What Does 200 Calories Look Like?
wisegeek.com
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There are also calculators listed in the FAQs that will help you determine what you need to eat to maintain your bodyweight, lose fat, gain muscle, etc, over a user-selected window of time.
First thing I realized - that the difference between tracking your "macros" and not is like programming with Word or with vi/emacs/slickedit/etc - the difference is AMAZING.
The next thing I realized - is that to get enough protein if you're even moderately active, you have to eat A LOT - eggs, milk, meat, tuna, and even then I still have to supplement with protein supplements.
Now, combine the diet knowledge with a beginner weight training program like Starting Strength and the effect is amazing. I've gained 10 pounds of muscle and lost 10 lbs of fat. I've doubled all my lift numbers (which are still admittedly quite low) in four months. I have far more energy and other activities - I occasionally play tennis - I play better and feel stronger.
Edited to add - and most importantly, use something like myfitnesspal.com - which is free, has a great app, and has millions of food items, and track everything for just a few weeks. it will teach you what protein/fat/carbs common foods you eat have.
Any time someone specifies "A LOT" as a nutritional guide I get a little skeptical. Keep in mind when you're eating these foods the whole nutritional profile to determine if you're over-eating something (or filling yourself with LDLs). Try to balance the eggs, milk and meat with alternatives like quinoa, spirulina, lentils, bulgar, etc.
If you are going to go big on animal protein, naturally fed varieties generally have more vitamins and good fats. And of course, always drink whole milk vs the skim stuff (more vitamins + good fats - and it tastes better!!).
We do eat a lot of meat over here though (I believe #1 per-capita in the world).
Source: A week ago I read through all studies I could find on pubmed about optimal protein intake for muscle gain.
Correct on the steroids and fasting though.
It's worth pointing out as well that there is no disadvantage to consuming too much protein.
Strength standards for beginners.
http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/StrengthStandards....
Uh... there are many sources that cite problems with eating too much protein. Dehydration, kidney stress, calcium deficiency, heart disease, and other side-effects of increased fat or cholesterol levels of foods with large amounts of protein.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/468026-physiological-conse... http://breakingmuscle.com/nutrition/put-down-steak-youre-eat... http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50...
"Finally, the authors reiterate that even if you consume “unnecessarily high protein intakes” like 1.3 grams per pound of body weight per day, this still isn’t a risk to your kidneys unless you already had kidney disease."
The ones I often see are somewhere between .6g and 1g per lb of body weight, with 1g being the most common recommended on body building forums.
This article (http://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein-...) calls the 1g/lb recommendation a total myth.
Another important question is whether the ratio is against total or lean body weight? If you've got a lot of fat, you may be over-calculating your protein needs.
Eating too much protein may or may not hurt. Some say excess protein taxes the kidneys (which filter it out into your piss). Some say your body ends up converting it to fat. (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/maki1.htm)
Also following recommendations from people who's goal it is to look like Lou Ferrigno may not make sense for most people.
So you don't think I'm attacking you, here's a pro-protein link: http://www.livestrong.com/article/556322-how-much-protein-is...
Who's right? Who knows?
Better to eat too much protein than too little anyway.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001224/
But wikipedia claims that recent research blames artificial trans fats, not natural cis fats, for artery disease.
And skim milk tastes better than the fatty stuff. It turns out that taste is subjective and modifiable based on life experience. (That is why coffee is tolerable to adults)
Also, most of the vitamins in milk are in the fat, which people usually remove.
In fact, i'd propose that some people think about their health a little too much (myself included). Do something outside and don't eat a lot of crap. K.I.S.S.
It depends on how goal-directed you are in this domain. Others may have higher, more specific, or more urgent health/fitness goals.
Some good resources: http://whole9life.com/start/ http://thepaleodiet.com/
[1] Standard disclaimers. I'm not a nutritionist. This works for me. YMMV.
The chart isn't particularly useful, but it's still interesting imo
Whatever works for you of course is the best. Regrettably I've been a bit preachy about keto diets before, but understand now that some people prefer calorie counting better and it works for them, so fair enough!
Calorie restricted diet I have failed at many times before. Keto was difficult for the first month but now it's a doddle.
There's nothing wrong with carbohydrates either. Never said that. Carbs in moderation is a diet that most people I know seem to exist healthily and happily off. However elimination of carbohydrates is a tactic that's giving me awesome results, making me happy and more energetic. You do not need to consume carbohydrates to stay alive of be healthy.
Check out the Applebee's menu (fairly typical): http://www.applebees.com/~/media/docs/applebees_nutritional_...
A 12 oz NY Strip + seasonal veggies will run you about 520-540 calories. That's under half as many calories as any of the fajitas, pasta dishes, and most of the salads. It's also half as many calories as any of the sandwiches.
It's bread and pasta that isn't worth it (unless you're poor and need lots of calories per dollar). The food pyramid makes people think bread is good for you, so people dramatically underestimate how many calories they take in from bread. A typical American diet might have two slices of toast at breakfast, two pieces of sandwich bread or a bagel at lunch, and a baked potato for dinner. These are simple accompaniments, not the stars of the meal, yet they add up to a staggering 700 calories daily. You could replace that with two slices of bacon at each meal and still cut your calorie intake substantially.
That's an extreme example, but the idea is that the food in question provides calories without nutrients. So there is such a thing and it makes plenty of sense.
(USDA takes my side: http://www.choosemyplate.gov/weight-management-calories/calo...)
A spoonful of sugar contains 100% nutrients.
That link is total nonsense. For example it claims pizza is empty calories, but bread, cheese, tomatoes, meat & veggies are not? It's ridiculous.
Which I thought was implied. But I forget that imprecise communication works less and less.
It does not contain any minerals, vitamins, protein, essential fatty acids, micronutrients or antioxidants, which in the context of this discussion, is what is meant by saying it has no nutrients.
> While there is still some debate in the area, researchers have assigned a caloric value to fiber of 1.5-2 cal/gram (depending on the specific type).
Source: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/fiber-its-natures...
I've been losing weight lately without any fad diet. I just cut my caloric intake by 20% and boosted my caloric output by 20-30% with regular exercise.
Also a calorie is not a calorie. One small example, different calories have different thermic effects. I've read estimations that from protein you lose 30% of the calories from the thermic effect, and with carbs you'll lose 15%. Therefore reducing carbs and upping protein will assist with weight loss further. Calories in and out will probably have you losing weight, but it's an over-simplistic view.
Just because the idea came from the prehistoric doesn't mean it can't be a fad.
So what? Vegetation diet 100 million years ago I'll guess that obesity is nill comparatively to today.
I'll also guess that there was comparatively virtually no obesity in the Paleolithic period.
Nowadays we live in a period where we're told pasta is healthy, or orange juice is healthy (a lot of brands have more sugar in the juice than coca cola). We all eat lots of bred, refined carbs. Sugar has never been so readily available. Parents buy their children sweets all the time.
And guess what? We're turning into a developed world of obese people and higher levels of heart disease.
So yes, a modern vegetarian diet probably is healthier and safer than sandwiches, crisps and orange juice.
Paleo diets are not fads. Our bodies are tuned to metabolise those sorts of foods. People relentlessly defend carbohydrates when they are the most likely candidate for the epic levels of obesity and other related diseases.
Basically, the response to the change of the environment of a species depends on three factors:
1. Heritability 2. Intensity of the selection 3. Number of generations that selection acts.
What this means is that 10,000 can be more than sufficient to fully evolve the ability to eat and digest dairy and grains.
I strongly suspect that my excellent reaction to low carb diets is because I haven't evolved the ability to consume them as well as other humans. Clues include oral allergy to birch pollen and my 'output' when I eat dairy and grains is less than optimal.
I don't believe low carb works for everyone. It doesn't work for my wife. But it is a useful tool, that I'm very glad I found.
Additionally, beer is considered by many to be the first significantly consumed product of grain. I don't think you could say modern day beer is completely free of any health side-effects. It gets the blame for quite a number of ailments.
Which is older than all of the vegetables that exist today, and older than cattle or chicken. "This food has evolved over time" is not support for a claim that the food is unhealthy or dangerous.
>It gets the blame for quite a number of ailments.
No, it doesn't? Alcohol does, but that's neither unique to beer nor does it have anything to do with grain.
"...in the vast quantities we eat them today." THIS is what matters.
Net calories are king, regardless of diet macro composition.
Calorie counting will probably have you losing weight, but reduction of carbs to protein for example will assist with weight loss better. Also protein is more useful to your body than carbohydrates.
God, I hate hearing this.
Let me guess, you say "weight" as in "gain weight" and "lose weight"?
The problems is that nearly everyone...EVERYONE actually means "lose fat, maintain muscle" or "gain muscle, lose/maintain fat".
No one WANTS to gain fat. And when losing weight, no one wants to lose muscle. So talking about "weight" is stupid. And when you only talk about net calories, the only thing you can talk about is weight.
Macros matter when talking about "losing fat, maintaining muscle", "gaining lean muscle" or "recomposition". And the simple fact is that the ratio of macros greatly effects what you are going to do, regardless of total calories.
If you don't get that, you need to spend more time researching.
And also, for those that are extremely obese?
And what if your goal was to actually lose 50 pounds of fat, but losing muscle+fat you can't achieve your goal for 1+ year, but just targeting fat reduces that to 6-8 months. That gain in time is huge.
And, lastly, chances are that if you say "I don't care about losing muscle as well", you will if you actually achieve your goal of being a certain weight b/c you won't look like you thought (or perform as well in x activity as you would have thought). Muscle is a magical thing.
The fact that it is fundamentally inaccurate with no basis in reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet#Opposing_views
When I need to lose weight, my go-to is Okra. A bag of frozen okra is, IIRC, about 150 calories and eating 3/4 a bag will have you over-full.
I've done the paleo/lowcarb fad diets too. They just trick you into eating fewer calories by forbidding most of the food you ate before the diet. Not to mention some versions of these diets are based on incorrect understanding of human physiology. For example, despite what the paleotards will tell you, carbs are very rarely converted into body fat. But when you eat any food in excess of TDEE, the dietary fat you eat is stored instead of used as fuel. Even if you eat zero carbs, if you eat more than your TDEE, you will gain fat.
In the end ALL diets work, but the best diet is the one you can stick with.
I eat more calories than before judging by the amounts of meat/butter/nuts that I eat. I lost 15 kilos in body weight accompanied by a 5% reduction in body fat (-> gained muscle).
So at least on a personal level, I can really not confirm this.
An interesting article backing the low-carb high-fat diets that has links to the matching double blind studies: http://authoritynutrition.com/11-biggest-lies-of-mainstream-...
So, judging by guessing. That is not how you judge. Measure your food and see how many calories you actually consume. It is fewer.
>An interesting article backing the low-carb high-fat diets that has links to the matching double blind studies
Which confirm that the people who successfully lose weight on low carb diets do so by caloric reduction. Might want to pay attention when posting sources that contradict you.
"Every randomized controlled trial on low-carb diets shows that they:
- Reduce body fat more than calorie-restricted low-fat diets, even though the low-carb dieters are allowed to eat as much as they want (41, 42).
[...]
- Low carb diets are also easier to stick to, probably because they don’t require you to restrict calories and be hungry all the time. More people in the low-carb groups make it to the end of the studies "
While the TEF of protein does reduce it's net caloric contribution by about 25%, that doesn't matter if you eat in excess of TDEE, which will result in weight gain regardless of the kind of foods eaten. Upping protein to reduce hunger works really well, but there are better foods than almonds to do this (cottage cheese, meat, fish, whey protein, etc).
For example for me, normally on a 2 hour bike ride (@ ~120bpm) I would need to drink ~2.5 bottles of glucose drink to keep my blood sugar levels high enough. When I'm on a keto diet I'll only need 0.5 bottles of glucose drink during the ride to stave off the knock. [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_the_wall
I doubt the diet has anything to do with it. (In this case anyhow... certainly nutrition is critical for harder efforts).
Anecdotal reference point: I go out every weekend with 3 friends, we do minimum 3.5 hours riding time in the local mountains, and the most any of us eat is something like a cereal bar and a banana. I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times any of us have bonked in the past 5 years...
I trained 400 - 500 miles per week, riding anywhere from 10 to 140 miles per session. I'm 40 now and still cycle but just for pleasure and getting around now, slower than I was before but riding centuries is still no problem.
In short, I know exactly what the knock feels like.
I expect you are carb loading either the day before or in the morning before your rides, and that could easily give you enough stored glycogen to see you through a 2 hour ride.
I however was cycling to burn off fat that I'd built up during a few months of strength training, so the last thing I'm going to do is gorge on pasta the night before.
I'm assuming you are not a mid or long distance runner, though.
If you talk to many runners, myself included, we really do crave carbs. Because our bodies need it for the distance we're running.
As a mid-distance runner, proteins are good, but I use them up as energy very, very fast (even when I'm not running), so I get hungry faster if I only eat protein.
IMHO and from my personal experience, of course.
I think for your typical person, who is typically somewhat overweight, low-carb and ketogenic diets are a good way to go. People tend to eat what they grew up eating, and western cuisine is the product of historical contexts in which grain was cheap and meat/fat was expensive. A lot of typical food is thus based on flavoring-up bland bread with spare amounts of flavorful meat and fat. But that's not really relevant to people these days. You can get a lot of the flavor and filling quality of meat and fat without the extra calories from the carbs.
E.g. most of the calories in a fajita comes from the tortilla. Most people on a diet might cut net calories by eating half a fajita. Now they're just hungry. I'd rather eat an extra-big portion of the filling out of fajita, maybe with some cheese crumbled on top, and cut calories by getting rid of the least flavorful part of the meal. Again, this won't work for everyone, but I think it's a good "go to" default for typical people.
Yeah, you probably need to brush up on your biochemistry before you make statements like this.
"Carbohydrates are rarely converted to fat (a process called de novo lipogenesis) under normal dietary conditions. There are exceptions when this occurs. One is with massive chronic overfeeding of carbs. I’m talking 700-900 grams of carbs per day for multiple days. Under those conditions, carbs max out glycogen stores, are in excess of total daily energy requirements and you see the conversion of carbohydrate to fat for storage. But this is not a normal dietary situation for most people."
Carbohydrates ARE converted to fat under normal dietary conditions, via insulin. If this metabolic process was "rare" as he states, then diabetics that require insulin injections wouldn't need them often.
I don't know where this "expert" is getting his information from, but it's a basic human biochemical reaction to form fat from blood glucose, via insulin.
From a high level perspective, I agree that insulin causes the body to burn blood glucose for fuel. The extra "carbs" don't get magically converted to fat though - they're used to replenish muscle glycogen and perform other actions. It is the dietary fat ingested alongside carbohydrates that gets stored as fat in the body.
Here's a quick summary: http://examine.com/faq/how-are-carbohydrates-converted-into-....
Note: I am not an advocate of ketogenic or otherwise low carb diets. I think a calorie deficit and adequate protein intake is all that you need to lose fat. No diet can work without some sort of calorie deficit, either explicitly or indirectly induced.
No, it will confirm what he said and that you are mistaken. You should try opening one and skimming through it before believing it will always support your assertions, regardless of their lack of factual basis.
Since June 2012, I've been tracking my weight almost daily, the food I ate, and the amount of times I've worked out. I drastically increased my workouts from October to December, working out almost 4-5 times per week, and I gained 10 lbs. This was accompanied by a change in diet, since my company started offering free lunches.
In January, I went with low-carb (less than 30g of carbs per day), and besides cutting out most carbs like bread, pasta and rice, I increased the amount of meat and vegetables I ate. I actually eat more after being on this diet than before. As well, I cut my workouts down to 2-3x per day. Since then, I've lost 15 lbs. So, with less workouts, more food, and within 8 weeks, I've lost more weight than any period in the last 8 months. When you look at the graph of my weight over time, you can see that the only significant factor in weight reduction was my low-carb diet.
I simply counted calories and worked out. I aimed for 1600-2000 a day and the weight just came off. One snack I had to drop, and mean I had to because it was a binge type snack, was nuts. The calories I was consuming were silly. When I measured out my quarter cup (200 calorie average) it was shocking.
My belief, the majority of people have no clue how many calories they truly consume and even a simple picture chart like this one may be the hint they need.
This doesn't discount the fact that cutting carbs also works. In my case, it has been working spectacularly. I believe that I don't need to cut calories or cut the amount of food I eat, and still lose weight, by choosing food that is very low in carbs. I limit myself to 1 granola bar per day, plus whatever incidental amounts of carbs I eat through other means, and I've been able to lose a lot of weight in a short period of time. I don't overeat meat or fat, I eat the same diet, just a lot less carbs.
"Eating the same diet, just a lot less carbs"
If you're eating less carbs, that's 4 calories less for every grab of carbs you've cut out. If previously you were eating around 200g of carbs everyday (probably on the low end, honestly) you've now removed around 800 calories from your diet.
You're still cutting calories.
(cause you'll never sell a best-selling book like that)
Dieting is about tricking that system in one of various ways. Different things work for different people. For some people, no tricks are required but you can't just assume it's that easy for everyone.
Some sources of energy turn preferentially into fat, others promote a higher burning base metabolism. And when you say weight, you're ignoring other factors like muscle mass, water retention, others, that aren't really what we mean when we say lose weight. (Although incidentally, cutting carbs decreases water retention which is one very valid counter to the low-carb weight loss claims.)
Ignoring the very direct counter-statement by OP that he increased his caloric intake and still found success cannot be dismissed.
It isn't that simple and a group of us has proved that isn't necessarily true.
Three times I have lead several people through the Whole30 Challenge laid out the Whole9 website mentioned above. We all ate a ton of food and lost fat and almost all of us lost weight. If anything, our caloric intake stayed the same or went up.
(BTW: the goal wasn't to lose weight. It was to become healthier. Last month, someone improved their cholesterol numbers by 93 points by eating that way.)
Assume there are 3,500 calories in 1 pound of body fat.
Then cut, say, 300 calories daily out of your diet for, say, 3 years.
That's 109,500 calories a year or 328,500 calories over 3 years.
328,500 calories divided by 3,500 calories/pound is 93 pounds.
The math isn't that straight forward, but many people use the very math to explain weight loss, at least in the short term. I just can't buy into the math that 'calories in' equals 'calories out'.
That said, I've done the 30-day challenge three times, not restricted my caloric intake, and still lost weight (lost fat quicker than I gained muscle mass). So, even in the short-term, you can lose weight without restricting calories.
* Cutting carbs typically means people end up eating less calories*
Mostly true, but ore specifically, cutting carbs means that you are sending less sugar into your body. Less sugar means it is more difficult for the body to produce fat. Fat is more dense than muscle and the reason most people diet is to lose the fat.
I am not sure this is scientifically accurate, but this is how I make sense of it:
When I eat Paleo, my body thinks it is surround by high quality energy sources. It gets fed those energy sources frequently. The body recognizes that there is low risk that it will go a short period of time without high quality energy. It determines that it has little use for the fat it has stored on the body. The body then converts the fat into energy. Your body enters into a phase where you go for weeks (or months) of high energy because of all the fat you are burning by eating a lot of high quality food---food a caveman would eat.
Carb free or low carb isn't entirely healthy either.
Some good resources: http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/ETLBook.aspx
[1] That said, we both agree that that kind of sugar won't fill you up. I only disagree that eating large quantities of meat or fat is in any way healthy.
Now unsaturated fats at moderate levels? Absolutely necessary. A bit of saturated fat in your diet? No problem. But a diet that consists of upwards of 20% saturated fat? You might as well go on low dose aspirin while awaiting your heart attack.
(Note: there are conflicting studies, but meta-analysis seems still to side with this contention. Really the only desenting papers are funded by bigAg, on very high fiber diets or had testing flaws - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascula...)
Actually, there's a lot of counterevidence to this "well-established" link between fat and heart disease. The classic on the subject is Gary Taube's "Good Calories, Bad Calories." But also, check out William Davis' blog (he's a cardiologist who recommends a low carb diet.) Or this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648?itool=EntrezSyst....
Remember when eggs used to be bad for you, because they had high cholesterol, and then they became ok again? (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/eggs-regain-reputat...) I'm afraid I don't fully trust any source of nutritional information until I've tested it empirically.
Which I did. I cut out all grains and found that my cholesterol plummeted and I lost a lot of weight (and I have more energy.) That's on a moderate fat diet. I'm just one anecdote, of course. I invite people to experiment for themselves.
http://www.theiflife.com/the-inuit-paradox-high-fat-lower-he...
Pretty strange how their not keeling over from heart disease! Perhaps the traditional view of fat is wrong.
Highly recommend you watch this amazing lecture by Garry Taubes at Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4
He also brings a lot of other eye opening case studies to light such as obesity in Pima Indians during a famine.
So of course you find less heart disease in that group. They're dying of TB, diabetes (of all things) and suicide long before they get heart disease.
In the three five-year periods studied, from 1989 through 2003, the infant mortality rate was approximately four times higher in the Inuit-inhabited areas, compared with all of Canada."
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/080123/dq080123d-en...
So you're partially right about satiety levels, but in my experience eating something high in carbs won't make you more hungry; it just won't do much to make you less hungry.
When I'm doing caloric restriction, I try to eat just enough carbs to stave off ketosis, and it works pretty well.
It takes more good fats and protein to fill me up.
Good carbs fill me up very, very fast.
In general, I try to eat lowish carbs (maybe 50-100g a day) avoiding mostly grain based products. When I was more seriously tracking what I ate and did a lot of weight lifting, I ended up eating a few more carbs (maybe around 200g) on training days. Basically high fat/low carb on non training days, moderate carb/low fat on training days. Protein remained the same.
The days I was more satisfied were the carb days. The problem was the next day. Whenever I ate a lot of carbs, the next day I would just feel hungry all the time even though all I ate was protein and fat. The days following not having carbs, even though I ate carbs, I rarely felt hungry.
Right now, my diet probably consists of around 40% protein, 40% carbs, and 20% fat, to slightly varying degrees per week.
I watch what I eat and study what I eat quite a bit, though. I've tried the ketosis thing, the low-carb thing, the good high-carb thing. The only thing I've not tried was the high good-fat diet, because I tend to break out and/or get really oily skin when I eat fatty stuff. (Having said that, my skin was the best when I was ovo-lacto vegetarian.)
As everyone has said, each body is very different and the way your body uses what as fuel differs depending on your lifestyle.
Having said that, I do believe everyone has a "sweet spot". That is, a diet and exercise regime that works almost perfectly. I've read people that have been weight training for years that say they go into ketosis with around 100g of carbs a day. Many say this is impossible, but I've seen pictures of the dudes, and unless those aren't his, he seems to be doing extremely well. Personally, I could never go into ketosis with nowhere near that amount.
What I also found to be true is that you can either have lots of carbs and protein and little fat, or lots of fat and protein and little carbs. If you have lots of fat and lots of carbs at the same time, you will get fat quickly. The whole .8g to 1.5g per kilo (of your weight) for protein seems to work for me, as well.
Another thing that I've noticed that is very important, and this is with regard to what you say about insulin, is monitoring your glycemic index levels, because this is another way you can get fat. Unfortunately, this can be tricky, because theoretically, even fruits can get you fat once you consider the excess increase/energy that you do not expend.
Lastly, macronutrients! Getting in your macronutrients within your caloric intake I've found to be mandatory, especially if you're working out.
Most people will lose weight on any restrictive diet they stick to. Most people can't stick to a diet.
"It's too hard, it's too complicated, I'll never lose weight".
For the vast majority of people that need to lose weight, keeping it simple is the best thing.
Goal:
Eat less calories than you use each day. (fullstop!)
Once they've lost a chunk of weight, they can start dialing it in with complicated stuff about carbs vs. fat vs. protein etc, etc, etc,
While true, that statement is useless. It doesn't take into account the effect insulin has on the ability one has to actually take in those fewer calories. It also doesn't take into account metabolic pathways that allow one to eat more of certain kinds of foods than others.
The scientific literature is pretty clear (once you filter out the government propaganda that caused 300 million people to be unwitting participants in a dietetic experiment):
If you[1] want to loose weight and be healthier, screw calories and worry about insulin (full stop!)
There is nothing that more closely predicts insulin reaction than the number of carbs you are eating. Cut out all the simple carbs (which includes the bags of sugar we've cultivated as most fruit) and focus on fats, protein and very complex carbs and you will lose weight. More importantly, nothing has been shown to affect metabolic disorder[2] as positively.
I look at it like this: what do we use to fatten cattle up before we slaughter them? It's corn. Now look at every nutrition label to see what is in it. Is it surprising we are fat, too?
1. The body is incredibly complex. There are people who will respond better on other diets. So take any general study with a grain of salt and experiment on yourself to find what works!
2. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, heat disease, hypoglycemia, type 2 diabetes, gout, and others have all been lumped together into a disorder that strongly appears to be the result of hyperinsulenimia (eg too much insulin in the blood stream).
If I put 10 gallons into my tank every day, but use 11 gallons daily.. I'm "using up" gas. That's all that matters.
Of course, there are many, many, many tweaks to be made, but for the majority of people, who need to lose a massive amount of weight, if they eat less calories than they use, they will lose weight. End.
Maybe it just is that complicated (not that I view the above as complicated, I just don't view it as simple as you make it).
> If I put 10 gallons into my tank every day, but use 11 gallons daily.. I'm "using up" gas. That's all that matters.
Imagine an engine that behaves differently depending on the type of fuel is put in it. One type of fuel causes the engine to move slower and burn less gas per unit time. So you may continue to put in your 10 gallons a day with this new fuel, but you'll notice a surplus building up because it only burns say 5 gallons a day because of this change. The output you get from the engine varies depending on what is put in it.
That's what the parent was describing. Calories in and calories out are not independent variables despite how they are treated in some research and most popular media. The type and amount of "calories in" affect your energy level (calories out) and hunger level (ability to limit your caloric intake).
Of course, that's why you have to constantly Analyze how much fuel your body is burning, and reduce the rate accordingly.
> The type and amount of "calories in" affect your energy level (calories out) and hunger level (ability to limit your caloric intake).
Indeed, though again, that doesn't impact the basic statement:
If you eat less energy less than you burn, you will lose weight.
From things I've read [1] it seems that the vast majority of people consume more calories than they 'burn' but only in some people is it converted to unwanted weight gain. The real question, as many people have been referring to, is how do you determine whether your body hangs onto the extra calories as weight or simply disposes of it.
Saying "If you eat less energy than you burn, you will lose weight" is certainly true, but is akin to saying: "If you never get in a car your chances of dying in a car accident are significantly reduced." It's true...but not really helpful or meaningful.
1 - http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259
Very bad analogy.
It's more like saying "If you burn more gas each day than you put in, you'll eventually start burning up your reserve tank, (until you run out)."
> but not really helpful or meaningful.
It's extremely helpful and meaningful. For the massive majority of people that are overweight, they simply need to eat less calories. Not less food. Less calories. The original article here is showing what 200 calories looks like, so it's extremely helpful for people trying to eat less of them.
You would be shocked how many people have no idea a mountain of apples is equal to a small amount of alcohol, etc. Once they learn this, they lose weight.
Source: I lived with two girls who lost over 100lbs each at Weight Watchers, one of them became a WW representative, and for years I went to meetings with her as moral support. Over the years I've personally seen at least 1000 people go from being completely helpless with weight loss to losing somewhere between 50-200lbs each. All they did was eat less calories than they were burning. Nothing else. (WW obfuscates that with their points system, but it's just calories/50)
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/23/study-the-best-and-wor...
Put a stop to this myth. The type of food actually matters!
I don't even care if the keep drinking coke and eating fries, as long as they cut their calorie intake somewhat, down to below what they are using, they will lose weight. Period.
Losing weight at that point is the most important thing.
Once they've done that for a while, their body adapts and they'll have to cut more calories, as an ongoing process. In years, they will have lost a lot of weight, and they will have to cut things like Coke and fries, but that's years down the road.
For now, they need to eat less calories. Fullstop.
The point that you are missing is that this is not necessarily true. In fact, the converse may be true; that obese people require less calories to maintain their weight because they live a more sedentary lifestyle.
> I don't even care if the keep drinking coke and eating fries, as long as they cut their calorie intake somewhat, down to below what they are using, they will lose weight. Period.
> Once they've done that for a while, their body adapts and they'll have to cut more calories, as an ongoing process. In years, they will have lost a lot of weight, and they will have to cut things like Coke and fries, but that's years down the road.
And they will be literally starving, dealing with the effects of malnutrition, and have almost no energy to complete daily tasks. Switching to healthier sources of nutrition first will provide the energy the person needs as well as the ability to control caloric intake, which greatly enhances the chances of success.
You seem to have made up your mind about a subject you know little about. This isn't a simple single-variable equation.
A body burns more calories for every pound of fat it has to maintain, even if sitting on the couch all day.
> You seem to have made up your mind about a subject you know little about.
Read my other comments here. I've personally witnessed at least a thousand people lose 50-200lbs each over the years due to my involvement with Weight Watchers. I think I have a good idea of what is required for people to lose weight.
What's your experience?
I guess that's handy, actually.
I do want to point out I'm not using them to indicate "end of conversion" or "shutup" or anything like that, I'm using them to indicate that is the end of my solution/problem... as in there are no if/buts or maybes.
Which means you have to adapt and eat (ever) less calories.
What the basic calorie-in-calorie-out equation doesn't take into account is that it is a biological imperative to eat. That means you have to find the way to balance those calories that overcomes that.
Some people (usually the people espousing "it's just a calorie") have a metabolism that, for whatever reason, either doesn't cause them to be hungry or allows them to eat whatever. Great for them.
For those of us who struggle daily with this issue, "willpower" isn't enough. We need to find the way that overcomes the biological, hormonal imperative that drives people to eat.
And just saying "cut calories" does not work. Three percent of obese people will manage to lose weight by dieting. Do you think they are just "too ignorant" to "get" the equation? Or are they just "too lazy" to do what needs to be done? Because I know that neither is the case.
Edit: The other component, which really screws up an "engine" analogy, is that your "engine" becomes more efficient the less you feed it. If you need 1500 calories a day today and so start eating 1300 calories a day, soon, your engine will only take 1300 calories a day to run. Great, bump up the exercise so you burn 200 calories a day. Soon, your engine only needs 1100 calories a day and you feel lethargic all the time.
Your body is not an car motor.
On a side note, I'd love to hear what sort of issues you have with maintaining?
All the problems can be summed up with "crappy carbs". It's actually a long story about what started me down that path (dealing with health issues), but I've actually put back on some weight (around 40 pounds...it's easy to be blind to oneself :().
What I've found is that when I start eating carb-rich food, my ability to stop snacking on carb-rich foods goes to zero. So I've cycled between maintaining where I eat a low-glycemic diet and not doing that and gaining. When I spoke of "biological imperative", I mean me: when I eat carbs, I can't stop. I never get full. I'm sure I'd be a Type 2 diabetic in about 5 years if I didn't make this change.
A few weeks ago, I dumped the crappy carbs again. I'm back full-on low-carb and have lost about half of that[1]. This time, I'm going to learn from my mistakes. :) I'm going to follow the Atkins notion of gradually increasing carbs until you find your "critical carbohydrate level". Since I've bounced back and forth, I figure realizing that fact will be helpful in my long-term maintenance.
1. Yes, a very large percentage of this is water. I'm OK with that. :)
I've attended hundreds of Weight Watchers meetings over many years and I've personally seen at least 1000 people go from being completely helpless with weight loss to losing somewhere between 50-200lbs each. It's a great achievement.
> What the basic calorie-in-calorie-out equation doesn't take into account is that it is a biological imperative to eat.
I didn't say eating less calories than you burn is mentally easy. It takes discipline and hard work, no doubt about it. We all have slip-ups and set backs along the way, which is all part of it. Nothing worth doing is easy.
> And just saying "cut calories" does not work. Three percent of obese people will manage to lose weight by dieting. Do you think they are just "too ignorant" to "get" the equation? Or are they just "too lazy" to do what needs to be done? Because I know that neither is the case.
In my experience watching at least a thousand people lose a massive amount of weight, every single one of them did it by slowly reducing their calorie intake, and increasing their activity to burn more calories. Why did they need WW for that? There are a variety of reasons, though I think Number 1 is that people honestly don't know fries, coke, burgers, chocolate, alcohol, etc. aren't food and you shouldn't eat them regularly. They are so enormously calorie dense they mess everything up.
Reason number 2 is simply being completely and utterly overwhelmed by the contradictory and complicated information about weight loss, causing them to give up completely. This is evidenced by the > 200 comments here.
> Your "engine" becomes more efficient the less you feed it.
Of course it does!
So next week/month will be a different intake/burn than last week/month. It's a constant process to make sure you're eating less than you take in. Although, again being honest here, anyone that is 100lbs+ overweight can likely just cut out one enormous calorie dense food (soda or fast food for a lot of people) and they will lose weight for a long time before they need to re-jig the equation, because they've been eating an enormous number of calories for a very long time.
Don't be confused and think I said it's an easy process to achieve. Many people find it one of the hardest things they will ever do in their lives. I said it's a simple process to understand.
I think one of the reasons people fail at weight loss is because of the conventional wisdom of low-fat (read: low-flavor) diets combined with low-effectiveness exercises like running. It's pseudo-scientific crock. If you've tried the CW and failed, try something else. Have a couple of slices of bacon instead of that plain breadstick (and avoid the urge to blow your calorie budget by slathering it in butter!) and instead of spending hours on a treadmill do high-intensity weightlifting 3x30 min a week. For your average sedentary Aeron-chair dweller, that's going to be a far more likely path to success.
This still doesn't make things terribly complex, and getting the basics down will help a lot.
Dieting has all sorts of psychological and physical factors that vastly complicated the picture.
It is exactly that simple, it's just not easy.
> Dieting has all sorts of psychological and physical factors that vastly complicated the picture.
They make the task more difficult, they don't make the task more complicated.
I'm not saying that eating less calories than you burn is easy for people with weight issues, but it is a very simple concept to understand and work towards.
Something can only be seen as difficult if you have a clear view of the task at hand. Chopping wood or solving equations might be difficult. Something is complicated when the mind needs many different tactics to solve a problem. Solving equations and the understanding and acting upon multiple feedback loops is difficult.
People suffering from weight problems often cannot comprehend their whole problem. Understanding the products that are eaten will focus on perception, therefor clarifying over time the big picture. It's like asking a gambler to calculate the odds of every bet he makes. Soon, the math becomes more important than the winning, thus freeing the sufferer from the emotions that are attached to food.
Another way of seeing the complications involved with food problems is by understanding that most of the food we eat nowadays is processed. For example, we tend to eat the carbs but not the fibers. This unbalances millions of years of natural evolution and allows for exorbitant high levels of insulin without feeling saturated. Counter-acting these processes that happen partly inside and partly outside our mind is a complicated process that takes years or decades of someones life.
The key to weight loss is sticking to your diet. That means adopting a diet that's easy to stick to. In my opinion, ketogenic diets are easier to stick to (for typical people) for two reasons:
1) there are lots of tasty, filling, foods that fit into the diet; 2) meat/dairy aren't peddled to bulk-up entrees in the same way as carbs (e.g. free tortilla chips and salsa) so cost forces some discipline;
Re: 1. Say you're at a restaurant and want to order a salad. On a low-fat diet, you might have some grilled chicken with bland greens with no dressing and a bread-stick. On the "eat less" diet, you might just leave a quarter of the food untouched and starting at you. On a keto diet, you can slather an ounce of caesar dressing on that salad in exchange for just leaving aside the croutons and breadstick. The first option fills you up, but isn't tasty. The second option leaves you a little hungry. The third option fills you up (because you eat all the greens, which take up volume) and is tasty (because even greens are tasty with caesar dressing).
YMMV, but pretending it's just a simple math equation is stupid and sets people up for failure. It is math, but it's a complex optimization problem. Each food item has two associated values: satisfaction and calories. The goal is to optimize satisfaction at a given calorie budget.
I think on a satisfaction per calorie basis, carb-y foods often lose unless you put fat/sugar in them. What would you rather have for breakfast? A two-egg omelet with an ounce of shredded Parmesan cheese, or a plain bagel (both 280-300 calories)?
I am saying people need to eat less calories.
They are not the same thing.
Also, anyone trying to lose weight does not need to be eating in restaurants. Obviously this is very difficult for many people, due to convenience, etc. but I suggest that if people can cut down their restaurant visits by 1 a week, they will likely lose weight.
People here seem to think I was saying the process of losing weight is easy, which I did not say. The method is simple to understand, but the execution is often the most difficult thing many people will do in their lives.
Your satisfaction from food isn't simply proportional to the weight or calorie content of the food. Foods aren't created equally in terms of how satisfying they are per calorie. My point is that the conventional wisdom of eating lots of bread/pasta is counter-productive simply because they're not very satisfying. A cheesy omelet isn't more or less food than a plain bagel, but for a similar calorie count I'm a lot happier 2 hours later. That's the essence of my point.
> Also, anyone trying to lose weight does not need to be eating in restaurants.
I live in New York and so pretty much only eat in restaurants (nobody here cooks). On a keto diet it's no big deal. Restaurants make money by selling you tons of carbs to inflate entree sizes. If you don't eat carbs, there actually aren't all that many ways to blow your calorie budget. If I'm at a restaurant, I can easily order a big steak and steamed veggies and mushrooms, or fish/chicken with a fatty sauce and keep within ~600-700 calories. The restaurant has no financial incentive to give me a lot of these expensive ingredients, so they don't. Psychologically, it's a lot easier to feel satisfied cleaning your plate of those things than leaving half your huge plate of pasta uneaten.
Simply reducing calories but eating mostly carbohydrates will cause the body to lose more muscle than fatty tissue. People will lose total weight, but they will not improve their health.
My sister (an M.D.) did an autopsy of a very skinny girl, who ate nothing but redbull sodas and similar stuff, who died of starvation, who looked VERY skinny, but her inner body was full of fatty tissue, with small organs and weak muscles, all because she wanted to be thin and only did calorie counting.
So please stop disseminating that harmful information, so we can save other girls like her from her fate.
No, it really is relevant. It actually does matter. Your fad diet is not magical, just like every other fad diet was not magical.
>The latter will quickly convert to glucose in your body
This is irrelevant. There is no evidence at all to suggest "insulin spikes" (which are actually minor and totally normal) are a problem at all. And they occur when you consume any food, not just carbs.
>will make a huge difference in your satiety levels
For some people. As much as it pains true believers to hear it, many people do not lose weight on low carb diets. The only way the diet works is by making you feel full so you consume fewer calories. Many people feel very hungry without carbs, and can eat massive quantities of fat without feeling full. Those people gain weight on low carb diets.
Largely I cut down on carbohydrates (because I was stuffing myself with crap like Coke, sweets, etc.) and ate less in general.
Late last year I realized that I had put on weight again because of the same bad habits so I cut them out again and redid my "program". I now weigh 71kg which is very healthy for my height.
To be honest, a small investment in knowing the calorie and nutrient content of foods, cutting out processed and useless foods, and most importantly "listening to my stomach and not my mouth" made weight loss pretty easy for me.
The other important motivator was realizing the asymmetry between the effort required to insert calories in my mouth (100s of calories per minute are easy) and burn calories once in me (100s of calories per hour).
Always remember that a calorie is a proxy metric, and a very poor one at that; it's the energy output of burning the food, which has very little correlation with what goes on in your body during consumption/digestion.
Next time you buy a loaf of bread look at the end of the list of ingredients. If there is an emulsifier listed it's a red flag; there really should only be Flour, Water, Yeast and (some) Fat. You can also tell the quality of the bread by squeezing it and feeling for the spring-back. Many supermarkets don't actually stock 'real' bread.
I was alerted to this by reading the book 'Not on the Label' https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22not+on+the+label%22+bread
Otherwise, bah to very little correlation.
- Glycemic Index: how quickly blood sugar levels spike after eating
- Proportional mix of the protein, fat and carbs that you mention (Maybe someone can help me out with a citation on the affect on health, both long and short term, of the different mixes of these).
- Micro-nutritional content: presence or absence of vitamins & minerals
- Poorly understood factors such as whether a requirement to chew (or suck) food prior to swallowing primes the digestive system and/or alters perception of 'fullness' (peanut butter vs. peanuts, sugar in a glass of coke vs. same amount of sugar in hard boiled sweets)
It's also important to remember that foods are not simply energy, but have direct effects on the levels of various neurotransmitters in the brain, leading to feedback loops (sugar addiction comes to mind).
I think you are better off to literally trust your gut over a calorific value.
See http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/poultry-products/701/2 VS http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/poultry-products/703/2
Make sure you line up the serving sizes.
(For bonus usability, they could stop shifting the popups off to the right so I need to make my browser window wider to close the popup.)
"All pictures were taken with the same camera (Nikon D70 digital camera) and with the same setup; in other words, the portion sizes displayed are all relative to each other.
The plate is 10.25" (26cm) in diameter and the bowl is 6.25" (16cm) "
They definitely fall on the 'health food' end of the breakfast breads/pastries/etc.
(Honestly, I think that's why people have success with low-carb diets. So much of their calorie intake is from carbs from simple basics like breads and pasta.)
And nuts are filling for those calories. Peanut butter (with added oil) I suspect is too easy to eat to slow down calorie intake.
Carbs = 4 calories
Protein = 4 calories
Fat = 9 calories
Alcohol = 7 calories.
But even huge distances on Earth can be measured in km, and we don’t need megameters.
With calories however for all practical purposes we have a number range in which it is okay to use kcal. So here people just forgot that the k actually has a meaning. It makes not much sense to go down to the level of cal.
Pre-historic or not, paleo is a fad. People with self control are going to lose weight no matter what method they chose. People with no self control are going to stay fat no matter what they do.
The former isn't nearly as useful (but of course is much easier to figure out with any accuracy).
So keep that in mind when reading labels.
Strange loop, or filter bubble?
Who am I? I'm a techie and a fitness nut. I've played high level basketball, amateur football, rugby, aussie rules football. I've done some triathlons (not my forte), a couple ultra races (hate them, learned a lot about myself). My current area is gaining muscle, losing fat, and building strength. I write fitness books in my nights and weekends (no link provided).
I'll try to give the briefest of summaries, though I know it is going to be challenging. If I didn't summarize something well enough or if it is unclear, let me know and I can try to do a better job.
1. Calories vs Macros also known as Weight vs Composition
Calories matter for losing and gaining weight, but they don't tell the whole story. If the only thing you know about are calories, you can't lose weight or gain weight intelligently (ie. lose fat and gain muscle). You can do it by accident, but you certainly can't do it optimally.
But, I'll offer this, if the only thing you care about is the number on the scale, you can safely just track calories and eat in a deficit. You'll lose weight.
Macros, or macronutrients, are important to understand so you can achieve the goal you actually care about. Most people say "lose weight" and mean "lose fat". "Gain weight" actually means "gain lean muscle".
If that is true of you, you need to understand and track macros. And, no, you do not need to track both macros and calories. Macros are just fine.
2. Gaining Muscle
I wrote an entire book on gaining lean muscle mass complete with 3 workouts, nutrition info and a diet. I'm going to do my best to summarize it here as quickly as possible.
A. Workout with heavy weights (see workouts below). B. Spike insulin after a workout (more on this in a sec). C. Cycle your days.
Recommend: For C, cycle your food in the following manner:
Workout days: 1g protein/desired lean bodyweight. Even simpler (if you hate math), just 1g protein/desired bodyweight. 1-2g carbs (post workout only)/desired lean bodyweight (this is more important to nail 100%), .5g fat(before workout only)/desired lean bodyweight.
Non-workout days: 1g protein/desired lean bodyweight. Even simpler (if you hate math), just 1g protein/desired bodyweight. 0-30g MAX carbs, .5g fat(before workout only)/desired lean bodyweight.
For B, you can see above that I'm recommending carbs post workout. The goal with the carbs is two fold: to replenish glycogen stores and to spike insulin. If you are diabetic or for some other reason can't eat carbs, you can still spike insulin, though not as fast and not as high. If no carbs, do the following: protein shake with creatine, leucine (5-10g) and MCT oil (prefer straight MCT, but coconut oil will do as well). (Note: this is the same shake I use in the 'lose fat' below to still build some muscle while losing fat).
3. Losing Fat
Again, I wrote an entire book on this, so I'll do my best to summarize. Remember, lose fat probably means 'lose fat and maintain whatever lean muscle mass I currently have' .
A. Workout with heavy weights (preferred, mostly to maintain your muscle mass...need to continue to stimulate the body), sprints/HIIT, or very low intensity walking (mid-level cardio, i.e. running is bad for this goal, just FYI). B. Spike insulin without carbs post heavy weight workout. If HIIT or low intensity cardio, NO insulin spike. C. Carbs once a week.
For A, I prefer people to continue to workout with heavy weights simply to make sure they can maintain their muscle, or even pack a bit more on.
For B, just use the same post workout shake above. Again, if workout was HIIT or low-intensity cardio, don't do this.
And for C, follow "non-workout day" above and go ultra low carb for 5-6 days a week (in a row). Then carb-refeed (also called carbing up) once or twice a week. I highly recommend you start out with this approach: 6.5 days ultra low carb (less than 30g/day) and then on the 7th night, have a 6 hour window where you eat basically whatever carbs you want. On the order of 300-700g of carbs in that window. The next day you are going to feel pretty bloated and you'll gain weight (water), but in 2-3 days all that is gone and you are back to losing fat. The reason for the .5 days of carbs is hormonal adjustment.
I initially intended to write much more, but this is already getting too long for a HN post. It is really hard to summarize everything down to the barest of essentials, so I hope I did an adequate enough job for people to get a start.
I follow something similar to what you say and can attest that it has been working for me for over a year, with slight variations and tailoring it to my day-to-day life, since I am first and foremost a runner. However, I still weight train (heavy weights), so going back and forth from the "runner's world" to a "weight-trainer's world" are two different beasts, but I am too stubborn to give up one for the other and seek a balanced approach that seems to be working for me.
The only thing I must say is that because I am so active, I eat an incredible amount of foods that everyone around me remains in awe. The problem is that it can get very expensive! Especially when trying to have a clean diet.
My co-author for my book on gaining muscle is a runner (and trainer etc). Loves running, marathons, ragnar, the whole lot etc.
Before we started writing, I finally convinced him to give the program a shot, eat the way I recommended and workout with weights the way I recommended. He put on over 10 pounds of muscle and never felt better. His marathon time dropped, his 5k/10k was faster and he has 6-pack abs. He's a convert.
Now, he still runs but he works with weights with equal intensity and he runs much, much less than he did previously. And since his diet changed, he is able to maintain the muscle and leanness.
For absolute beginners, Starting Strength or Stronglifts is great.
In the book I recommend something similar, but a bit more custom for muscle building. Basically, stick to the big four (deadlifts, squats, bench press and overhead press), throw in some accessory work for lagging bodyparts and problem areas. It'll do wonders.
For more advanced people, same as above, but with more volume and tension training.
I like people to follow this progression when weight training:
Focus on strength first, volume second and tension third. Seems the best recipe for putting on muscle fast.
I've been able to low bar squat 300# at 175lbs bodyweight and full snatch 130# at approximately 145lbs bodyweight at various times in my life, fyi. Nothing to write home about obviously
Deadlift: 500 Bench: 295 (this and OHP are a source of annoyance for me) Squat: 350 for 5 (low bar). Haven't maxed in squat in a while...mostly been box squating lately. Box squat (what I actually do most often): 390x2 OHP: 185 (this is a source of annoyance for me)
So, nothing to write home about by any measure.
FYI, my personal muscle building post workout shake is this: WPI (whey protein isolate)(50+g), leucine (5-10g), creatine(5-10g), dextrose(20-30g), skim choc milk(about 15g carbs). If leg day, I'll probably up the dextrose a bit or eat the aforementioned gummy bears (or other similar treat).
I know quite a few people who do something like egg whites (beaters), WPI, creatine and fruit juice (mostly orange from what I've seen).
The imgur gallery makes it easier to gauge the portion size in my opinion.
which offers more items, better size comparisons, and a rough price
Brown Sugar
53 grams = 200 Calories
Splenda Artifical Sweetener
50 grams = 200 Calories
I don't understand?
But besides that, and this is probably your question: you only need a tiny amount of artificial sweetener, to get the same sweetness that you would get with sugar. For example Aspartam is about 200x as sweet as sugar, but it contains a very similar amount of energy. Sugar has ca. 16.8 kJ/g and Aspartam more like 17 kJ/g.
so 200Calories actually _is_ close to a quarter-million calories (small c)
If you eat a lot of good fats (good = monounsaturated, e.g. olive oil, avocados, peanuts), then it reduces cravings for bad fats (fried foods, butter, animal fat etc.).
A rule of thumb is that any fat that it is liquid at room temperature is 'good'.
It's the best, except when it doesn't agree with you. In which case it's rather annoying, since it's so very popular.
Canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil are all pure fat, so they are all around 120 cal per Tbsp (9 cal per gram).
From a calorie standpoint, butter is better, as it is not 100% fat. It also tastes way better.