[flagged]
No, not necessarily. Several studies have shown that different people can get different amounts of energy out of the same food, depending amongst others on their gut micro biome, though stress also seems to play a role. It’s never going to be that simple.
> the laws of thermodynamics won't fail
Conventional thermodynamics don’t work when you consider a full human, which is a very out-of-equilibrium and not-isolated system. Conservation of energy does not tell you anything about the efficiency of the energy extraction process.
Sure, so they just need to compute their at-rest calorie consumption differently, and from there the rest is the same.
> Conventional thermodynamics don’t work when you consider a full human, which is a very out-of-equilibrium and not-isolated system. Conservation of energy does not tell you anything about the efficiency of the energy extraction process.
This is like saying that even if you don't refuel your car it will never stop, because different cars have different mpg ratings. A human is indeed a closed system when you consider the works it outputs and the calories it ingests, unless I somehow missed a newfound capacity for photosynthesis. The fact that it might be a bit harder to compute calorie requirements than what might be naively done does not allow you to just dismiss everything else.
Not at all, because different gut biomes are more efficient than others at processing some kinds of foods. Famously, some populations are more effective at processing fish than others. Really, "amount of calories" works on average, but people with food issues tend not to be average, otherwise they would not be outliers.
You cannot take any assumption for granted. If it were so easy, we'd have solved it. It's only very recently that we started to grasp the role of the microbiome, and we are far from having explored it all.
> A human is indeed a closed system when you consider the works it outputs and the calories it ingests, unless I somehow missed a newfound capacity for photosynthesis.
You missed a lot of things. Radiative heating and convective heat exchange, for one. Our body spend a lot of energy to heat up when it's cold, and try really hard not to do anything when it's hot. This works differently for different people; I tend to heat up fairly efficiently and I am very rarely cold; my GF is the other way around. Obviously, this is also environment dependent.
Plus, we eat all the damn time. How can you seriously be arguing that we are a closed system? Again the problem is not that it's slightly harder. The problem is that it is multifactorial, that we don't know all the factors, and that the importance of each factor varies with genetics, history, and the environment.
> The fact that it might be a bit harder to compute calorie requirements than what might be naively done does not allow you to just dismiss everything else.
I am not the one dismissing things...
Even when running a nuclear reactor, there is still a limit, even though it is much higher than that of our puny built-in chemical reactors.
Nope still that simple. Your claim just means those people need less calories in to be in a state of calorie deficiency
What did I eat? Fries, Pizza, Chocolate, Burger, … still lost weight.
I've lost 90 lbs, achieved a healthy body weight, and kept it off for years, but I keep trying to lose just 10 more pounds. I only make progress when I'm religious about calorie counting, including weighing every meal or needing to do precise food prep beforehand.
That's such a pain in the ass that I inevitably fail and keep returning to my body's new average weight.
I think you're right about truly obese people. They're eating so many calories that they would lose weight if they could manage a better diet.
For people who aren't obese, the same principle may apply, but it's now a matter of much tighter margins and much greater precision, and it's remarkably difficult.
Natural bodybuilders seem to manage their weight with precision, so it's not impossible with knowledge and effort. But I suspect very few people are capable of managing that if they tend towards obesity to begin with.
I do this sometimes for lunches, which we eat separately anyway. But that's only 1/3 of my meals.
I'm assuming we're talking about e.g. rice dishes or stews, curries, etc. "one pot" dishes. Otherwise if it's like steak and vegetables, you can weigh each steak and the vegetables, do them in different racks of a steamer etc.
I can't stand eating the same thing multiple days a week. Are you preparing multiple different meals for each day, one day a week?
Not to mention that it's never going to be as nice as a freshly-cooked meal anyway.
There are some things I can eat multiple times, some things I can't. Chicken breast is one of my repeat foods. I'll do a few different dry rubs and bake a bunch at once, then all I have to do is pick which rub I'm feeling on the day, cut and reheat when making a meal.
You could see it as a half-prep plan: pre-cook and prep a bunch of base ingredients in approximately equal quantities, and when ready to eat, create some permutation in a few minutes so you have a half-freshly cooked meal that's semi-unique. My gotos were: eggs, chicken breast, tuna, permuted with quinoa, rice, kale, broccoli all sliced and/or diced in various ways to make one of a stir fry, salad, plate, or wrap, with varying hot sauces or oils to keep it interesting.
One day I'll do a wrap, another day chicken salad, another day I'll eat it as is on some quinoa or something, and I'll cycle through options like that that are easy to mix up on the fly. Making a meal to eat usually takes about 5 mins. Apply your programming mind to this like a permutation/optimization problem!
I liked most of the meals because they were tasty and hit all the macros, and with the work put in the gym I could see the results, so there was a great positive feedback loop.
Every meal doesn't have to be a culinary masterpiece, just like every coding session doesn't have to be a symphony of mathematical elegance. Some coding is just glue, and food is primarily just fuel.
tbf it's like any learned skill, it sucks at the beginning but over time it gets easier. when i started getting serious about my fitness i was tracking it meticulously but now i rarely do.
For example, apples with peanut butter is my favorite snack. I initially measured out and weighed the peanut butter, then used the same entry for calorie counting and eyeballed it for a while.
I eventually measured again, and I was eating nearly 50% more peanut butter than my initial entry! I imagine I probably added just a little bit more each time, because my brain really loves peanut butter.
I don't think I do this with proteins, but with carbs and anything sweet I definitely do. So I have to be very careful.
I'm thinking restaurant / takeout mostly. Because you never know what they put in the food. And the usual suspects of carbs and fat loaded with salt can easily throw you off if you don't pay attention.
Why? My sugar-free protein bars say exactly how much calories they are. I also eat some zero-calory fiber (psyllium), vitamin and minerals pills, a spoonful of fish oil, feel great and loose weight :-)
I used to eat a lot of cookies until November but stopped as soon as I noticed (at the clothes store) I gained some belly fat. I don't want to switch my clothes size. I firmly believe any visible increase in waist size (unless attributed to muscle growth) is a strong sign I must lose some weight (by reasonably healthy means - I would hesitate to take incretin mimetic drugs, they seem risky).