Which is it? Let's hear opinions!

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dualcollision
dualcollision Posts: 87 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I hear some people say it's how much you eat and "a calorie is a calorie". I also hear some say It's what you eat, not how much. What do you think? I'll keep from voicing my opinion right now but my personal experience leans me towards one answer not the other.
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Replies

  • rmhand
    rmhand Posts: 1,067 Member
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    It's about what you eat and the amount matters too. But all calories are not created equal.
  • taso42
    taso42 Posts: 8,980 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being
  • Mother_Superior
    Mother_Superior Posts: 1,624 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    IN

    ...for what will surely turn into a drastic over-complication of such a simple, perfect truth like this.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    In theory, this, but there are a lot of theories out there saying that protein, fat, carbs don't digest the same way and whatnot. The jury is still out.

    In the end though, the basic idea is that for the same amount of calories, eating a cleaner diet will not leave you starving.
  • kellyjamespro2012
    kellyjamespro2012 Posts: 29 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    THIS^^^
  • MsDrJuris
    MsDrJuris Posts: 41
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    THIS. I've found that I can lose weight just by cutting calories, but when I want to look cut and lean and great, I have to eat clean (i.e.:when you're at a healthy weight already is when clean eating seems to really make a huge difference).
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being


    ^ This is generally how it works.
  • taso42
    taso42 Posts: 8,980 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    THIS. I've found that I can lose weight just by cutting calories, but when I want to look cut and lean and great, I have to eat clean (i.e.:when you're at a healthy weight already is when clean eating seems to really make a huge difference).

    you can fulfill your nutritional goals without eating clean
  • IronPlayground
    IronPlayground Posts: 1,594 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    ^Yep! This sums it up!
  • BenPolonowski
    BenPolonowski Posts: 115 Member
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    I feel better when I eat food that is fresh and unprocessed.
  • pcastagner
    pcastagner Posts: 1,606 Member
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    Ugh. This topic always results in more heat than light.


    Presently, caloric value of a food is determined by burning the food and seeing how much energy is produced. While on the one hand this model is in some ways not like your body, it still yields an UPPER LIMIT. If a given substance only has the material to produce 100 calories of heat, there is no way to get more than that out of it.

    Calories are not meant as a measure of how fattening a food is for any given organism ingesting it. It's merely a way of expressing the upper limit of how much energy could be extracted from something.


    In practice, humans are very much alike, and at the same time we are special snowflakes. For instance, your gut flora are your own and no one else's, and they are very much involved in determining efficiency of digestion. On the other hand, the law of thermodynamics applies to ALL energy systems, so none of us are able to gain mass unless we eat more than we expend.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
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    I hear some people say it's how much you eat and "a calorie is a calorie". I also hear some say It's what you eat, not how much. What do you think? I'll keep from voicing my opinion right now but my personal experience leans me towards one answer not the other.
    My mother eats the healthiest diet of anyone I know and has been overweight/obese her entire life.

    She is (well, was, anyway) a binge eater.

    I ate nothing but junk most of my life, but not a large amount of food in general. I was never even slightly overweight until I was 29 years old, and then only for about a year in total.
  • Antlady69
    Antlady69 Posts: 204 Member
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    I also used to think "a calorie is a calorie" but have recently been convinced otherwise. I've long heard that sugar is REALLY bad for you health-wise, but I was really blown away when I actually heard Robert Lustig's explanation - and that one calorie is not necessarily equal to another calorie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

    Sadly, I haven't been able to reduce my sugar intake significantly, but I'm working on it! :)
  • rmhand
    rmhand Posts: 1,067 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    I like this one too!
    Also a quote from Dian Sanfillipo "Eat to be healthy and you will lose weight if you need to."
  • ItsCasey
    ItsCasey Posts: 4,022 Member
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    For weight loss, it's how much you eat. I've been at this for 3.5 years. I have tried every method. The one that has worked best for me is calculating a deficit from my TDEE (15% in my case) and eating that amount every day, regardless of exercise calories.

    Having said that, my primary goal right now is fat loss. That necessitates eating enough protein and doing enough strength training to retain the lean body mass I currently have. The strength training necessitates a certain amount of carbs to fuel progress in my lifting sessions. And everyone needs a certain amount of dietary fat to keep their bodies functioning properly.

    So macros matter to me, and, in that sense, what I eat matters. But there are different ways to get, say, 150 g of carbs. Vegetables may be a healthier form of carbs than ice cream, but I have not found that it matters in relation to my fat loss goal whether I eat vegetables or ice cream or both. And eating some of the so-called "unhealthy" foods that I enjoy (like ice cream) keeps me from going nuts and wanting to murder people, so I say ice cream is a win.
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
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    I also used to think "a calorie is a calorie" but have recently been convinced otherwise. I've long heard that sugar is REALLY bad for you health-wise, but I was really blown away when I actually heard Robert Lustig's explanation - and that one calorie is not necessarily equal to another calorie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

    Sadly, I haven't been able to reduce my sugar intake significantly, but I'm working on it! :)

    I would recommend this, very much:
    http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/
  • squirrell79
    squirrell79 Posts: 154 Member
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    Well, you will lose weight if you eat nothing but 500 calories' worth of Twinkies everyday. I believe some researcher did just that (not 500 exactly, but you get the gist) a few years ago, and the media promptly dubbed it the "Twinkie diet."

    But is that healthy? Absolutely not.
    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    This person put it very nicely.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    oop. dble post
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being

    There are situations where some people do better on different macro mixes due to metabolic issues, but basically ^^ this.
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,677 Member
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    Calories drive weight loss or weight gain
    Macros, along with exercise, drive body composition
    Micronutrients drive health and well being
    THIS. Also to add, a calorie is a calorie regardless of source.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

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