Why calories don’t work the same

JayZ1488 · March 2021

Why don’t calories work the same

I’ve heard it helps to eat more water. Fruits veggies etc but why is it I’d be more full on a 500 calorie salad vs a 500 sandwhich while drinking a bottle or two of water.

I’ve been doing good with my deficit but ok even a serving of almonds 170 calories or 300 calorie protein shake. Some foods ad up a lot of calories and keep me hungry.

I’ve been doing good avoiding heavier caloried snacks like chips cookies etc and I’ve lost 28lbs and been in a deficit for almost 4 months. Some days I work more physical and I get that but why don’t calories work the same.

If I’m full on a 500 calorie salad but not cottage cheese and almonds at 500 it annoys me and makes me feel unsatisfied and left with little to no calories

I’m sure it’s also got to do with sugar and salt but regardless shouldn’t these calories fill me rather then keep me hungry

wunderkindking · March 2021

Volume.

Think how much room 500 calories of almonds vs a 500 calorie sandwich is and how big a 500 calorie salad is.

It's just how much food is in your stomach and how fast it does or doesn't digest. Which is not always the same as satisfaction, but that's a whole different topic in some ways.

Like. I can easily eat a whopper from BK at 560 calories. Can I eat 600 calories of lettuce? Is there PHYSICALLY ROOM FOR IT? Absolutely not.

AnnPT77 · March 2021

Satiation - what makes us feel full - is pretty individual. You're figuring out what makes you feel full. That's a good thing, right?

Gotta admit, I don't understand why you find that irritating.

Calories just measure the energy in food, not the nutrition or the filling-ness or the tastiness or anything else.

It's like a pound of bricks, a pound of feathers, and a pound of cheese: They all weigh a pound, but one is better for building walls, another is tastier for making pizza, and another makes a more comfortable pillow.

I don't understand the problem. 🤷‍♀️

wunderkindking · March 2021

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Satiation - what makes us feel full - is pretty individual. You're figuring out what makes you feel full. That's a good thing, right?

Gotta admit, I don't understand why you find that irritating.

Calories just measure the energy in food, not the nutrition or the filling-ness or the tastiness or anything else.

It's like a pound of bricks, a pound of feathers, and a pound of cheese: They all weigh a pound, but one is better for building walls, another is tastier for making pizza, and another makes a more comfortable pillow.

I don't understand the problem. 🤷‍♀️

I think the 'problem' is that if you 'spend' 500 calories on, for instance, cookies it would be NICE if you got as full as if you ate 500 calories of salad and stayed full as longer.

It doesn't actually work that way, of course. It's both why it's easy to gain weight if you eat a lot of calorically dense food/people don't just hit their calorie limit and get full and stay that way - and why restriction in calories nudge people toward less calorie dense food.

BUT IT WOULD BE NICE if the NUMBER Of calories kept me equally full no matter what. 8 candy bars a day, full all day and losing weight. (No. I'd get sick of them but I get the wish)

JayZ1488 · March 2021

I appreciate the help! Thank you

wunderkindking wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Satiation - what makes us feel full - is pretty individual. You're figuring out what makes you feel full. That's a good thing, right?

Gotta admit, I don't understand why you find that irritating.

Calories just measure the energy in food, not the nutrition or the filling-ness or the tastiness or anything else.

It's like a pound of bricks, a pound of feathers, and a pound of cheese: They all weigh a pound, but one is better for building walls, another is tastier for making pizza, and another makes a more comfortable pillow.

I don't understand the problem. 🤷‍♀️

I think the 'problem' is that if you 'spend' 500 calories on, for instance, cookies it would be NICE if you got as full as if you ate 500 calories of salad and stayed full as longer.

It doesn't actually work that way, of course. It's both why it's easy to gain weight if you eat a lot of calorically dense food/people don't just hit their calorie limit and get full and stay that way - and why restriction in calories nudge people toward less calorie dense food.

BUT IT WOULD BE NICE if the NUMBER Of calories kept me equally full no matter what. 8 candy bars a day, full all day and losing weight. (No. I'd get sick of them but I get the wish)

yirara · March 2021

yeah, relax! Everyone finds other types of food satiating, so it's good you found out what works for me. Bodies are weird, and all are different. My weird body decides that the same calorie amount of very fluid yogurt over oats and fruit leaves me hungry while less fluid yogurt doesn't. *shrugs*

mkculs13 · March 2021

I get the irritation--and it passes, but being hungry when you don't want to be, especially if it surprises you or you are new to it, well, I'd expect folks to feel irritation. I do. I'm hungry and "can't" eat, dang it! Actually, I just do what I need to feel less hungry b/c that irritation is a trigger for me, and I'd rather eat back my deficit for the day than fight it and trigger a binge. I just move on the next day, lesson learned. But I had to learn that lesson first (oops, xxx doesn't satisfy me; oops, trying to struggle through unexpected hunger/hunger levels doesn't work for me) and was plenty irritable in the process. Learning to relax, take care of the hunger in a healthy way, and move on to the next day took me a while. Like, decades. It was the main reason I kept failing to lose successfully over the long haul. I always thought, "I can't do this; I'm just too hungry" and I gave up. So, OP, hang in there. Good luck.

wunderkindking · March 2021

mkculs13 wrote: »

I get the irritation--and it passes, but being hungry when you don't want to be, especially if it surprises you or you are new to it, well, I'd expect folks to feel irritation. I do. I'm hungry and "can't" eat, dang it! Actually, I just do what I need to feel less hungry b/c that irritation is a trigger for me, and I'd rather eat back my deficit for the day than fight it and trigger a binge. I just move on the next day, lesson learned. But I had to learn that lesson first (oops, xxx doesn't satisfy me; oops, trying to struggle through unexpected hunger/hunger levels doesn't work for me) and was plenty irritable in the process. Learning to relax, take care of the hunger in a healthy way, and move on to the next day took me a while. Like, decades. It was the main reason I kept failing to lose successfully over the long haul. I always thought, "I can't do this; I'm just too hungry" and I gave up. So, OP, hang in there. Good luck.

It took me so long to go "Yeah that didn't work/wasn't worth the calories" and 'Okay that is a calorie hit but makes a BIG difference in how satiated I feel". Lots and lots of trial and error and days where I also said 'screw the deficit I am not going to be starved all day and end up eating my body weight in potatoes at 9 p.m because I'm ravenous.

And not all unhealthy stuff.

Eggs, by and large, are a total waste of calories for me. They're fairly high calorie for size, there's not enough protein there to compensate, and I never feel full after them. The weird exception is boiled eggs which are a perfectly filling snack for me, all on their own.

Equally ironically potato chips - just regular ones, not the interesting flavors - can hold me pretty well for an actual serving. They don't make me feel FULL but I feel like I've had a satisfying snack and that's worth the 150-160 calories.

Such a danged annoying process.

PAV8888 · March 2021

In my opinion, EXPERIMENTING SHOULD be part of weight loss because it helps you develop ammunition for weight maintenance.

I NEEDED to find out that boiled eggs ARE satiating and so are boiled potatoes (and I can throw them in a salad with a lot of veggies as example... and for me they work better if they're warm while the rest of the salad is cold... just because!). And that a vanilla cone from McD's before a dog walk is far from wasted calories because it can actually hold me for a couple of hours of walking up and down hills whereas a protein bar for the same 250-300 Cal won't do that. But having the same calories in the form of cookies.... would just generate the need for another 300 Cal of cookies and then another 300!

I mean people ARE different and I don't see anything wrong with learning about one's self. Is it annoying that I can't just eat ice cream all day... well, actually, there have existed a few days where I had a double gelato cone for lunch and a double gelato cone for dinner plus ~400 Cal worth of yogurt for protein, without weight gain... but I wouldn't call that exactly long term sustainable eating, right?

You can have anything and everything, just not in unlimited quantities, and not all the time.

We are born, we live, we die, we pay taxes, and different foods satiate differently for the same calories: it just is!

janejellyroll · March 2021

Calories aren't an indicator of how filling a food will be. This isn't a failure, it's just not what they're designed to do.

Satiety is something that most of us have to experiment with. Some people find fat to be very filling, others don't. Some of us are volume eaters. Some people find that frequent snacks work well for them, others prefer bigger meals. For some of us, fiber or protein go a long way to fill us up. You basically have to experiment to figure out what works best for you.

wunderkindking · March 2021

Also it CHANGES.

I used to be a constant snacker. Somewhere in this progress I'm a 'eat one really big meal, have a snack after' person. Those are POLAR OPPOSITES and it makes no sense to me but here we are.

Why calories don’t work the same

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