Is counting calories really all it takes?

2»

Replies

  • joshperna
    joshperna Posts: 2
    You can loose weight eating anything as long as you burn off more calories than your body needs. Its a simple as that. You will be lacking certain vitamins and minerals, and will probably feel like crap, but you will loose weight.
  • SanteMulberry
    SanteMulberry Posts: 3,202 Member
    Of course, I have definitely seen results by watching my calorie intake, but something about this method worries me as it can encourage you to eat ANYTHING as long as it comes under the calorie goal. For example, my calorie goal is 1200.

    I could eat about roughly 4 mars bars, and then reach that goal. Obviously that's not sustainable, but what if you met your calorie goals just eating utter crap like that? :laugh: Would the weight still come off?

    What if you only ate microwave meals or McDonalds but it didn't go over your calorie goal? Just a thought...!

    Any reduced-calorie diet will cause a reduction in the number on the scale over time. That part is true. HOWEVER (and this is a very big however) what composes those calories can make the difference between health and disease (and even has an influence on what is burned---body fat or lean tissue). As you rightly pointed out, a diet composed of Mars Bars does not a healthy body make. Basically, a diet of 1,200 calories has no room AT ALL for the empty calories represented by sugar and starch, if health is to be maintained (and if binging and regain is to be avoided). Body builders can afford empty calories because of the huge number of calories that they take in (sometimes 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day). But I can guarantee that if that 5,000 to 6,000 calories was composed entirely of Mars Bars, they would not be able to keep up their high level of training for long, without suffering a breakdown in their health (actually, they would likely lose their taste for Mars Bars before that happened).

    You must eat right to get desirable results from your body. That understanding is one of the best things to come out of modern athletic training. I listened to a broadcast recently that concerned a cross-country bicycle race. One of the men interviewed, said that he now understood the importance of eating right. He said that, at first, he would eat whatever appealed to him and he had an appetite for a LOT of junk food. He went on to say that he got very ill after about the third day of racing and eating a lot of empty calories. He kept to the race anyway and one day, just fell off his bike and lay by the side of the road until another contestant came along and helped him to the rest station. His helper was a seasoned long-distance bicycler and asked what the ill participant had been eating. When he told the seasoned rider, the older man laughed and said, "Well, that's your problem. Watch me and see what I eat---and then you eat that--not the junk you've been eating."
  • SanteMulberry
    SanteMulberry Posts: 3,202 Member
    lol, I asked my mum this too!!! She said it's about the fat and the sugar in those foods, that are bad for your body...I think the fat would cling to you...just my understanding but I have no idea tbh :p

    Actually, fats have gotten a bad rap. Even "bad fats" (saturated fat) that comes from natural sources like, meat, fish, dairy and eggs have a place in a healthy diet. Because they are easy sources of high quality protein. these foods would be greatly missed in some program to eliminate fat. Butter is a source of nutrients that are not very available in other foods. Sugar, on the other hand, delivers essentially no nutrients other than calories. One must be VERY judicious about what one spends calories on in a calorie-restricted diet. Every bite must be considered in terms of its health-building potential. Not as much fun as eating whatever appeals to one, but there it is.
  • SanteMulberry
    SanteMulberry Posts: 3,202 Member
    To add: fat does not make you fat. My fat is set at 30%.

    me too - but i managed to hit 65% fat one day last week :/

    not planning on doing that everyday but i still lost 2lb this week - a LITTLE of what you fancy does you good now and then.

    i like this site better than others as you can see what you should be hitting for your macros - of course you can lose weight only eating (1200s wortth of) mars bars but you won't feel or look very good imo.

    Actually, I'm guessing that you discovered that you didn't have much taste for fat the next day or so after your OD on fat the one day? As long as they are "good fats" (no hydrogenated vegetable oils or trans fats) you will probably notice that your fat intake rises and falls naturally from one day to the next. Our bodies are master self-regulators if we don't mess them up by eating junky foods. The fructose component of sucrose (sucrose is 50% fructose) appears to be one of those substances that "fools our body" into thinking that it is not full, according to researchers. http://www.foodaddictionsummit.org/foodaddiction.htm

Categories