How does sugar affect you compared to calories?

RangerSteve

Young,

The Twinkie Diet guy lost weight because he cut his carb intake actually. His diet of Twinkies (and other food) ended up being lower carb intake than his "normal" diet.

Here is an interesting take on analyzing that diet results: http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/11/16/the-twinkie-diet/

So you're saying he lost weight because he cut his carbs and not because of a calorie deficit?

Jefster

Ranger,

Yes. By decreasing his calorie intake, it had the side effect of decreasing his carbohydrate intake.

Again, it's not the absolute # of calories but the make up of calories that count more.

You don't have to agree, I just have a difference of opinion than you on this.

young9

well, god knows i'm no expert on this and i have had my troubles with my weight over the years but the last time i lost weight, before the birth of my 4th child, i ate a balances diet and lost 30lbs in 4 months. some days i went overboard on carbs..some days not. if i felt like dessert, i'd try to eat a smaller lunch and on those day, my carbs were pretty high. i plan on following the same plan this time to get these 30lbs back off. seems to work for me..i just always stay below 1200 cals. i'm only 5' so that seems to work pretty darn good for me. i exercise for around an hour at least 5 days a week.

RangerSteve

Ranger,

Yes. By decreasing his calorie intake, it had the side effect of decreasing his carbohydrate intake.

Again, it's not the absolute # of calories but the make up of calories that count more.

You don't have to agree, I just have a difference of opinion than you on this.

Yes, he decreased his calorie intake (1,800 a day from his usual of around 2,600 a day). By doing so, he most likely decreased his carbohydrate intake, although with the foods he was eating (cookies, twinkies, etc) maybe he didn't decrease his carbohydrate intake. Because he decreased his calorie intake, his body used fat and possible muscle stores as energy as he was under his caloric needs for the day.

Now, you're saying that it was makeup of the calories, specifically carbohydrate reduction that caused this? How did you come to this conclusion and how did you come up with the conclusion in general that makeup of calories means more to weight loss than actual calories?

Saying it's a difference of opinion doesn't cut it when you make claims like this. I can claim gravity doesn't exist and then use the "agree to disagree" statement but that doesn't make me right. If you can explain to me how the things you're saying make sense then I'll agree to just have a difference of opinion.

Jefster

The opinion difference here is that you feel it's as simple as "Calories In, Calories Out", and think insulin is a bit of a scape goat in the scenario. I feel that it's more than just "Calories in, Calories Out", and that the hormonal impact of those calories goes a long way in determine the effect on the body.

Carbohydrates and excessive protein can lead to increased blood sugar levels, which leads to increased insulin production. It is that effect that determines what your body does with the fat stores it has, or thinks it needs to preserve.

So by decreasing carbohydrates and not having excessive protein, you decrease blood sugar levels, and decrease insulin secretions, which decrease storage of the "calories" you intake as fat deposits in the body. It's the repeated raising of blood sugar, which requires more insulin, which can lead to insulin resistance.

I'm not trying to vilify carbs, as not all carbs are created equal. I'm just saying not all calories have the equal effect on the body, so it's more than just Calories in, Calories out.

RangerSteve

The opinion difference here is that you feel it's as simple as "Calories In, Calories Out", and think insulin is a bit of a scape goat in the scenario. I feel that it's more than just "Calories in, Calories Out", and that the hormonal impact of those calories goes a long way in determine the effect on the body.

Carbohydrates and excessive protein can lead to increased blood sugar levels, which leads to increased insulin production. It is that effect that determines what your body does with the fat stores it has, or thinks it needs to preserve.

So by decreasing carbohydrates and not having excessive protein, you decrease blood sugar levels, and decrease insulin secretions, which decrease storage of the "calories" you intake as fat deposits in the body. It's the repeated raising of blood sugar, which requires more insulin, which can lead to insulin resistance.

I'm not trying to vilify carbs, as not all carbs are created equal. I'm just saying not all calories have the equal effect on the body, so it's more than just Calories in, Calories out.

No, I don't feel it's simple calories in vs calories out. Hormones, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, heart rate, etc etc are all going to play a role. HOWEVER, when people make claims (such as the guy in the original article) that eliminating certain foods will lead to weight loss, it's a load of BS. For every anecdotal story of people losing weight by not eating bread, there are a dozen stories of people losing weight by eating a lot of bread.

Carbohydrates and excessive protein lead to increased blood sugar levels because excessive calories lead to increased blood sugar levels. Being in a calorie deficit will mean decreased blood sugar levels because your body is using what you eat. This is where thermodynamics comes into play and this is where simple science takes over. If you want to argue against the laws of physics then you need to bring it up to the department of education so you can get the textbooks changed.

Insulin resistance also comes about from excessive calories (not counting genetic issues). Also, plenty of people need and want insulin spikes. If you train multiple times a day and need glycogen replenishment, insulin is your friend.

The storage of calories in your body has to do with thermodynamics. Yes, hormones and the other things I mentioned above play a role. However, when someone is in a calorie deficit, you can't claim that decreased carbohydrates are the reason they lost weight when they would have lost weight even with an increased carbohydrate intake. The twinkie diet is a perfect example of that. Eating cookies and twinkies all day can still result in weight loss because energy has to come from somewhere and that means fat and muscle. Even if it's sugary foods, it won' t matter. And finally, for more anecdotal evidence, ask any backpacker about how they can lose weight while munching down donuts and all sorts of carb rich foods while they're on the trail. According to "carb restriction" theories, they should be holding onto that fat. What kind of sense does that make?

Calorie restriction leads to weight loss.
Carbohydrate restriction leads to carbohydrate restriction.

Jefster

Ranger,

Have you seen the "Big Fat Fiasco" speech before?

It gives a good explanation of why Calorties in/Calories out is not entirely accurate. Specifically part 4.

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/10/28/video-of-the-big-fat-fiasco-speech/

RangerSteve

Ranger,

Have you seen the "Big Fat Fiasco" speech before?

It gives a good explanation of why Calorties in/Calories out is not entirely accurate. Specifically part 4.

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/10/28/video-of-the-big-fat-fiasco-speech/

I'll try and watch it again tomorrow but I could only make it 6 minutes through part 4 because of the blatant mis-information he's talking about and the lack of proper studies.

The women's health initiative is a retrospective study that means absolutely nothing. Any study where you follow people for long periods of time and ask them about their lifestyle choices is going to be horribly off. Yeah, 8 years, really controlled study he's using there.

The overfeeding study is a little more interesting but doesn't take into account plenty of things. NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) measurements were not taken. What was the lean body mass of the prisoners? Also, as far as the guy who ate 10,000kcal per day, that's N = 1. One guy means nothing. We can just use the twinkie diet nutrition professor as an EXACT opposite study group.

After that he goes on about insulin while failing to mention that insulin levels will always be elevated when over-eating.

I mean come on, I'm barely listening to this stuff and I'm picking it apart without even having a graduate level degree in the field. This is ridiculous. Once again, a guy demonizing certain nutrients (carbs in this case) in the same exact way that saturated fat was demonized in the 90's. In ten more years, it'll swing back the other way and here we go again.

Thermodynamics is physics. Plain and simple, you will store excess calories and you will break down muscle, fat, bone, teeth, etc to survive when you eat in a calorie deficit. What "excess" calories means is the tricky part because of hormones, body heat, activity level, BMR, TDEE, and a host of other things. But to blame sugar or to say sugar is the reason people are losing weight or gaining weight is completely out of control.

Well, I've lost 8 pounds since joining MFP and that's with eating pint upon pint of Ben and Jerry's premium ice cream. I guess I've been doing it wrong. No, wait, I haven't. I've been eating less than I need and that is doing it. I never would have guessed......

summalovaable

@Ranger

I believe you mentioned the law of thermodynamics,so I thought this might be of interest to you. Of course this isn't the correct answer to what any one is saying here. As even the author mentions that many scientists and doctors have varying opinions and this is simply how HE views it. The article is a little longer but this seemed to be the important part of it. Again, its just an article offline and clearly when is site is called "protein power" we all know what side he clearly favours. But regardless, as a dedicated science student I feel the best way to draw conclusions is to take into and understand BOTH sides of an arguement and to see where one might be getting their "low carbs will help me loss weight faster" theory. NOT carbs will make me fat (as you seem to think people are implying)
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/metabolism/thermodynamics-and-weight-loss/

Just a summary of the obvious :
The second law can kind of be summed with this equation:

calories in = calories out + entropy

If we substitute numbers in the above equation it could look like this:

100 calories in = 70 calories out + entropy

If we solve this equation for entropy, we can see that entropy is 30 calories. Or, in this case, 30 calories of energy are lost.

The larger the number for entropy, the more inefficient the system is, i.e., more energy lost from the system forever.

And how it applies to weight loss:

"If we have a diet containing plenty of carbohydrate, the carbohydrate goes into the blood as sugar. There are very few chemical reactions along the way, and there is a loss of energy to the universe with each of these reactions. But, since there aren’t many conversions, there isn’t a lot of energy loss.

If we have no carbohydrates (or few) in the diet, however, it’s a different story. In order to maintain the necessary sugar level in the blood the body is forced to make sugar out of protein, which isn’t a simple operation. Look in any basic biochemistry textbook and you can see all the reactions required to convert protein to sugar, and each one of these reactions consumes energy just to take place but loses energy to the universe in the process as well. It’s much less efficient for the body to convert protein to sugar than it is to simply take the sugar as it comes in already formed.

The second law of thermodynamics virtually mandates that there be a larger loss of energy when one has to convert protein to sugar instead of merely using the sugar as it comes in. Since there are 4 kcal of energy in a gram of sugar and 4 kcal of energy in a gram of protein, it should be apparent that less of the 4 kcal in a gram of sugar will be dissipated than will be the 4 kcal in a gram of protein if this gram of protein has to first be converted to sugar.

And, consequently, one would think that a diet low in carbohydrate and higher in protein and fat (both of which have to be converted to sugar) would bring about a greater weight loss than a diet of the same number of calories but with higher levels of carbohydrate. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics predicts this very phenomenon. But despite this rather obvious notion that complies perfectly with the second law, many ignorant people continue to cling to the idea that ‘a calorie is a calorie’ despite that idea flying in the face of the second law. I suppose these people discount the second law. If so, then they should spend their time putting together a perpetual motion machine, which, if they could, would garner them a lot more fame than their inane posturing on the inevitability of the second law might do.

A classic example of how the second law works is in the difference between regular and premium gasoline. Both regular and premium have the same exact number of calories per gallon, but premium burns more efficiently. In other words, the calories contained in the premium gas get ‘wasted’ at a lower percentage in propelling the car along the road than do the calories in the regular. A high-performance automobile designed to squeeze the most out of a gallon of gas will get better mileage on premium than on regular gasoline, yet the calories in are exactly the same.

In the human body this inefficiency can be measured as an increase in metabolic rate and an increase in body heat being produced under laboratory conditions. One would assume that since the second law is inviolable and always in operation that people eating a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein would produce more heat than those consuming the same number of calories but composed of a much higher percentage of carbohydrates. And that is exactly what is found."


As I think i mentioned above, you also seem to believe that people on carb diets use a post-hoc way of thinking ( saw of your love of logical fallacies). People on low carb diets do not think "I used to eat a lot of carbs, and now i'm fat, so carbs made me fat." On the contrary you cannot say "I ate lots of carbs and lost weight therefore, carbs help you lose weight" Simply because A preceded B does not mean A caused B.

And now that you're done reading all that and think I'm some awful person that doesn't eat carbs. I don't personally believe in carbohydrate restriction to lose weight. I'm an all in moderation type of person, I just like to consider both sides before I pick one that works for myself.

razeak

sugar = fat.

Not really. Sugar = carbohydrate and will only make you gain fat if you are eating over your maintenance level of calories.