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Are all calories the same??

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Replies

  • EvgeniZyntx
    EvgeniZyntx Posts: 24,208 Member
    auddii wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    macchiatto wrote: »
    @nvmomketo, right there with you in terms of personal results and 140 gm carbs/day being their definition of "low carb."

    You should read the explanation for why that is (it was necessary to balance calories without changing other things and still allowed for testing the insulin hypothesis), as well as the discussion of the study I posted above, from examine.com. (The belief is that lower carb would have had slightly better results but been essentially the same as low fat over time.)

    But if people will stop claiming 140 g of carbs is low carb, I'd be happy, sure.

    Meh, people can find all sorts of ways to justify calling themselves "lower carb". I'm not sure if it's needing to fit in with a group or really wanting to label yourself as something or what. I eat how it works for me. I'm still working on finding macro levels that I'm good with. And I really need to start tracking binge patterns with macro splits.

    On it.
    Let me think about this, I think I can integrate a min-max moving window analysis to my spreadsheet.
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    edited February 2016
    yarwell wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Low carb has more fat oxidation but also more fat intake. It leads to equal amounts total fat lost.

    Precisely. That someone eating more fat burns more fat is hardly shocking -- you tend to burn what you eat -- but also not significant.

    They weren't eating more fat, the LC arm ate the same amount of fat and cut down the carbs. Fat oxidation increased, insulin secretion reduced. See the graphical summary.

    The people eating less fat oxidised the same amount of fat, so your hypothesis "you tend to burn what you eat" fails. For that to work the fat oxidation would have gone down on LF and stayed the same on LC surely.

    Fat oxidation - Fat intake - fat storage = fat loss/gain.

    They're eating in a deficit, so they've got a net fat loss.

    Which means, if their fat intake stayed the same, fat oxidation had to increase to create a net fat loss.

    Which means, if their fat intake lowered, fat oxidation did not have to increase to create a net fat loss.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member

    Which means, if their fat intake lowered, fat oxidation did not have to increase to create a net fat loss.

    Indeed.

    Doesn't address the point though "That someone eating more fat burns more fat " didn't happen in this study.

    Someone eating less carbohydrate burns more fat did happen.

    Are all calories the same ? No. Look at the graphical summary. Two identical calorie changes, two different outcomes. Sorted.

    "They're eating in a deficit, so they've got a net fat loss." is supposition on your part. That's what the study was exploring. A significant part of your "net fat loss" of the LC arm was actually supplied by carbohydrates.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    edited February 2016
    Just to reinforce the point
    fx1.jpg

    On the left an ~800 cal reduction in fat intake alone left everything else the same (hence the = signs).

    On the right an ~800 cal reduction in carb intake produced a 400 cal increase in fat oxidation and a 500 cal decrease in carb oxidation (hence the arrows and the different sized flames).
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    What IS your point?

    The ones eating more fat burned more fat to supply the calorie deficit with energy from their body fat.
    The ones who did not eat as much fat were still burning extra fat compared to their intake (= body fat) to supply energy for the calorie deficit.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,373 MFP Moderator
    edited February 2016
    yarwell wrote: »
    Just to reinforce the point
    fx1.jpg

    On the left an ~800 cal reduction in fat intake alone left everything else the same (hence the = signs).

    On the right an ~800 cal reduction in carb intake produced a 400 cal increase in fat oxidation and a 500 cal decrease in carb oxidation (hence the arrows and the different sized flames).

    You're failing to recognize that while grams of fat didnt increase, it did increase based on percentage of calories. You have to consider the 30% reduction of calories.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    yarwell wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Low carb has more fat oxidation but also more fat intake. It leads to equal amounts total fat lost.

    Precisely. That someone eating more fat burns more fat is hardly shocking -- you tend to burn what you eat -- but also not significant.

    They weren't eating more fat, the LC arm ate the same amount of fat and cut down the carbs. Fat oxidation increased, insulin secretion reduced. See the graphical summary.

    I think what I meant was clear, but in case you aren't just pretending to misunderstand: that someone eating more fat as a percentage of their overall consumption burns more fat is hardly shocking... (the rest is the same).

    And yes, of course you must take into account deficit or not. I was assuming deficit and did not realize you were comparing the people at deficit with the baseline diets.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    What IS your point?

    Simple enough - two identical changes in calories in, two different outcomes.

    Therefore all calories are clearly not the same according to this experiment.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I was assuming deficit and did not realize you were comparing the people at deficit with the baseline diets.

    It's an intervention study, we did X and Y or Z happened.

    Fat intake did not increase in the LC arm, where fat oxidation increased.

    I'm not a big fan of index syndrome where one starts dividing data items by other data items in a vain attempt to find a number that moves in a direction required by preconception.

    Hall's half an experiment demonstrated the known physiology that reducing carbohydrate intake increases fat oxidation. Had he stayed around long enough to exploit that fully he might have learned something other than that his model is a bit rubbish at predicting the early days of calorie reduction.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited February 2016
    yarwell wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    I was assuming deficit and did not realize you were comparing the people at deficit with the baseline diets.

    It's an intervention study, we did X and Y or Z happened.

    Fat intake did not increase in the LC arm, where fat oxidation increased.

    Why are you pretending not to have seen my post where I said fat intake increased as a percentage of overall calories, which it did? Cut carbs, and the percentage of fat (and protein) increases. Cut fat, and the percentage of carbs (and protein) increases.

    Your assumption that somehow there's an overall advantage to eating fewer carbs -- that you will burn more fat than the fuel + deficit would explain -- is entirely unsupported.

    Also, I'm curious -- you seem to have been doing the keto thing for a while. Care to provide numbers that indicate that there's an advantage to doing so vs. what the deficit would predict?
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    I am not pretending anything, you appear to be somewhat overfocussed on what you think I'm thinking rather than the facts in the OP.

    I have little interest in your indexing and percentages, cut 800 cals of fat and nothing much happened, cut 800 cals of carbs and fat oxidation increased dramatically. Therefore all calories are not equal. Fat oxidation did not decrease because fat intake reduced, it stayed the same, so you don't - as claimed - "burn what you eat".

    A deficit is a piece of post hoc calorie accounting or energy balance. It is the consequence of what happens, not the driving force. As stevencloser said the LF arm in this half experiment lost weight/fat because the fat oxidation stayed the same but the fat intake reduced. The LC arm lost weight/fat because the fat oxidation increased for the same fat intake. Different changes, different outcomes.

    The advantage to me in doing keto is a lower blood sugar, lower triglycerides, higher HDL (hence lower heart disease risk), and a diet I can stick too with foods I enjoy. As I don't live in a metabolic chamber or possess a faecal calorimeter I can't help you with what my deficit might be. I can tell you that I don't lose significant weight if my fasting blood sugar is elevated above about 120 mg/dl
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    I am not pretending anything, you appear to be somewhat overfocussed on what you think I'm thinking rather than the facts in the OP.

    This is what happened:

    2 groups of people eating at or above maintenance (based on the claim that they reduced calories by 30% I get 2667 calories, but don't have access to the whole study any more).

    Cut calories of one group by 800 (30%), all from carbs. Cut the calories of the other group by 800 (30%), all from fat.

    At this point both groups are eating at a deficit (i.e., they must use body fat to fill the gap). One group is eating moderate carbs (140 g) and high fat (108 g), whereas the other is eating very low fat (17 g) and reasonably high carbs (352).

    The low carb group loses more weight (although the model predicts that the results would be closer if the carbs were lower and will even out somewhat over time, with low carb retaining an advantage).

    But you object insisting that lower carb still is superior and will lead to better results (and Hall is just too dumb or biased to realize this), because the lower carb people oxidized more fat (NOT body fat, fat overall).

    But this is simply a result of what they are eating. The low fat people burn carbs and then turn to fat to make up the difference when they run out. The lower carb people have fewer carbs to burn so burn more fat, but not some amount out of line with the deficit -- indeed, less than the low fat people. There's no support for the idea that you burn extra fat -- you burn what you eat plus what you need to make up the deficit.

    The -800 calorie people aren't burning more fat because they changed the macro make-up of their diets. They are burning fat because they are at a deficit. That the group eating fewer carbs and more fat burns fewer carbs and more fat is meaningless.

    Personally, I lost weight more rapidly than predicted when eating as many carbs as I wanted, so I find the idea that eating carbs makes it impossible to lose weight or interferes with weight loss to be inaccurate (and I've seen no studies to suggest that my anecdotal experience is weird). That low carb or even keto might be a better choice for someone else due to personal pleasure or satiety is something I've always agreed with. But if you want to assert that your weight loss is extra fast because of it and you burn more net fat (the net being the key concept here) than someone eating more carbs, I'd like to see the numbers.
  • sbermud
    sbermud Posts: 58 Member
    Yes. Same.
  • elite_nal
    elite_nal Posts: 127 Member
    A calorie is a calorie since it's a unit of energy, but that doesn't mean that 200 calories from potato chips will have the same effect on body composition as 200 calories from lean protein and veggies.
  • tincanonastring
    tincanonastring Posts: 3,944 Member
    elite_nal wrote: »
    A calorie is a calorie since it's a unit of energy, but that doesn't mean that 200 calories from potato chips will have the same effect on body composition as 200 calories from lean protein and veggies.

    But it will have the same effect on weigh management.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,373 MFP Moderator
    elite_nal wrote: »
    A calorie is a calorie since it's a unit of energy, but that doesn't mean that 200 calories from potato chips will have the same effect on body composition as 200 calories from lean protein and veggies.

    I am guessing by this response you didn't read the OP?
  • auddii
    auddii Posts: 15,357 Member
    psulemon wrote: »
    elite_nal wrote: »
    A calorie is a calorie since it's a unit of energy, but that doesn't mean that 200 calories from potato chips will have the same effect on body composition as 200 calories from lean protein and veggies.

    I am guessing by this response you didn't read the OP?

    Reading is hard; much easier to respond to titles. Context is purely optional.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited February 2016
    elite_nal wrote: »
    A calorie is a calorie since it's a unit of energy, but that doesn't mean that 200 calories from potato chips will have the same effect on body composition as 200 calories from lean protein and veggies.

    This is why a calorie is a calorie doesn't mean a food is a food and no one claims otherwise.

    Calories matter for weight, but food choice (i.e., overall diet) matters for nutrition, satiety, health, and in some cases body composition (more for people who are leaner and trying to gain muscle or get to a low body fat percentage, less for obese people losing lots of weight).

    In the context of a healthy, balanced diet the fact that you spend an extra 200 calories on chips vs. more lean meat and veg probably won't matter at all for the vast majority of people. Now, obviously, a diet of only chips would be stupid and unhealthy and not good for gaining muscle or satiety, probably, but since no one recommends it, it's hardly worth debunking, is it?
  • robs_ready
    robs_ready Posts: 1,488 Member
    Zmac34 wrote: »
    No, all calories are not the same. Over time if you're consuming more processed foods, dairy, meat then that will add more weight than if you consume a whole foods and mostly plant based diet high in antioxidants, and nutrients.

    Meat and dairy have helped me to lose weight and gain quality muscle. Not sure what you're talking about to be honest?