Does the balance of carbs, fat, and proteins matter for weight loss?

You could eat your calorie allowance's worth of McDonald's food every day and still lose weight, yeah.

You'll lose weight based on cutting calories alone, but paying attention to your macronutrients is important, too, for a well-balanced diet and healthy body. Your body needs all three for different processes.

For weight loss, it doesn't really matter. You may find that certain ratios help you feel full longer. You may also find that having enough protein along with strength training helps reduce the amount of muscle lost during the weight loss process. As said, you could eat all McDonalds (I'm thinking burgers here) and lose weight, but you may feel very hungry throughout much of the day. You need to find what works for you and your lifestyle.

Personally, I think of my protein and fat as minimums, and enjoy some small treat regularly (usually ice cream) while consuming a fair amount of a variety of veg and some fruits for fibre and micronutrients, and to give me the full feeling.

BuddhaB0y wrote: »

I used to believe that a calorie is a calorie until recently. If you check around online there are some new well respected medical studies that are showing that in fact a calorie is NOT a calorie.

From a physics perspective, yes a calorie is a calorie, however they have found that in the human body, we process different types of calories differently. Basically what they found is.... If you were trying to lose weight, If you ate all your calories in carrots, you would lose more weight and be healthier than if you ate the exact same amount of calories in fat.

I don't have the inclination to locate and post links for the studies, but they are out there if you wish to look for it.

Biology does complicate things, but not by much - "a calorie is a calorie" isn't precisely true - particularly for fiber which is only partially digested - but it's close enough to true to be useful. Some of the things people usually call out, though - like the thermic effect of food - are more complex than they portray, because of homeostatic feedback loops. If you eat a lot of protein, yes, a significant portion of the calories in the protein are "lost" as heat rather than forming ATP for your cells to use. However, because that extra heat is produced, your body produces less heat by other mechanisms like brown fat thermogenesis, so while you gained fewer calories from the protein, you burned fewer calories in your resting metabolism and balanced it out.

Neither the all-carrot diet nor the all-fat diet sound particularly healthy, by the way - you'd probably end up with kwashiorkor (dietary protein deficiency) on either of those diets which would eventually cause organ failure and death by starvation, even if you had enough total calories.

BuddhaB0y wrote: »

I used to believe that a calorie is a calorie until recently. If you check around online there are some new well respected medical studies that are showing that in fact a calorie is NOT a calorie.

From a physics perspective, yes a calorie is a calorie, however they have found that in the human body, we process different types of calories differently. Basically what they found is.... If you were trying to lose weight, If you ate all your calories in carrots, you would lose more weight and be healthier than if you ate the exact same amount of calories in fat.

I don't have the inclination to locate and post links for the studies, but they are out there if you wish to look for it.

But who is going to eat all carrots? And what about protein and fats, both are needed in a healthy balanced diet. BALANCE for macronutrients and micronutrients is important. You are talking about weight loss in a bubble without considering other factors such as lifestyle, taste preferences, and honestly I can't see how eating nothing but carrots would be remotely healthy in the long run.

OP, no - macros do not DIRECTLY affect weight loss.

But different macro ratios CAN affect satiety, making it easier to stick to your calorie goal. Many people find if they are too low in protein or fat, increasing those macros can help them feel fuller.

And if you want to maintain lean muscle mass as you lose weight, it is important to get enough protein.

Macros come into play more when you apply them to health and fitness goals. Calories for weight loss/gain, macros for health/fitness.

Totally different effects on your body. Yes, it matters. You can lose weight eating candy bars and drinking cokes on a deficit, but it will be all muscle.