Can your body mistake calories?
Workout4Health
Posts: 447 Member
Sometimes when you are getting gradual results and you've been doing all the right things, you start to think if math is cheating you. Is it possible for you to eat 2000 calories but because of your metabolism, your body thinks its 3000 calories and acts accordingly? I saw somewhere on youtube where some guy said if you've been on an extreme diet before, your body takes in more calories than you give it. So you give it 2000 but your body thinks it's 3000. Is there any truth to that? Are some people ever just not meant to lose weight because their bodies are programmed in a way to burn less than they actually do and take in more than they actually eat? Yesterday someone said that if you walk 35 miles, you might not even lose a pound. That's an example of your body cheating you with math.
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You have some REALLY weird questions....I'm not even sure I understand this one. :ohwell:0
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Your body cannot take in more calories than you give it. It can conserve the calories you do give it more efficiently. And if you've lost weight you might be one of those people who is very efficient. Cheer up, if there's ever a famine, you'll outlive everyone and you can have their stuff.0
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Sometimes when you are getting gradual results and you've been doing all the right things, you start to think if math is cheating you. Is it possible for you to eat 2000 calories but because of your metabolism, your body thinks its 3000 calories and acts accordingly? I saw somewhere on youtube where some guy said if you've been on an extreme diet before, your body takes in more calories than you give it. So you give it 2000 but your body thinks it's 3000. Is there any truth to that? Are some people ever just not meant to lose weight because their bodies are programmed in a way to burn less than they actually do and take in more than they actually eat? Yesterday someone said that if you walk 35 miles, you might not even lose a pound. That's an example of your body cheating you with math.
No. Just... no.
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Is it possible for you to eat 2000 calories but because of your metabolism, your body thinks its 3000 calories and acts accordingly?
No.0 -
Your body stores calories? So isn't that the same thing?
Storing calories is the process commonly referred to as getting fat lol. The whole point of a calorie deficit is to force your body to run partially on internal calories rather than those it gets from outside. Thus burning your fat.0 -
Well, maybe you have the terminology wrong and you arent saying what you mean? "math is cheating you"...I'm guessing you mean the math doesnt seem to show the same result as what you calculated. If so, most of the time your numbers are wrong, "Is it possible for you to eat 2000 calories but because of your metabolism, your body thinks its 3000 calories and acts accordingly?" this sounds like you are asking if the metabolism can stay high with lower calorie intake, if so, yes, for a while, but the actual calorie number matters more than any metabolism effect.
"Are some people ever just not meant to lose weight because their bodies are programmed in a way to burn less than they actually do and take in more than they actually eat?" Metabolisms are different yes, but the effect is much less than the calorie numbers you eat, and the accurately recorded exercise and activity you do, if you arent accurate in any of these, that is your most likely and most important error source. If you "take in calories" (eat them), then how could one possibly think they "take in more than they actually eat?"...injection? Enema of sugar? Otherwise no.0 -
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You're A. Eating more than you Think or B. Overestimating how much you need.
For example you think you need 2000 calories a day to lose a pound a week but really you need 1500. So you think the math is cheating you, but really you're just not obeying the math.0 -
Make sure you log everything: all food groups, what you drink, etc. Weigh your food and measure your drinks to get the best results. Even things that are "too small to count" count those things anyway.
Be careful about eating back exercise calories. MFP and gyms generally overestimate how much was actually burned.
Do not get discouraged if your weight stays the same for a couple of weeks. This is a common part of weight loss. However, if this lasts more than a few weeks then you're eating at maintenance. Eat less, exercise more and your weight will come off.
Metabolism can slow but it's not by a big enough percentage to be concerned about. The truth is that when researchers experimented with food where they kept the people onsite, monitored what they ate (no sneaking food, and everything was accurately measured), and had them run/walk/jog a certain number of miles each day, they all lost weight. Even when they lost some weight, they continued to lose. The only time it really slowed enough to make a difference ("starvation mode") was when their weight got so low that they didn't have any more extra body fat to lose. Most of us on here are nowhere near that point (unless someone is on here to gain weight after an eating disorder), so there is nothing to worry about.0 -
Sometimes when you are getting gradual results and you've been doing all the right things, you start to think if math is cheating you. Is it possible for you to eat 2000 calories but because of your metabolism, your body thinks its 3000 calories and acts accordingly? I saw somewhere on youtube where some guy said if you've been on an extreme diet before, your body takes in more calories than you give it. So you give it 2000 but your body thinks it's 3000.
This is physically impossible.
If the ingested food has 2000 calories, your body cannot make that be 3000 calories.
Only the reverse can be true - ie the ingested food has 2000 calories but your body only gets 1000 from it - eg if you have an absorption problem like Crohn's disease.
Obviously this would make it hard to put on weight, not to lose it.
other possible things
* you are incorrectly counting the food as having 2000 calories when in fact it has more (because of incorrect measuring, not including condiments etc)
* you have set your goal incorrectly - eg you need to net less than 1500 to lose weight but you have miscalculated your need as 2000.0 -
No, OP. You're not eating 2000 and you're body thinks it's eating 3000. If you're body is acting like it's eating 3000 calories, then you're eating 3000 calories. This is a very creative attempt at fabricating an excuse.0
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I think a lot of people are reading way too much into that "walk 35 miles" thing.
The only thing I can possibly figure about any of this stuff is the possibility of water retention and the negative affects of that on the number you read on the scale (note: I'm talking specifically about the scale, not about fat gain or muscle gain). It's physically impossible for the body to take in more calories than you consume. We don't photosynthesize
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If you swallow a cupcake whole and dont taste it, does that mean you actually ate it?0
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I don't think so. I've never heard of your theory before.0
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You ask a series of very interesting questions!0
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Yes op!
Just last week my body mistook calories for a shampoo commercial.
Before you knew it, every time I ate something with calories in it, my hair was silky smooth and I was compelled to constantly do that hair flip thing.
I hope this answers your question. :flowerforyou:0 -
Nope.0
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What that guy meant was that your metabolisim has slowed down. It should be obvious that its not possible to take in more calories than exisst. A calorie is pretty much a solid object, though sometimes people do not measure them accurately. And more often than not people do not count them accurately.
Its true that you could walk 35 miles and not lose a pound if you ate enough calories to provide all the energy you needed for hte walk. But i don't htink that's the issue here.
If you really are doing all the right things and still not losing weight you could have a metabolic disoder. You can get your fasting blood glucose measured and this will tell you whether you've got a metabolisim problem. If you haven't got htis then its just a case of you not understanding the ins and outs of calories properly.
So here's what you should check:
age
height
curent weight
Do you weigh your food with a scale or measure it accurately wtih cups and spoons _these latter should level measurements not heaped spoons.
Do you log absolutely everything you consume? milk coffees, tsps of sugar, glass of this drink or that drink, theodd chocolate and so on.
Do you try to calculate your exercise calories. If so then stop doing that. Just go with basic generalisations of sedentary, light exercis and so on according to the defintioins given by the calculator you are using.
Is your calorie deficit moderate or severe. It should be less than 500 calories. eg if you energy output is 2500, then your calorie intake should be 2000 or more. If your energy output is 1600, your calorie intake should be1200 or more becuase its not recommended you eat less than 1200 unless you are really short. Personally i prefer a calorie deficit of around 200.
How often do you weigh yourself. I'd suggest daily or weekly. But if doing it daily then you have to be aware of the factors that affect water retention such as salt intake, inflammation from a lot of exercise, menstrual cycle and accpet that this will cause daily fluctuations that should not upset you. Constipation is another factor.
What time of day do you weigh? Just do it in the morning after a pee wiht no clothes on is best. Adn before you drink or eat anything.
All that said, gradual results are good. Dramatic results are generally not sustainable.0 -
Nope, that's not true. If it were, there would be a superior breed of homo sapiens running around that would only need a few hundred calories a day because their bodies would 'cheat the math.'
It's important to remember that weight loss is not instantaneous. If I go out and run 5 miles right now, I won't have lost weight if I step on the scale the instant I'm finished. Particularly with rigorous exercise (i.e. the 35 mile run) your body needs time to repair muscle tissue and rehydrate. You'll notice the changes maybe within a week. The human body is subservient to the laws of mathematics, but not instantaneously. It needs time to absorb, burn, rebuild, fuel, and repair. Patience is key.
Also, particularly with women's bodies, weight can fluctuate as much as 15 pounds due to hormonal changes and water retention. Because of menstrual cycles, the body stores water to compensate for the blood loss, causing you to put on weight. There are a million factors that contribute to body weight, so don't over think it. Weigh yourself once a week. Eat fewer calories that you burn. Be patient, and it will work.0 -
No but one time it did mistake some accidental cardio for strength training. Man, did I ever get buuuuullllky!!!0
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sometimes all the right things isnt really all the right things.
i was plateauing for a while. couldnt figure out why. i was doing all the right things. except i was estimating my calories burned, not weighing my food and estimating low, and basically, eating too much.
im crawling out of that plateau now because... early weight loss is easy. and you start to think... wow i did this much i MUST know what i am doing... but then it gets harder because your body is not like "wow, we arent running on a billion calories a day anymore" its like... hey, we lost weight and now we live on such and such calories... "
thats when you have to be sure that what you are logging is really what you are eating and exersizing, and that the food you are eating is really as little as you think.
2 examples. we made pizzas tonight. serving size for the dough was two ounces. i snipped off some dough and plopped it on the scale. i thought it would be 3 oz or so. nope. 5.3 oz.
example number 2. i walk a lot. sometimes we will be walking for 5 or 6 hours at a time while running errands. so i would estimate a 3 hour walk thinking some of that time was stopped so half should be fine. recently i got a fitbit which tells me my actual steps. and then i went downtown on a 4 hour adventure yesterday. what i would have logged as a two hour walk (half the time) was actually not many steps at all and only 117 calories burned or so. according to it.
so... yea.
thats that.
everything right isnt always everything right. sometimes its some things right but not everything.0 -
Weight loss is as much art as it is science. In other words, it's not perfect, and it won't always perfectly follow the formulas that we follow. GENERALLY, yeah they work, but there is room for error. What you should probably do is adjust your calories (not below 1200 NET unless you under 5' tallish) until you start losing weight.0
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...Yesterday someone said that if you walk 35 miles, you might not even lose a pound. That's an example of your body cheating you with math.
My brain just crashed. :huh:0 -
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Well here was my diet today. Morning- turkey sandwich on wheat 120 calories for each of 2 slices
Lunch- Bean Burrito- 500 calories
Dinner- 2 beef tacos, 1 chicken sandwich
Exercise- 25 mile bike ride (mountain bike), 2 mile walk after dinner
Not nearly enough info for proper feedback.0 -
Yesterday someone said that if you walk 35 miles, you might not even lose a pound. That's an example of your body cheating you with math.
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Not even wrong.0
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. Cheer up, if there's ever a famine, you'll outlive everyone and you can have their stuff.
:laugh: :laugh: :drinker:0 -
I think you need to go back to basics with some of the science.
Calories are a unit of energy, just as centimetres are a unit of length. So if a serving of any particular food contains 100 calories, this is a statement about how much energy there is in that food. Your body uses this energy to keep your cells alive and to move around.
If you give your body 3000 calories of energy through food, but your body only needs 2500 calories that day, then you have 500 calories of energy left over, which your body will store as fat.
Calorie calculators give an estimate, because if you're a certain height and weight, you can make a guess how many of each kind of cell that person has, and estimate how many calories of energy their body needs each day to keep all those cells alive.... we're not all identical though, so this is *just an estimate* - it's a best guess made on how many cells a typical person of that height and weight can have. If, for example, you have more muscle than average for your height and weight, you might find that the calculator *underestimates* the amount of energy your body needs to burn to keep all your cells alive, because you'd have more muscle cells and fewer fat cells than average for your height and weight... and muscle cells need quite a bit more energy than fat cells do.
Activity calories are a bit harder to estimate, but you can still use maths to do this... again, it's just an estimate. It's never going to be completely accurate, but for most people it will get you an estimate to within a couple of hundred calories, if you are completely honest about your activity factor.
Your body will not "mistake" calories - your body will use the energy it needs to keep your cells alive and move around... but the calorie calculators are only estimates, so someone's body could actually be using quite a bit more or less energy than they predict, and so the result will be that they don't lose, or gain weight, eating the amount of calories that the calculators say they should lose weight at. Medical conditions make this more likely (because they affect how quickly/slowly the cells use up energy...)
I hope that answers the question you were trying to ask - your question is a bit muddled and confused, so it's hard to tell exactly what you meant.0
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