Calories vs. Carbs

I'm always at the high end of my carb intake (average 205g) I am eating around 1200-1300 calories per day and am losing a minimum of 1.6lbs a week. I weight myself every Tuesday, but already this week I have lost 2.4lbs. So the carbs are obviously not doing any damage. Oh and its important to note that I eat around 1500 calories once a week... I can't not have the foods I love, I just have them in moderation and once a week is plenty for me.

both calories and carbs need to be counted, imo.

One more thought / question - why are we here counting calories or carbs? People have been on the planet earth for 2 million years. As recently as our grandparents generation everyone was at a pretty healthy weight. Heart disease was low. Insulin sensitivity didn't exist. Almost no one exercised as an adult. No one counted calories. People ate until they were full and went about their business. Why now are so many people's bodies NOT able to regulate their weight?

Well, my grandparents didn't sit on their sofa and watch TV as much as I do! Plus, they didn't have all the easy things that I did my whole life like I've had - toilet in my house, car, air conditioning, dishwasher, wash machine, clothes dryer, etc! They also didn't eat as much processed foods as we do.

OP: When I shifted my focus to staying under my carb goal, it was way easier for me to come under my calorie goal. Even when I go over my carb goal, I still 99% of the time am under my calorie goal so I don't feel so bad, but my goal still remains to focus on coming under carb.

One more thought / question - why are we here counting calories or carbs? People have been on the planet earth for 2 million years. As recently as our grandparents generation everyone was at a pretty healthy weight. Heart disease was low. Insulin sensitivity didn't exist. Almost no one exercised as an adult. No one counted calories. People ate until they were full and went about their business. Why now are so many people's bodies NOT able to regulate their weight?

Compare total activity back then to now. Did people sit around and watch TV (as often as now) and play XBox back then? Or were they farming, working more active jobs, and moving around? Did people eat fast food then, and drink gallons of soda, as much as they do now?

As a society we are eating more calories and moving a lot less then previous generations.

Not sure our grandparents were that much more active than us. Factor in all of the exercise that today's generation does and I might argue the opposite. Either way, they had the ability to eat foods they enjoyed - and had the means to eat enough of it to get fat. Why didn't they? Or better question, why have more and more of OUR bodies lost the ability to maintain themselves at a healthy weight? To tell us, you're full and don't eat any more?

The following is my opinion.

I think, as a society, we have been sold a big fat lie about what we should be eating. The so called experts have told us that anything that comes from plants is healthy and natural and good for you, and anything that comes from animals is unhealthy and unnatural and makes you fat. They sold a generation on this concept. They created a food pyramid that said grains were the foundation of our diet - and told us it was irrefutable fact. They got organizations like the American Hearth Association to put their heart healthy logos on sugary cereals loaded with sugar because they doesn't contain saturated fats. Then the food industry scientists started playing with the plant foods and sugars to create the most addictive foods in history. This science got us things like partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that proved to be 100% plant based and extremely ultra-unhealthy! So now we have a generation of people that, in their heart of hearts, think that wheat and grains are healthy, and steak and cheese are not. The only way many of us can control ourselves is to carefully monitor what we eat and record it in MFP so our cerebrums can have the facts they needs to impose the necessary self controls. Our bodies have ceased to be the self-monitoring system that evolution (or God, depending on your beliefs), intended them to be.

Eating a low carb diet helps restore the body's ability to monitor itself. You become familiar with what "hungry" feels like as opposed to the body's screaming for sugar, which is what we though hunger was. The reason people regain weight after doing this "diet" is they think that once they've lost their weight they can go back to eating the way they always had. And finding the middle ground is very tricky.

I find exercise and removing certain trigger foods from my diet are the ways I can maintain. I have no illusions of adding sub buns, french fries, crackers, etc. in the future. But I do love many foods I can eat, and I eat them often and without worrying about how much I eat. This is my plan for maintenance - to keep eating as I am now, and allowing my body to find equilibrium.

It pains me to see people talk about not cutting foods from their diets and losing the "natural way", or "the healthy way", or similar sentiments. In fact they are eating the way that we've been told is healthy and natural, but is in fact neither. We are, in fact, eating in an unhealthy way that puts our bodies in a state that they can't maintain themselves. This is a sickness. 2 years or 5 years or 10 years from now this will all be unraveled and we'll get a more factual picture of what we should be eating by the next generation of nutrition science that I hope like h3ll is smarter than the last generation. There are signs that this is happening already. Can you believe the food pyramid was repealed? The experiment I referenced was conducted and published. Nutrition experts and even doctors are recommending lower carb diets. We are on a new trend - a healthy one - a natural one.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that the types of food we eat impacts how much energy our bodies use (burn) both at rest and when active.

After losing weight on a diet, subjects were put on three different diets - one high in sugary carbs (typical American diet), one high in low glycemic carbs, and one low in carbs (Atkins). The calories they ate were the same - it was only the mix of carefully measured foods that varied. (This was done in a clinical setting - the subjects were monitored throughout the study).

The results were people that ate the sugary carbs diet had a lower energy output (they burned fewer calories) than people that ate the low glycemic diet. And people that ate the low glycemic diet burned fewer calories than those that ate the low carb diet.

How much difference - people that ate low carb could eat about 300 more calories per day than people that ate the sugary diet, because their body was burning about that many more calories.

This puts a new spin on the "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" debate.

One more thought / question - why are we here counting calories or carbs? People have been on the planet earth for 2 million years. As recently as our grandparents generation everyone was at a pretty healthy weight. Heart disease was low. Insulin sensitivity didn't exist. Almost no one exercised as an adult. No one counted calories. People ate until they were full and went about their business. Why now are so many people's bodies NOT able to regulate their weight?

u gotta post a link with such contradictory info!

Here is a link to a column from the NY Times that explains and interprets the study:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/what-really-makes-us-fat.html?_r=0

And here is a link to the raw study abstract, as published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, June 27, 2012, Vol 307, No. 24

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154

thx 4 posting the link. his findings r very controversial. i wonder if there have been follow up studies to prove him right or wrong. i wonder how he is quantifying the calories burned. he probably used weight loss not fat loss. weight gain will be shown in subjects with a high cab diet vs those on low carb diet because glycogen makes u hold on to alot of water. i would love 2c a body composition test on the people 2c where the weight variations came from. thx 4 posting.

One more thought / question - why are we here counting calories or carbs? People have been on the planet earth for 2 million years. As recently as our grandparents generation everyone was at a pretty healthy weight. Heart disease was low. Insulin sensitivity didn't exist. Almost no one exercised as an adult. No one counted calories. People ate until they were full and went about their business. Why now are so many people's bodies NOT able to regulate their weight?

Compare total activity back then to now. Did people sit around and watch TV (as often as now) and play XBox back then? Or were they farming, working more active jobs, and moving around? Did people eat fast food then, and drink gallons of soda, as much as they do now?

As a society we are eating more calories and moving a lot less then previous generations.

Not sure our grandparents were that much more active than us. Factor in all of the exercise that today's generation does and I might argue the opposite. Either way, they had the ability to eat foods they enjoyed - and had the means to eat enough of it to get fat. Why didn't they? Or better question, why have more and more of OUR bodies lost the ability to maintain themselves at a healthy weight? To tell us, you're full and don't eat any more?

The following is my opinion.

I think, as a society, we have been sold a big fat lie about what we should be eating. The so called experts have told us that anything that comes from plants is healthy and natural and good for you, and anything that comes from animals is unhealthy and unnatural and makes you fat. They sold a generation on this concept. They created a food pyramid that said grains were the foundation of our diet - and told us it was irrefutable fact. They got organizations like the American Hearth Association to put their heart healthy logos on sugary cereals loaded with sugar because they doesn't contain saturated fats. Then the food industry scientists started playing with the plant foods and sugars to create the most addictive foods in history. This science got us things like partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that proved to be 100% plant based and extremely ultra-unhealthy! So now we have a generation of people that, in their heart of hearts, think that wheat and grains are healthy, and steak and cheese are not. The only way many of us can control ourselves is to carefully monitor what we eat and record it in MFP so our cerebrums can have the facts they needs to impose the necessary self controls. Our bodies have ceased to be the self-monitoring system that evolution (or God, depending on your beliefs), intended them to be.

Eating a low carb diet helps restore the body's ability to monitor itself. You become familiar with what "hungry" feels like as opposed to the body's screaming for sugar, which is what we though hunger was. The reason people regain weight after doing this "diet" is they think that once they've lost their weight they can go back to eating the way they always had. And finding the middle ground is very tricky.

I find exercise and removing certain trigger foods from my diet are the ways I can maintain. I have no illusions of adding sub buns, french fries, crackers, etc. in the future. But I do love many foods I can eat, and I eat them often and without worrying about how much I eat. This is my plan for maintenance - to keep eating as I am now, and allowing my body to find equilibrium.

It pains me to see people talk about not cutting foods from their diets and losing the "natural way", or "the healthy way", or similar sentiments. In fact they are eating the way that we've been told is healthy and natural, but is in fact neither. We are, in fact, eating in an unhealthy way that puts our bodies in a state that they can't maintain themselves. This is a sickness. 2 years or 5 years or 10 years from now this will all be unraveled and we'll get a more factual picture of what we should be eating by the next generation of nutrition science that I hope like h3ll is smarter than the last generation. There are signs that this is happening already. Can you believe the food pyramid was repealed? The experiment I referenced was conducted and published. Nutrition experts and even doctors are recommending lower carb diets. We are on a new trend - a healthy one - a natural one.

I think you are trying to get to deep and profound with this whole thing. Its a well known fact the generations before moved more, ate foods closer to their natural state and weren't sitting in front of the TV shoving an entire bag of cheetohs down their throats. And actually a lot of our grandparents are now suffering and have died of diabetes, heart diseases, cancers, and our parents are worse off and obese because these grandparents stopped breastfeeding, started feeding them processed foods, thought being fat was being healthy and hearty. For instances those hearty breakfast we like to eat now? Biscuits, gravy, pancakes with syrups, waffles, fats, sausages, bacon, etc? You want to know why people ate like that before and didn't get fat? Because they woke up at 4 am and spent all day grueling manual labor, farms, factories, construction, worked the mines, you name it. Most of us now sit at a desk and troll MyFitnessPal.

Not sure our grandparents were that much more active than us. Factor in all of the exercise that today's generation does and I might argue the opposite.

I simply disagree.

Me too! I don't know how anyone with any understanding of what life was like 75 or 100 years ago could make that statement.

Much agreed Greeny......................

Now get out there and go eat a donut before you max out on the bench! Rawr!

For me, it's both.

This! They are both elements to be managed, it's not either or.