Does it REALLY matter where calories come from?

* NOTE: I am NOT the author of this document .. but I think it shows some good facts relating to the OPs question.


Why a Calorie isn't a Calorie
-- OR --
Why We Eat Clean

---

Lets say Fanny Adams weighs 200lbs at 5'4". She’s 28 years old and has been Fat all of her life. She want to lose weight. So on the simple notion that a calorie is a calorie she sets out on a diet. She starts to do some light exercise and works out that to lose 1 pound a week she’ll need to eat around 1,800 Calories a day (she had the sense to use The Harris Benedict Method) .
She also starts to follow the recommended practice of drinking Ω her bodyweight in oz of Water each day. 2 weeks later she’s lost 5lbs and can’t believe it. After a month she’s down 10lbs and very excited. At this point she has no idea that 6lb of that was Water retention, 2lb was Muscle and 2lb was Fat, she’s losing weight and she’s happy. The problem is Fanny has a few problem foods, the big one being donuts. But, as long as she sticks to her Caloric goals she’ll lose weight, after all it’s a simple matter of numbers, right? So she fits in her daily trip to Krispy Kremes at 300Cals a day. Nutritionally we know that there is nothing good in a donut, I don’t think I need to go into detail, a Donut after all is simply Sugar and Saturated Fat. There are no Essential Fatty Acids in a Donut and there are no Essential Amino Acids in a Donut. Your body needs both EFA's and EAA's to function properly. The rest of her food choices are somewhat better but she tends to chose Burger King over cooking at home and Prefers real Soda over diet. So on a Macronutrient Basis, although she’s sticking to her Caloric Goals, her diet is basically 80% Carbs, 10% Fat and 10% Protein. She continues to lose weight and in fact after a few Months has lost 30lbs. Following the 6lb of Water that went, she’s no lost about 12lb of Fat and 12lb of Muscle. Her clothes are looking a little better but the skin is getting a little saggy. She also hasn’t lost much weight over the last couple of months so reduces her calories further. She Walks 5 Miles ever day, has her Donut on a morning, the occasional Coke, her BK Chicken Sandwich for Lunch and her Pita Breads and Humus for Dinner. She loses a little more weight, again about a 50/50 Split Muscle to Fat and gets a little saggier. Eventually she finds that she’s within the "good" weight range for her height but looks in the mirror and sees Fat in certain spots that she doesn’t like, she doesn’t understand why. Lets now say after a year she battles with the hunger the hypo caloric diet has caused and she’s down to 130lb. She even looks good in all her new clothes. She still walks her 5 Mile every day and she still drinks enough water to extinguish a forest fire every day. (This is a big assumption to make of course because we haven’t discussed Set Points, Plateaus or the body's natural hormone and metabolism adjustments it makes to keep you fat) We have a problem. During the course of this journey she has cut her Calories from 1,800/day to 1,300/day just to keep the weight coming off. Also, because she was starving herself of EFA's and EAA's, her body more readily wasted her muscle stores than her Fat stores to use as energy. When she was 200lb she was about 40% Body Fat and had 120lb of Lean Mass. At 130 she’s 25% Body Fat and has 98lb of Lean Mass. As Muscle is a metabolically active tissue that burns 40 times more calories than fat, at rest, she has significantly reduced her base metabolic rate. Faced with the prospect of only being able to eat 1,300 Calories a day (and she still has her 300Cal Donut every day) for the rest of her life she starts to eat to comfort herself. She regains 30lb, all Fat. She goes back on her hypo
caloric diet and loses more weight and more muscle. She repeats this process several times over proving that dieting doesn’t work and some people were born to be fat. She ends up back at 200lb but now she’s 60% Body Fat rather than 40%.

Obviously this is totally fictional but there will be a few people around here who can relate to this story, me included. Simply reducing calories without considering the food that you eat creates this situation more often than not. Had she chosen wiser food choices and considered eating a more balanced diet which included Healthy Fats, More Protein AND LESS SUGAR, she would
have preserved more lean mass and maintained a higher basic metabolic rate. Without even considering exercise, she could have moved the Fat-Muscle loss ratio considerably in her favor. Without losing as much muscle she would have been able to maintain that 130lb weight by eating a few hundred more calories a day and wouldn’t now be staring down both barrels of type 2
diabetes because of a diet that was basically sugar.

Now hear this, this is not complicated, this isn’t rocket science, your body stores energy in a few different places and in a few different ways. It stores energy in your Muscles, as Protein and Glucose (in the form of Glycogen). It stores energy in your Liver as Glucose (in the form of Glycogen). It also stores Fat, in the form of well, Fat. That’s the stuff that wobbles about when you run up the stairs. In a normal metabolic state, the energy needs of your organs are met by your liver giving up it’s glycogen stores and allowing glucose into the blood stream. When moving about you open up your aerobic pathway and burn a mix of Glucose and Fat, with a little air. When you do something in an anaerobic fashion, lifting a Keg of Beer into a Bath full of Ice for example, you will use glucose from your Muscle Glycogen stores. When you consume energy it will be used in the following order, immediate energy needs, replace missing glycogen, turned to fat, stored. When on a hypo caloric diet, as most of us are, you don’t eat enough energy to satisfy your energy needs, in theory. Therefore your body derives energy from other sources. In the absence of sufficient dietary protein it breaks down the amino acids from the protein stores in your muscles and turns it to glycogen to be used as glucose in the blood stream. As you don’t burn much energy in the aerobic pathway, under normal circumstances, the release of fatty acids from the adipose tissue is not all that high, thus the high muscle wasting effect of low calorie diets.

Now lets take the consumption of food for a moment.

Meal = 1 Regular Donut = 200Cals, 11g Fat, 24g Carbs, 3.6g Protein, 1g Fiber, this is also >80 on The Glycemic Index (which means it’s processed from food to blood sugar in the blinking of an eye with minimal digestion)

OK, you eat it, this happens. The Carbs which are largely Sugar are very quickly turned to Glucose and your Blood Sugar rises rapidly, almost immediately. Your immediate energy needs are minimal and it’s the middle of the morning. You had a Cereal based breakfast and the replenishment of the low Glycogen levels in your Liver has already been taken care of, helped along by a
little Protein Breakdown and Catabolism. The last anaerobic activity you were involved in involved pushing the UPS Package away from in front of your chair when you arrived at your desk so Muscle Glycogen is also quickly topped up. The caloric balance after these needs have just been met is now turned to Fat. As luck would have it, your Pancreas has just secreted an enormous
amount of Insulin to help control your skyrocketing level of blood sugar, phew. Insulin is also the hormone that tells your body to store nutrients so the majority of the food that you’ve just eaten gets sent to the adipose tissue [translate: Fat Gut]. Blood Sugar crashes through the floor and in an attempt to get this up again your brain lowers dopamine and leptin in an attempt to get you to eat again. You don’t eat. You have will power yes? You remain hungry. Blood Sugar must rise though so the Liver starts to rip a little more protein from the muscles. The Catabolism continues. As there was no Protein in this meal, any Protein your muscles needed isn’t available anyway. You need to climb 5 flights of stairs as the elevator is being repaired, you almost pass out at the top but still had enough blood sugar to get you there. But hey, you’ll be within your Calorie goals, and like you’ve said, That’s all that counts, Right? Er, Um, I’m afraid wrong.

Let's take another look at this.

Meal = Bowl of Oatmeal and an Egg ñ 225Cals, 8g Fat, 27g Carbs, 11g Protein, 4g Fiber, this meal would be around 40 on the GI

OK, you eat it, this happens. Because this is a particularly complex meal it requires a reasonable amount of effort to break down. The Fiber and Protein, added to the Complex Carbohydrates in the Oatmeal, are processed quite slowly in the Stomach. The energy required to break the nutrients down into their respective components, i.e. Amino Acids and Glucose, is also quite high
so your metabolism raises as part of this digestive process. Over a period of time nutrients are slowly made available for use. The Amino's are sent to the muscles to replaced those damaged fibers from your earlier walk to work and moving that damn box. Glucose is released slowly into the bloodstream satisfying ongoing energy needs and Blood Sugar remains stable and in control
and thus Insulin levels remain normal. You feel upbeat and energetic, all of your key weight loss related hormones seem stable, Insulin, Glucagon, Leptin and Dopamine (I wont start on Testosterone and Thyroid at this point). You take the stairs while sharing a joke with the mechanic repairing the elevator and while your climbing the stairs your body releases a little Fat from your adipose tissue into the Aerobic pathway to be burned. Life is just swell. Your maintaining your muscle mass while utilizing fat stores as fuel.

I believe that it does, indeed, matter very much where calories come from. Eating donuts all day long would certainly be tasty, and provide LOTS of calories, but your body wouldn't get the nutrients, protein, etc. that it needed. Suggest checking out marksdailyapple(dot)com for lots of excellent food information.

Research has shown that no, it doesn't. That said, I believe that in the short-term. That is, if for a day you eat pizza and ice cream but stay in your calories, you are fine. I wouldn't want to live that way. Personally, while trying to lose weight, I would skew much more towards lean protein. The protein will help you feel full with fewer calories and support your muscles.

I'd like to encorage everyone to read this too:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/496770-misinformation

When we correct misinformation it is NOT a personal attack against the poster.

Umm, yes it does matter. Not all calories are the same. If you want to lose weight you will need to ease off the sugar. And remember sometimes you might not see a drop on the scale right away, it does take time. But again if you are eating bad foods then you will not see any progress.

How was it that I ate ice cream and still lost weight?

You can have a cheat meal and still lose weight. You can't eat ice cream all day everyday and expect to lose weight.

Uh yes, yes you can. As long as you are STILL at a deficit, you will continue to lose weight on a diet of deep fried butter, Ice cream, and snickers.

Interesting information, cheers.

Wow, this got really heated... I can't resist adding my 2c before this badboy is shut down though...

The way I look at it is a calorie is a calorie. I calorie (kilojoule/joule) is a unit of energy. How/where that energy comes from is inconsequential. If you have a negative balance of energy (cals out>cals in) you will lose weight.

Where the debate gets a little more complicated is when we start talking about health. Do you want to give the body the nutrients it needs to function at a high level? (I'm talking both about a reasonable distribution of macronutrients and reasonable doses of necessary micronutrients).

If you want to just lose weight - eat whatever you like within your calorie limit, if you want to be healthier - put a little more work into your diet.

BTW, I eat icecream or chocolate or pizza or evil white carbs just about every day, but I do it within my calorie limit and as part of a reasonably healthy but sustainable diet overall. I really don't think I need to complicate things any more than theat for me to be successful!

If 1/2 junior burger = 150 cals and 1/4 c. almonds = 150 cals, I think I'm gonna go w/the almonds!

yeah ... I'll probably choose the burger. but can I add cheese?

I probably would do. 1/4c almonds keeps me full for like 20 minutes :C

Wow, this got really heated... I can't resist adding my 2c before this badboy is shut down though...

The way I look at it is a calorie is a calorie. I calorie (kilojoule/joule) is a unit of energy. How/where that energy comes from is inconsequential. If you have a negative balance of energy (cals out>cals in) you will lose weight.

Where the debate gets a little more complicated is when we start talking about health. Do you want to give the body the nutrients it needs to function at a high level? (I'm talking both about a reasonable distribution of macronutrients and reasonable doses of necessary micronutrients).

If you want to just lose weight - eat whatever you like within your calorie limit, if you want to be healthier - put a little more work into your diet.

BTW, I eat icecream or chocolate or pizza or evil white carbs just about every day, but I do it within my calorie limit and as part of a reasonably healthy but sustainable diet overall. I really don't think I need to complicate things any more than theat for me to be successful!

:flowerforyou:

Daily ice-cream eater here... and I'm maintaining my weight while losing inches still.

I'm not even sure what the argument is here.

Of course eating whole grain, vegetables, salads, fruits, etc., etc., etc. is healthier for you than eating pizza, french fries, donuts, burritos to some standard, but it has no effect on actual weight loss. 2000 calories of apples are the same calories as 2000 calories of pizza. Different nutrients, which some may argue are better for you, but it is still the same amount of calories. From reading some of the earlier posts, I get the impression that some are saying that if I eat 2000 calories of "clean" food, I will lose more weight than if I ate 2000 calories of whatever. There is no science backing that up and is pure speculation and nonsense.