"Clean" eating vs. Moderation- what works for you?

DebHutton55 wrote: »

Eat the right carbs, proteins and fats. Watch the quantity. Move! There's the key to healthy living and an outcome in your later years that has you with your memory and the ability to move around with ease. If you are just eating for your weight, wise up. It's taken me most of my life to figure that out.
Someone said, sugar is nothing unless you have a medical condition. So wrong! Read, read, read. What all this stuff is doing to your brain, is more important than what it is doing to your butt.
Of course, eat an occasional bad but if you start eating correctly, you don't have that desire anymore.

This is awesome. I love this statement: "What all this stuff is doing to your brain, is more important than what it is doing to your butt." Very well put. ♥

Some people tolerate a high carb diet better than others, certainly I am not in the lot of that kind of tolerance. I was borderline Type II and have an auto-immune disorder and had to change my diet completely - I lost the weight, gained muscle and strength, lost many of the symptoms of the auto-immune disorder (not all), and now awaiting my physical this week to check my blood work one year after I made this change.

I can say I have cheated maybe 5 times in one year - and during that time, it was morsels - I still eat chocolate but it has to be pure dark chocolate. I know what is good because I was a chocolatier at one time - successfully owned a business and sold it 5 years ago. I know what goes into confections and there's no way I would eat any of them now unless its pure dark chocolate. Chocolate has fiber - that makes it palatable to eat.

There's a real difference calorie for calorie between different foods - meat <> broccoli, for example. Both provide specific nutrients (or densities of nutrients) the other doesn't have. Further, to achieve the caloric equivalent of meat, it takes a hellalot of broccoli. Say an 8oz hamburger or salmon or tenderloin - take those three calorically and you would need to eat ALOT of broccoli - in fact, all three meats contain differences in nutrition unto themselves.

I do believe CICO matters but it matters within the context of your macros. For instance, not all fiber is digestible (insoluble v. soluble). Not all soluble fiber is digestible - those calories can essentially be thrown out - fiber is used by the body in a much different way than the "net" carb of that food. You can't store fiber (or most of it) because it's not made to be stored. It's made to be moved through the body and aids in the elimination process.

Protein requires protein calories to process it - then some protein is used for muscle synthesis and hypertrophy:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11255140

"Resistance exercise improves muscle protein balance, but, in the absence of food intake, the balance remains negative (i.e., catabolic)."

So one can "move around" but if one doesn't eat the required macro, one creates a catabolic state that in essence wipes out the whole concept of "moving around"!

The remaining protein is then "storable." So figure 33% of your protein calories are convertible to fat.

I don't think there's a magic number when it comes to weight loss - for instance, many purport that eating 1500 calories would garner weight loss - but 1500 calories of what - does that figure exercise into it, and is that enough to sustain muscles over the long-term? Does that raise the metabolic set point to where you need to eat even less once your metabolism slows to 1500?

That's the problem with looking at things from just the CICO perspective. I do agree (and often get mislabeled on here) that CICO matters, but it matters within the perspective of your macros, the kinds of foods you are eating, the processing (or lack thereof) of that food, and your body's metabolic resistance (or lack thereof) to certain macros and foods.