quality of calories question

brianparow

Is it true or false that you can consume less calories if the quality of calories is higher in vital nutrients?
Take my net calorie goal of 2010. If I ate nothing but fruits, vegatables, whole grains etc... and did not eat empty or low quality calories would my body be more resistant to starvation mode at say 1200-1500 calories than if I just ate a mix of low and high quality calories?

courtney_love2001

That would be false. I could eat nothing but carrots all day, but if I ate 3000 calories worth of carrots I would not lose weight just because carrots are healthy. Calories in= calories out! I do suppose that if you ate better quality foods (low sugar and sodium), it would be better for your electrolyte balance so you wouldn't retain water, but you wouldn't be burning fat just because they're healthy. I wish that what you said were true....

brianparow

Hey Courtney,

I understand what you are saying by calories in= calories out and that 3000 calories of carrots is still 3000 calories. But what I am asking is if One's calorie deficit could be higher without going into starvation mode if only consuming high nutrient foods.

CrystalT

That would be false. I could eat nothing but carrots all day, but if I ate 3000 calories worth of carrots I would not lose weight just because carrots are healthy. Calories in= calories out! I do suppose that if you ate better quality foods (low sugar and sodium), it would be better for your electrolyte balance so you wouldn't retain water, but you wouldn't be burning fat just because they're healthy. I wish that what you said were true....

I think you have it backwards. He doesn’t want to eat 3000 calories of carrots. My understanding is that he wants to know if he eats less than 1,200 calories (or whatever his number maybe) but the calories he eats are super nutritious, will he keep from going into starvation mode?

I don't know the answer, but I would love to.

iplayoutside19

I think you'd have to eat less than 1200 calories for two to three weeks before you get to starvation mode.

Will the higher quality foods fill you up faster to the point you could get by on 1200 calories and not be hungry? I don't think you could do it without neglecting other nutrients, and I know I couldn't do it at all.

courtney_love2001

I thought when I posted that I didn't fully understand the question, and I'm not sure if I still do. However, I think my answer is still correct. Just because it's higher "quality" of food shouldn't matter. A calorie is a calorie no matter what, and your body needs calories to survive. If there are lots of nutrients attached to those calories, that is great. I am leaning toward the thought that it wouldn't matter if they were nutrient-rich foods or not, though explaining it would get into a ton of biochemistry that I don't want to delve into hehe (perhaps songbyrdsweet would care to chime in here). I do agree that you would have to be well below your daily limit to enter starvation mode, and it looks like you're no where near that!

Sorry if I didn't answer your question fully....I'm just a little confused I think :ohwell:

MercuryBlue

Sort of reminds me of a question that was on my son's cartoon today: "What weighs more, 10 pounds of bananas or 10 pounds of Ah's dirty socks?"

I think Courtney has it right- that calories are calories. You get too low, your body goes into starvation mode (regardless of the nutrients in the food).

LuckyLeprechaun

the "starvation mode" is just a phenomenon where your body is being asked to perform more work than you are fueling it for, and so it hangs on desperately to your fat reserves in order to prolong the length of time it takes you to starve to death/go into malnutrition. If you put high-octane gasoline in your car, and then you drove to another state, you would still run out of gas. So it would seem to me that high quality calories are great, but they won't make up for too great a deficit.

Banks?
Songbyrd?

NotSurprised

But it's not really the same, because ofcourse sugars & fat calories everything through the roof with say candy bars or whatever you may choose to oppose the quality food it will get you for sure, in diabetes all nasty deseases as oppose to eating mostly vegetables & some fruits pure ofcourse. hahaha Sorry, but when they say 210 calories for a candy bar & all it's actually about twice that if not more considering all the loaded garbage in it probably 3-4 times that insane. Huh

brianparow

Maybe I should clarify what I want to accomplish. I want to do a weeks worth of almost fasting (Juicing with only fruits and vegatables) and only eat solid foods like salads, oat bran cereal, yogurt. I want to do this mostly to cleanse out my system but also enjoy the benefit of jumpstarting my weight loss.
But I'm afraid to go to low and lose energy/muscle. My current net calorie goal is 2010 without exercise but I would be hard pressed to drink/eat that many calories using the above method.

NotSurprised

Maybe I should clarify what I want to accomplish. I want to do a weeks worth of almost fasting (Juicing with only fruits and vegatables) and only eat solid foods like salads, oat bran cereal, yogurt. I want to do this mostly to cleanse out my system but also enjoy the benefit of jumpstarting my weight loss.
But I'm afraid to go to low and lose energy/muscle. My current net calorie goal is 2010 without exercise but I would be hard pressed to drink/eat that many calories using the above method.

I'm not a nutritionist, but I don't see a problem with it, remember yogurt can be high in calories, just two big spoonfulls from one of those tiny containers is like 100-200 calories so a little bowl would be up to equal the 2010, but I would try & limit it to 600 calories tops then get some bran & the like for the rest also bran is high in hardyness as we all know which is very good.

iRun4wine

Interesting to read all of the responses, and the question!

Not sure, but I think the question is something like this:

If I ate 1200 calories worth of (fruit snacks/ice cream/fruit loops... etc) a day, or 1200 calories of lean meats, veggies, and fruit... over a prolonged period of time, would those 2 scenarios effect my body and my weight loss differently?

songbyrdsweet

Starvation mode is about calories AND quality of food. And it can be mimicked even at normal calorie levels if the quality of calories is poor.

Pretend that you're eating 1500 calories a day, but almost no protein, and you're not eating complete proteins. Even though you're eating enough calories overall, your protein levels are so low that your body has to break down protein-containing tissue (skeletal muscle, organs, cardiac muscle) for amino acids to make other cellular proteins. That's a form of starvation. But you're still getting enough carbohydrates and fat to make ATP (energy).

Now if you're eating 800 calories a day and all complete proteins, the catabolism of tissue in the body might not be as great, but eventually you will run really low on body fat so you won't be able to spare the tissue, and once again you have tissue breakdown. You don't have enough energy to make sufficient ATP, so you're breaking down everything --fat and muscle.

Neither scenario is healthy. There is no 'jumpstarting' weight loss, and there is nothing to 'cleanse'. Have you urinated or had a bowel movement today? Then congrats, your body is cleansing just fine on its own.

iplayoutside19

Maybe I should clarify what I want to accomplish. I want to do a weeks worth of almost fasting (Juicing with only fruits and vegatables) and only eat solid foods like salads, oat bran cereal, yogurt. I want to do this mostly to cleanse out my system but also enjoy the benefit of jumpstarting my weight loss.
But I'm afraid to go to low and lose energy/muscle. My current net calorie goal is 2010 without exercise but I would be hard pressed to drink/eat that many calories using the above method.

Unless your Doctor prescribed this to you, I wouldn't do it. You can't maintain it, and while you're doing that you're not learning long term behavior that is consistant with long term success.