Can your body mistake calories?

Calories are a unit of energy, just as centimetres are a unit of length.

Thanks. I was in physical pain from the "calories are a solid thing" statement.

But I guess what I'm saying is do some peoples bodies not respond to a lower calorie deficit.

No.

There are no such people.

But I guess what I'm saying is do some peoples bodies not respond to a lower calorie deficit.

No.

There are no such people.

I think some people respond with more adaptive thermogenesis than others. So their bodies don't respond as well to the same calorie reduction as others, or to the same perceived deficit. Actual deficit- no. But we don't know the actual deficit.

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.

^^ Possible, so you're good for a Zombie apocalypse. :happy: Although there are great "rules" for losing weight, everyone is different and some people have bodies that are more resistent to weight loss for a number of reasons. I don't know if you've been to the doctor to rule out some of those possibilities, but if you are concerned then that's one avenue.

However, MOST people just aren't following the rules as carefully as they think they are. OR, if you've been at this for a while, then you likely need to adjust your daily caloric intake. The less you weigh, the less you need. A lot of people forget to re-calculate every 10 lbs or so. It sucks, though, when you see your daily goal drop by 100-200 calories!!

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.

Love this response, and the examples are dead on the important of accurate logging and our misestimation of calories in/calories out.

OP, our bodies react to however many calories we feed it.

Nobody is meant to be fat, skinny, or anywhere in between. We all have the ability to consciously lose, gain, or maintain our weight. The problem comes in when we are unconscious regarding food because then we generally eat more than we realize.

Math does no lie. If it's not working, you're doing something wrong.

That's the beautiful thing about math. The truths are universal.

That's not correct. The universe does not run on math, and math's foundations are based on our subjective experience. It's a useful tool for describing the universe from a very specific perspective, but it does not contain "universal truths" - hell, math isn't even internally consistent.

1 + 1 does not always equal 2.

Can you provide an example where 1 + 1 does not equal 2?

(1 man + 1 woman) x 9 months = 3 people :bigsmile:

Also.....

(1 female cat + 1 mail cat) x however many months =anywhere from three to ten kitty cats. :bigsmile: :bigsmile:

If you can put 2000 calories in and get the body to think it has consumed 3000, then you have created the Holy Grail of energy production and deserve a Nobel Prize. Scientists have been trying to do this for centuries. Seriously though, counting calories is not an exact science, either in or out. Somewhere along the line you are not counting properly and need to cover this properly before moving on to other theories.

Math does no lie. If it's not working, you're doing something wrong.

That's the beautiful thing about math. The truths are universal.

That's not correct. The universe does not run on math, and math's foundations are based on our subjective experience. It's a useful tool for describing the universe from a very specific perspective, but it does not contain "universal truths" - hell, math isn't even internally consistent.

1 + 1 does not always equal 2.

Can you provide an example where 1 + 1 does not equal 2?

That's actually true in some cases, although not what he had in mind...
The simplest case is to think of vectors. Or for some more fancy stuff, think of non Euclidean geometries. Think of living on a sphere for a second. It's like a wonderland, you have to reconsider everything, e.g. the sum of the angles of a triangle is not pi anymore...

But back to mundane flat Euclidean life: I'm much more curious about the "math is not even internally consistent" comment.
Really? Do tell...

Think about living on a sphere???? Do you mean that the earth is flat??? Modern science clearly has a lot of catching up to do. (I shan't ask how many turtles support the flat earth!)

lol... it did occur to me that someone might get caught up on that, but still, didn't bother to explain better...
The earth is big enough so that geometry of a flat surface is good enough (most of the time). Living on a sphere was meant more like on a planet like the little Prince's, where every theorem of flat geometry needs to be readdressed.

A calorie is pretty much a solid object

False. Actually, a calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water one degree Celsius. Energy is not a solid object.

The original method used to determine the number of calories in a given food directly measured the energy it produced. The food was placed in a sealed container surrounded by water--an apparatus known as a bomb calorimeter. The food was completely burned and the resulting rise in water temperature was measured. This method is not frequently used today.

Nowadays, food manufacturers use the Atwater system, which is based on an indirect calorie estimation. In this system, calories are not determined directly by burning the foods. Instead, the total caloric value is calculated by adding up the calories provided by the energy-containing nutrients: protein, carbohydrate, fat and alcohol. Because carbohydrates contain some fiber that is not digested and utilized by the body, the fiber component is usually subtracted from the total carbohydrate before calculating the calories.

The Atwater system uses the average values of 4 calories/gram for protein, 4 calories/gram for carbohydrate, and 9 calories/gram for fat. Alcohol is calculated at 7 calories/gram. (These numbers were originally determined by burning and then averaging.)

Too bad Bill Watterson is no longer drawing Calvin and Hobbes. Such a wealth of material here.