Comment by ryeguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryeguy | Hacker News Reader

This is delightfully nerdy and overly analytical, but I can't believe someone would go to the extent of creating this yet never think to look for counterarguments against their dieting regimen. Doing this would have given him the answer much sooner.

Trying to figure out how the consumption of certain foods correlates with weight gain/loss is a waste of time because it's simply the caloric content, not the macronutritional content (eg protein vs carbs vs fats). There are dozens of studies showing that only calories matter for weight loss, including vs low-carb, low-fat, and more[1].

The author is acting like each food has arbitrary properties that make them food or bad for weight loss. It's a good reason to play with ML, but it's easier to just count calories. I hate seeing people go down the "good food/bad food" path of thinking because they end up overanalyzing the shit out of everything they eat and for no good reason.

The glycemic index doesn't realistically matter either for a ton of reasons. It hasn't been taken seriously as a useful marker when chosing foods for quite some time now. It's not a reliable indicator of anything. I posted a summary a few years back that debunks all the insulin/GI spike voodoo[2].

Low carb diets work, but they only work because they're a trick to get you to reduce calories. Look at what you're eating and remove all the carb foods. Notice how much your calorie intake dropped. It's a simple way of losing weight without counting calories, but that's it. The weight loss on keto, atkins, etc have nothing to do with carbs, and everything to do with calorie restriction.

It's worth noting that low carb diets have great health benefits, however [3].

[1]: http://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-lo...

[2]: https://reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/j853z/insulin_an_undes...

[3]: http://examine.com/nutrition/are-there-health-benefits-of-a-...

Food does have properties (not arbitrary) that make them good or bad for weight loss. I agree, calories count. But if you eat food that makes you hungry, it is harder to cut calories. The reason low-carb high fat diets work is that you feel full on fewer calories.

This is it. Its easy enough to say that only calorific intake is a factor. It is but there are many indirect factors that influence the success of a regimen.

I'm not gonna eat my daily allowance in spoonfuls of sugar am I?

All calories are not equal. Ask a diabetic to chow down on carbs. The body clearly doesn't treat all the macronutrients as interchangeable units of energy. To say, "a calorie is a calorie" helps none and allows people to behave as thought-terminating parrots.

There are also dozens of studies showing exactly the opposite (I've googled up just two): http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022207, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022637. It's pretty safe to assume that currently science is not overly conclusive about this subject.

From the point of biochemistry that claim doesn't make much sense either, as calories measured in the food (which is done by measuring the heat when you burn it) are not the same calories that you end up having as ATPs in your blood stream. No digestion is 100% efficient and it's much more complex process than just the simple oxidation. Different foods and food combinations and different gut bacterias in each human create hundreds of variables in how efficient the conversion process is. We have variable food quality, variable food combinations interacting chemically, variable gut bacteria and digestion chemistry, variable metabolism for each person. Our body is a chemistry lab and making stuff repeatable and simple in the lab is usually very hard. Digestion itself also uses energy itself and how much depends on the type of the food. It also matters how often do you eat, eating all your calories all at once and than starving for the rest of the week is definitely not the same as having a balanced calorie intake. Presuming that it's all simple "just sum it all up from standardized tables" is overly simplistic look on a highly complicated chemical process that has many bio-feedbacks involved and is far from being a constant. Which of course doesn't mean that it's not a good enough simplification for the purpose of keeping the dieting simple enough for people who are not interested in the biochemistry, but that is just the same kind of approximation that all other technics do: "Follow these rules and you'll probably lose some weight".

See, studies like these are the problem. They aren't calorie matched making them fully, completely invalid for debunking the point I'm trying to make.

The first study says "[the low carb diet] involves limiting carbohydrate intake without restricting consumption of fat and protein", which means calories aren't controlled for at all. Only carbs are counted. The second study has the same problem, read the methodology section.

Please, link me to "dozens of studies" that refute the link I provided above that: 1) have calories controlled in both groups 2) account for the non-permanent water weight in low carb diets and 3) find statistically significant differences in weight loss vs a regular calorie-restricted diet. You won't find a significant amount, if any.

Your second argument is a really common one and I have never understood it. Agreeing that calorie management is all that is needed for weightloss DOES NOT imply that calories are equal. Calories being equal is not a requirement for counting calories. I understand the concept of TEF and that there are several other factors that can impact what the "effective" calorie amount of foods are. I understand that the human body is incredibly complex and there is no formula for accurately determining an individual's calories.'

But none of these things realistically matter for counting calories as a tool of weight loss. You estimate your calorie intake using one of several googlable methods, then you adjust your intake over time to hit your desired weight loss rate. Any personal variances your body has or any dietary habits you have just get accounted for in the amount as you adjust it.

The other problem is they do it wrong.

One of the ones he linked limited to 20g per day, which is OK, but then increased the amount gradually to be "manageable." Uh, that's not true keto, that's Atkins half-assed keto, which is the exact book they used.

The other one limited to 30g a day, which people over at /r/keto would consider too high, as would most low-carb dieters.

Additionally, they both encourage (or, at best, don't prohibit) consumption of things which can be eaten in small amounts but still have a high GI, such as fruits and other things. It's not just about keeping the carb count below a certain number, it's about avoiding sources of glucose spikes as much as possible, too. They ignored that, and even flew in its face, which, in my opinion, invalidates the testing methodology.

> calories measured in the food (which is done by measuring the heat when you burn it)

They're not measured like this any more, the macros are measured and an average figure for each is applied. It's called the Atwater method.

> The author is acting like each food has arbitrary properties that make them food or bad for weight loss.

But they might for him. The point is that he's analyzing what he feels like eating without worrying about caloric content in order to achieve a steady state where he's losing weight.

If he can eat eggs until he's sated and lose weight, or he can eat cereal until he's sated and gain weight, the caloric difference is irrelevant to the question of what foods he should be eating to not have to think about counting calories while feeling sated. This is a personal question about what foods count as good or bad, not a general conclusion, and the author says as much.

This kind of personalized analysis via machine learning is probably going to be a big thing in the coming years.

One of the arguments OP used was that fatty foods satisfied his hunger faster. That still means the diet would be more effective, even if in theory all tha matters are calories.

Another big point was that fasting, particularly during sleep, was very effective. Is there any studies on if this is true or a real effect? Or perhaps it also just has a indirect effect by reducing calories consumed, but he argued it was more than that.

The satiation thing is a valid point (as others have pointed out). I just don't like the super high level view he took of it. I'd prefer something more controlled like eating calorically equal foods and then ranking them by how long they satisfied his hunger.

Fasting is a very effective tool for losing weight. By itself it doesn't really cause any magic (meaning, it doesn't increase the rate of fat loss on its own or anything like that). It's a great tool for diet adherence because your body eventually gets used to its eating hours. If you only eat in an 8 hour window each day, you're fuller during that 8 hour window and generally less hungry in the 16 hour foodless window. You can read more here - http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debun....

The whole site is dedicating to intermittent fasting and is a good resource.

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