A Calorie REALLY ISN'T a Calorie

It must be nice to be in a position to only eat completely 'healthy' foods while the rest of the peons eat a terrible diet that apparently will be causing all sorts of health problems.

ETA: I wonder what health markers would be like if you compared a significantly overweight person that only ate totally 'healthy' according to some extreme definition v a healthy weight person who ate a balanced diet with a variety of foods but ate some mass produced foods or non-organic produce.

When I was a kid we lived on a farm and grew our own vegetables (even made our own cleaning products, lotions, ect). We lived out in the country where there was no fast food, my brother and I only had McDonalds on special occasions (maybe twice a year). Despite growing and preparing our own food I was still obese and sick. By high school I was almost 300 pounds and on several meds including high bp medicine, depression medicine, pain medicine, and I was bordering on high cholesterol. So my markers were horrible. I was going through health issues of a middle aged women. Now I eat IIFYM. I have lost weight, lowered my body fat %, I no longer take any daily medications ( my bp actually tends to run low now), and my cholesterol levels are back to healthy levels.

I ate to many calories, plain and simple. It didn't matter that it was all unprocessed healthy meats and veggies. I ate too much, I got fat and I was still sick.

It must be nice to be in a position to only eat completely 'healthy' foods while the rest of the peons eat a terrible diet that apparently will be causing all sorts of health problems.

ETA: I wonder what health markers would be like if you compared a significantly overweight person that only ate totally 'healthy' according to some extreme definition v a healthy weight person who ate a balanced diet with a variety of foods but ate some mass produced foods or non-organic produce.

When I was a kid we lived on a farm and grew our own vegetables (even made our own cleaning products, lotions, ect). We lived out in the country where there was no fast food, my brother and I only had McDonalds on special occasions (maybe twice a year). Despite growing and preparing our own food I was still obese and sick. By high school I was almost 300 pounds and on several meds including high bp medicine, depression medicine, pain medicine, and I was bordering on high cholesterol. So my markers were horrible. I was going through health issues of a middle aged women. Now I eat IIFYM. I have lost weight, lowered my body fat %, I no longer take any daily medications ( my bp actually tends to run low now), and my cholesterol levels are back to healthy levels.

I ate to many calories, plain and simple. It didn't matter that it was all unprocessed healthy meats and veggies. I ate too much, I got fat and I was still sick.

Congratulations on your weight loss. That is fantastic.

I might as well wade in on this, though I'm somewhat leery to do so based upon the vitriol that I've been reading. Whatever, I guess, take these as my opinions.

1. Calories In, Calories Out. I think it's obvious that you cannot make energy (stored as fat) where no energy previously existed (taken in). That's logical. However, I think it ignores several things that, for the purposes of diet/weight loss/health enhancement, should factor in. From the mental impact, such as satiety rate, that has an effect on one's ability to maintain one's diet, to the more physical/metabolic, with regard to how your body uses and partitions specific nutrients that are taken in. We like to consider the body a closed system when considering a CICO paradigm (in at the mouth, out as energy), which I think is useful but doesn't consider the fact that our body is a collection of many very complex systems which are affected by the nutrients we take in. The "out" is very difficult to measure in an exact way, because it's always changing.

2. Carbohydrates. As far as carbohydrates go, I think we generally have a range. As an example, take two people. Person A and Person B. Person A has normal fasting glucose levels, and fasting insulin levels around, oh, 10. Person B has normal fasting glucose levels, and fasting insulin levels around 40. Person A has a relatively healthy carboydrate processing system: normal blood glucose, normal insulin needed to keep that blood glucose, etc. Person B shows problems -- it takes four times as much insulin for Person B to maintain a normal blood glucose level as Person A. Person B is insulin resistant and probably likely to develop Type II diabetes at some point.

Now, we know that insulin is secreted in response to your body's attempts to normalize blood glucose after a meal. Now, it's a drastic simplification, but let's assume Person A eats 100g of carbs at a meal, and requires 1000 units of insulin to keep blood glucose normal. Person B eats 100g of carbs, and requires 4000 units of insulin to keep blood glucose normal. Given insulins role in adipose storage, it's going to be more difficult for Person B to achieve the same levels of fat regulation of Person A - specifically, they are going to be more inclined to store the excess glucose as fat. They're less tolerant of carbohydrates than Person A, and the specific dietary recommendations given to both of them should likely differ. Person B may benefit from more carbohydrate restriction, whereas Person A can get by without it.

3. Health versus Weight. I see these terms getting conflated quite a bit, and I think it makes sense to have some common ground on it. I believe most of us can agree that using weight as the determinant factor for health is likely myopic -- you can have very unhealthy slender people. That being said, however, obesity is a very strong correlator with all sorts of disease states: CVD, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's, etc., so being overweight is, generally speaking, "not healthy". So what else do we look at? Commonly, we use cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, and other assay markers in the blood to determine whether or not our body is working at an optimal rate.

There is danger here, though, in that the science regarding all of these is always changing, and our adoption of a lot of these standards are strongly related to the amount of press each new study gets. For instance, it is the general belief that cholesterol is a strong indicator for CVD. However, studies from well before the current cholesterol recommendations through to today often show that it's actually a very poor indicator -- that many times, low blood serum cholesterol has shown higher correlation to heart disease and sudden cardiac death than high cholesterol. So what do we do?

We make compromises and sacrifices, and we eventually come upon something that we can live with. Then we implement it and see how it works. If it doesn't work, we likely make changes to it, and try again. If it does work, we've hit the jackpot -- clearly we've stumbled upon the ideal way that people should eat. And therein lies the problem.

We feel strongly about what has worked/is working for us, so it's natural to want to extrapolate that out to the scope of public health policy -- "It worked for me, ergo, it will work for everyone." While we are all human, and all process nutrients via the same mechanisms, the devil is in the details. Some people find a high fat diet more satiating, wherein if they went high carb, they'd be ravenously hungry. Other people can't imagine eating 70% fat, because they're concerned that their heart will explode immediately.

Who's right? The better question is, why does it matter? If you've found something that you're comfortable with, that you can live with, and has worked for you, congratulations. I, for one, had tried low fat, calorie restriction, and tons of exercise, and found that I had problems losing weight and felt miserable all the time. On my current diet, which is 70-80% fat, 20-25% protein, and minimal carbohydrate, I have lost weight easily, I eat a normal amount, and I get to exercise because I like it, not because of some compulsive need to do so. For what it's worth, I lose weight at 2000 kcal with this diet significantly more easily than I did with my previous attempts.

Does this mean that my diet is right for you? Not if you think it's unhealthy and will make your heart explode. I may think that your diet isn't ideal, either -- but if it works for you, why should my opinion count? We have a limited amount of time, no matter which way you cut it. Losing 50, 100, 150 pounds is almost guaranteed to make that time longer. So what we're really doing is arguing at the margins -- trying to find an "ideal" for everyone else. I think there is benefit to this, public policy wise (of which I think our current recommendations are probably poor), but not interpersonally. Just be happy for each other if they've found something that works for them.

Besides, I think the multiple camps could probably find some common ground, anyway:
1. Exercising is generally healthy.
2. Eating vegetables is not a bad thing.
3. Self-control is helpful when trying to lose weight.
4. Copious amounts of refined sugar are probably not good for you (I'll leave it to you to define "copious").

Stuff like that. We get too worked up over the minutiae - and trust me, I really like having discussions/debates regarding the science of it, too. When I do that, however, I like to make sure we discuss science, as opposed to "you". Discussing "you" always makes people upset, understandably.

Sorry for the wall of text.

I might as well wade in on this, though I'm somewhat leery to do so based upon the vitriol that I've been reading. Whatever, I guess, take these as my opinions.

1. Calories In, Calories Out. I think it's obvious that you cannot make energy (stored as fat) where no energy previously existed (taken in). That's logical. However, I think it ignores several things that, for the purposes of diet/weight loss/health enhancement, should factor in. From the mental impact, such as satiety rate, that has an effect on one's ability to maintain one's diet, to the more physical/metabolic, with regard to how your body uses and partitions specific nutrients that are taken in. We like to consider the body a closed system when considering a CICO paradigm (in at the mouth, out as energy), which I think is useful but doesn't consider the fact that our body is a collection of many very complex systems which are affected by the nutrients we take in. The "out" is very difficult to measure in an exact way, because it's always changing.

2. Carbohydrates. As far as carbohydrates go, I think we generally have a range. As an example, take two people. Person A and Person B. Person A has normal fasting glucose levels, and fasting insulin levels around, oh, 10. Person B has normal fasting glucose levels, and fasting insulin levels around 40. Person A has a relatively healthy carboydrate processing system: normal blood glucose, normal insulin needed to keep that blood glucose, etc. Person B shows problems -- it takes four times as much insulin for Person B to maintain a normal blood glucose level as Person A. Person B is insulin resistant and probably likely to develop Type II diabetes at some point.

Now, we know that insulin is secreted in response to your body's attempts to normalize blood glucose after a meal. Now, it's a drastic simplification, but let's assume Person A eats 100g of carbs at a meal, and requires 1000 units of insulin to keep blood glucose normal. Person B eats 100g of carbs, and requires 4000 units of insulin to keep blood glucose normal. Given insulins role in adipose storage, it's going to be more difficult for Person B to achieve the same levels of fat regulation of Person A - specifically, they are going to be more inclined to store the excess glucose as fat. They're less tolerant of carbohydrates than Person A, and the specific dietary recommendations given to both of them should likely differ. Person B may benefit from more carbohydrate restriction, whereas Person A can get by without it.

3. Health versus Weight. I see these terms getting conflated quite a bit, and I think it makes sense to have some common ground on it. I believe most of us can agree that using weight as the determinant factor for health is likely myopic -- you can have very unhealthy slender people. That being said, however, obesity is a very strong correlator with all sorts of disease states: CVD, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer's, etc., so being overweight is, generally speaking, "not healthy". So what else do we look at? Commonly, we use cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, and other assay markers in the blood to determine whether or not our body is working at an optimal rate.

There is danger here, though, in that the science regarding all of these is always changing, and our adoption of a lot of these standards are strongly related to the amount of press each new study gets. For instance, it is the general belief that cholesterol is a strong indicator for CVD. However, studies from well before the current cholesterol recommendations through to today often show that it's actually a very poor indicator -- that many times, low blood serum cholesterol has shown higher correlation to heart disease and sudden cardiac death than high cholesterol. So what do we do?

We make compromises and sacrifices, and we eventually come upon something that we can live with. Then we implement it and see how it works. If it doesn't work, we likely make changes to it, and try again. If it does work, we've hit the jackpot -- clearly we've stumbled upon the ideal way that people should eat. And therein lies the problem.

We feel strongly about what has worked/is working for us, so it's natural to want to extrapolate that out to the scope of public health policy -- "It worked for me, ergo, it will work for everyone." While we are all human, and all process nutrients via the same mechanisms, the devil is in the details. Some people find a high fat diet more satiating, wherein if they went high carb, they'd be ravenously hungry. Other people can't imagine eating 70% fat, because they're concerned that their heart will explode immediately.

Who's right? The better question is, why does it matter? If you've found something that you're comfortable with, that you can live with, and has worked for you, congratulations. I, for one, had tried low fat, calorie restriction, and tons of exercise, and found that I had problems losing weight and felt miserable all the time. On my current diet, which is 70-80% fat, 20-25% protein, and minimal carbohydrate, I have lost weight easily, I eat a normal amount, and I get to exercise because I like it, not because of some compulsive need to do so. For what it's worth, I lose weight at 2000 kcal with this diet significantly more easily than I did with my previous attempts.

Does this mean that my diet is right for you? Not if you think it's unhealthy and will make your heart explode. I may think that your diet isn't ideal, either -- but if it works for you, why should my opinion count? We have a limited amount of time, no matter which way you cut it. Losing 50, 100, 150 pounds is almost guaranteed to make that time longer. So what we're really doing is arguing at the margins -- trying to find an "ideal" for everyone else. I think there is benefit to this, public policy wise (of which I think our current recommendations are probably poor), but not interpersonally. Just be happy for each other if they've found something that works for them.

Besides, I think the multiple camps could probably find some common ground, anyway:
1. Exercising is generally healthy.
2. Eating vegetables is not a bad thing.
3. Self-control is helpful when trying to lose weight.
4. Copious amounts of refined sugar are probably not good for you (I'll leave it to you to define "copious").

Stuff like that. We get too worked up over the minutiae - and trust me, I really like having discussions/debates regarding the science of it, too. When I do that, however, I like to make sure we discuss science, as opposed to "you". Discussing "you" always makes people upset, understandably.

Sorry for the wall of text.

that's probably one of the most level headed, resonable and intelligent responses i've ever seen to one of these threads lol

should i even comment??..

here i go.

i am #team i believe a calorie isn't a calorie. i am a pear shaped girl and suffer from pcos. i have diabetes in my family. notice that when i eat more carbs i store fat (even when i am active). when I minimize my carbs and stick to healthy fats and protein... i can eat AS much as i want and still lose weight easily.

i cant believe people believe in this calorie in calorie out thing. only americans obsess with this and look at how fat we are.

should i even comment??..

here i go.

i am #team i believe a calorie isn't a calorie. i am a pear shaped girl and suffer from pcos. i have diabetes in my family. notice that when i eat more carbs i store fat (even when i am active). when I minimize my carbs and stick to healthy fats and protein... i can eat AS much as i want and still lose weight easily.

i cant believe people believe in this calorie in calorie out thing. only americans obsess with this and look at how fat we are.

You gain more weight when eating more carbs because you're eating more calories.

Calories in vs calories out is a biochemical fact.

I suggest you read up on PCOS. It's not that simple. I strongly doubt you'll ever be in the position to know what you're talking about in regards to that particular syndrome.

should i even comment??..

here i go.

i am #team i believe a calorie isn't a calorie. i am a pear shaped girl and suffer from pcos. i have diabetes in my family. notice that when i eat more carbs i store fat (even when i am active). when I minimize my carbs and stick to healthy fats and protein... i can eat AS much as i want and still lose weight easily.

i cant believe people believe in this calorie in calorie out thing. only americans obsess with this and look at how fat we are.

You gain more weight when eating more carbs because you're eating more calories.

Calories in vs calories out is a biochemical fact.

I suggest you read up on PCOS. It's not that simple. I strongly doubt you'll ever be in the position to know what you're talking about in regards to that particular syndrome.

Actually I have my med school applications in right now so you might be surprised

Hormonal disorders affect the calories out part. It doesn't invalidate the equation, not by a long shot.

Wow, I'm impressed. You might learn something then.

Bump for later.

should i even comment??..

here i go.

i am #team i believe a calorie isn't a calorie. i am a pear shaped girl and suffer from pcos. i have diabetes in my family. notice that when i eat more carbs i store fat (even when i am active). when I minimize my carbs and stick to healthy fats and protein... i can eat AS much as i want and still lose weight easily.

i cant believe people believe in this calorie in calorie out thing. only americans obsess with this and look at how fat we are.

You gain more weight when eating more carbs because you're eating more calories.

Calories in vs calories out is a biochemical fact.

I think you're at danger of confusing correlation and causation. Yes, if one gains weight, one will be taking in more calories than they use. That goes without saying. But what the law of thermodynamics doesn't infer (especially as it relates to this particular dietary concern) is causality.

You are saying that she is intaking a ton of food, so her body is storing the excess as fat.

Another valid way to interpret the situation, albeit a bit more complicated way, is as follows:
Her body is not good at processing carbohydrates and utilizing glucose as energy (due to insulin resistance, PCOS, or several other disease states). So her blood sugar is high after she eats carbohydrates. The body is not getting the same energy bump from carbs that a person who normally processes carbs would get -- so what does the body do? Tells you you're still hungry, because you haven't met your energy needs yet. So you eat more. By the time your insulin production catches up and gets your body the energy it needs, you have all this "extra". That gets stored as fat. When it comes time to "exercise it off", her body resists fat oxidation, again due to the insulin resistance issues.

In the one explanation, she's a lazy glutton that could lose weight if only she could stop stuffing her face with Doritos.
In the other explanation, her body functions in a way that makes her predisposed to adipose tissue gain, and makes the conventional "eat less, exercise more" paradigm almost guaranteed to not work for her -- her body is telling her she's still hungry when she eats "normally", so restricting food and upping exercise (something that will generally signal her to intake more) is extremely difficult to do. Maintainability, in my eyes, should be a focus of any dietary restriction. If you're losing weight, but hating life, what's the point?

The low carb high fat answer is a response specifically to scenario two. It seems like it works for her. I know, at similar caloric levels, I feel significantly better on LCHF than I did on low fat restricted calorie diets, and I lose weight significantly more easily.

Right, so it's calories in vs calories out. Whether it's hard to stop eating doesn't change the equation.

should i even comment??..

here i go.

i am #team i believe a calorie isn't a calorie. i am a pear shaped girl and suffer from pcos. i have diabetes in my family. notice that when i eat more carbs i store fat (even when i am active). when I minimize my carbs and stick to healthy fats and protein... i can eat AS much as i want and still lose weight easily.

i cant believe people believe in this calorie in calorie out thing. only americans obsess with this and look at how fat we are.

You gain more weight when eating more carbs because you're eating more calories.

Calories in vs calories out is a biochemical fact.

I think you're at danger of confusing correlation and causation. Yes, if one gains weight, one will be taking in more calories than they use. That goes without saying. But what the law of thermodynamics doesn't infer (especially as it relates to this particular dietary concern) is causality.

You are saying that she is intaking a ton of food, so her body is storing the excess as fat.

Another valid way to interpret the situation, albeit a bit more complicated way, is as follows:
Her body is not good at processing carbohydrates and utilizing glucose as energy (due to insulin resistance, PCOS, or several other disease states). So her blood sugar is high after she eats carbohydrates. The body is not getting the same energy bump from carbs that a person who normally processes carbs would get -- so what does the body do? Tells you you're still hungry, because you haven't met your energy needs yet. So you eat more. By the time your insulin production catches up and gets your body the energy it needs, you have all this "extra". That gets stored as fat. When it comes time to "exercise it off", her body resists fat oxidation, again due to the insulin resistance issues.

In the one explanation, she's a lazy glutton that could lose weight if only she could stop stuffing her face with Doritos.
In the other explanation, her body functions in a way that makes her predisposed to adipose tissue gain, and makes the conventional "eat less, exercise more" paradigm almost guaranteed to not work for her -- her body is telling her she's still hungry when she eats "normally", so restricting food and upping exercise (something that will generally signal her to intake more) is extremely difficult to do. Maintainability, in my eyes, should be a focus of any dietary restriction. If you're losing weight, but hating life, what's the point?

The low carb high fat answer is a response specifically to scenario two. It seems like it works for her. I know, at similar caloric levels, I feel significantly better on LCHF than I did on low fat restricted calorie diets, and I lose weight significantly more easily.

Right, so it's calories in vs calories out. Whether it's hard to stop eating doesn't change the equation.

I hope you don't go into endocrinology.

You're saying that hormonal issues that make people eat more calories or make their bodies use fewer calories invalidates calories in vs calories out.

It doesn't. Calories in vs calories out is a biochemical fact. Period, end of story. Yes medical conditions may make one side or the other harder to control or predict, but it's still a valid equation.