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Comment by run4yourlives | Hacker News Reader

"A calorie is a calorie" is good enough, however.

People aren't fat because they are consuming 2500 calories from a Big Mac and Fries rather than 2500 calories from carrots. People are fat because they are consuming 6000 calories and burning off 1300.

The message is simplistic, sure. For a large majority of overweight people though that's all that is required. Somewhere between reducing caloric intake and becoming fit, the message that not all calories are created equal sinks in, if for no other reason that it quickly becomes apparent that you'll starve only eating one meal of McDonald's a day.

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Negative. You miss the entire point of the article.

Why are people consuming 6000 calories? They are always hungry and eat too much food.

Why are they always hungry? They eat and drink too many carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates leads to high blood sugar which leads to too much insulin. After the insulin does its job, the blood sugar crashes causing hunger. The cycle repeats, causing problems including insulin resistance, excess fat storage and type 2 diabetes.

What is the solution? Don't consume carbohydrates and avoid the hunger/sugar/insulin cycle.

Erm... did you read the article?

The only mention of carbohydrate's effect is because it's chosen as a large, easy number to reduce in favor of raising the protein amount, raising the overall inefficiency of the system. They listed, in Atkins-like diets, that shifting from 55% carbs to 8% carbs (with the change going to increased protein intake) results in about 140kcals less useful energy.

That's it. From where in the article are you drawing insulin/diabetes/hunger connections?

Its not in the article but its a very well know phenomenon. If you research "low-carb diet" or "paleo-diet" you'll find more information.

As soon as your insulin spikes due to high amount of carbs ingested, your body immediately starts to convert excess carbs into fat.

I've done very low carb diets and easily lost 20 lbs in a month even though I've never weighed over 200lbs. Its pretty difficult though.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm just pointing out it has nothing to do with the article.

After stating that the now-great-great-grandparent had missed the point of the article, they proceeded to talk entirely about things not at all contained in the article. I'm sure there's a better term for it, but the post is pretty blatantly contradictory in that way.

You are right that clp is incorrect in his suggestion that he criticizes his parent. Rather, he amends the information there with things unrelated to the article, but very much related to the general subject and, frankly, indispensable for anyone seeking to understand weight gain/loss.

Upvoted y'all :)

Don't consume carbs? This sounds insane. What about a balanced diet of caloric value inline with one's caloric output?

This argument has been rehashed several times here on HN. Do a site search (use Google or searchyc) for Gary Taubes, or pretty much any nutrition-related subject, and there will be a thread about why a calorie-balanced diet is only a very small part of the nutritional picture.

> Don't consume carbs? This sounds insane. What about a balanced diet of caloric value inline with one's caloric output?

What about it? It's not necessary. If you look for it, you can find lots of examples of societies that were quite healthy on diets that weren't "balanced". One popular example is the Inuit, who got 75% of their energy intake from fat (largely seal and whale blubber) because that was what was available to them whereas fruits and grains and vegetables were not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit#Diet

Errr.... consuming 6000 calories and burning off only 1300 would cause you to gain more than a pound. That might be a daily intake for someone weighing 600 pounds, but it's hardly the situation for your run-of-the-mill fat person.

Putting it in practical, personal terms -- I was laid up for six weeks for medical reasons this winter, and my bad habits continued for the next six weeks as well. Over that period I gained about 18 pounds, one of the worst periods of weight gain in my life. Simple math (and ignoring the data presented in the article!) tells you I must have been eating about 5250 excess calories a week. Roughly speaking I was probably eating 23,000 calories a week when I should have been having 18,000.

Now suppose I had gained that weight on a low-fat diet. The study cited in the article suggests that if I had been on a low-carb diet instead, I wouldn't have gained any weight at all! That's a pretty significant result. (Of course, in practice I was on a "whatever" diet.)

For those of us living on the edge, trying to shave off 500 calories a day, the knowledge that not all calories are created equal is a Big Deal.

It was an exaggeration to make the point. Sorry, thought that was obvious.

For your example: If you had eaten a low-carb diet, you'd probably need to have eaten 50% more food in terms of quantity in order to meet the caloric intake you were getting on the "whatever" diet.

That's my point. If you simply focused on the caloric intake and kept it at 18,000 a week (which seems high for someone lying in bed, to be honest) and still ate whatever you wanted, you would't have put on 18 pounds.

Simply counting calories will reduce your weight. I can pretty much confirm that now. Over the last eight months I tried to stay below 1900 calories per day and I have lost 17 kilo. As much as I wanted to, I did not manage to change my diet in any meaningful way, I’m just eating less. I didn’t even manage to keep up a regular sports routine. But my fallback – mercilessly tracking my weight and counting calories – saved me. (I would very much want to eat better. Many of the things I’m eating now have so high calorie densities that I can only eat very little of them.)

I do know that I will have to track my weight and count calories for the rest of my life. That’s ok. (As a teenager I already lost a substantial amount of weight with the same method but I gained it all and more back because I stupidly stopped tracking my weight and counting calories. I’m confident that I won’t make the same mistake again.)

If you simply cut out carbs you will lose a ton of fat.

But yeah if you want to eat carbs and be healthy you have to basically count calories for the rest of your life.

Changing my diet never worked for me. Counting calories does. Also: I do love pasta.

Counting calories is not that hard. I can do it in my head by now. Tracking my weight (which, I think, is equally important, especially for motivation) is more or less a reward and not a chore by now.

There is also some research that suggests fasting being beneficial in modulating insulin resistance. I try not to consume food after a certain time at night. It is not too difficult to do, and definitely stops short any thoughts of a late night snack.

I'm very skeptical that fasting is healthy, it probably is not. The only thing I do care about is losing weight and that works.

Read up. Fasting can be quite healthy. (The only actual debate is on how good it is for you, not on how bad.) Especially intermittent fasting.

Good on you, but it's a sad fact that lots of folks just can't keep things in check.

As someone who does not get food cravings and does not have blood sugar regulation issues, it's hard for me to understand, but the only way some folks can manage to eat less is by banning certain foods from their life.

Not necessarily. I went from counting calories on a sheet of paper to mentally keeping track of balances in my caloric regiment and keeping track of my weight everyday.

Perhaps it's a diet of coffee/cigarettes (appetite suppressants) that made me go from 200 lbs to 172 in a year but oh well.

Well, for a lot of people giving up bread and pasta is a lot harder than counting calories. Never mind the fact that there's an awful lot of "bro science" in the no/low/slow-carb crowd.

That definitely worked for me. I adopted the paleo lifestyle more than 2 years ago. Although I was never obese, just overweight, now I weight about 20 pounds less than when I started. My blood lipid levels were also corrected.

I used to eat rice, pasta, potatoes, and bread all the time. I only miss the bread, but I make exceptions when I go to a restaurant and they have a really good bread.

I agree with that. I lost around 10kg in a couple of months on a steady diet of ice-cream and chicken, counting calories as I happily ate my ice-cream.

Surely this is just an application of the maxim "Anything measured improves," rather than anything specific to weight control?

I do believe that measuring is vital but I don’t believe that it is enough (17 kilo are not random weight loss). There must still be an underlying cause. I attribute that to my calorie counting.

Experiment with healthy foods you can pre-cook. Rice cooker with rice and beans takes 5 minutes to put on and feeds you all day. Leave it soaking in water overnight and it's 5 minutes of cleaning in the morning.

Can hard boil eggs with minimal attention (set the alarm on your cellphone), can make 6 or 12 at a time and those will last you a couple days.

Get some vegetables that require minimal preparation - I used pickled vegetables and like them, but canned would be fine too. Maybe tuna or sardines, try them all and see what you like.

Then you've got rice+beans, and you add on some vegetables to it, and then either hard boiled eggs, tuna, or sardines - fast, cheap, healthy.

I expect that you'll end up getting downvoted by the "carbs are evil" crowd, but I think you're largely correct. Too many people are looking for the magic bullet that will let them remain sedentary, overeat, and yet still lose weight.

Nice to meet you, Nostradamus v2.0 :)

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