Comment by ordinaryperson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ordinaryperson | Hacker News Reader

To summarize some of the major points:

1. Calorie counts on labels undercount by up to 18%

2. Other factors to weight than pure calories, including genetics

3. Certain foods have low calorie counts but are worse than others with higher counts

4. Eating whole foods is better than non-whole foods and helped the subject of this article lose weight better than calorie counting & exercise

Worshipping whole foods is not the answer, you need balance. Plus who wants to live life like a Buddhist monk? Having a burger or pizza every once in a while is fun, it's just about moderation.

I'm calorie counting right now via a food journal, trying to stay under 2K a day (I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day), and I'm oddly enjoying the experience.

One, I can't cheat myself. Before I'd get frustrated trying to lose weight and failing, feeling like I tried really hard and "deserved" it. But with the calorie count you know if you did or didn't. It's very easy to forget or not realize how much you're eating exactly, that's why you write it down.

Also, I feel rewarded if I eat salads every day, like I'm getting points in a game or something. Not everyone's brain works that way but for me calorie counting makes dieting more scientific, at least somewhat.

Articles like these are somewhat unhelpful because yes it's great to eat whole foods but so is 1) watching what you eat 2) relying on moderation and 3) exercising.

P.S. Didn't like how the article implicitly denigrates running as a weight loss tool just because this one person didn't succeed doing it -- not exactly a rigorous analysis.

Moderation is great if it works for you; personally, I’ve found it easier to give something up entirely than to moderate. If I don’t eat sugar for a couple weeks, I don’t miss it, and it takes no effort to stay off it; if I have something sweet, the cravings come back with ferocity.

I noticed the same thing. After consuming a soda a day for even just a few days I start to crave it. But if I stop drinking soda altogether, within a week the cravings go away, and I'm just as happy with water.

And that will work better for some people. For me I try to manage my addictions instead of going cold turkey. But if that works for you, more power to you my friend.

I'm doing very much the same thing as you. Only started actually calorie counting a month or two ago, but I do notice a major difference when I stay on track versus when I fall off (weight-wise).

I'm actually using an app that connects to Apple HealthKit (I also have an Apple Watch I specifically bought to keep me on track with my exercise). All of those things working in concert is great and they've been working for me.

How much I was eating (and moreso—what I was eating) surprised me, but it made everything make sense after I'd been working out relatively intensely for years. The strength was there, but I wasn't losing body fat the way I wanted.

Since taking up watching more closely, I've been able to start making a real dent.

Also: Being a Scots-Irish Canadian, I naturally love my beer and whisky. Thankfully I also grew up loving vegetables by product of my mother growing them and often offering only those as snacks. By counting my calories I can ascribe value to what I eat (or drink) throughout the day so that I don't have to ever really: a) give up drink for more than a month or two at a time, depending and b) I can let myself eat as many fresh vegetables as I like as long as I watch it with the olive oil.

Exactly. I've had the same experience as you. I've exercised a ton over the years -- weight lifting, marathon running, mountain climbing -- but haven't lost the fat I wanted to.

Calorie counting isn't magic but it's helped me "price" my meals. If the little cajun fries at Five Guys are really 600 calories, maybe I can pass on those and get a bag of 90 calorie chips instead.

Now I'm no longer surprised when I step on the scale each week, I know from my weekly calorie total if I've lost weight or not.

It's like as humans we all have eating amnesia, the minute we consume something it's forgotten about -- then later we wonder why we haven't lost weight. This article is a little silly in pretending that the math of calories in/calories out isn't as viable a method as just eating whole foods.

> I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day

2x a day I think is key. It worked amazingly for me. I think it just kept up my metabolism rate very high through the day. I lost weight even if I had a few days of high calorie food.

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