21 day 5000 calorie challenge: debunking the calorie myth?

QuietBloom

Just asked him if he was eating at this ratio of macros before the challenge - it is a good point that if he wasn't then he should drop some water weigh which will alter the results.

Also 21 days isn't long enough - I would have said a minimum of 6 weeks as that is how long it take the body (generally) to adjust to a change in diet.

I was right - his regular macros were 30 carbs 40 fat 30 protein - so he has actually changed more than one variable. This could well account for the initial weight loss.

Plus weight gain and loss is not linear.

This is a vanity experiment with no real basis in science.

'Vanity experiment'. Excellent way to put it.

QuietBloom

Very interesting I notice that he is eating a lot of coconut oil and also walnuts both of these foods increase metabolism so could in theory prevent him form gaining weight. If he has a high metabolism he may well be able to eat 5000cals a day and not put on weight. Where as me who has been blessed with a slow metabolism would get fat just looking at his menu. a case in point is this lady and she doesn't eat clean.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/4660129/Ive-had-five-kids-eat-5000-calories-of-junk-food-a-day-and-size-6.html

Coconut oils and walnuts have not been proven to increase the metabolism in any statistically significant way.

QuietBloom

Well the calories in calories out model IS a myth - that's just science. the body pursues homeostasis regardless of the number of calories in and the number out. Carbohydrates will tend to add to adipose tissue (i.e. grow fat). so if you eat a lot of carbohydrates you can expect to gain fat. however if your calories are high protein and high fat, unless you are rigourously exercising muscle, the body has no recognized need to add lean muscle mass (i.e. pounds of muscle) unless it is getting the signals (through heavy exercise) of that requirment. so it will pursue 'homeostasis' and those additional 'good calories' will be converted to urea and excreted. that's the chemistry and that's been proven many times. (see the 'good calories bad calories pdf online).

so if this guys is a trainer, he may gain weight but it will likely be muscle mass. i'm assuming he's not consuming excess carbohydrates.

one of the challeenges with MFP is it does tend to support the calories in calories out mythology. but for most people, because of the caloric density of high carbohydrate foods, when you restrict calories but balance your nutrition you will tend to restrict carbohydrates automatically. I've been on WW and Jenny and if you analyze the diet plan, you will find you're restricting your carbs to under 100 grams per day anyway. so most successful diets recognize the importance of carbohydrate restriction whether they tell you that or not.

Bro-science at it's best. :ohwell:

QuietBloom

On the standard American diet I gained steadily despite calorie restriction, and became pre-diabetic on a diet of "healthy whole grains", lean meat and vegetables.

The last year I have eaten primarily paleo(not necessarily low carb) which upped my calories about 500-1000 a day in mostly fat, gained 3 pounds LBM and lost 25 lbs overall.

No other factors have changed other than my diet.

Calories in are NOT all equal, the quality of your food does matter.

So you are saying you defy the law of thermodynamics? Something is off in your calorie counting.

Confuzzled4ever

How would eating food debunk the calorie myth, and what is the calorie myth again?

There are a lot of people that do not believe in cals in/out. They feel that it's the quality of the food that matters. So, if you were eating very clean, whatever that means, I guess no junk, no soda, pop tarts, ice cream, cheeseburgers, etc. just clean food. If you eat that way, you can consume 5000 cals a day without gaining.

There are entire groups so passionate about this, and are successful too. As an example, you don't need to count calories eating Paleo/primal. You just don't. If you stick with it.

funny because i was eating paleo primal and not losing weight until I started counting calories.

i think the premise is that you fill up on low calorie food instead of high calories ones so if you eat proper portions and don't over do it all while being active and exercising you will lose weight simply because you aren't over eating. No counting required. I'm also loosely following a diet that says you don't need to count calories, but I do, or i wouldn't be able to eat enough. Some of the people following it with me tracked a day and realized they were eating way too much. So there ya go.

elcy

On the standard American diet I gained steadily despite calorie restriction, and became pre-diabetic on a diet of "healthy whole grains", lean meat and vegetables.

The last year I have eaten primarily paleo(not necessarily low carb) which upped my calories about 500-1000 a day in mostly fat, gained 3 pounds LBM and lost 25 lbs overall.

No other factors have changed other than my diet.

Calories in are NOT all equal, the quality of your food does matter.

So you are saying you defy the law of thermodynamics? Something is off in your calorie counting.

I am saying that the poor quality of the food I was eating in the past put my body in an insulin resistant/pre-diabetic state, causing my body to retain more fat. Insulin is a fat-storing hormone, the more of it that circulates in the body the harder it becomes to burn body fat

When you consider that 25.8 million children and adults in the United States, 8.3% of the population, have diabetes and 79 million people have pre-diabetes, this is extremely relevant information when considering diet and how to lose weight.

extra_medium

There is a study out there that looks at the daily calorie burn of the regular Kenyans that run 10+ miles a day. And they burn the same amount of calories as the average American. Even though they are way more active.

Why do think that might be true? Considering no details. A marathoner from Kenya would weight what? The Average American would way what? Right there is food for thought. Now if you said the average Kenyan marathoner consumes less calories than an American marathoner of the same weight, then there might be some genetics at play.

This looked at non marathoners. The basic premise was the average Kenyan gets way more exercise than the average american. So they must eat a lot more food and burn way more calories. The average daily calorie burn was equivalent and food intake was as well.

Basically, the conclusion was your body comes more efficient at whatever activity you throw at it. So to get the big calorie burns, you need to keep upping the ante.

Do you have a link? I can't seem to find it.

But I think neaderthin's point was how much does the average Kenyan weigh and how much does the average American weigh?
Were their weights the same? Because the "average" American would weight more, and require more calories than the average Kenyan. The activity level is what equals it out, I am guessing.
Again, I am just wondering because I haven't seen this study and it isn't clear to me how this was measured.

Not sure how much it would add up to. Probably not as much as proponents claim, probably not as little as detractors claim.

Can you post a link? I've seriously googled forever and can't come up with it. I'm actually interested in reading it not just debating it.

All it takes is one guy on a forum somewhere on the internet to say "there's this study that was done..."

extra_medium

Well the calories in calories out model IS a myth - that's just science. the body pursues homeostasis regardless of the number of calories in and the number out. Carbohydrates will tend to add to adipose tissue (i.e. grow fat). so if you eat a lot of carbohydrates you can expect to gain fat.

Except for 20-30 years ago when high-carb, low fat was the fad, and people still managed to lose weight back then.

elcy

Well the calories in calories out model IS a myth - that's just science. the body pursues homeostasis regardless of the number of calories in and the number out. Carbohydrates will tend to add to adipose tissue (i.e. grow fat). so if you eat a lot of carbohydrates you can expect to gain fat.

Except for 20-30 years ago when high-carb, low fat was the fad, and people still managed to lose weight back then.

Almost 70% of the population is now overweight and guess when that started... in the 80's when the government food pyramid came out with the suggested 6-11 servings of carbs. In the 70's, before the "healthy whole grain' craze less than 16% of the population was overweight or obese.

ironanimal

Well the calories in calories out model IS a myth - that's just science. the body pursues homeostasis regardless of the number of calories in and the number out. Carbohydrates will tend to add to adipose tissue (i.e. grow fat). so if you eat a lot of carbohydrates you can expect to gain fat.

Except for 20-30 years ago when high-carb, low fat was the fad, and people still managed to lose weight back then.

Almost 70% of the population is now overweight and guess when that started... in the 80's when the government food pyramid came out with the suggested 6-11 servings of carbs. In the 70's, before the "healthy whole grain' craze less than 16% of the population was overweight or obese.

Yep, that's the only thing that changed since the 70s.

Iron_Feline

Well the calories in calories out model IS a myth - that's just science. the body pursues homeostasis regardless of the number of calories in and the number out. Carbohydrates will tend to add to adipose tissue (i.e. grow fat). so if you eat a lot of carbohydrates you can expect to gain fat.

Except for 20-30 years ago when high-carb, low fat was the fad, and people still managed to lose weight back then.

Almost 70% of the population is now overweight and guess when that started... in the 80's when the government food pyramid came out with the suggested 6-11 servings of carbs. In the 70's, before the "healthy whole grain' craze less than 16% of the population was overweight or obese.

because it is that simple :noway:

magerum

Well the calories in calories out model IS a myth - that's just science. the body pursues homeostasis regardless of the number of calories in and the number out. Carbohydrates will tend to add to adipose tissue (i.e. grow fat). so if you eat a lot of carbohydrates you can expect to gain fat.

Except for 20-30 years ago when high-carb, low fat was the fad, and people still managed to lose weight back then.

Almost 70% of the population is now overweight and guess when that started... in the 80's when the government food pyramid came out with the suggested 6-11 servings of carbs. In the 70's, before the "healthy whole grain' craze less than 16% of the population was overweight or obese.

because it is that simple :noway:

yopeeps025

interesting

ublanchard

Yeah whatever, have fun dude, but this is bad science. You can't debunk anything with ONE subject. Where's the control group?

BigT555

this whole argument is just one big pissing contest. im sure there is merit to both sides. ill stick with what has lost me (and a ton of others) 70 lbs

xtrmtrnng

Many on paleo/primal can lose a lot of weight fast without counting calories. However, many on a diet to begin with are coming from a standard American diet (SAD) and are already metabolically damaged. In those cases it sometimes requires going on the lower carb side of paleo/primal and/or counting calories in order to lose weight (both would be best). Once the weight is lost, sometimes you can come off the very low carb and calorie counting if you've restored enough insulin sensitivity and healed elsewhere.

xtrmtrnng

My last comment was a reply to someone stating they didn't start losing on paleo until counting calories.

To add more to the general topic: The idea of quality food and not needing to count calories is very much true for paleo/primal, but it has to be viewed in the proper context and adjusted for when there is metabolic damage already done. Calories in / calories out (CICO) isn't the complete way to view weight management even though it ends up working in a lot of cases. Restricting calories often works, but the equation is not the entire picture, so weight loss comes for some without a complete understanding of why. Then there are those that cannot lose with the CICO model, and they are told they don't have enough will power. That's not always true.

On the other end, not everyone can push calories way over base metabolic rate and not gain even if eating paleo. The 5,000 calorie thing is more of a test/concept that can sometimes demonstrate what's wrong with CICO, but if you are metabolically damaged or just cannot tolerate unnaturally high calories, you may gain.

There are two primary mechanisms in why not counting calories often works with paleo. One is related to this calorie topic directly in that the amount of calories in food from a thermodynamic perspective doesn't 1:1 translate into a perfectly efficient closed energy system in the body to where CICO would be applicable. That's what the 5,000 calorie challenge can demonstrate. CICO doesn't account for what the body actually does with the actual amount of energy that becomes available to the cells. Here is something to help explain that (not proof, just more very good info):
http://garytaubes.com/2012/11/what-would-happen-if-thoughts-and-thought-experiments-on-the-calorie-issue/

The second reason why not counting calories often works with paleo is that natural unprocessed whole foods are far more satiating, so you end up eating less while not actually counting and not at all being hungry. Yes that ends up effectively partially supporting the CICO model even though you're not logging the numbers, but it's only one part of the bigger picture. There's crossover in the explanation, and that's why there is confusion and disagreement about CICO.

Eating paleo/primal is the natural diet for homo sapiens, so people will often do best eating that way. What does it all mean?

SAD = You may or may not be very metabolically damaged yet, so you may or may not be overweight and manifesting unhealthy attributes. Generally SAD is making us fat and unhealthy though.

non-paleo CICO = It may be enough to help lose weight even though it's an inaccurate view. It will fail for others. In most cases, you will be hungry if not ravenous. Stopping the caloric restriction may result in regain.

paleo wo counting = It's often enough to lose a lot of fat. As you near a healthy fat percentage, metabolic damage, stress, and other factors may slow or stall loss, but you can get to a very healthy fat percentage if not your exact target. You eat as much as you want and are not hungry; you can eat naturally like that forever, so there is no end of the "diet".

paleo w counting = While counting should be unnecessary, sometimes this is the fastest way to lose, and sometimes it will get you through a stall.

chivalryder

Did anyone read into this guys progress at all? Sorry, but I didn't read through the entire thread. If you go directly to day 21 of this guy's challenge, it reads:

Day 21, and I am 96.3kg before breakfast which is 7kg up from my starting AM weight and 0.8kg up from yesterday morning. Last night I was 96.4kg, making my mean for Day 20, 95.95kg, which is +6.25kg from the start! As it was the last day I also weighed myself this evening at 97.3kg, giving me a mean for day 21 at 96.8kg, which is a massive +7.1kg up from the start and +0.1kg above the calorie formula on a 53,872 k/cal surplus.

So, the prediction is he would gain 7kg. Guess what. He gained 7 kg. Shocker, I know, right?

eric_sg61

Did anyone read into this guys progress at all? Sorry, but I didn't read through the entire thread. If you go directly to day 21 of this guy's challenge, it reads:

Day 21, and I am 96.3kg before breakfast which is 7kg up from my starting AM weight and 0.8kg up from yesterday morning. Last night I was 96.4kg, making my mean for Day 20, 95.95kg, which is +6.25kg from the start! As it was the last day I also weighed myself this evening at 97.3kg, giving me a mean for day 21 at 96.8kg, which is a massive +7.1kg up from the start and +0.1kg above the calorie formula on a 53,872 k/cal surplus.

So, the prediction is he would gain 7kg. Guess what. He gained 7 kg. Shocker, I know, right?

/thread
ETA: I have issued a similar challenge to calorie deniers before, they never take it. Fact is even the most holiest and cleanest of foods will result in weight gain if eaten over your TDEE.

CupcakeCrusoe

Arguing against the first law of thermodynamics?

Ambitious to put it nicely.

THIS. ALL OF THIS.