Why calorie counting is ridiculous
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1) I liked this page a lot - pretty much everything on it makes sense.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/is-a-calorie-a-calorie.html (Pull quote: "To lose weight, eat less; it works every time.")
2) ^^ Lula, my (uninformed) opinion is that many of our natural hunger cues are not ideal for the current environment.
My body doesn't know if hard times are coming or not, and it certainly doesn't know that I have access to refrigeration and supermarkets -- the adaptively smart thing to do is pack on some weight while I mysteriously have access to copious sugars and fats, and I obviously don't have to do more than an hour or so of light running and climbing to accomplish this, so I can afford to carry 30 extra pounds easy.
(From my body's perspective, I must have somehow killed a mammoth AND found dozens of honeycombs - no telling when a long shot like that will happen again!)0 -
About the only thing right in that rant is that we eat too many "food-like substances". An Oreo is not food, Go-Gurt is not food, an apple is food.
Stick with real food and you probably wouldn't need to count your calories to keep from overeating as badly. (But you still couldn't just pig out all the time.)0 -
I apologize to Ilovechips and anyone else I offended earlier today. I am sorry. I don't know why I lashed out the way I did. Sorry ????0
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I will treat this with the dis-respect that it deserves - If I make a wild assumption this means Hmmm - That there are no overweight people pre-1970 and no overweight people in any tribes in Africa? (I get flashbacks to King Henry & Elizabethan paintings now). Wild animals don't get fat either - OK cool new diet fads - #1 the "eat grass" to get thin and the ever popular # 2 chase it down or starve - Why do you not see fat lions - they die guys :P cause they cannot run fast enough to catch their food they spend their days lounging around while watching the monkey shows.0
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Calorie counting is a tool for me.
Before I was just eating whatever I wanted and most of what I wanted was processed food.
Counting calories has helped me with my portion sizes and has helped me to get a grasp on what's healthy as far as macros go.
I'm glad I'm counting calories, but I don't see doing it forever, it's just a tool.0 -
(From my body's perspective, I must have somehow killed a mammoth AND found dozens of honeycombs - no telling when a long shot like that will happen again!)
This is about the most brilliant condensation of everything in this website that i have ever read.0 -
Pre-1970's were thin? Then why do I have vivid memories of when I was in elementary school in the 1960s with the Moms coming at the end of the day (most were stay at home back then) and probably 75% of them were morbidly obese?
How old is she anyway?
I was THERE and NO THEY WERE NOT! At least not a huge chunk of them. Also, I lived in the suburbs of New York City, not somewhere you would expect that kind of thing today.
Editing to add...I drive by elementary schools today and see Moms waiting, and almost every one is really skinny, opposite of when I was a kid.0 -
(From my body's perspective, I must have somehow killed a mammoth AND found dozens of honeycombs - no telling when a long shot like that will happen again!)
This is about the most brilliant condensation of everything in this website that i have ever read.
Thanks!
(IMHO, to condense everything on this website, I would have to include something about how a pound of mammoth weighs the same as a pound of honey . . .)0 -
Here is why this woman's post is complete and total BS she pulled out of her butt. My Mother's generation grew up in the depression (these were the Moms during the 50s and 60s) and they grew up eating whatever the heck they could get, my Mom loved to snack on creamed corn on bread (they ate a lot of that during the Great Depression). That is probably (notice I say probably not claiming my observation as scientific fact) one of the reasons why so many in my Mom's generation were obese, clinically obese, or morbidly obese (lots of morbid ones I remember, at school, the malls, the grocery store, amusement parks, everywhere).
The other thing about my Mom's generation is they tended to have big pantries stocked with lots of stuff, especially canned goods.0 -
I agree with most. In this world, counting calories is unfortunately part of my life for now ,because :
I don't walk as much as used to.
I dont exercise as much as I used to
I eat a lot more proccessed food then when I was growing up
I eat much less organic food because .#1 its very expensive,# 2 is not in
my gramdmas garden as when I was growing up
So ,until I reach my goal,I will be counting those damn calories.
I might not be the greatest loser,but I will be as healthy as I can in my power,without being wierd in my own eyes,
with crazy cleansing rituals and wrapping myself in aluminum foil...
Keeping my sanity.0 -
And if you don't count calories for quite a while until you lose your weight, figure out how much you can eat for maintenance without gaining, get a good understanding of what that amount/type of food is before you get rid of the training wheels, then you will be like the majority who gain the weight right back.I agree with her on this. Nutrition is way too complicate to be simplified with calories in / calories out.
But since the major reason of obesity IS actually eating more than our body would need to, that's why counting calories work. It obviously wouldn't work if you were eating 4000 kcals everyday and still logging it. It works because once you realize how much you're eating and how much you actually need to eat, you simply try to eat less. So it's not actually counting calories that works - it helps, but what really works is eating less. I could eat 40 bananas in a day and it would be too much for me, I'd gain weight. But bananas are healthy...
I would not even consider stopping until I know I am ready to take off those training wheels, even if I have to log my food for 10 years, even if I have to log it for the rest of my life, I prefer that to EVER gaining it back.0 -
sounds like hogwash, and also ridiculous to ask for 'discussion' from a site that largely promotes counting calories as its main feature.0
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That whole notion of diets & calorie counting not popping up until the 1970s is such bull. The author fails to note that with the evolution of technology, people around the world are getting lazier but still eating the same (and often more) quantity of foodstuffs. Our "pre-1970, non-calorie count[ing]" ancestors were certainly on the look for more foods and not concerned with diets, absolutely. For them, the main problem was getting more carbs, fat, and sugar into their systems, not less. That's why, in all of human history, the first person to go on a recorded weight-loss diet was England's William the Conquerer (he went on an alcohol-only diet, then died from injuries in a horse-riding accident, and he still had to be stuffed into his casket, so really, the first diet was the first failed diet as well).
Fad diets popped up in the 19th century. From 1895 until 1919, Fletcherism was a thing--and it was basically "chew more, less often--only if you're starving" and so while people were not counting their calories, they were taking in less empty drink calories, being more mindful eaters (taking time to really chew until food is basically liquid means feeling fuller longer), and completely reducing their intake (their CALORIES) to increase total wellbeing (dental hygiene, hair/skin/nails, as well as weight loss). Also, Weight Watchers started in the 1960s--I did all sorts of logging & counting on that program and "points" were just an involved way to count calories. In 1964, there was "the drinking man's diet."
People (mostly women) started counting calories in the 1920s to fit into the fashion of the time period. Even earlier, there was this physician named Lulu Hunt Peters who was a HUGE proponent of calorie counting/restriction as a means to lose weight (because she lost 70 pounds doing so--from her highest of 220 pounds) from 1918 until she died.
This entire site is proof that her opinion on calorie counting is completely off. All those people in the success forum must've gotten lucky.
It always seems to be the people who've never needed to count their calories that are the most adamantly against budgeting portions for the day by way of calorie counting. Telling people who got overweight from portion distortion to "listen to their bodies/minds" and "eat when they're hungry" or "just switch out BAD food for GOOD food" is really poor guidance. People will look at a package, see something positive that the company wanted to promote (made with whole grains, no added sugars, real fruit juice, gluten/fat/soy/dairy/sodium free, it's vegan/vegetarian, it's local/organic, etc) and think they can just eat a bunch, when that organic granola is 250 calories per 1/4 cup and they just ate a cup worth in one sitting (but it was "good' food that they ate when they're "starving" because they "listened to their body"). So now they ate 1000 calories and will continue on with regular meals for the day, thinking they made a choice that will reduce their weight. It's so easy to do--I know I've done it!
Calorie counting is working for me. No, I'm not going to log everything everyday for the rest of my life after I reach my goals, but counting calories helped me understand portions and made me read labels first and think before ordering at a restaurant. so when I've been in maintenance long enough, I can "listen to my body" because now I can actually trust my body.
End rant.0 -
My body doesn't know if hard times are coming or not, and it certainly doesn't know that I have access to refrigeration and supermarkets -- the adaptively smart thing to do is pack on some weight while I mysteriously have access to copious sugars and fats, and I obviously don't have to do more than an hour or so of light running and climbing to accomplish this, so I can afford to carry 30 extra pounds easy.
(From my body's perspective, I must have somehow killed a mammoth AND found dozens of honeycombs - no telling when a long shot like that will happen again!)
Lovely!! Thanks for that! We're descended from the people who were lucky and whose bodies held onto every calorie it could.0 -
I know right! A horse is food people! Not oreos.About the only thing right in that rant is that we eat too many "food-like substances". An Oreo is not food, Go-Gurt is not food, an apple is food.
Stick with real food and you probably wouldn't need to count your calories to keep from overeating as badly. (But you still couldn't just pig out all the time.)
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I think calorie counting works if that's the kind of relationship you're willing to have with food.
Personally, having done it in the past, it's not remotely the kind of relationship I want. I've lost none of my 130lbs or so counting a single calorie, logging, measuring, etc. I prefer other ways to get my deficit in that are just much more sustainable to me. I also prefer a more intuitive way of eating, understanding real hunger vs cravings, satiation, etc. I don't want a weigh/measure/log relationship with food for the rest of my existence, and I'd prefer to eat more like human beings have for the majority of our history (hint: nobody knew what a "calorie" was).0 -
Have not read the whole thing (yet), but cal counting is a good educational tool for beginners. But obsesseive cal counting for life, that is not healthy.
I know because I experienced a backlash after reaching my goal and feeling sooo tired of having numbers in my head all the time!0 -
People werent obese way back in the day because they had to work for their food and it wasnt readily avaialble - they practically spent more calories finding food than they got from eating it. I can just sit my *kitten* in the car and go through the drive through - whoever wrote this e-mail must think they are flippin fantastic! I hope one day I can graduate to NOT counting calories but it is ABSOLUTELY and excellent tool in weight loss and learning what you can and cant have in day.0
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Only read OP, this may have been covered.
It's ridiculous crap like this that actually hinders the general weight loss community.
BRB while I go lose weight on 5,000 calories of vegetables a day.0 -
Have not read the whole thing (yet), but cal counting is a good educational tool for beginners. But obsesseive cal counting for life, that is not healthy.
Not sure its all that cut and dry. Even dietitians were found ot underestimate calories in one study.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12396160Energy intake and energy expenditure: a controlled study comparing dietitians and non-dietitians.
Champagne CM1, Bray GA, Kurtz AA, Monteiro JB, Tucker E, Volaufova J, Delany JP.
Author information
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Underreporting of food intake has been commonly observed. We hypothesized that experience with recording dietary information might increase the accuracy of the records. To test this hypothesis, we compared energy intake and energy expenditure in dietitians-who are experienced in recording food intake-with those of non-dietitians, whose only exposure to training to record food was in the context of this trial.
SUBJECTS/SETTING:
Subjects for this study were 10 female registered dietitians and 10 women of comparable age and weight who were not dietitians.
DESIGN:
This study compared the energy intake obtained from 7-day food records with energy expenditure measured over the corresponding 7-day period using doubly labeled water.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS:
Data were compared by an analysis of variance
METHODS:
All subjects were trained to provide a 7-day weighed food intake record. Energy expenditure was measured with doubly labeled water over the 7 days when the weighed food intake record was obtained. A total of 10 dietitians and a control of group of 10 women of similar age and weight were recruited for this study. Participants were told that the goal was to record food intake as accurately as possible, because it would be compared with the simultaneous measurement of energy expenditure determined by doubly labeled water.
RESULTS:
The energy expenditure of the dietitians and controls were not different (2,154+/-105 [mean+/- standard error of the mean] kcal/day for dietitians and 2,315 +/- 90 kcal/ day for controls). The dietitians underreported their energy intake obtained from the food records by an average of 223 +/- 116 kcal/day, which was not different from their energy expenditure. Participants in the control group, as hypothesized, significantly underreported their energy intake (429 +/- 142 kcal/day, P < .05).
CONCLUSION:
Dietitians estimated their energy intake more accurately than non-dietitians, suggesting that familiarity with and interest in keeping food records may lead to more reliable estimates of energy intake.
They were more accurate than the untrained person but counting, tracking, weighing, measuring might need to be a part of our normal routine for a lifetime.
I am much more relaxed about calories than when I started but my day to day food still gets tracked. If I go out or have someone else cook Im not going to worry about it but I dont see a day where I no longer track what I am eating.0
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