"The idea is completely false"

Whenever I read an article where someone claims "calories in vs. calories out is false" what they almost always really mean is that: "calories out is really hard to calculate accurately and can vary widely from person to person doing the same things".

"Health and nutrition organisations have perpetuated the myth that a reduction of food
intake of 2 MJ per day will lead to a steady rate of weight loss of 0·5 kg per week.
Because this static weight-loss rule does not account for dynamic physiological
adaptations that occur with decreased bodyweight, its widespread use at both the
individual and population levels has led to drastically overestimated expectations for
weight loss." - http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60812-X/abstract

Whenever I read an article where someone claims "calories in vs. calories out is false" what they almost always really mean is that: "calories out is really hard to calculate accurately and can vary widely from person to person doing the same things".

Whenever I read an article where someone claims "calories in vs. calories out is false" what they almost always really mean is that: "calories out is really hard to calculate accurately and can vary widely from person to person doing the same things".

I think that the fact that people take the time and effort to track calories, they become aware of how much then end up consuming in the course of a day, a week, a month. Is tracking calories in and calories out going to be 100% accurate...most of the time its not. I would even venture a guess that's it's about 90% accurate and sometimes less than that.

Labels aren't accurate most of the time, people don't use a food scale and either eyeball it or use a measuring cup...and a cup is not a cup is not a cup...they fill it beneath the rim or use a rounded cup, and where you might get 50 grams using one cup, you may get 55 grams using another brand of measuring cup even though you think you filled it up the same place. When you get something from a restaurant, those are estimated calories based on what was measured by certain guidelines, but those workers don't always go by those guidelines. Take an ice cream cone from Sonic, it's listed as 250 calories on their website, but what you actually get from the server can range from being a really small serving, or a really large serving...just depends on where you stop and who is making the cone. Is my apple a medium or a large? Is it 80 calories or 90 calories?

Peoples metabolism, how much everyday regular activity they truly do, and several other factors, are often either overestimated or underestimated. I probably move more everyday than I think I do, but I will often put that I'm sedentary when filling out those online calculators to calculated my BMR or TDEE because I have a desk job. This happens a lot.

Yes, it's a crap shoot. The goal, I think, is to be as aware of what and how much you're eating as you can, try to get as close to your goals as you possibly can, make informed choices on what foods you eat to fit your calorie and macro goals, exercise doing what you enjoy and track those burned calories as close as possible. In the end, you will still be eating less calories than you did when you were just shoving food blissfully down your pie hole before you started tracking, and that's where the success will come from. This has worked for me so far, as it has for many other people through this site and on other sites and with other programs where the food is prepacked and the calories are measure for you.

Whenever I read an article where someone claims "calories in vs. calories out is false" what they almost always really mean is that: "calories out is really hard to calculate accurately and can vary widely from person to person doing the same things".