Calories in, calories out
possiblywrong.wordpress.com
possiblywrong.wordpress.com
I've always though of the "calories in vs calories out" technique for weight loss to be the starting point for the majority of people trying to lose weight. Reign in how many calories you're eating, start burning a few more (even just walking a block or two for most people is a great start) and you'll see significant weight loss over a long period of time.
Don't beat yourself up when you have a "bad" day, because the success of this technique is not measured in days. It's not even measured in weeks or months, it's measured in a unit of "the rest of your life".
After many months tending to years of this, and many pounds lost, the approach can be fine tuned and what is being eaten can be examined in slightly more detail.
Once you've mastered crawling, you can move onto walking and running, but it's simply too difficult to jump straight into running where there are so many gains to be made from simple crawling.
I think a really good first step is to 1) drop soda, sweets, or other things that are relatively effortless changes and then 2) just track everything you eat (you don't even need to look up calorie information initially) so you have the data in case you want to start making other dietary changes. I have also found that restricting your diet to a small set of foods where you deeply know the nutritional data, etc. and can build a routine out of it and moving from carbs to proteins are also really helpful.
I personally (when I lost as much as 60 pounds and started lifting for the first time in almost a decade) found lifting to be very helpful from a motivational standpoint, but it was controlling my diet and running that caused most of the weight to come off.
My philosophy is that if you don't enjoy your health regime, whether its a diet, running, lifting, crossfit (I know, booooo) or some combination -- you're going to give it up as soon as possible. Lifting is something that I think a lot of people find enjoyable because it really doesn't have that misery factor of other workouts (I personally love that, I'm a rower which is basically a sport predicated on collectively loving misery more than the other team). People tend to stick with lifting longer, if not forever. That extra 200 calories 3 or 4 times a week, plus the boost in metabolism over the lifetime of a person is more valuable in my opinion than only dieting/running for a year and then being relieved when you cross the finish line and stop.
When people ask me how to lose weight (I cut pretty hard every year and it's dramatic), I point them towards lifting -- maybe they would lose more weight short term by controlling their diet and running, but people never stick to that stuff. A lot of my friends, mostly girls, have been doing some lifting program now for a couple of years (5-3-1 is my favorite) and they have stuck with it because its enjoyable. They eventually get dragged in and discover protein and macros and by then they're already invested in lifting and enjoying it -- it's part of their lifestyle now.
Why the "boo"? Just interested to know. I don't do crossfit!
The other reason is that crossfit is the Harvard of workouts -- you'll know someone is doing it because they'll tell you, constantly. My girlfriend hates it because people talk about it constantly on facebook.
I personally like to add some work-cap style workouts occasionally. I like their test workouts and a lot of their workouts are fun to adjust and add to my normal cycles. As with a lot of things, if you don't focus on doing it correctly and police yourself - you're opening yourself up to injury.
We have a crossfit gym near work I've been meaning to try out - I don't really have any problems with the program, the haters are just very passionate and vocal on the internet about their feelings towards the program.
> The other reason is that crossfit is the Harvard of workouts -- you'll know someone is doing it because they'll tell you, constantly. My girlfriend hates it because people talk about it constantly on Facebook.
I have also found people who practice crossfit talk about it endlessly. Anyone know why?
One good thing about muscle is that it can burn fat quite happily. Unlike the brain.
Here's the hypothesis. The post-workout effect on metabolic rate burns more calories than the exercise itself.
Here's the experiment.
Begin with hydration. Drink excess water until urine has little color. Every day thereafter, after your first urination of the day, measure and record your body weight. Make no attempt to control food intake, but if you wish, record what you eat and attempt to subjectively rate your appetite before and after meals. Continue to drink excess water for the duration of the experiment.
First elimination. Do not exercise for one week. Do not repeat this phase if you choose to do additional iterations.
Control. Perform 60 consecutive minutes of cardiovascular exercise on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for two weeks.
Elimination. Do not exercise for one week.
Experiment. Exercise enough to elevate your heart rate for 5 minutes at a time, at 4-hour intervals, 5 times a day. Do this for 2 weeks.
Elimination. Do not exercise for one week.
Repeat this cycle several times. Compare weight measurements for the 3-week control intervals with the 3-week experimental intervals. If they are significantly different, you have evidence for a post-exercise effect. This may help you devise a weight-loss plan compatible with your lifestyle.
"Some of this also comes from the still gross misconception that ‘muscle burns a ton of calories’ (a myth I took apart in Dissecting the Energy Needs of the Body – Research Review). That is, they hope to jack up metabolic rate by increasing muscle mass. Which is a futile activity because the effect is minimal (on top of the fact that the obese are already carrying extra muscle mass). A pound of muscle burns about 6 calories at rest, you have to add a ton to impact on metabolic rate (see also the next issue I discuss, low metabolic rate isn’t a problem). And that takes a lot of time, time better spent focusing on active fat loss."
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/dissecting-...
Huh...I follow Lyle, but I've read the exact opposite in Body by Science: in cross-sectional views of obese people (CT scans), their muscles are small, weak, and atrophied.
IIRC, Body by Science makes the assertion that their muscles are essentially starved, because the metabolic system/insulin insensitivity/etc. are shunting energy primarily into fat cells.
And, with strength training, you can turn the metabolic tide back into energy getting into/being used by the muscles.
Disclaimer: It's been awhile since I read the book, and I might mistakenly being integrating ideas I'd read elsewhere.
Hrm, no pictures (which IIRC are convincing), but here's an article:
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/training-the-obese...
These suggestions ignore the (soft) limitations of human agency. The degree of difficulty in (not) eating an additional (something) has never been really quantified in sufficiently broad spectrum of situations, to my knowledge.
A generally helpful and encouraging life can lead to many positive changes, weight loss not least among them.
Maybe instead of telling fat people to lose weight, we should be inviting them to parties, and when they get there, treating them like everyone else.
Just a thought.
Not.
It’s not ok to treat people worse because of their weight.
B) Now that fat people harm the rest of us (via Obamacare and rules forcing employer health insurance to charge everyone the same), its hardly clear that social opprobrium is unwarranted.
You've missed the entire point.
Never once has it ever been said you should eat less.
Just eat less calories, not less quantity.
(This reply is so important I replied to two different people with it)
The science is well established. It makes a lot of sense: people agree the glycemic index of food is important, and the satiety index builds on that look at the number of calories a food contains as well as how quickly it is absorbed.
I'm just following the Weight Watchers formula, which I've personally seen hundreds of people lose thousands of pounds using.
I've seen people completely shocked they're "allowed" to eat virtually unlimited quantities of salad and fruit while still losing enormous quantities of weight.
I honestly believe the vast majority of people who are struggling to lose weight really have no idea about the different between "quantity of food" and "amount of calories".
Better advice: just stop eating highly processed food and you will fell fuller for longer. If you can't eat it raw or with just one transformation (cooking for example) don't. Flour for example has separation of the germ, milling, reconstitution (water) and cooking so yes, even wholewheat bread is highly processed.
Currently, its around 40-50% protein, 25-30% fat and remaining carbs (fruit and vegetables mostly). I weight and log all my food intake (well, 95% or so, the rest I eyeball it when I go out to eat with my family, but even then I try to keep it simple, grilled steak with veggies, no sauces or oils. That way at least I have an idea on the macros/calories). I prefer to work in ranges to have a bit more freedom than a set number. For example, its 9pm after dinner and I have 82kcal remaining for the day, and since my protein and fat goals for the day were achieved, I'll be eating 12 green olives (weighted) with a bit of garlic as a snack that will get me 5kcal over my daily limit.
It maybe overkill for some, but it works for me. I used to box and had to make weight, knowing and controlling (weighting) the food worked for me, so whenever I want to change my body composition or my work and workout changes, it is my go-to tool and it works. I'm sure it will work for most other people short of some medical issues, but many people don't stick to it or fool themselves by 'forgetting' to log that cookie at work or those 2 spoons of sugar in each of the 4 cups of coffee they have per day. Now, appetite control is something different, and regarding that, I know many folks have problems with, both physical/hormonal and mental to which I don't want to say anything as I don't want to impose my views on other folks and don't know what they have/are going through. I actually try to stay away from nutrition discussions here in HN since there is so much crap flying based on the hip bloggers of the time that I gave up. (fad now for hacker-like mentality seems to be the Paleo and Keto diets being the holy grail of dieting. While both have good, and bad things about it, and I'm sure they have worked for various people, it is almost like discussing which religion is right)
Yes and this is symptom of addiction. From that you can see that advice of "eat less" or "count calories" is as useful as "don't take anymore heroin". The only useful advice is about how to change your lifestyle/eating habits to be able to eat less not that you should eat less in the first place.
Think about it like an athletic coach, do you tell the sprinter that he should run faster and count seconds or do you tell him what drills to do to actually become faster ? "Count calories" is the same as "just run faster and count seconds".
But, today's sugary foods contain less protein than before, so we keep eating these foods until the quota of protein has been met. This is why probably the keto diet reduces appetite.
In the first 4 words you've already missed the entire point.
Never once has it ever been said you should eat less.
Just eat less calories, not less quantity.
I managed to quit, but it was quite hard to do. It really took a major major shift in thinking and a lot of psychological withdrawals. I imagine this is what it's like for people who over eat, and I sympathize.
I mean we certainly need a lot more research on that but it seems the reason people do well on low-carb high fat or high protein is that they eliminate what caused the addiction for them.
If that's the case then any research which controls for amount of calories is missing the point of what is actually helpful to people as it already assumes the final goal (having people eating less). It is still interesting question if calorie is in fact a calorie but this question isn't in my mind the important one when it comes to solving obesity problem.
More interesting is discovering what behaviors (including both restricting certain foods as well as life style habits like many meals vs few meals, eating breakfast or not etc. etc.) help people to actually stick to calorie deficit while feeling reasonably well during the process.
Sure, protein has a higher TEF (thermic effect of food), and yadda yadda yadda there are some other minor things involved, but they're just not enough for you to discredit the calorie situation.
However, when it comes to burning fat, the next most important thing (after you have determined a reasonable caloric deficit) is to maintain a "high" level of protein.
Too low of protein, and you're going to lose too much muscle mass. Ultimately, this is what's leading to so many "skinny fat" dieters. You get a lot of it from people who do nothing but cardio cardio cardio.
It turns out that all the low-fat vs. low-carb wars are really meaningless, because most of those studies don't control protein - which is MORE important! That last low-fat vs. low-carb study that came out was miserably guilty of this, because protein intake has actually been shown to be more significant than carb or fat control[1].
After you've situated your calories, then your protein (and you are consistent about it), then you choose your carbs and fats however it pleases you. There are extremes on both sides.
What's important is you find something that you can be successful with, and keep that protein number up. Lest you be skinny fat, which I personally feel is worse than being "muscular fat".
In the bodybuilding community, some people have taken this to extremes with Flexible Dieting, or "IIFYM" (If it Fits Your Macros...). Basically, the idea that proper quantities (as discussed above and below) are more important than food quality. I will err on that side of the argument, but the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle when attempting to achieve overall health.
Finally, it's worth noting that while total caloric intake and macronutrients are most important when it comes to weight and aesthetics, please eat some damned vegetables too. And corn is not a vegetable.
The other thing I found, is that I had to avoid foods that tasted too good. Basically any food that combines fat, simple starches, and a sweet sauce will taste too good and give you an overwhelming urge to overeat. If I wanted to eat a burrito for lunch, I would cut it in half, put the other half in the fridge, and save it for dinner, before I even started to eat my lunch. Burritos are quite satiating, and you actually diet while eating them, you just have to portion control, and will yourself past the ten minutes when you are done with the first half and so tempted to eat the other half.
I've wondered if the reason why so many diet strategies succeed in the short run, but fail in the long run, is because they are all hacks to make you eat less tasty food. If you just eat fat, or just eat carbs, or just eat whole wheat, or whatever, your food will be less tasty. In the long run though, people like eating tasty food, and so they keep making exceptions to the diet in the name of taste, and they are back to their normal eating habits.
Take, for instance, potato chips -- and not the low-fat Baked Lay's or Quest Chips kind. If you're on a "balanced diet", they're legal. But good luck measuring them and not eating the entire bag.
It sounds like your success was mainly in portion control. Eating standing up helps you get full faster too, as does focusing on chewing a lot (also prevents choking and other benefits).
The biggest problem I forgot to mention above, however, is that people will read all sorts of literature, but when it comes to actually weighing their food with a food scale (costs literally $20) and counting their calories and macros, they all fail. Yes, it's a pain in the arse, but you learn so much by recording everything you eat. But people simply don't want to do it, and it drives me nuts.
This also leads me to believe that there's a massive business opportunity somewhere in there to make it easier to do (I have ideas but am too busy).
My recommendation to dieters is to not do it halfheartedly. Go all in, read reddit fitness, geek out on dieting, count calories, come up with new recipes, set a complete routine around cooking the right food, etc. That way you won't be tempted to make exceptions and you will know with 100% certainty that you will get results.
Pulled pork Put a pork butt/shoulder in the slow cooker. Douse with a 16oz bottle of root beer. Cook on low for 8 hours. Pull apart. Mix in BBQ sauce and cheddar cheese to taste. This can end up tasting too good, so you might need to portion control when you eat it.
Roast beef (or roast lamb, or roast anything) Buy an oven roast and rub in salt and pepper. Cook according to the times laid out here http://www.thehealthybutcher.com/livetoeat/volume23/TheHealt... Very simple, yet amazingly delicious right out of the oven.
Baked Chicken Buy a mix of thighs and breasts. Slice the breasts in half so they are the same thickness as the thighs. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook at 400 degrees until they are 160degrees internal temp (37 minutes in my oven, when laid out on a rack, not on the baking pan directly). Once you have baked the chicken, you can eat straight up the first night. Then in succeeding nights you can mix with tomato sauce and do pasta, mix with cheese and make a quesadilla, mix with coconut milk, red curry paste, and peanut butter and do a thai chicken, etc. By doing the work of cooking the chicken all in one night, in following nights you can make a variety of healthy, delicious meals in under 10 minutes. Just reheat the chicken in a sauce and you have instant goodness.
Roast veggies But three 1pound bags of frozen veggies - brussel sprouts, "fiesta mix", brocoli, whatever you like. Put in strainer and run water over to thaw out a bit. Dry. Put on baking pans. Brush with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Put in oven at 425 degrees for 25 minutes. If using multiple pans, switch the racks half-way through. It is even better if you do fresh veggies, but it is more prep work in cutting them to the proper size.
There recently was a story in Norwegian media about a person that had gone down some X kgs (basically from overweight to more healthy) -- by eating a strict diet of ready-made meals (heat in the microwave type stuff). The reason behind this anecdote? They all list calorie content. No need to measure (again). Is it a healthy diet? Probably not (high salt, high fat, low vitamins, little variation... the list goes on).
But it's easy to then try and follow up on calorie count.
That said, those same people are probably dying inside from the quality perspective!!
One way I've managed to make dieting more sustainable (which is the most important part, making sure you find a healthy diet you can stick to in the long run) are cheat days/meals. This allows you to program in "tasty" meals without the psychological guilt and adverse health affects from these typically unhealthy treats. Most nutritionists will agree that if you adhere to your diet 90% of the time, you're going to be successful. That means in a typical 3 meal/day diet, you've got roughly 2 meals / week where you can cheat and eat whatever without it affecting your health or body composition.
My approach, which has allowed me to increase my strength without increasing my body weight, has been through a cyclical ketogenic diet. As always, YMMV, but I have determined through my own empirical research that I am not well carb-adapted, and staying low carb (<50g net carbs) all week doesn't negatively affect my energy levels or strength, in fact it improves moreso than when I ate carbs after workouts. Nonetheless, I love me some carb-rich foods, so once a week, after my biggest workout of the week, I eat roughly 400+g of carbs to refuel glycogen, satiate my desire for a "tasty meal" and overall reward myself for adhering 90%+ to my diet for the week.
What's important here is that you plan for the cheat, and that allows you to still enjoy life and food without it negatively affecting your health and body composition.
They then use those exact measurements to do things like calculate how much the various activities like sitting, walking, typing, reading, running, sleeping, lying down quietly, etc... consume in terms of calories.
What's nifty (and surprising to me), is that for most people, the standard models that are based on age, weight, height, and gender are pretty good predictors as to how much energy you will consume doing a particularly activity.
[1] http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/01/look-at-testing-with-new-...
w[t+1] = w[t] + (c[t] - alpha * w[t] - beta * d[t] * w[t]) / 3500
w[t] = c / (alpha + beta * d) + const * (phi ** t)
w = c / (alpha + beta * d)
w = 2000 / 12.5 = 160 lb
w = 2500 / (12.5 + 0.63 * 5) = 160 lb
It'd be interesting to see how accurate this is.
Assuming no lifestyle changes - I might be less excited to ride my bike with a 115 lb bag on my back - you should reach some sort of thickquilibrium.
I'd love for someone to do this with beer.
So when you go into extreme diets, there is a problem with measuring exactly what is going on if all you use is a scale.
carbohydrate = 4 kilocalories protein = 4 kilocalories fat = 9 kilocalories alcohol = 7 kilocalories
It seems difficult to quantify this accurately without fully understanding human metabolism and how it utilizes energy sources.
My own experience is that calories in/out controls weight, yes.
But I’ve only been able to lose fat and gain muscle by eating a diet that keeps my blood sugar stable. I think this is the real benefit of avoiding high-glycemic carbs, not some magical exemption from thermodynamics.
I’d be interested to help test this.
That depends on the goals you have for your metric. % fat by weight is probably a better fit than total weight for describing body image, but there are two issues that help the viability of total weight:
1. There's not so much variation in % body fat by weight, which means confounding "amount of weight that is fat" with "amount of weight that is anything" doesn't lose you much in practice.
2. Total weight is extremely easy to measure, always desirable in a metric.
And, as you note, while replacing fat mass with muscle mass generally makes men more attractive, the same is not true for women, who are in my experience the vast majority of the "worried about their weight" audience.
Just pinching your belly fat with a caliper every week and seeing the numbers go down is much more accurate. It doesn't matter what your body fat IS or how much it went down, as long as your caliper measurements decrease.
For the record, my caliper measurements were something like 25/14/27 (belly/chest/thigh) at a high body fat (maybe 18%?) and more like 17/6/18 in the low teens.
I didn't really see a point of actually trying to track my fat loss through caliper measurements because they were exaggerated, the calculators said I was higher bf% than I really was (19.3% but I wasn't that high), and then they said I was lower bf% than I really was after I lost it (12.1% but I wasn't that low). I only lost 10 lbs between a purported 7% change in BF from 200lbs to 190lbs.
But as a measurement of "yep, losing fat", it's very accurate.
There are a lot of formulas to estimate body fat at home. Sample website I just googled: https://www.linear-software.com/body-fat-calculator.html
Most are caliper based but there is one based on belly/neck measurement. No idea how accurate those are in general but they give very similar estimations in my case.
Many men would disagree.
Personally I think this is a great way to control your weight. The diet doesn't say anything about what to eat, just how much (in calories). It doesn't necessarily make it easier, but it does give you constant feedback, which can help you stay motivated.
Fresh, intact fruits and vegetables are often the foods highest in satiety per absorbed kilocalorie, but there's only one person that has your brain connected to your guts. You may find that hard-boiled eggs do the trick for you. Or guacamole. Or olives and feta cheese. Whatever it takes to reprogram your "eat watch" to alert in a way that helps you shed fat instead of gaining it.
(This post will probably only make sense after you read far enough into the parent post's link.)
I also think it is amazing how much we do know and people simply don't give a shit about!
Smoking is terrible for you. Sugar is terrible for you on a daily basis. Highly processed foods are terrible for you.
Everybody knows these things... but nobody gives a shit and the obesity and diabetes epidemic rages on.
I personally think calories are what you track when you eat processed crappy food. Eat real raw foods, which usually have no nutrition labels, and calories don't really matter.
I've been doing something similar (but less rigorous) over the past two years. I was obese at the start and decided to get back to my college-age weight. I have now lost 70 pounds using "calories in / calories out" as the sole consideration.
The challenge, as this blog post states, is knowing what calin and calout actually are.
I have often wondered: how do healthy weight people seemingly know how much they should eat to maintain weight? Many people can maintain a weight without meticulous logging and data collection. They seem to know how to consume the appropriate portion sizes instinctively, without having to learn the actual numbers underneath it all.
I have come to view the ability to know "how much should I eat?" as some combination of talent and skill. Some people seem to have much better intuition about this and need no training. Others, like myself, may live most of our lives without such intuition. Only through extensive data collection, observation, and analysis have I learned to approximate how much "calin" a meal will result in.
I wonder: is there a way to teach this ability to children? Is this something that some people learn early in life, which they retain for a lifetime? Is this an avenue that researchers are exploring?
- Water. This is either in your digestive system, your bladder or "your body" (blood plasma and also water in tissues and glycogen in muscles - http://8fit.com/blog/glycogen-gluconeogenesis-and-water-weig... )
- Food. You eat food, not calories. Yes, some parts are not digestible, and some are staying in your digestive system right now
Of course calories in/calories out explains your weight loss/gain. I haven't seen a single study that shows anything except this.
But of course that isn't the whole story.
The big issue with using calorie restriction for weight loss is that it take significant self control for long periods of time (months).
People take that as a moral judgement of people who don't lose weight: they assume that it means they are mentally weak.
But the truth is that there are alternatives. The thing that most calorie in/out advocates miss is that it's calories over time that matter. If one can spread digestion of the same calories over a longer period of time the subject will generally feel less hungry.
This is where high-protein, anti-processed food, anti-sugar and insulin reaction people have a point: High protein, high fiber and unprocessed foods generally have a high satiety index[1][2]. This means a person eating them will feel less hungry for longer for the same amount of calories.
Naturally this links back to calories in: if someone who is trying to lose weight doesn't feel hungry they don't have to have so much self control.
To me the low satiety index of confectioneries and soda drinks explains why sugar is so dangerous: It's digested very quickly and contains lots of calories, which is the worst possible combination for weight control.
I don't understand why satiety isn't discussed more in weight control, since to me it is the key factor.
(This is all from the perspective of someone who lost nearly 20kg via calorie counting)
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7498104
[2] http://www.ernaehrungsdenkwerkstatt.de/fileadmin/user_upload...
Actually, there is one.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2011.48/full
The experimental group was prescribed a standard low-calorie diet (20% protein, 30–35% fat, 45–50% carbohydrates, 1,300–1,500 kcal) providing carbohydrates mostly at dinner, whereas the control group received a standard low-calorie diet (20% protein, 30–35% fat, 45–50% carbohydrates, 1,300–1,500 kcal), providing carbohydrates throughout the day
So they were isocaloric.
Anthropometric changes after 6 months are presented in Table 3. Significant weight loss, BMI, abdominal circumference, and body fat percentage reductions were found in both groups. Significantly greater weight loss was observed in the experimental group vs. the control group at the end of the study (11.6 vs. 9.06 kg, P = 0.024).
But the weight loss was different.
It looks like did not live in a ward though.
Participants, who did not attend meetings with the dietitian, did not adhere to the diet or exceeded the caloric range of 1,300–1,500 kcal/day, were excluded from the study.
But I'm not sure how they found out that a person exceeded his caloric range.
Have you seen one that actually claims to prove it? I was looking for something conclusive, and have come up with a lot of explanations why the numbers diverge (atwater factors are inaccurate, everyone is self reporting, BMR not properly estimated, etc, etc.).
A theory that works for 70% of the cases and fails to explain the remaining 30% is WRONG, even if you have no better competing theory.
I'd just like to highlight this, because it is profoundly true. There are probably very few people who have the patience to log everything they eat, diet or no diet, unless they have some kind of payoff close at hand! Even if you do log everything you eat, it's still not easy. Here are just a few reasons why:
1. The best foods to eat on a diet don't come in prepackaged portions with the calorie count labelled on the back.
2. Packaged food often does not have anywhere near the same calories as the label claims. Food manufacturers often aren't very precise and they have an incentive to underestimate.
3. The ideal way to measure the absorbable caloric content of food would be to feed it (and nothing else) to human test-subjects (other animals can metabolize foods quite differently; e.g. grass and cows) for an extended period of time while strictly regulating the test-subjects' physical activity. Measure the weight change, and there you have it. Yeah... This experiment is never going to happen. That's why we stick food in a calorimeter, burn it, and consider the heat it provides to be a measure of its caloric content. This crude method provides decent estimates on average, but can occasionally be misleading.
For these reasons, I'm actually a bit surprised that the author's data matches the theory so closely. This indicates the author scrupulously measured his portion sizes, found accurate estimates for the caloric content of the foods he ate, and logged everything. This is seriously impressive. If the author had failed to log something as insignificant as the sugar and cream he puts in his coffee it would have thrown his numbers way off over a period of 75 days. Similarly, he must have scrupulously recorded his physical activities. The fit is so perfect I actually suspect he... ah... played with his data slightly after the fact. A "fortuitous" choice for alpha is obviously helpful too.
One other thing worth pointing out is that weighing yourself daily and plotting it on a graph like this is a fantastic way to observe progress and stay motivated to stick to your new routine. First, if you don't regularly observe your weight then you have no feedback. If you fail to accurately measure your caloric intake/expenditure the results might not be as desired. Feedback is necessary. However, daily feedback can be wildly misleading if you don't place it in context. If you look at the author's data, there are plenty of ups and downs around the trend. For example, on day 7 he observed a large gain and on day 8 a large loss. If the author only kept the previous day's weight in his head he might conclude that he did poorly on day 6 and made up for it on day 7. In reality, he might have consumed very healthy, fiber-rich food (e.g. a lot of beans) on day 6 and a bunch of sugar-rich processed garbage on day 7. The author might have stored away some fat on day 7 but wound up weighing less on day 8 purely because of passing the fiber from his meal on day 6. Pure sugar doesn't leave much behind to be passed!
I do question the worth of calculating your caloric deficit. It's simply too hard to get an accurate measure of consumption. However, measuring your weight regularly and plotting it so you can observe the larger trend is invaluable. About five years ago I dropped 60 pounds (it's still off, and I've gained lean muscle mass). I didn't count calories. I simply measured my weight regularly and plotted it on a graph similar to the author. I looked at the larger trend and made small adjustments gradually to keep it going in the right direction. If you don't weigh yourself regularly you can undo months worth of progress with one new bad habit. If you don't place your weight in context you'll have difficulty identifying habits that are a problem. Finally, watching that line steadily come down is a fantastic way to stay motivated.
Source? If they aren't within 20% they can be shut down by the FDA. Not exactly something you would want to risk.
* bodega muffin. 640 claimed, 735 actual
* starbucks pretend coffee. 370 claimed, 393 actual
* chipotle burrito. 1175 claimed, 10% over
* some veggie sandwich. 228 claimed, 100% over
* subway sandwich. came in under
4/5 of tested food underestimated, some wildly
This is absolutely the most important "diet" that I've done - having a mobile phone app, I use "Libra" on Android, that prompts me every morning for my weight and shows the trend curve. I can easily see now that my weight consistently goes down when I'm exercising and watching my diet, which is a slow process of experimentation in lifestyle, and it stalls if I'm only doing one of those or neither. Previously monitoring my day-to-day weight was ineffective due to the fluctuations you mentioned.
After trying a few apps, I have found MyFitnessPal and tracking what I eat has become my daily routine. The app makes it very easy, has a great database of foods and in my case, I can almost always choose from my food history with 1 tap.
I'm in the 9th week of my diet, which simply means burning 1000 kcal more a day than I consume. My results are similar to the one in the blog post - spare 7000kcal a week and lose 1 kg.
Sure, measuring calories is imprecise at best, but my results speak another language.
The fitbit app sucks, it isn't well thought out and has numerous UI bugs. I had the fitbit one step tracker for a while until I lost it. Now I'm using my iPhone as step tracker, as I'm almost always carrying it in my pocket.
I weigh and log virtually everyting (not coffee/tea/water though) but as you said, measuring calories is imprecise at best. I'm currently targeting ~3400kcal a day and I would estimate a healthy error margin of +/- 400kcal a day on that figure.
The biggest benefit is that it makes me totally conscious of what's going into my body and developing a feel for the caloric content of various foods (e.g. wow I had no idea 2 cups of spinach was only ~10 calories!).
Author of the linked blog post here. I made the comment that "if I had instead chosen 12, or 13 (for alpha), the resulting predictions would not agree nearly as well." This is perhaps overstating the "luck" of my initial midpoint choice. Here is a quick plot showing the same data with predictions using 12, 12.5, and 13: http://imgur.com/lP5sjwB
(Note also that a better least-squares estimate of alpha is actually about 12.7.) Even these "endpoints" still look to be in reasonable agreement with measurements. That is, if 12 to 13 calories per pound really represents most of the range of variability among the (male) population, then one can likely make useful predictions without needing to be spot-on with their choice of alpha.
Of course, it's a valid question whether 12 to 13 really covers a large chunk of the distribution. Are there men out there with alpha<10, or >15, for example?
I've also tried training that way, and didn't see good results.
Wow, seriously? Does that depend on whether the chicken is raised on farm (in open spaces, with enough room to run around) versus in battery cage? I would expect it matters a lot (the taste is _very_ different to me).
I used to be overweight, lost weight, but it's a constant struggle for me to keep a normal weight. I've spoken to some very thin people, and they don't seem to experience hunger in the same way I do. These people forget to eat, get full very quickly, and when they get full, they lose all of the sense of pleasure they get from eating, they immediately want to stop. Me? I have an urge to eat quickly and I can eat way past "enough". I'm pretty sure I could eat 2000 calories for dinner if I didn't stop myself, but the reasonable mark is at about 900. I can never "forget" to eat, my body/brain doesn't let me.
It's pretty clear that some people have stronger sex drives than others. I don't understand why it's such a radical notion that some people have a stronger sense of hunger than others. If you've never been overweight, chances are it's not an active effort or perfect habits on your part, it's just the way your body/brain works, it's largely genetics.
I've pretty much learned to accept it's something I'll have to deal with for the rest of my life, rather than "I was fat once, I got rid of it, it's no longer a concern, the end."
It totally pisses me off to see people who can't manage to do the same being judged in awful ways by people who were lucky enough not to have to do it in the first place or for whom it was apparently relatively easy and assume it'll be just as easy for everyone else.
I count myself amongst the lucky, I'll never say "I could do it, so you can too." It's counter productive and an awful thing to hear when you're already really trying.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/ci-gbi091012....
They can even mess with your mind to make you crave junk food.
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rule...
Transplanting them from a thin human to an obese mice slimmed the mice down.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/health/gut-bacteria-from-t...
Jet lagged gut bacteria can contribute to obesity.
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/jet-lagged-gut-bacteri...
Diet soda can alter gut bacteria to make one gain weight.
http://www.prevention.com/health/diabetes/artificial-sweeten...
There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body, and they actually release chemicals that affect the brain and have evolved to do that and there are a lot of other factors that influence gut bacteria, including what got passed on from your mother, what foods you ate during your life, what antibiotics you took etc. etc.
And gut bacteria is just one variable among things like activity levels, pollution levels, sleep amount and quality(not sleeping well can make you eat about 600 calories more the next day), peers(hanging out with obese people is likely to make you obese, obese people tend to have obese pets!), poverty, car ownership, smoking, tastebud sensitivity, commute time(people with longer commutes tend to be obese),genetics,water intake, muscle mass,stress levels, food additives, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, time of the month for women, free time in a day(try cooking at home and exercise working 2 grueling jobs to make ends meet), drug side effects, emotional eating, type of exercise, micronutrients in food,portion sizes in restaurant, food advertising, food subsidies, vitamn level, thyroid function, insulin sensitivity, liver health, distribution of fat around body parts and inside organs,will power, processed foods, food availability and cost etc. etc. Some of these variables affect the others in a chaotic state machine kind of way.
It's no wonder that all these low carb, low fat, paleo, etc. diets are not one-size-fits-all solutions and that such discussions descend into WORKED-FOR-ME!!! Y U NO DO IT?!! platitudes. A calorie = a calorie is as true and as useless as answering the question "Why are there so many people inside the Super Bowl stadium during the game?" by saying "Because more people entered it than who left, if only people didn't get in, it wouldn't be so crowded."
"Why is it warmer in the summer than the winter?"
"Because your hemisphere took in more calories than it gave off."
True! And anyone who denies it is just arguing with thermodynamics.
Gary Taubes has written a lot about it.
And of those calories you got in, how many left through the waste canal?
Obviously it is a question of calories in = calories out, the question is whether what we are measuring is even close to either side of that equation.
It's very easy to lose water weight and say you lost more than you were supposed to lose because you're using weight as a measurement. If you use the amount of fat you have on your body, a low carb diet is no more effective than a low calorie diet at losing weight given the same amount of caloric expenditure.
I don't know where this absurdity of water losing came from, but It's utterly ridiculous.
That doesn't mean you can't lose fat on a low carb diet, of course.
So if I lost 5 kg of water and "only" 15 kg of fat, so be it... as opposed to 0 kg of anything with low calories.
In 30 years I've read a lot against low-carbs, but nothing that can reconcile the fact that it works.
That may be where the confusion comes from.
A calorie = a calorie, but accessing it, sorting it, and storing it, depends on the package it comes in.
Sure it's an extreme case, meant only as a thought experiment, but it's obvious that 0 calories in and non-zero calories out absolutely MUST mean weight loss. What are the alternatives?
Here's the thing... I'm willing to change my mind. Totally willing. Here's what it will take: Show me a person who is overweight and goes on a VERY strict, almost laboratory controlled diet for 6 months. Everything strictly regimented and monitored. If that person simply cannot lose weight then fine, Gary Taubes wins.
The point is that enough sleep and exercise, the right mix of gut bacteria, and a diet consisting of sufficient protein, fat, and fiber, with very little simple sugars and starches, will allow you to feel satiated on fewer calories, and lose weight without having to count calories, strictly regiment your diet, or suffer through hunger pangs.
I don't disagree at all. I just think the conversation shouldn't be about "is it calories in vs. calories out?!" and more about "What can we do to make it easier for people to eat the right amount or run a calorie deficit?" Could we massively tax bad food and subsidize good food? Attempt to change culture? Figure out the underlying neurological issues involved in overeating and attempt to create a targeted treatment to ease these issues?
I guess I feel like a lot of people try to obfuscate the issue by saying "It's more complicated than just calories-in vs. calories-out" almost as a way of absolving themselves from responsibility. Because, yes, running a calorie deficit for a long time is HARD. Like, I have a friend who's convinced "it's just a thyroid issue I have, calories-in vs. calories-out doesn't matter". However if there were a magic pill that caused them to only ever want to eat at most 1500 calories per day and start loving the taste of vegetables more than anything with no side effects I guarantee you that suddenly they'd be losing weight.
Conversion of body weight to a form that has less stored energy per unit of weight mass (e.g., fat to muscle). That's unlikely with zero calorie intake (since activity, which is difficult to maintain with a too-extreme deficit, and protein are both important to it), but it balances the calorie equation just as well as weight loss does.
More generally on the point under discussion, adjusting caloric intake alone without changing calorie output is expected to produce weight loss if a bunch of other factors are held constant, but the way humans are constructed, its actually not at all simple to adjust calorie intake and not alter calorie output or any of the other relevant factors -- in fact, many of them the body will itself change as a result of a change in calorie input.
Unless
* You care about your productivity or health, in which case getting sufficient balanced nutrition is important.
* You care about body composition eg going on a diet is liable to lose you large quantities of lean body mass which sets you up for rebound weight gain down the track.
* You are one of those rare people who are affected by hunger. If you are one of those people you might want to consider the effect of diet composition, adequacy and timing on your appetite.
I also note: sample of one. Duration: 2 months (of people who lose weight over a 2 month period only a small fraction keep it off). Statistical significance: 0.
"[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets."
http://carcinisation.com/2014/08/14/science-journalism-march...
If you treat the gut as a simple "food processor" that does nothing more than take in food, break it down and transfer the resluting proteins & sugars into the bloodstream then you're vastly over simplifying things. Yes, it's perfectly true that gut bacteria do not make up a huge percentage of your body mass, but you could say the same thing about your kidneys & anyone who claimed that the kidney "just takes waste products from the bloodstream and excretes them as urine" would be over simplifying things enormously. That statement is as true as the "gut bacteria are only 1% of your body mass" one, but it also misses out on a lot of complexity - the kidneys are involved in all sorts of hormonal feedback loops & can go wrong in many weird and wonderful ways. The same is true of the gut, and that's the point of the original statement about the vast number of gut bacteria IMO - it's reminding us that the digestive system is in fact very complex and an active participant in hormonal feedback loops that affect the rest of the body, including those that affect how much we want to eat.
That would require that there be people that think that the human gut itself weighs more than the rest of the body.
>"[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets."
In what sense is Vin Diesel not outnumbered by a bag of crickets? Combat skill?
The "Microbe Nations" would be Monaco all the other table-top countries and tiny one-man-on-an-island republics, and they would also fight amongst themselves.
people have a tendency to either not adhere to the diet over time or not partake in the diet at all by listening to people say: all these other magical factors effect your weight, why bother? negative platitudes if you will. 'its not that 4000 calorie a day diet that is making you fat, its genetics!' etc etc
while its true gut bacteria makes a difference, it is also true and proven that gut bacteria adjusts to your food intake. it is more likely that a persons weight problems can be moderated by diet and exercise than anything else. diet is most easily moderated by good eating habits.
What we are saying here is that you reduce your calorie intake within the range where gut bacteria can act, it might not have any effect, or even negative effect.
If you reduce your calorie intake below the level gut bacteria activity matters, you will lose weight, but only if you can sustain the diet for basically the rest of your life.
If the diet doesn't fit you, you will be fighting your body every single day, and your body might cave in and it becomes your new norm, or you can't stand it anymore and go back to your previous behavior.
Fighting your body until it gives up is such a brute force method it's just hell on earth (we say "your body", but litteraly you're punishing yourself). Experimentally the vast majority of people won't be able to brute force their behavior And metabolism, and have to find a diet that fits them. S
What I'm saying is sustaining low calorie intake is a result of having a diet that works. The relevant part is to find that diet in the first place.
I lost 15% of my weight and kept it off. It's not that hard. It's not punishing myself, it's going to the gym and taking protein supplements. The "diet that works" is eating a lot of protein because it's the most filling.
But how high depends on the level of activity and total caloric consumption. You can eat both high protein AND high fat. 40% of calories in protein, 50% of calories in fat, 10% of calories in carbs would be an example of a diet high in protein, fat and low in carbs.
For weight lifters I would recommend 1g of protein per pound of lean tissue (approximate) and the rest of the calories in carbs or fats however you want to distribute those, but some carbs before a workout.
Basically, any diet whatsoever will result in you losing weight. Just measuring/charting your weight is effective too. Chewing 7 times with every bite will do it.
High protein diets are particularly awesome for a number of reasons though - in the first couple months you drop a ton of water, which makes the scale drop quickly, which is emotionally rewarding. And, eating a lot of protein tends to result in more rapid satiation. (Water and Dietary Fiber are good here too - so a simple diet trick is, four glasses of water with every meal).
Protein is also good when you are lifting, so is an important component in building muscle mass...
People have a very unrealistic expectation from how much muscle they can gain going to the gym. Some can do better than others, but as for me, I have a very slight frame so I have difficulty putting on muscle mass.
My stats after 7 months: https://imgur.com/Pmnmkc8
Two years later, they barely improved: https://imgur.com/P7qGI5n
"Under the best possible circumstances (perfect diet, training, supplementation, and recovery strategies) the average male body can manufacture between 0.25 and 0.5 pounds of dry muscle tissue per week"[1]
For sure SS will get you stronger in an almost magical fashion (I'm currently doing a modified SS program) but expecting to gain 20lbs of muscle in a short period of time is unrealistic.
[1] http://www.t-nation.com/portal_includes/articles/2006/06-154...
Did you see the articles about Zach, one of Mark Rippetoe's trainees? Based on skinfold caliper measurements, he gained 78 lbs in 6 months, 46 lbs of which was lean body mass, and 32 lbs of which was fat: http://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/showthread.php?t...
calipers are just an approximate estimate of someone's body fat percentage, and in this case because of body fat distribution (all the fat is very evenly distributed) they're way off, by as much as 5%
So closer to 25%
If you lost fat and gained muscle, you're doing OK :)
given a calorie surplus.
IMO "the diet that works" can be anything. For some people it actually can be to eat anything they want, but at specific times of the day (and because for instance, they don't actually want to eat that much, it's just a matter of setting limits or not). I don't believe in a diet working for everyone, I think it's complicated, especially as it can affect a lot of other things in your everyday life, and whatever works for someone is fine.
If you are dieting for 3 months and then going back to how you were eating before, you're just losing your time.
I've never been fat so can't comment for that part but when I'm cutting/bulking I eat the same things but in different quantities.
It's not about fighting your body, it's about having discipline.
I like the Scott Adams' approach to discipline: self control, or motivation, is a finite resource. Just like attention span, or muscle endurance. You have to work around it, much as you work around your other limits. Dieting techniques are techniques to work around this limit.
This also means that saying it is about discipline conveys nothing actionable. It's like saying running the marathon is all about muscle endurance. True, but not actionable and thus useless.
Yes. It really gets to me when people say they're going on a diet. There's no such thing as "going on a diet." There is only "changing your diet." If you change your diet for a while, lose weight, and then go back to your previous diet, you will gain the weight back.
Yeah, and giving up heroin, smoking or alcohol are just matter of discipline as well. People are just lazy slobs who can't control themselves why should we ever think about how to help those people if all that is needed is just stop taking heroin/drink alcohol/smoke cigarettes. Oh, and I've never been addicted to cigarettes/alcohol/heroin so I have found that I just need to cut on those for few months if they affect me somehow. It's not about fighting your body, it's a about having discipline.
That's exactly the point; but not in the way you intended.
The whole reason for the lifestyle change is so that you don't need discipline. Forcing yourself to go to the gym against your desire is only going to last so long.
What helps is to realise that "things I enjoy doing" is a flexible category and that by getting good at activities you can move them into that category. This may also mean giving up or doing less of existing hobbies.
I used to play a lot of computer games, now my default activity on a Saturday is to play tennis, go swimming, or climb. There's friends who still structure their free time around gaming, I don't see those friends as much any more because the degree to which we share a hobby has changed.
A lifestyle change is inherently disruptive - almost by definition it will change how you socialise and with whom.
Frequently people want to change their lives without changing who they are (which I understand) but that's inherently a tricky proposition. If old-you was that great, you wouldn't be where you are now.
This is absolutely false.
1) there's of course the obvious cas where you're consuming 5000 kcal/day and burning 2500, and then cut that to 4000 kcal consumed -- still gonna gain, albeit more slowly.
2) less obviously but perhaps more importantly, reducing caloric intake can reduce metabolism (because your body thinks food is more scarce) and therefore also reduce calories out!
3) the types of foods you eat help determine whether your body stores the energy as fat -- which is triggered by insulin. Replacing fat calories with sugar calories (as was done extensively in the late 20th C rush to low fat foods) even if the total caloric intake is slightly lower can actually accelerate weight gain.
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[0] Bacterial ClpB heat-shock protein, an antigen-mimetic of the anorexigenic peptide α-MSH, at the origin of eating disorders http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html
It's surprising to see a causal link between ED and gut flora. Anorexia is, when we adjust for factors, the most fatal mental illness.
Has anyone tested people who have a reliable diagnosis of either anorexia or bulimia? That would seem ethically easy enough. Especially since current treatment sometimes involves detention against the patient's ill in hospital, and forced naso-gastric feeding.
A friend of mine spent one month in solitary confinement as a "treatment" for her anorexia, when she was 14. That was 15 years ago, in France...
The study linked above found cross-reactive antibodies in anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders patients.
The next step would be to attempt fecal transplant for these patients.
From a cursory read, it looks pretty damning to me - I'm not qualified to do a deep dive in the research methodology, but the conclusions look sound.
Finally, we show that plasma levels of anti-ClpB IgG crossreactive with α-MSH are increased in patients with AN, bulimia and [binge eating disorder], and that the [eating disorders] Inventory-2 scores in [eating disorders] patients correlate with anti-ClpB IgG and IgM, which is similar to our previous findings for α-MSH auto-Abs.
Search in text for "Anti-ClpB antibodies in ED patients" for the details.
I'm still trying to work out how many humans were used. It's a frustratingly dense read on mobile.
EDIT: 65 control; 27 anorexia; 14 binge eating disorder.
It's interesting, but I want to see very many more samples taken from women at different hospitals and the community.
... Ctr, n=65, AN, n=27 BN, n=32 and BED, n=14
Crt = controls, AN = anorexia, BN = bulimia, BED = binge eating disorder.
http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/fig_tab/tp201498f4.h...
Add to that the ridiculous habit of shortening "kilocalorie" to "calorie" when talking to humble folk without temptation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie (yeah, the wikipedia article makes it even more ridiculous with its "small"/"large" calorie language, somewhat in the vein of "up goer five").
From the article, it sounds like dietary science in the US is done with imperial units. It was written by an American for a primarily American audience. Americans track their weight in pounds. Those seem like pretty good reasons to not use metric to me.
You lose weight by having a good plan and taking consistent action to follow it. You achieve success the same way.
I honestly believe that the problem with people who work really hard and never achieve success is that they didn't formulate a good plan. You can be the fastest runner in the world but you're never going to win a race if you run in the wrong direction.
It's well proven that raw foods, despite being slightly higher calorie content than their cooked version, contribute significantly less calories because FAR less is digested and absorbed.
And it's equally well proven that weight gain is significantly due to the consumption of processed sugars (most carbohydrates that people eat these days), as they contribute far more sugar far quicker to the blood (and hence kick off an insulin reaction to lower the blood sugar by storing the sugar as fat). 1000 calories of white rice will contribute far more to weight gain than 1000 calories of, say, plain chicken.
So we _know_ that it's not just calories in, calories out. It just seems that way sometimes, because most studies don't really change the fundamental type of food (that is, it's almost assuredly cooked food still, and at least somewhat similar in the processing done (e.g. no candy bar but they're still eating white bread)). Everyone's just repeating the same study over and over, not realizing they weren't fundamentally changing the inputs.
Not to get into a pissing match, but I think "well proven" needs some citation here.
The role of insulin does not bypass thermodynamics.
The efficacy of metabolism is in my opinion very much the big question mark here, and why I think relying on one-size-fits-all concepts like "a carbohydrate translates to 4 kilocalories" is simplistic and in all likelihood flawed.
I do not doubt this, but is there any evidence that these variances are significant? Treating human bodies as 100% efficient food to energy converters is useful for practical reasoning about weight loss; unless these factors are significant, focusing on macronutrients, genetics, or the "hormonal situation" is just getting lost in the weeds.
It just has to do with the way the body deals with sugar. Sugar produced from the digestive process goes straight to your bloodstream as glucose if your body needs it, but if you already have enough ... it is sent to your liver where it is converted to glycogen. The rub is, your liver can only store so much glycogen (about 100mg of it I think), after that ... any sugar that hits your liver is converted to straight fat.
First, we do know that simple sugars lead to insulin spikes, that's measurable and repeatable. All carbohydrates (save cellulose) are processed into the monosaccharide glucose at some point.
And the finite amount of glycogen the liver can store probably also could use some attribution or citation. I haven't heard of that and I'm always very leery about these hard-and-fast #s in terms of measurements that kick off some process that we should expect in all humans.
Dietary fat does not have any effect on insulin, btw.
> Even protein spikes insulin
Can you explain this mechanism? From my research, this is a demand-driven process via gluconeogenesis. The effect on blood sugar is so minimal here as to suggest that insulin secretion is nominal at best.
If you were thinking of substituting fructose for glucose in your diet, to get a lower insulin response, reconsider.
you can store 100g of glycogen or even more, depending on how low you are at the moment and how big your muscles are
This is why nutritional ketosis is driven primarily by hepatic glyocgen depletion.
Many cyclical ketogenic diets use this hack to replete glycogen in their muscle tissue (in the form of a once per week carb refeed) in order to fuel glycolytic workouts during the week. While it's hard to completely avoid filling your hepatic glycogen stores during the refeed, they can be burned through pretty quickly by the brain in the course of a day or two provided you restrict dietary carbohydrate to < 20g/day. It's also worth noting that glycogen repletion is generally preferential to muscle tissue first, then the liver second.
There goes my plan to weigh the tomato and multiply by the c^2.