A calorie is not a calorie

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Replies

  • delicious_cocktail
    delicious_cocktail Posts: 5,797 Member
    Yep... It's a catchy short phrase for 'a calorie [that you eat] is not [necessarily] a calorie [that your body has available for its own energy needs, or to store as fat].'

    ^^This.

    Just like it's not as simple as "calories in, calories out". If that were true everyone cutting 1000 calories a day would lose 104 lbs a year. Heh.

    I lost 140 lbs in 7 months. It most certainly is calories in, calories out.


    Also, the thermic effect of food is nothing new and typically not enough of a factor to make much difference. It's a unit of measurement. A watt isn't a watt, because amps?

    You are everyone? :-) Nah, as awesome as you might be! Weight loss isn't always linear. Not enough sleep, not enough water, hormonal issues and simply not enough fat on the body to lose would prevent a 2 lb a week loss Grats on your loss tho.

    While true that it's marvelously complicated, the underlying science is pretty well established. The perturbations from a bad night's sleep become noise. No amount of hormones changes the following:

    Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
    Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
  • LiftAllThePizzas
    LiftAllThePizzas Posts: 17,857 Member
    But they can be removed or added to an open system. :tongue:

    And thanks for the chocolate. I had to open it up and look at each frame to figure out how they did it. Neat trick. :)
  • delicious_cocktail
    delicious_cocktail Posts: 5,797 Member
    But they can be removed or added to an open system. :tongue:

    And thanks for the chocolate. I had to open it up and look at each frame to figure out how they did it. Neat trick. :)

    TRUE! They can be removed from or added to an open system.

    But hormones, sleepless nights or not, if the energy was not added or removed, physics wins again.

    At night I cuddle with science. She's cold and unaffectionate, but I love her all the same.
  • vtmoon
    vtmoon Posts: 3,436 Member
    In the words of a great man, "A toaster is not a toaster."

    See how stupid that sounds?

    I thought we already established that a toaster is not a toaster due to having different meanings...

    Two of the many meanings:

    A machine that toasts bread

    A person who makes a toast during a occasion or a celebration.
  • ksuh999
    ksuh999 Posts: 543 Member
    Thermic effect is already accounted for in TDEE calculations. It's fairly small - your body is fairly efficient at digesting food.
  • elephant_in_the_room
    elephant_in_the_room Posts: 145 Member
    Thermic effect is already accounted for in TDEE calculations. It's fairly small - your body is fairly efficient at digesting food.

    Have you read the original article?
    According to it, the amount of energy needed to make protein useful in your body is 25% of the protein's energy (calories), the amount needed for carbohydrates is 10%, and for fats, 2%. According to it, 30% of the calories in almonds never get to the body, but are excreted. That would reduce almonds from 600 to 400 calories per 100g, and an egg from 150 cal to 135.

    That's not insignificant.
    Of course assuming that the article is correct, which is hard to establish because it doesn't make citations.
  • elephant_in_the_room
    elephant_in_the_room Posts: 145 Member
    Ignore BS studies on mice. They are not humans.

    Have you read the original article? It doesn't say 'mice lost weight on a diet of raw sweet potato, and so will humans', it only says 'mice lost weight on a diet of raw sweet potato' (whereas 'they gained weight on a diet of cooked sweet potato').

    That seems to say something about the qualities about a food being raw or cooked. Seems to, of course, because the article doesn't give a source, and we get no idea how comparable the experiments really are.
  • prattiger65
    prattiger65 Posts: 1,657 Member
    Ignore BS studies on mice. They are not humans.

    Have you read the original article? It doesn't say 'mice lost weight on a diet of raw sweet potato, and so will humans', it only says 'mice lost weight on a diet of raw sweet potato' (whereas 'they gained weight on a diet of cooked sweet potato').

    That seems to say something about the qualities about a food being raw or cooked. Seems to, of course, because the article doesn't give a source, and we get no idea how comparable the experiments really are.


    A calorie is a calorie because it is just a measurement. TEF is different across different macros. This is part of the calculations in a well thought out program. Why do we keep coming back to this? It really isn't hard.
  • jennifer_417
    jennifer_417 Posts: 12,344 Member
    Mmmm....sweet potatoes...
  • Mia_RagazzaTosta
    Mia_RagazzaTosta Posts: 4,885 Member
    Buddy? Is that you?
  • Myhaloslipped
    Myhaloslipped Posts: 4,317 Member
    These "a calorie is not a calorie" threads are making me want to scream into a pillow. It's like Groundhog Day (the movie).
  • 2dare2dream
    2dare2dream Posts: 104 Member
    Whether you agree or not with A calorie is a Calorie, it does prove one thing..there is so much conflicting data out there which can be confusing to someone starting a weightloss/get healthy programme. Its the reason some of us newbies ask what others may class as silly questions because there is just too much info on net to know what is right and what is wrong. Personally i thank people who start threads like this if only to see what seasoned travellers make of it. This excercise has a purpose, as its another peice of floating info out there that can be clarified by those who are more knowledgable.
    Have a good day everyone
  • Deipneus
    Deipneus Posts: 1,855 Member
    This topic has been discussed before, and I also thought I had read about it, but here is a bit more depth:

    http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/11/12/3889049.htm
    Yeah. Like a million times. After this argument can we get a reprise of loose versus lose? And then maybe we can hear from the pedants who like to blast people for saying that muscle weighs more than fat instead of the more precise, muscle is denser than fat.
  • waldo56
    waldo56 Posts: 1,861 Member
    Yep... It's a catchy short phrase for 'a calorie [that you eat] is not [necessarily] a calorie [that your body has available for its own energy needs, or to store as fat].'

    ^^This.

    Just like it's not as simple as "calories in, calories out". If that were true everyone cutting 1000 calories a day would lose 104 lbs a year. Heh.

    They would. If they were able to keep up with their changing metabolism in order to actually maintain a 1000 cal/day deficit.

    Gaining and losing to precise numbers over a fairly long period of time is not hard at all.
  • waldo56
    waldo56 Posts: 1,861 Member
    Thermic effect is already accounted for in TDEE calculations. It's fairly small - your body is fairly efficient at digesting food.

    Have you read the original article?
    According to it, the amount of energy needed to make protein useful in your body is 25% of the protein's energy (calories), the amount needed for carbohydrates is 10%, and for fats, 2%. According to it, 30% of the calories in almonds never get to the body, but are excreted. That would reduce almonds from 600 to 400 calories per 100g, and an egg from 150 cal to 135.

    That's not insignificant.
    Of course assuming that the article is correct, which is hard to establish because it doesn't make citations.

    You are missing the point of the statement. Were you to account for those digestion issues, you'd also have to correct your TDEE calculation. Incidentally your TDEE calculation will have to be changed by exactly the same amount you change the calorie input values; it is a total wash.

    If calorie values are flawed, the calculation of the bodies calorie needs is also flawed, by the exact same amount, since the error is on both sides of the equation. In other words, this seemingly profound thing you seem to think you have found is totally inconsequential.
  • Cinloykko
    Cinloykko Posts: 117 Member
    This is a whole lotta interesting....... in for the fireworks :)
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Thermic effect is already accounted for in TDEE calculations. It's fairly small - your body is fairly efficient at digesting food.

    Have you read the original article?
    According to it, the amount of energy needed to make protein useful in your body is 25% of the protein's energy (calories), the amount needed for carbohydrates is 10%, and for fats, 2%. According to it, 30% of the calories in almonds never get to the body, but are excreted. That would reduce almonds from 600 to 400 calories per 100g, and an egg from 150 cal to 135.

    That's not insignificant.
    Of course assuming that the article is correct, which is hard to establish because it doesn't make citations.

    My last response I did give a link that has studies mentioned.

    2 ways this could be handled.

    Try to figure out how much energy is burned by the body for each macro type (carbs would be all over the board though, fiber, cooked, complex, ect) per so many calories ingested, and lower the supplied calorie count by that amount. If going for this level of accuracy, better figure out how different races process different foods too then, and people with poor digestion systems.

    Or in ALL diets that count calories, you pick some activity level, say sedentary, and 10% of that burn is associated with the processing of all food you eat. That way the amount of variance from that figure is minor, and lost in the other inaccuracies going on.

    So say you eat 2000 calories for your maintenance of 2000 calories on non-exercise day.

    200 of that total is already accounted for processing of food.

    Say you did 50/30/20 macro % ratio, which works out to 1000/600/400 calories.

    Let's assume your rough figures above are what's wasted in processing, which are inflated according to other sources, what's left to use as energy then on average is 900/450/392 = 1742.

    So 258 calories of the 2000 lost in processing the food.

    Already included in your maintenance though was an assumed 200 calories for that process. So you burned 58 extra calories over what was assumed.

    Sorry to say your food labeling inaccuracies through the day are going to add up to more than 58 calories. And in this case, you burned 58 extra.

    You'd have to go from one extreme to another in those macros to cause any significant difference in assumed and actual.

    You could also probably find what the exact ratio is that causes the 10% assumption.

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