You Are Not Different

Silverkittycat

Quit sheeping! If he can't even take on Martin in a Facebook argument how will he take on the ones that know? hmmm? Silly people.

CarmenSRT

No, he wasn't. He was clearly saying that one cannot gain bodymass, regardless of composition of that gained bodymass, in a caloric deficit. Nowhere did he say that an increased percentage of one or the other within that smaller bodymass was impossible.

Okay, I went and read some of this guy's other stuff and he does seem to think it's possible to gain LBM eating at a deficit, so I was wrong about him, at least on this issue. Here's an example:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/adding-muscle-while-losing-fat-qa.html

As to the original post, either his writing style is poor, or this is a hot-button issue for me and I'm reading what's not there. Maybe some of both.
SNIP BY ME

You're right on the money. Lyle's writing style IS poor. He knows it too. I remember him acknowledging how boring Ketogenic was. It's a grind, no two ways about it.
Dieting issues can get heated. Take a bunch of people, some of who spend more time hungry than they're comfortable with, add some debate and it's bound to get raucous.

12skipafew99100

People on forums are sheep. The snowflake saying cracks me up. Someone made it up and now everyone throws it out there. Sorry everyone is an individual unless you have an identical twin.

Cant wait for the next years buzzwords to come out so you sheep can use it in every sentence.

Signed,
Opinionated Snowflake

Even if you are an identical twin you are still an individual.

marijasmin

I haven't read all the replies because there are way too many to get through so I hope this hadn't been covered already but I have two questions about the OP that maybe somebody can answer for me.

I have anorexia nervosa. I have been hospitalised on several occasions as a result of my ED. During each admission, I was initially on bed rest for many weeks or months and I was given a set diet of 3,500 kcal/day. On every admission, without fail, I would LOSE weight on 3,500 kcals (coming from eating an extremely low calorie diet - I won't quote numbers in case it's triggering). I was always dehydrated on admission so I know my fluid balance was probably out of whack but it still doesn't explain other week's loses.
On the flip side, I went through a period of rapid weight GAIN some years later, eating very little. Now I know it was mentioned in the OP about people under-reporting what they ate and how much. The only people who definitely don't do that are anorexics, instead we will hugely overestimate how much we've eaten "just in case" (case in point: today I ate 4 peanut halves out of a 100g/3.5 ounce bag but logged it as half the bag, which means that I've logged 4 peanut halves as 300 kcals and have been tracking my kcals this way for more than 20 years!). I was told I needed to eat more by a RD and, sure enough, many, many months later my weight evened out and dropped again.

Any ideas on what was happening there?

After a long period of annorexia or starvation, your digestive system isn't functioning fully. Therefore although you are ingesting the calories, you are not digesting and absorbing them. This happens also as we age. The calories are being eliminated. After a period of time , the digestive systems adapts again and starts producing acid and digestive enzymes. The system is designed to stop your body from digesting itself. This is a feedback loop with several different hormones involved including a hormone called grehlin.

Hope this explains my understanding.

Jasmin

wisters

OMG, I love this!

Hey snowflake, how'd you get a picture of MY cat??? Oz wants his pic back

PayneAS

Replying to save this. Great read (as much as I've read so far).

fancyacuppa

Bumping to read later

hpynh2o

Lyle McDonald is awesome.

anjoola

I thought I was a snowflake with extra fluff :brokenheart:

TeresaOH1

Love the article and love the snowflake kitty!

penrbrown

TLDR: To Sum Up:

I AM DIFFERENT. Stop trying to rob me of my uniqueness. Hmph.

DonniesGirl69

OP.......

You are my hero

AniOnFire

I've been wondering about these types of generalizations thrown out to address what is often refusal to address calorie management. In this sense he's right to address this in these terms. However I have some reserves about the "thermodynamic" arguments being used. Not only can metabolisms be vastly different from one individual to another but even the same individual can have a metabolism that varies quite a bit. How much do we vary? Up to 30% (http://examine.com/faq/how-much-does-metabolic-rate-vary-between-individuals.html) For an outlier, on a high exercise day that would be 900+ calories or more. That's a chunk of cheese!

The other element I wonder about, that these thermodynamic-based argument assume we are a closed system and therefore calories in would equal calories out. Except that the calories we talk about - nutritional calories are a best guess estimate of food energy value that assumes absorption in the gut is the same. It isn't - not only does it vary greatly and is effected by composition and transient time. A good read (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy). And not only are those calories only an estimated of the absorbed energy, but even those estimates vary from place to place (http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/Y5022E/y5022e04.htm) So be wary about these thermodynamic arguments, this is a best guess field.

Thank you I hate when people use pseudo science to prove their opinions and then the masses gobble it up like it's a golden rule. Also no one pointed out that he said essentially "Everyone is not different unless they are" which is essentially this entire article...and he's ignoring set point theory which is the actual reason people plateau >.> *sigh* here is some info on that one... Oh look it's something not from someone's blog or fitness journal, it's from a medical publication!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21117971

(I just realized most of you guys couldn't read it so I dug up others)

http://weightloss.about.com/od/glossary/g/setpoint.htm

http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/21747/router.asp

The last one has a great definition of it under what causes obesity.

Silverkittycat

AnoOnFire, what you've posted are studies or opinions based on adolescents and bariatric surgery patients, I am neither.

AniOnFire

AnoOnFire, what you've posted are studies or opinions based on adolescents and bariatric surgery patients, I am neither.

You might be neither, but set point theory is accepted by the entire scientific community and not conjecture. Metabolism is not a constant either, I don't believe anything I can't find on PubMed, believing what you read in blogs without real sources can lead to you doing more harm than good to your body. Just because it's popular with the public doesn't make it right.

Here is another article that doesn't deal with bariatric surgery patients or adolescents. Again it's hard to find things on it that aren't on EBSCOHOST or PubMed... which you have to have a subscription to see.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/328699-what-is-set-point-theory-in-weight-management/

http://www.examiner.com/article/biopsychological-set-point-theory-and-weight-loss

There's more on it.

You can also find articles about people complaining about it and saying it's not true... but they haven't made it into academic publications or Pubmed yet... I wonder why. I've also had a nice conversation with a professor of Neuroscience about it.

But yes, you're exactly like everyone else, and which makes medical history, weight, brain chemistry and all of those other factors irrelevant when dealing with a plateau.

Sublog

Thank you I hate when people use pseudo science to prove their opinions and then the masses gobble it up like it's a golden rule. Also no one pointed out that he said essentially "Everyone is not different unless they are" which is essentially this entire article...and he's ignoring set point theory which is the actual reason people plateau >.> *sigh* here is some info on that one... Oh look it's something not from someone's blog or fitness journal, it's from a medical publication!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21117971

(I just realized most of you guys couldn't read it so I dug up others)

http://weightloss.about.com/od/glossary/g/setpoint.htm

http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/21747/router.asp

The last one has a great definition of it under what causes obesity.

He's ignoring setpoint theory because its not proven to be true. That study does absolutely NOTHING to prove setpoint theory. People simply plateau because there is SOME variable they cannot account for.

The bottom line, and complete point of the article is this:

You can’t gain bodymass unless your energy intake exceeds your energy output because you can’t make something out of nothing (muscle or fat). And you can’t lose bodymass unless your energy intake is less than your energy output.

mmapags

AnoOnFire, what you've posted are studies or opinions based on adolescents and bariatric surgery patients, I am neither.

You might be neither, but set point theory is accepted by the entire scientific community and not conjecture. Metabolism is not a constant either, I don't believe anything I can't find on PubMed, believing what you read in blogs without real sources can lead to you doing more harm than good to your body. Just because it's popular with the public doesn't make it right.

Here is another article that doesn't deal with bariatric surgery patients or adolescents. Again it's hard to find things on it that aren't on EBSCOHOST or PubMed... which you have to have a subscription to see.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/328699-what-is-set-point-theory-in-weight-management/

http://www.examiner.com/article/biopsychological-set-point-theory-and-weight-loss

There's more on it.

You can also find articles about people complaining about it and saying it's not true... but they haven't made it into academic publications or Pubmed yet... I wonder why. I've also had a nice conversation with a professor of Neuroscience about it.

But yes, you're exactly like everyone else, and which makes medical history, weight, brain chemistry and all of those other factors irrelevant when dealing with a plateau.

Just as a point of accuracy, Lyle McDonald is not just a random blogger. He is a well respected fitness and nutrition expert and author as well. In addition, his sources are cited often in his articles or after them. He is not just some random blogger. You may agree or .disagree but the man, while not perfect, has earned the respect he is given. While you are intent on seeing the world in the light of us all being special and unique snowflakes, the fact is that a very high percentage of the factors that impact weight loss and health are the same for a very high percentage of the population.

For someone who is willing to give no credence to a 'blogger" you are citing 2 "articles" above. Lyle's article doesn't say, "you're exactly like everyone else" as you've stated above and if that's what you got from it, I'd suggest a reread. You will believe what you chose but the plain fact is we are all more the same than we are different, from a geneological level on up.

ironanimal

By all means continue your debate, but please do not cite Livestrong.com as a source and expect it to carry any kind of merit.

Morgaine_on_the_move

good info, thanks!

SideSteel

Bumping this because Lyle is brilliant.