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Comment by QSIITurbo | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal evidence _for_ a calorie being a calorie: lost 5 kgs in three months by cutting food intake evenly by just reducing the size of meals. Also consumed slightly over 10% of daily intake in sugar (saccarose) which surpasses the recommended level (10% absolute max). Otherwise stuck to official recommendations. Sedentary lifestyle, moderate alcohol consumption.

The magic trick is being able to measure your weight for the first week or two and then keep the same habits until the goal is reached. No fancy apps or diets or nutritionists or whatever required. So a calorie is a calorie.

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I don't know why you're getting downvoted. A calorie is a calorie in isolation. Eating at a surplus because you don't feel full after eating a bag of M&M's doesn't change that fact.

It certainly helps (in many ways) to e.g. increase protein in leue of sugar, but that you will certainly ly lose weight if calories burned > calories consumed.

It's because people want to have a sense of control and that is achieved in this case by making wild hypotheses about losing weight. It's further complicated by authors like in the linked article wanting to sell controversy and/or diets that are unsustainable or uncomfortable in the long term (soup diets, atkins, feral, etc). Controversy feeds rebellion which in turn is a way of feeling in control.

You could make the alternate case that people want to believe that "a calorie is a calorie" despite the evidence to the contrary because it means they don't need to change their habits. Defense against change. It's not surprising that people prefer the "science" that conveniently reinforces their life choices. The USDA and the food industry is also perfectly happy with the status-quo, because processed foods are a lot more profitable than whole foods are. In that sense, it's not surprising that people suggesting healthy foods are considered "radicals" -- people don't want to change what they eat, and the food industry doesn't want to change what they sell.

The medical scientists / professors I know have gone through several revolutions in medical science (statins, diabetes treatments, resuscitation procedures, surgical procedures, dialysis, etc.). I wouldn't call them unable to change their habits. In fact, they are few of the smartest people I know.

I don't know about the margins of food, but I consider preparing food from the basic ingredients somewhat time-wasting and costly (when I actually order or buy and prepare them myself). As they can have fine nutritional values, I don't think processed foods can be generalized to be bad per se.

The problem with anecdotal evidence is there's no particular reason to think that others metabolism is going to react the same as yours does, or that your weight loss will continue indefinitely. For instance, a diabetic on insulin would likely gain weight following the diet you follow while you lose weight, because the insulin would signal to the body to store the calories as fat.

Since you're an expert in the field: How does the insulin for a diabetic patient differ in its fat-storing capabilities from the normal insulin secretion of a healthy person? I agree that there are metabolic differences in people but rarely non-pathological and rarely not age or body mass related. Pathological cases where the difference in metabolism is indicable, we already know how to treat / be unable to treat them. Moreover: type I diabetics tend to be lean / normal weight. So the question is: what is the metabolical difference you are referring to?

I'm referring to insulin resistance. Chronic high levels of insulin will result in cells not responding to the signal from insulin to store blood sugar (because they've already saturated their glucose storage capacity), which will result in the pancreas releasing more insulin to compensate. The more insulin resistant you become, the more your pancreas ramps up its insulin levels (to diminishing returns, unfortunately), until it reaches the point where your pancreas can't make enough insulin to control blood sugar. (Type 2 diabetes). Your body can't/won't burn fat when insulin levels are high, and the insulin resistance results in insulin never dropping an appropriate amount, which results in fat not being burned despite the meal not being particularly egregious.

So if that diabetic was eating 1000 calories/day, they would not loose weight? That's literally, physically impossible.

The word you're looking for is "lose", not "loose".

In the short term, they'd absolutely lose weight. After a certain point (probably about six weeks), their basal metabolic rate will drop though, in adaptation to the new situation where their body adapts to living off a lowered caloric intake. Then the weight loss will plateau, or at least significantly slow down, while any deviation from the diet would generally result in a sharp uptake in fat storage (because now the metabolism is significantly slower and more greedy)

Anecdotal evidence that a calorie is not just a calorie:

4 of my buddies are doing a weight-loss challenge ahead of this spring's local marathon. They're each losing about 10-12 pounds over the month of January.

3 of them kept their calorie intakes roughly the same but changed their macros to favor protein and fat (and no changes to their exercise regimes). All 3 have already reached their goal without significant loss of muscle mass. One guy switch to the keto diet for January (<25g carbs/day), and is at 16 pounds lost as of last night. The 4th guy lowered his caloric intake but maintained his carb-heavy diet. He's lost 4 pounds, and he's struggling with hunger and trying to lose more weight.

You'll definitely still lose weight if you calories consumed < calories burned. But you'll lose more fat if those calories are consumed in the proper ratios. Increasing protein consumption while at a caloric deficit minimizes muscle loss, especially when combined with (even minimal) weight training.

Keto is the absolute worst you can do as an athlete since carbohydrates are required for fast recovery. No professional athlete would be on keto while training. The idea that an athlete should have even slightly over 1g/kg of protein intake per day is correct. However, over 2g/kg/day poses a risk of permanent kidney damage.

Moreover, losing 4 kgs or more of fat in a month increases the risk for cardiovascular disease: the blood cholesterol levels of the subjects may rise to unhealthy levels. Some are resistant to high cholesterol, but statistically it's a risk.

Keto can result in (somewhat) worse performance depending on how professional you're trying to be and what activity you're doing, but most people aren't trying to compete at that level and they can work out while on a keto diet.

Also, some people up their carb intake a little before their workout, so it'll burn off and they'll still be in keto afterwards while not risking performance loss.

Finally, you don't double your protein intake on keto, you replace your carb intake with fat, so you wouldn't be at 2g/kg/day danger levels you're suggesting if you're doing the diet properly.

"...and he's struggling with hunger and trying to lose more weight."

This is all I was really trying to emphasize. When it comes time to burn energy, calories are the same, but this isn't true when eating.

High sugar affects insulin and other things that may it hard for people to stick with it. Eating meals high in fat provides higher satiety (you feel full longer). Eating vegetables high in fiber fills your stomach with large mass but low sugar so you'll feel full longer while that breaks down.

If it works for you, keep it up.

Caloric restriction seems to fail large groups of people to the point where short-term weight loss that is followed by respective gain (and more) has its own Wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo_effect

Many people who try caloric restriction suffer from pangs of hunger, general weakness, brain fog, lack of energy, daytime sleepiness, loss of mental clarity and focus, etc. Diets based strictly on calorie restrictions are not sustainable for their specific age+gender+body type combo, but might be effective for yours.

Don't take this as aggressive, I'm glad you've dropped some weight. I'm not sure how overweight you are/were. How much of a calorie deficit did you have on a daily basis?

Also, I wouldn't count 10 lbs over 3 month proof that a calorie is a calorie. Actually, I think it proves the opposite. A person who is 30+ lbs over weight should drop 10lbs in around two weeks with a 500 calorie deficit per day. (Generally considered the max safe range for sustained weight loss)

I'd really be curious to how much you would lose if you cut the sugar completely.

Where did you get those numbers? You're saying that 1lb for this person ~= 700 calories, which is absurdly low, based on my own personal experience as well as everything I've ever read on the topic.

I never said all the weight was from calories, most of it is water and waste.

For an "average" person they store 400g of glycogen in their muscles and 100g of glycogen in their liver. In this form, it is bound to 3-4 times as much water. So 500 * 3.5 is 2250g = 5 pounds just from this depletion.

As far as fat burning, a pound of fat has about 3500 calories. A 500 per day deficit will lead to 1 pound of weight loss. However, fat is also bound to water in a roughly 1:1 ratio so you'll also lose a pound of water too. So call this 2 pounds for the second week.

Add in all the weight in your digestive system over that two week period and you'll be ~10 pounds or more in two weeks. Again this assumes a person that is 30+ pounds overweight and has full glycogen stores.

I think this is making things too complicated with the water calculations, namely the 1:1 ratio. Adipose tissue is almost completely fat, which in turn is hydrophobic. See the picture on this wikipedia page for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte. The excess fluid (if any relevant amount exists in the body at the beginning of the diet) is lost fast (days) and early in the course of diest and the key is to have a constant, relatively slow (2-4 kgs / month) weight loss.

I'll need to redo some reading but I was under the impression that the TG (Triglyceride) which make up 90% of the Adipocyte require a gram of water for each gram of TG. I see some things that indicate the same thing online but it is less clear.

This is not true. 50% is too much even if you take into account the whole fat tissue (which is not what you lose when losing weight) and even there for extremely lean subjects with very little fat in the adipose cells. (Maybe anorectic / cacectic subjects are different in this regard for whole-body-average). You've probably read the conclusions of a confused self-taught "expert" who is making hypotheses based on exaggerated figures of water in fat _tissue_ vs. the fat that is lost when losing weight.

As an interesting sidenote: fat people have relatively a lot less water in their fat tissue than lean people.

You can also think about the fact that when you drop triglycerides in water, it will not solute at all. Also, human body creates fatty membranes (cell walls) to absolutely _prevent_ the influx / efflux of water.

I didn't want to cut sugar because -- apart from the size of portions -- I didn't want to change the type of food I was eating or my eating habits. The habits include some chocolate with coffee almost every day and moderate alcohol in the weekends (so it's more like a 5/7-day thing). This means I can easily continue the diet and habits indefinitely even after reaching the goal as I reach the equilibrum.

Overweight from start was minimal (4, maybe 5 kgs over BMI 25) but I got rid of the "gut" that was starting to form and it was extremely successful. I actually have no idea what the calorie deficiency was: I just ballparked it for the first two weeks and then kept that while measuring my weight every morning. I'd say it's about 600-700 max with the weekends reserved for no fat-loss.

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