reason to not eat the junk, it ONLY MAKE YOU CRAVE MORE JUNK!!!!

It really isn't that hard at all. The only peanut butter I eat when cutting or prepping for contest is completely natural peanut butter which consists of only peanuts and if salted, salt. Trust me, it's a much better decision than other choices.

dalzinho

Really, if you can't be bothered to shell, de-skin, blanch, then grind your own peanuts into peanut butter, then you don't deserve to be in good shape.

WinKitty

Really, if you can't be bothered to shell, de-skin, blanch, then grind your own peanuts into peanut butter, then you don't deserve to be in good shape.

I know, right?!

wolfchild59

I am not an expert but I believe that some veggies are negative cals which means that it takes more energy to process the food than there are actually in the food ie celery.

So IMO I would say that 200 cals worth of say celery is very different from 200 cals of chocolate.

In saying that though I believe everything in moderation so have a bit of what you fancy and lots of healthy fruits and veggies

An excerpt from here: http://www.answerfitness.com/269/negative-calorie-foods-fact-fiction/ The whole thing is an interesting read, but the bit below is kind of the core of the it.

Is Celery Really a Negative Calorie Food?
While the list of negative calorie foods has ballooned to include everything from beets to strawberries and mangoes (yes, I’m being serious here), celery is the most commonly cited negative calorie food.

From a nutritional standpoint, celery is pretty much empty. It’s basically made up of water, sodium, some trace minerals and something called cellulose — which is a form of vegetable fiber than the human body cannot digest. It contains no protein or fat and marginal carbohydrates. Any other nutrition in celery is in the form of vitamins, minerals and enzymes, which contain no calories.

In fact, aside from iceberg lettuce and cucumbers, you probably couldn’t find a less nutritious, lower-calorie vegetable to eat. These foods are already about as close as you can get to eating zero calories. Close, but not quite, as we’ll see in a moment.

A large, stalk of celery weighing in at 2.2 ounces contains only nine calories. Negative calorie diet advocates claim that the mere process of chewing and digesting celery requires an expenditure of energy that exceeds the 9 calories present in the celery. Therefore, the argument goes, celery has “negative calories.”

Again, this all sounds good in theory, but what about in practice?

Issues with the Negative Calorie Foods Theory
There are some flaws with the negative calorie food theory, however.

First, the reason that certain foods like celery are already low in calories is exactly because of their high-non-caloric nutritional content. The fact that cellulose, water and minerals like sodium contain no calories is already figured into the food’s caloric-content. That’s why it has minimal calories in the first place. Negative food advocates want to double-dip here, and have you believe that the non-caloric nutrients like cellulose lower its effective calorie levels even more, but that’s just not how it works. This is already baked-in.

Second, the whole argument that the body burns more calories chewing and digesting negative calorie foods like celery is also suspect.

Yes, the body does expend a certain amount of energy to digest food, but that expenditure — even with foods that contain a high-percentage of non-caloric nutrients like cellulose — is actually fairly minimal.

Typically, the body will expend 10 - 15 percent of the calories you consume each day to fuel digestion. Let’s just throw the negative calorie food gurus a bone and say that for foods that are rich in non-digestible nutrients like cellulose, that number is actually as high as 50 percent of calories consumed (I have no evidence for this claim — I’m just being generous to prove a point.)

In the case of celery — the poster child of all negative calorie foods – you would be burning an extra 4.5 calories per each 9 calorie, 2.2 oz serving of celery. That would put your effective net calories at 4.5 (9/50% = 4.5 calories) — hardly “negative calorie” territory.

And because the amount of energy expended on digestion of foods is always expressed as a percentage, to have a negative calorie effect, digestion would have to constitute at least 101% of the energy consumed in order to create a negative calorie environment — something which is physically impossible.

So it appears that the food that is the best candidate for qualifying as a negative calorie food — celery – can’t even hit the break-even point, let alone become “calorie-negative.”