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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Having gone through a process to lose > 120lbs I know that in my case, a lot of food myths are not based on people like me :-). Between "official guidance" that was put together by the food industry, the relatively deep and uncharted effects of your current gut biome on your body, and the debate between the physics based or enzyme based concepts of food metabolism it is clear that we really really don't have a clue at how this "simple"[1] system works.

[1] It was always presented to me as a simple system but the more I look and read and the less simple it seems.

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Yea my experience is mostly (broad strokes), it's as easy as 'calories in calories out'*

*after spend weeks eating consistently, verifying your TDEE then take 200-500 calories off of it.

Then, when you prove your TDEE is something stupid outside the range of the calculator's guess, it's about your metabolism. For instance, finding out you can only maintain weight if you eat only x calories a day kinda sucks when you want to intuitively eat twice that. You're forced then to operate as a scientist, figuring out how to change it to your advantage. Where you have to watch everything to figure out what has thrown it in X or Y direction. Reverse dieting and such are also popular areas for fitness nerds, where you retrain your metabolism not to suck for w/e your goals are. (Even harder than your typical dieting.)

Like cutting out artificial sweeteners and only to sugar in moderation to keep in my carb ranges kept me more full and I ended up breaking out of my plateau even though I kept the same amount calories and macro split

As someone who has kept track of all calories in for a while now, there are some discrepancies. For example, I can eat more fat calories than I can each carbohydrate calories and moderate my weight. So somehow my metabolism doesn't create fat when eating fat, as much as it does when eating carbohydrates. That suggests that for me, not all calories are calories.

Was your protein macro the same % of your total calories for each? Because I've found if I'm eating at least 30-40% of my calories just being protein, it doesn't matter if I'm more eating carbs or fat in either direction.

I notice negligible changes otherwise, I think that part is the coming down to genetics micro biome and what you're eating.

>That suggests that for me, not all calories are calories.

That's way too deceiving for newbies to read cause, yes but no. Once you're out of obesity body fat ranges and into just higher than normal that's when you can see benefits from the aggregate of the tiny changes. So looking at that low level helps alot, however if you're cutting by 300-500 calories that's plenty of wiggle room to account for your metabolism handling fat better than carbs and vice versa especially when starting out.

If one not weighing everything and measuring it will make it seem much more like a calorie isn't a calorie because it's much easier to accidentally 'over eat' enough to change your hormone response to eating. Like cooking oils, they could be adding 200+ calories to your meal without you realizing it. Carbs wise a bowl of pasta is great for you but one extra scoop and boom there goes 100-200 calories, changing your average cut amount from maybe 300-500 to 100-200.

You need consistency to communicate with your body those fluctuations is what causes gains of fat.

A lot of truth here. When my BMI was high, just the reduction of calories and the daily exercise (walking) was enough to lose weight.

I've also had RMR (resting metabolism rate) tests to get some idea of base metabolism and DXA (differential X-ray) scans to identify lean vs adipose tissues.[1]

The goal for me was to find a 'budget' of how many calories a week I could eat based on my level of exercise and maintain my weight. That involves spending a lot time tracking what you eat (and for me breaking up calories by fat, carbs, and protein). All to just to data analysis and to create a data driven mental model of what I could eat and how it would affect the aggregation of fat.

[1] Not sure how widely available they are but I've used Bodyspec for both (https://www.bodyspec.com/)

I just measured that by testing it personally, cause I just don't trust/don't want to spend money on what I also know is a model that is more fallible than 2 weeks of '''stagnation'''. Honestly though I'm glad it's working for you though cause I kinda thought it was an expensive TDEE calculator, based off people I known do it have gained weight eating some of their recommendations could have easily been the service they got too but still gave me a poor impression.

That's actually a well known thing, carbs are processed first and faster, anything you don't immediately used is quickly transformed into adipose.

Fat is processed slower, so slow that the body actually starts using stored reserves at the same time if you're doing anything intensive.

Protein is used as needed and most of the excess is excreted. Some gets converted to fat or carbs by some slow process.

At least that's how I understand it. Keto diet is exactly that, eating fat and protein and little to no carbs.

I am with you on this, they are not the same. I have a similar experience. On another thread one time to dare suggest that it’s not as simple as the CICO folks claim…apparently my 4 years and 170lbs of weight loss while meticulously logging my food and exercise and my experience I must have somehow made a mistake.

I will say this, that when my fat calories are a higher percentage in my diet my satiety with each meal tends to last longer and I eat less calories overall.

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