"A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of...

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  • LeonMT
    LeonMT Posts: 4
    But I think there is a much better chance of long-term success if you figure out how many calories you need per day and learn to live with that rather than having to figure it out all of the sudden once you stop drinking two shakes per day or cutting out a food group.

    Well put. Losing weight, and maintaining the loss has a success rate equal to that of quitting narcotics, or cigarettes. But those who do succeed in losing weight - however small that percentage may be - do so in traditional ways. By keeping track of what they eat, and keeping track of their caloric intake. Not by avoiding bread, or any particular food.
  • Springfield1970
    Springfield1970 Posts: 1,945 Member
    all diets have a horrible success rate over the long-term including just basic caloric counting.

    If someone goes into it with the attitude of "I'll count calories until I drop 40 lbs and then eat whatever I want again," as many do, then yes they will fail like with any other "diet."

    But I think there is a much better chance of long-term success if you figure out how many calories you need per day and learn to live with that rather than having to figure it out all of the sudden once you stop drinking two shakes per day or cutting out a food group.

    Here's the thing... I don't know one single person that did a 'diet' that cut out food groups or was liquid or just different from everyday eating, that managed to Keep the weight off AFTERWARDS (myself included). I'm 43 and have been doing this since I was 17 and have seen and done everything along the way. Calorie counting at a deficit and a bulk and then maintenance is the only thing that has worked.

    The best words of advice I read here was to try and make your deficit diet as close to what you'd eat at maintenance for the rest of your days, then it would be much easier to transition. Then you can have your red wine, your PB, your Greek yoghurt and chocolate, just balance a little bit of the foods you really love into a moderate diet with all the usual stuff, adequate protein, lots of veg, adequate and appropriate carbs.
  • cookieshop
    cookieshop Posts: 16
    A body builder and a master physicist. Move over, Carnot.



    :laugh:
  • cookieshop
    cookieshop Posts: 16
    When I was a child, we didn't own a microwave, garden-raised our own veggies and my mother made our bread from scratch. She also canned and froze most of the food we ate during the winter, and our meat was purchased fresh-butchered from the farm down the road. None of us gave a hill of beans for how many calories we ate, we worked on the farm when we weren't in school and ran and played outside when we were done with chores. TV was a not-so-often thing we didn't care much about. There were no cell phones or social media.
    We were thin and fit because we ate good food and were active. I grew up in Wisconsin, not France or Germany or Asia. Lifestyles have changed a lot in the last 30 years and that's a big part of the problem. A lot of us live sedentary lives and fill the time with snacks and food. We find ourselves needing to count calories now because we have jobs that keep us seated and entertainment that keeps us seated as well. Whether the whole calorie or 2/3 of it counts is moot.

    spot on :smokin:
  • ladymiseryali
    ladymiseryali Posts: 2,555 Member
    The no-carb jerks are jerks, period.

    Go to Paris, France. What is one of the staples of the French diet? BAGUETTES! In fact, it's quite normal to have a MORNING BUN, for lunch French cheese and a baguette and baguette with your dinner. And they are RAIL THIN!

    Same with ITALY - RAIL THIN, PASTA PASTA PASTA & bread! Amazing isn't it?

    And Germany - THIN, RAIL THIN, loads of potatoes, bread in that diet too. Get out of your paleo/no-carb/atkins world and actually SEE the world, thin people are everywhere, thin people who eat BREAD are everywhere.

    I feel ten times better on Keto. I'm also not a jerk about it. I don't care if other people eat carbs.
    Guess you're not one of the jerks then. :smile: I have done low-carb and it didn't work out well for me or my mental health. When it works for other people that makes me happy. What doesn't make me happy is the people saying that their way is the One True Way (TM), which you will get from just about every type of diet out there.

    Yea, I'm not one of those people. Low carb may work for me, but vegan or vegetarian might work for another person, or high carb and high protein might work for someone else. Live and let live is my policy. As long as you're not harming yourself or other beings, I don't care what one does.
  • JeremyBenn
    JeremyBenn Posts: 30
    u wanna look at theromgenic weights then we must understand what a calorie is, kcal, is a kelvin unit of heat, heat being the source of energy. Next we must look at kcal expenditure during digestion. The highest among the three main macros, protein, cho and fats is Protein. when we ingest protein it take sbaout 60% of the kcals from the proetin alone to digest it. What does this suggest, that we are using units of kelvin to produce heat/energy for digestion, hence a greater thermodynamic effect
  • Dragonwolf
    Dragonwolf Posts: 5,600 Member
    all diets have a horrible success rate over the long-term including just basic caloric counting.

    If someone goes into it with the attitude of "I'll count calories until I drop 40 lbs and then eat whatever I want again," as many do, then yes they will fail like with any other "diet."

    But I think there is a much better chance of long-term success if you figure out how many calories you need per day and learn to live with that rather than having to figure it out all of the sudden once you stop drinking two shakes per day or cutting out a food group.

    See the bold? That's a fallacious assumption. A diet that actually does do something like that is the same as any other short term diet. There's a reason that the people that do these diets and then "go off" of them are called yo-yo dieters.

    Not all low-carb diets are like that. Many are, in fact, alternative ways of eating that, yes, are intended to be followed forever. And while you, personally, may not be able to follow such a diet, it doesn't meant that there aren't others who prefer it, and find it easier to do than just calorie counting (because just like not everyone can handle doing something like giving up bread, not everyone can handle doing something like counting calories).

    You don't criticize a veg*n for being on a diet that's doomed to fail, because they'll gain weight when they go back to eating meat, do you? Not likely, because you know that they have no intention of going back to eating meat. If you do, the veg*n will likely look at you like you've grown a second head. The same goes for those of us that choose to cut out things like bread, and reduce our carb intake.

    If eating a certain way makes me sick, destroys my endocrine system to the point that I'm insulin-resistant and have elevated insulin levels that require medication, and makes me fat (largely because I'm not satiated on it, and therefore feel starved even maxing out my daily calorie goal), despite eating what many people consider to be "healthy" and "balanced" -- and if I feel better and fare better on a diet that cuts out certain foods -- then why the hell would I go back to the old way of eating once I reach my goal weight?

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