It can’t all be calories in/out
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briittanyxxoo wrote: »collectingblues wrote: »estherdragonbat wrote: »kimondo666 wrote: »ofc above link is CICO for healthy people, hyperthyroidism, or hypothyroidism affect gains - lose weight situation too.
By about 5%.
And *only* if the thyroid condition isn't treated adequately.
So having treated hypothyroidism wont affect weight loss any different than any one else?
Didn't for me.1 -
Watch an episode of Supersize vs Superskinny on YouTube. “Skinny” does not always equate with healthy. If you remain mindful about your nutrition, you will achieve your goals. It’s probably best not to compare.15
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courtneyaleen wrote: »Watch an episode of Supersize vs Superskinny on YouTube. “Skinny” does not always equate with healthy. If you remain mindful about your nutrition, you will achieve your goals. It’s probably best not to compare.
Many times losing excess weight can greatly improve health markers, regardless of what kinds of foods are being eaten. Yes, it's a good idea to eat a balanced diet with a focus on good nutrition (which definition can be debated), however just losing weight can have a positive impact on health.
Back when I started this whole thing I was still eating a very SAD diet/pretty poor nutrition make-up. Losing the extra weight, by continuing to eat the same foods but at a calorie deficit, improved all my health markers, including correcting a medical condition. Starting out I was very overwhelmed with my new diagnosis and never had dieted before. Learning how weight management actually works, CICO, met me where I was at and I was able to improve my health without making a lot of drastic changes all at once (which would have caused frustration and ultimately failure).
Now a few years into maintenance I eat much differently with a focus on whole foods, I track micros etc (I'm doing the DASH protocol currently). My way of eating is now much 'healthier', however I have years of data that show my health markers are controlled by my weigh and not by what kinds of foods I'm eating (in the almost 6 years of maintenance I've experimented with everything from WFPB to primal eating and have had twice a year blood work throughout).
All to say-for someone who's just starting this process and may be overwhelmed- just learning how CICO works, how weight loss works and then learning how to eat at the correct calorie deficit for their weight loss goals will go a long way in helping them move forward. After they get comfortable with those fundamental basics, then they can start making small, sustainable changes to what they eat.
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briittanyxxoo wrote: »collectingblues wrote: »estherdragonbat wrote: »kimondo666 wrote: »ofc above link is CICO for healthy people, hyperthyroidism, or hypothyroidism affect gains - lose weight situation too.
By about 5%.
And *only* if the thyroid condition isn't treated adequately.
So having treated hypothyroidism wont affect weight loss any different than any one else?
As other have stated, this has <5% impact on metabolism. I have access to over 1.5 M data points from patients and found no BMR/REE readings outside of 5%.
The only "weight gain" associated with thyroid disorders is a temporary water weight increase - similar to TOM.
I think some folks don't realize or selectively forget that we're not all just a bunch of internet ninnies yelling into the void here (I mean I am, but...). Some of the folks who regularly hang out here are actually professionals in related fields, with access to nifty stuff like data, education, and experience.
I used to eagerly read all the clickbait articles about metabolism, I'd actually keep lists of do's and don'ts. It's here that I learned that metabolism is a well-studied and measured thing, and not something I can do much about anyway, other than getting up off my heinie and increasing my NEAT.briittanyxxoo wrote: »collectingblues wrote: »estherdragonbat wrote: »kimondo666 wrote: »ofc above link is CICO for healthy people, hyperthyroidism, or hypothyroidism affect gains - lose weight situation too.
By about 5%.
And *only* if the thyroid condition isn't treated adequately.
So having treated hypothyroidism wont affect weight loss any different than any one else?
As other have stated, this has <5% impact on metabolism. I have access to over 1.5 M data points from patients and found no BMR/REE readings outside of 5%.
The only "weight gain" associated with thyroid disorders is a temporary water weight increase - similar to TOM.
I think some folks don't realize or selectively forget that we're not all just a bunch of internet ninnies yelling into the void here (I mean I am, but...). Some of us are actually professionals in related fields, with access to nifty stuff like data, education, and experience.
I used to eagerly read all the clickbait articles about metabolism, I'd actually keep lists of do's and don'ts. It's here that I learned that metabolism is a well-studied and measured thing, and not something I can do much about anyway, other than getting up off my heinie and increasing my NEAT.
I have now placed a placard outside my office with my new self bestowed title -
Internet Ninny
What's great is that you professional types say what you say in a manner that "not the sharpest tool in the shed" types like me can understand.
I certainly don't like or agree with everything I read here (forum inclusive) but when the simplicity of CICO is so easy to test, and it works...well, not much else to say really. Always more to read though
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azzeazsaleh5429 wrote: »It is calories in and out but also insulin resistance. Many people who consume a lot of sugars become insulin resistant so their body stores excess sugars as fat because the break down in their metabolism. While others who have a good response to insulin in their metabolism can get away with with processed sugar and foods. Eventually people who get away with the junk food end up having it catch up to them when they get older.
Very valid point!31 -
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I appreciate everyone’s insight but I just still don’t get it.
I work landscape and construction, on my feet all day and walk about 15/20,000 steps a day. A friend of mine I work with is the same way. For example yesterday he had 4 slices of pizza and a roll of girlscout cookies as I brought in a bagged healthier choice lunch. He weighs about 160 and has been at that weight since about 10th grade when we became friends.
I see how some people are not very active at all like my Roomate who prefers drinking or smoking, and eats out more days then not.
Both gentlemen I’m talking about don’t check calories, don’t worrie on what they eat and stay skinny.
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I appreciate everyone’s insight but I just still don’t get it.
I work landscape and construction, on my feet all day and walk about 15/20,000 steps a day. A friend of mine I work with is the same way. For example yesterday he had 4 slices of pizza and a roll of girlscout cookies as I brought in a bagged healthier choice lunch. He weighs about 160 and has been at that weight since about 10th grade when we became friends.
I see how some people are not very active at all like my Roomate who prefers drinking or smoking, and eats out more days then not.
Both gentlemen I’m talking about don’t check calories, don’t worrie on what they eat and stay skinny.
You don't have to check calories or worry about what you eat in order to stay slender, you simply have to eat the right amount of calories for your activity level. Your body "checks" for you, even if you're completely unaware. Some people are lucky enough that their appetite matches their activity level. Right now, we don't know why that is and why other people do have to be more conscious of what they're eating. I hope someday we do have a better understanding of that.
You see what your co-worker eats for lunch, but you don't see his breakfasts and dinners. You don't see snacks or the activity he does on his days off. It's hard to get a true picture of calorie intake/burn through just a portion of a person's day, which is why we often see posts from people who are confused by how their co-workers eat.13 -
I appreciate everyone’s insight but I just still don’t get it.
I work landscape and construction, on my feet all day and walk about 15/20,000 steps a day. A friend of mine I work with is the same way. For example yesterday he had 4 slices of pizza and a roll of girlscout cookies as I brought in a bagged healthier choice lunch. He weighs about 160 and has been at that weight since about 10th grade when we became friends.
I see how some people are not very active at all like my Roomate who prefers drinking or smoking, and eats out more days then not.
Both gentlemen I’m talking about don’t check calories, don’t worrie on what they eat and stay skinny.
So he ate around 750 - 1000 calories of pizza and 700-1000 calories of cookies, worst case that's 2000 calories, as long as whatever else he ate doesn't take him over his maintenance, which for a guy is probably a lot more, then of course he won't gain.8 -
Also I asked my friend who is skinny. He told me right now as I’m typing to this chat that he eats junk all the time, drinks way to much coffee with milk and sugar daily, candy, ordered lunch from pizza Chinese everyday when he works and yes stays skinny
He said “ I don’t watch or care about how much I eat” I eat what I want when I want and I stay skinny” words verbadem
Maybe it’s due to the fact that Muscle burns calories faster than fat when your body is at rest and in motion.
I apologize if I come off bold or unconcerned with the comments I’m just concerned.
It’s hard to find out the answers and I know it takes work and I am one
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Different people DO have different metabolic rates, period. Meaning they burn different amounts of calories EVEN AT REST.
Depends on age, activity level (you burn calories for quite a while AFTER exercise as well as during), muscle mass (muscle burns more at rest than fat does), certain medications, etc.6 -
Also I asked my friend who is skinny. He told me right now as I’m typing to this chat that he eats junk all the time, drinks way to much coffee with milk and sugar daily, candy, ordered lunch from pizza Chinese everyday when he works and yes stays skinny
He said “ I don’t watch or care about how much I eat” I eat what I want when I want and I stay skinny” words verbadem
Maybe it’s due to the fact that Muscle burns calories faster than fat when your body is at rest and in motion.
I apologize if I come off bold or unconcerned with the comments I’m just concerned.
It’s hard to find out the answers and I know it takes work and I am one
I can't speak for everyone, but when I first started logging and using a food scale, I was shocked on an almost daily basis by how much I ate in certain situations and how little I ate in others. A study was done once where even registered dietitians were way off estimating how much food they really ate. People on My 600 Lb life will insist they don't eat much, but you see them eat thousands of calories in the course of a day. Meanwhile young guys will insist in the Gaining Weight forum that they eat SO MUCH and can't gain weight, but when they start accurately tracking they realize they just weren't eating nearly as much as they thought.
Comparing "how much" food, exercise, activity etc with someone else is a waste of time. It's hard enough to figure out your own numbers. Trying to determine another person's based on the limited time you see them and what they tell you is impossible.16 -
Everyone I've ever known who "eats what they want, when they want" also has a remarkable ability to STOP eating. That's the main difference I've figured out.
Yes, they might consider candy and takeout food groups, but also probably have a fridge full of half-empty takeout boxes. Personally, I'm a recovering member of the Clean Your Plate Club. It's taken me a long time to learn that I don't have to eat the entire movie size box of M&Ms in one sitting and that most restaurant entrees are at least 2, if not 3 meals. Having learned and practiced eating to satisfaction instead of completion, now I get asked how I manage to stay the same size while enjoying regular dinners out, etc.10 -
Again, whether you watch calories or not, your body watches them for you. It sounds like your friend's hunger signals/activity levels/etc have him eating at maintenance.
PS, I'm not anywhere near that fortunate. I do watch what I eat. BUT my diary typically involves ice cream sandwiches, pizza, cookies, etc. Just not all on the same day and not outside my calories. So, if you happened upon me at synagogue and saw me at the refreshments table after services, you'd see a piece of potato kugel on my plate, together with a frosted shortbread cookie, and a few melon cubes.
I'd invite you home for lunch, where you would see me eat something like this:
Come back for supper and watch me eat a Havarti Cheese sandwich on a bagel.
But what you don't know is that on that same day, I also walked for 2 1/2 hours, which gave me nearly 600 extra calories. You don't realize that my refreshments after services were breakfast, that I pre-logged them, and know full well that those oh-so-fattening foods were about 400 calories (including the melon). And that during the week, I don't eat quite the same way.
You see how your friend eats and it's like you're trying to figure out the plot of a novel from reading one chapter. Unless you get him into a metabolic ward and weigh and measure everything he eats, you're not going to get the whole story.
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I wish I could find it again but there was a thread around here once comparing what people mean when they say they "eat all the time" or "eat a ton of junk." What came out of it were two vastly different poles of what people meant. Two people might say they eat "a ton" and one of them means like two baked potatoes, a 12 oz steak, and a gallon of ice cream and the other means half a baked potato, a 4 oz steak, and a pint of ice cream. From their perspective, each ate a ton. But when you put them together they're eating vastly different amounts of calories. This is why self-reporting is so difficult to rely on. One person's "I eat junk all the time" is a couple of Twinkies a week while the other person's might be a box of Twinkies a week. It's so incredibly subjective that it becomes worthless.
https://youtu.be/KA9AdlhB18o 19 -
Also I asked my friend who is skinny. He told me right now as I’m typing to this chat that he eats junk all the time, drinks way to much coffee with milk and sugar daily, candy, ordered lunch from pizza Chinese everyday when he works and yes stays skinny
He said “ I don’t watch or care about how much I eat” I eat what I want when I want and I stay skinny” words verbadem
Maybe it’s due to the fact that Muscle burns calories faster than fat when your body is at rest and in motion.
I apologize if I come off bold or unconcerned with the comments I’m just concerned.
It’s hard to find out the answers and I know it takes work and I am one
I have these friends, they're named metabolic ward patient #1 through #10 million. Everyone of them fails to magically stay skinny in rigorously calculated and watched overfeeding studies, and everyone of them manages to lose weight in similar studies for weight loss.
How would you account for this difference between what people say is their recall of their food intake in the wild, and what happens when these intakes are empirically measured and put to the test? Do calories care about being measured and follow rules more strictly when in the lab, or could it be that human memory is a rather fallible?15 -
Also I asked my friend who is skinny. He told me right now as I’m typing to this chat that he eats junk all the time, drinks way to much coffee with milk and sugar daily, candy, ordered lunch from pizza Chinese everyday when he works and yes stays skinny
He said “ I don’t watch or care about how much I eat” I eat what I want when I want and I stay skinny” words verbadem
Maybe it’s due to the fact that Muscle burns calories faster than fat when your body is at rest and in motion.
I apologize if I come off bold or unconcerned with the comments I’m just concerned.
It’s hard to find out the answers and I know it takes work and I am one
"All the time" isn't a quantity. Someone who says they're eating something "all the time" may have a very different definition as to what you might mean or what I might mean. Also, you can eat something regularly and still not consume a ton of calories from it.
When someone says "I eat what I want when I want," that still doesn't tell us how many calories they're consuming. If they have an active life (which it sounds like this person does), it's not surprising they could eat a relatively high volume of food and still be slender. The amount they eat may not be what you would be eating if you said you were eating what you wanted when you wanted. This is such a subjective way to measure food.
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It's all CICO - your base metabolism/insulin/thyroid/etc can all be genetic things that affect CO - but it's still basically CICO. Genetics/exercise/etc affect CO - what you choose to eat affects the CI.....4
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janejellyroll wrote: »Also I asked my friend who is skinny. He told me right now as I’m typing to this chat that he eats junk all the time, drinks way to much coffee with milk and sugar daily, candy, ordered lunch from pizza Chinese everyday when he works and yes stays skinny
He said “ I don’t watch or care about how much I eat” I eat what I want when I want and I stay skinny” words verbadem
Maybe it’s due to the fact that Muscle burns calories faster than fat when your body is at rest and in motion.
I apologize if I come off bold or unconcerned with the comments I’m just concerned.
It’s hard to find out the answers and I know it takes work and I am one
"All the time" isn't a quantity. Someone who says they're eating something "all the time" may have a very different definition as to what you might mean or what I might mean. Also, you can eat something regularly and still not consume a ton of calories from it.
When someone says "I eat what I want when I want," that still doesn't tell us how many calories they're consuming. If they have an active life (which it sounds like this person does), it's not surprising they could eat a relatively high volume of food and still be slender. The amount they eat may not be what you would be eating if you said you were eating what you wanted when you wanted. This is such a subjective way to measure food.
This is it exactly. My husband is underweight, but if you saw him eat dinner & dessert you would wonder how he stays that way. But if he doesn't pay attention, he won't eat until dinner - he just doesn't get hungry until then. We actually have to set timers to remind him to eat throughout the day to try to up his calories.
I eat a lot more frequently, but a lot few calories than my husband. I do better eating small amounts more often. Some people might call that eating all the time.
Unless you are watching someone 24/7, you don't know how active they are or how much they are really eating.7 -
must_deflate wrote: »Different people DO have different metabolic rates, period. Meaning they burn different amounts of calories EVEN AT REST.
Depends on age, activity level (you burn calories for quite a while AFTER exercise as well as during), muscle mass (muscle burns more at rest than fat does), certain medications, etc.
The range for BMR/RMR isn't all that huge, though, except for the part that varies with body size. Low hundreds of calories BMR difference between people of the same size would be a pretty large and unusual difference.
Age is conflated with inactivity (and muscle mass) in practice, EPOC is a small-ish percentage of the exercise calorie burn, a pound of muscle burns something like 2-4 calories more per day at rest compared to a pound of fat, hypothyroid condition (untreated) accounts for around 5% difference in BMR/RMR.
I can't speak from personal experience about all meds, but for the ones I know about, the weight gain/loss differences are primarily related to water retention, appetite, or fatigue.
I thought I had a "slow metabolism" because I was hypothyroid, post-chemotherapy, aging (nearly 60 at the time), menopausal, took estrogen-suppressing drugs for over 7 years . . . the "proof" was that I was super active, even competing as a masters athlete, but staying obese, while vegetarian and eating mostly healthy foods, besides.
That is, until I buckled down, started logging carefully, and found out my calorie needs are actually a little on the higher ("fast") side for my demographic. Heh! Turns out that few hundred extra daily calories had been pretty easy to out-eat.
Daily life activity (nonexercise) has a pretty big impact on differences between people. Exercise has some impact (moderate difference until we're talking long-endurance exercise). But those aren't "metabolic rate": They're things we can directly influence or control (as is muscle mass, though that's slow to build).
Mostly, I was deluding myself. It happens. Now I don't delude myself - and that had great results, for me. YMMV, as always. 9 -
I believe there have been studies showing that 'naturally' skinny people often over report or exaggerate the amount they eat, in the same way that people struggling with obesity will massively underestimate their own intake.6
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must_deflate wrote: »Different people DO have different metabolic rates, period. Meaning they burn different amounts of calories EVEN AT REST.
Depends on age, activity level (you burn calories for quite a while AFTER exercise as well as during), muscle mass (muscle burns more at rest than fat does), certain medications, etc.
Well...true, but the margin of difference is statistically meaningless.
Metabolic rate is an output of mass. This is little more than a culmination of the metabolic energy needs of a cell, and then multiplied based upon the number of cells in an individual.3 -
I apologize if I come off bold or unconcerned with the comments I’m just concerned. It’s hard to find out the answers and I know it takes work and I am one
I think you are overthinking this and worrying too much about what others are/are not eating. Does it really matter in the end if you lose weight and find success? You don't see them 24/7 to know what they eat when you're not around or how active they are. What you do know and can control is how much you eat and what your level of activity is. Log your food, accurately. Log your exercise, honestly. Give it a month to see what happens then adjust your calories if you need to. Figure out how YOUR body responds to calorie defecit because really, that is all that should matter to you.6 -
Activity levels. Does he move more than you?0
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