They cheat or miscalculate, because the US "serving" system is an insane way to measure nutrients.
Also 3% of body weight over 8 weeks is a nothing burger. Did they control for water intake? It's not in the abstract.
You can lose roughly 1-2% of your body weight in less than 24 hours, simply by sweating.
"They cheat or miscalculate, because the US "serving" system is an insane way to measure nutrients."
I'm not sure how many people who count calories use the "serving" system. Almost everyone I know, myself included, goes by weight of the food and calories.
Eg. 15g of Peanut butter is 90 Cals
I bet those who actually use the weight of the food (in a standardized 100g increment, for example) have much better compliance and success in weight control, like yourself.
There are two slightly different questions:
- how much weight is lost assuming perfect compliance
- how much weight is lost assuming the compliance of the average people
If I am interested in losing weight, I want to know what will work for me, a measly sack of meat with imperfect discipline, imperfect information and so on.
It’s like saying walking on a tight rope though a canyon is not dangerous - assuming you perfectly go through one edge to another. Sure, it’s trivially true. Not very informative though.
A girl I dated years ago started counting calories but not including the 3-5 cans of Coke she drank each day, or sometimes she'd only record one or two of them. I tried to point it out, and she insisted she only drank one or two cans/day and they were recorded. I pointed out that we bought a 12-pack of Coke on Sunday, and it was now Tuesday and there were only 2 cans left, so do the math, because I wasn't drinking any of it.
Or she'd buy Oreos and snack on them while gaming and after an hour not realize she's eaten a third of the package.
I don't think she was serious about wanting to lose weight, because anybody really wanting to lose weight probably wouldn't be buying Coke and Oreos. A single can of Coke and 3 Oreos is 300 calories. That's half a meal's calorie budget for someone trying to stick to 1800 calories/day with 3 meals/day.
Drove the whole family nuts. However, She lost 90 pounds from it all. So can’t complain.
Another cool thing is that calorie counting doesn't make you crazy hungry like some diets where the calories have been miscalculated.
However, it is a chore. Apps help.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/calories-count-only-when-...