Why calorie counting is ridiculous
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People absolutely counted calories before the 1970s, where is this idea that they didn't coming from?0
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Don't count calories ... let her do it for you (at a premium of course). All of her programs have "nutrition guidance" .0
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Cui bono?0
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It seems to me she is forgetting that people are WAY less active today than they were "pre-1970s". Technology is wonderful but it has made us lazier. Sure the people hunting the wild boar are not going to worry about the calories, but that is because they probably don't spend 9 hours a day glued to a computer. That's my take...
While activity helps general health and well being, diet is the only way to sustainable weight loss and good health. It is right not to starve yourself. Eat natural, cut unnecessary carbs, eat healthy fat and adequate protein to lose and stay healthy!0 -
OUT for corsets. At least in the context of everyday wear. :noway:0
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Couldn't even be bothered to read all of that as the first few lines irritated me. What a tit, we all have our own methods so someone should tell her to shut up.0
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It seems to me she is forgetting that people are WAY less active today than they were "pre-1970s". Technology is wonderful but it has made us lazier. Sure the people hunting the wild boar are not going to worry about the calories, but that is because they probably don't spend 9 hours a day glued to a computer. That's my take...
While activity helps general health and well being, diet is the only way to sustainable weight loss and good health. It is right not to starve yourself. Eat natural, cut unnecessary carbs, eat healthy fat and adequate protein to lose and stay healthy!
I'm really beginning to think that diet is essential to maintain weight and fuel activity...but it's the activity that stimulates good health. For example, there's this and that conflicting evidence about this and that dietary influence on cholesterol...but running has been shown to help the body self-regulate cholesterol pretty consistently.0 -
well regardless of her opinion and what she believes, calorie counting has only made me AWARE! I'm a snacker, and a junk food fiend...well at least I used to be... i'm really trying to behave...as well as counting out...making me work harder at making my body the potential is has to be... :::sigh::: We all do must what we can in life to succeed~0
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GMO grass no doubt!Also, no fat animals??? Never seen a UK native pony then, unless their grass intake is restricted they get really fat, to the point where they are ill as a result and still stuffing their faces, even the ones in Wales on the moors with no addtional food whatsoever.
And my dog would be fat if I let her eat as much as she wanted.
Well clearly that grass is processed toxic crap.
:flowerforyou:
Umm, processed grass . . .0 -
Weight Watchers Points Plus is a partial throw-back to the pre-1970's then...zero points (aka calories) for fruits and veggies. Hmmm...think I will have 5 apples today (450 calories).
On a side note - A single Points Plus point is actually 35 to 45 calories...depending on it's category.0 -
The History of Calorie Counting
People haven't been counting calories forever (though some days it may feel as if you have). The idea became popular around the turn of the 20th century, according to Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, a board-certified nutritionist and author of Living the Low Carb Life: Choosing the Diet that's Right for You from Atkins to Zone, and The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why. At that time, scientist Wilbur Atwater noticed that if you put food in a machine, called a "bomb calorimeter," and burned it, you could measure the ash and heat to find out how much "energy" was released and therefore how much "energy" was in the food. The idea caught on, and people began counting calories -- that is, calculating exactly how many calories were consumed when eating particular foods, and "burned" when engaging in different activities. "A spate of diet books in the early part of the century popularized the notion that it's all about the calories -- and it's been with us ever since," Bowden tells WebMD.
Interesting: http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/dos-donts-counting-calories
This I didn't know...
Learn something new every day ) 0 -
I think calorie counting kind of gives people a place to start when they nee that motivation. More often than not, you're going into it with only the final number in mind - the goal weight - but what about the numbers or goals you need to meet along the way? It can turn ugly very quickly but it serves a purpose as well.0
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If you are counting calories in order to moderate your otherwise out of control calorie consumption, as many overweight people are doing due to issues with portions, emotional eating, medical conditions and more, it's completely different. Calorie counting isn't about restriction to the point of illness or severe hunger, it's about gaining control over an otherwise out of control situation. People that utilize the information as a way to essentially punish themselves are setting themselves up to fail and regain... and that's a lot of what we see with The Biggest Loser contestants, in the end.
Personally, I wouldn't take advice from someone that has wrecked an engine like she described. If she can't manage it with a car, where the information is pretty straightforward and readily available as well as understandable, how are we supposed to trust what she says about something so complex as the human body?
Obesity is not new to the human race. It is just newly epidemic.... Though really, the 70s is a terrible turning point to choose, as my mother was hounded for being overweight back in the 50s as a child, and her mother before that. If obesity didn't exist before the 1970s, there wouldn't be antique ads for weightloss. One of the most famous weightloss machines of all time, the vibrating belt machine, is from the 1950s.
What she is saying here does not answer to the reason why SO MANY PEOPLE have been able to achieve their goals while allowing themselves to eat for pleasure on occasion.
The current food economy is such that everything short of growing and manufacturing your own food is going to bring "junk" with it. We have to be able to adapt and adjust to the environment we're living in in order to be successful.
Honestly? She sounds like she is bitter. Also, in light of the fact that there are so many rebound weight gain cases from The Biggest Loser series, I would hesitate to take any advice from them, honestly.0 -
I'm very disappointed with the number of gifs on this thread. I expected more from you guys :grumble:
Yea you're in the wrong place if you doing like calorie counting...0 -
GMO grass no doubt!Also, no fat animals??? Never seen a UK native pony then, unless their grass intake is restricted they get really fat, to the point where they are ill as a result and still stuffing their faces, even the ones in Wales on the moors with no addtional food whatsoever.
And my dog would be fat if I let her eat as much as she wanted.
Well clearly that grass is processed toxic crap.
:flowerforyou:
Umm, processed grass . . .
It's because, in the Eocene epoch, horses did not eat grass. Or something. If they really did eat grass then, it's because the grass has been modified in the last 50 years to be easily stored and the horses haven't yet adapted.0 -
I know I dating myself, but I remember my mother dieting in the 1960's and she counted calories. She had this little chart she carried in her purse.0
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AMEN. This article is ridiculous. Fine to eat all those natural foods if you can afford them. They are only twice as much as regular. Some of us are not made of money not to mention counting calories does work and you don't have to be deprived in the least or eat boring food. Just look through my Diary and it proves it. I have been eating like this for 18 months. Lost 43 lbs 9 of those months I wasn't even trying. Since I got serious about counting the calories and doing the Body Reset the first week in January I have lost 18 lbs. By the way tonight I am going to have a nice piece of Lemon Meringue pie and will still be at a deficit with my calories.Great, another fitness coach spouting nonsense. I wish there was a minimum intelligence requirement for becoming a fitness coach.0
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It seems to me she is forgetting that people are WAY less active today than they were "pre-1970s". Technology is wonderful but it has made us lazier. Sure the people hunting the wild boar are not going to worry about the calories, but that is because they probably don't spend 9 hours a day glued to a computer. That's my take...
While activity helps general health and well being, diet is the only way to sustainable weight loss and good health. It is right not to starve yourself. Eat natural, cut unnecessary carbs, eat healthy fat and adequate protein to lose and stay healthy!
I'm really beginning to think that diet is essential to maintain weight and fuel activity...but it's the activity that stimulates good health. For example, there's this and that conflicting evidence about this and that dietary influence on cholesterol...but running has been shown to help the body self-regulate cholesterol pretty consistently.
Agreed. Diet is the essential part of the equation, but exercise has documented benefits for not only physical, but also mental well-being. Both of these health states can drastically affect food intake. Even if a person eats as healthy as can be, if they don't participate in some kind of activity, they are subject to circulation issues, atrophy, lethargy and more due to the lack of demand. "staying healthy" also implies that we're healthy to begin with :P0 -
I am counting calories for now but eventually I want to just eat when I'm hungry and stop when I am satisfied.
I think we as a society have become disconnected from our natural hunger cues. Part of that is the amount of processed food we eat in the US, the billions spent on processed food advertising, focus on gluttony (just turn on the Food Network....c'mon now!), "value portion" distortion in restaurants, and the vast variety of foods that we enjoy in this country that is basically unheard of in most other countries. Even in Rome, you can't get red, ripe tomatoes in the winter and they don't offer them on restaurant menus except in the summer. They eat seasonally. In this country, we can have whatever we want, whenever we want, and studies have show that people eat more when they have more variety. We are also way more sedentary as a society. So it makes sense that we have lost our ability to figure out what and how much we should be eating.
Counting calories is a attempt to provide clarity around "normalized" eating for millions of Americans who have lost their way.....including me. People started doing it for a reason and it's probably better than the alternative - staying overweight.0 -
Now, short term this may be true in SOME (not all) people. But telling someone who is overweight to eat less and exercise more is like telling someone who is depressed to frown less and smile more. It demonstrates a complete and utter lack of any understanding of the intricate marvel that is the human metabolism, or, in the case of depression, biochemistry.
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...0 -
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
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