calories in calories out true or not

I'll just say from my personal experience.... take it or leave it.

I have been pretty much overweight since I was... oh... 12 years old. When I was 17, my dad started truck driving, and the rest of us at home didn't have transportation (other than our 2 feet).

Okay, my mother never cooked, I was only taught a little by my grandmother when I was younger, so I didn't cook, and well... the other person at home... was too lazy...

So, pretty much everyday, we went to the grocery store and bought things that you can pop in the oven or microwave. OCCASIONALLY we would get stuff for things like nachos and tacos, that sort of thing...

The route to took to the store form our home was about a mile there and back. Doesn't sound much until you consider the hills that are involved. I live in Missouri, we have LOTS of hills. Hills are good for traveling both up and down.

We'd also go to Walmart, and (I want a gag a little as I type the next place..) McDonald's... Yeah, I used to enjoy eating at McDonald's.

Needless to say, I didn't have a proper diet. But guess what...

In one Summer, I lost 40lbs. I went from 150lbs to 110lbs!!!

Another thing though, is we really only ate ONE "real" meal once a day, but we snacked on bad foods the whole day (my mother wasn't a good role model, obviously). I also was drinking "Diet Lipton Lemon Iced Tea" then too. That was REALLY good, and "at the time" was better than soda.

There you have it... IF you are active enough, yes, you can pretty much eat anything you want and lose weight. But perhaps ages must factor in...

My Dad when was a teenager could eat a large Godfather's pizza with a 2 liter of soda (not diet), plus eat other things when he went home, and never gain an ounce. But he worked a lot, and he weight trained...

Calories in/Calories out. Yes it works. BUT, there are multiple variables at play that affect weight loss including accuracy of measurements (most people get a little heavy handed and generous with measurements), and endogenous hormones in the body ie INSULIN, growth factors, testosterone, estrogen, THYROID HORMONE, etc. ALL of these play a critical role in weight maintenance. An imbalance in one or more of these factors can drastically alter any desired results. So yes, there is more to it.

Great Question....

I like this answer best. There is no simple answer. We are all designed different. There are basic rules but what works for one person will not work for everyone. All the variables must be know before someone could answer your question. Be smart. Eat healthy. Buy a scale and measure your food correctly. He is right. Most people do not know measure their food correctly. Give it a fair chance before giving up and just eating twinkles ......jk. I know that was just an example.

It's a nice theory but in terms of weight loss, those things don't matter too much. In the worst case scenerio, someone has a suppressed metabolism. Lets says a TDEE calculator tells them their TDEE is 2,500, but it's really 2,000 calories. They still have to eat under their TDEE to lose body fat, regardless of hormonal circumstances. Energy can't be created or destroyed.

....O your THAT guy.

When I was in high school, I had a friend who would did an 'ice cream diet'!!!

It consisted of only eating paddle pop ice cream bars, a chocolate ice cream on a stick, at about 100 calories per bar.

She would eat up to 10 per day, and only be consuming around 1000 calories.

She lost weight!

Not the healthiest option by any means, but low intake of calories!

You need to have protein, your body can't manufacture that. You need protein for the amino acids to make well, new cells, enzymes and all those important things. You also need vitamins/minerals these things go into making cells/enzymes - that well keep you going as well as making the enzymes that make the whole digestion, metabolising and cellular respiration tick along nicely.

The twinkie diet bloke - if you read the whole thing, was having a protein shake, and a vitamin pill every day.

We are just biological machines, we need fuel we can burn - luckily that is a wide range of things - but we also need the stuff to keep our engines functional. Putting petrol in a car with no oil or transmission fluid is not going to get you far up the street to actually burn the fuel.

It really makes my brain hurt, when people still think the where what comes from magically makes a difference.

Way back when in science, they thought "organic" things had a special "life force" that you couldn't just replicate (Vitalism). This was disproved by the bloke (Wöhler) who synthesised urea with Silver Cyanate and Ammonium Chloride - that was back in the early 1800s.

What goes in to make the blocks we are built from is not important, just that all the stuff does. You can happily get concentrated forms of all this stuff, put together (still most often from plant extractions because it is cheaper that way) by a bunch of people in white coats in a lab (well, mass produced in a factory doing the same thing on a larger scale) or you can try and eat a varied enough diet of fruit and vegetables, nuts, meat, seeds etc. which have very minute amounts of the important stuff and hope you manage to get enough of each. Even if you opt for the latter method, chances are you may be missing some things, and taking a vitamin pill provided you have functional liver/kidneys is not going to hurt you, you will simply pee out all the extra stuff. It's easy to have a good idea when you are enough of the micro-nutrients as people seem to call them, after a vitamin pill your pee will have a different colour/smell than usual.

Assuming you aren't consuming more fuel (energy) than you actually need per day, excess protein can and will be turned into energy, so will fat. Fat/oil is needed for among other things to a lesser degree, building cell walls (bi-lipid layer) but if you are trying to lose weight you probably have some spares of this hanging around as well - excess fat will get turned into energy. Carbs however complex are pretty much just for fuel, and historically (like before we got into agriculture and grinding up grains with rocks) relatively difficult to come across. From a biological point of view that's why we love them, to get sugars the fairly simple types, you'd be picking a zillion berries, sucking on flowers and fighting off bees to try and get their honey.

Junk food isn't just rubbish, it is highly concentrated, and far more so than most modern lifestyles require. It isn't a huge battle to get in the car and head through the drive through and get a single meal that contains all the energy you'll probably need for the day. That's fine if you take your vitamin pill, maybe some fibre and protein supplements and that's all you have. That's where portions come in - since you don't have to track and animal for miles over rough terrain and kill it with your bare hands to get that same amount of energy, it is as easy as pie(sweet or savoury) to get well more fuel that you need.

Healthy is getting enough of all the different fuels you need and not an excess of any of them. Too much salt, vitamins or minerals will work your insides harder to get rid of them so they don't build up and poison you - too much energy will make you chunky. It's ok to have some spares, but not more than you were going to burn in the next 6 months if all the food vanished.

What I have found amusing since I have lost weight is people comment I look healthy as a euphemism I suspect, as some ask me if I have been ill to have dropped weight. Seems odd that a side effect of sickness (weight loss) would be something that would be considered healthier. Biologically, our bodies never want to lose weight, our bodies expect food might stop anytime, best to stock up while you can!

Once upon a time (though still in some places where food is scarce) being bigger was a sign of success, the ability to get more than enough food. In the modern first world where food is so freely available it is seen as a sign of indulgence and laziness.

then why doesn't it work for some people...

Because the numbers they provide are not accurate. I am not saying they are all lying; they are often providing numbers they really believe are correct. And if the wrong number is calories burned, sometimes (very rarely) that is something beyond their control that they are unaware of. There are also a few people who are way too impatient and are complaining about water weight (start their diet the day after a binge that included alcohol and start with a weight from they were dehydrated, for example). And there are a few trolls that like to stir up long discussions.

But there is an elephant in the room. Most of them are not being entirely honest and they know it.