Check out my comment I made at KetoCon2019

science

(Cristian Lopez) #1

Fast forward to 16:49 were I answered the trivia question, “How many calories in a ketone”
https://www.ketocon.org/videos/ketocon-2019/vanessa-spina-ketogenesis-our-most-natural-state/

We are commonly taught about 3 macro nutrients:
-proteins 4 cal
-carbs 4 cal
-fats 9 cal
But actually I believe there are in fact 5.
-alcohol 7 cal
-ketones/ or beta-Hydroxybutyric acid 7 cal


Stokies and CICO die/blow hards
A Calorie is Not A Calorie - A Discussion of Thermodynamics
(Karen) #2

I love getting a fact for the day! That’s fantastic


(Bunny) #3

Interesting!

Calories/Units of Energy:

• Alcohol 7 units of energy.

• A Ketone Body 7 units of energy.

• Fat 9 units of energy. (including endogenous body parts; catabolism)

• Protein 4 units of energy. (including endogenous body parts; catabolism)

• Carbohydrates 4 units of energy (including endogenous body parts; catabolism; glucose; Gluconeogenesis GNG dependent internal organs)

• 1 Pound Of Body Fat 3,500 units of energy.

• Muscle Glycogen between 1,400 and 1,800 units of energy. (approximately 350g)

• Liver Glycogen is, around 320-400 units of energy. (approximately 80-100g)

TOTAL (Cumulative Sum ±): ____________. (grams/pounds/energy units)

References:

[1] ”…Because 3,500 calories* equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, it’s estimated that you need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound. So, in general, if you cut about 500 to 1,000 calories a day from your typical diet, you’d lose about 1 to 2 pounds a week. …” …Mayo Clinic

[2] Muscle glycogen in the body is approximately 350g, or between 1,400 and 1,800 calories. Liver glycogen is approximately 80-100g, around 320-400 calories. Therefore the body can store up to approximately 2200 calories in glycogen and as few as 1700. This will typically vary depending on your size. …” …More

[3] When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go? “Keeping the weight off simply requires that you put less back in by eating than you’ve exhaled by breathing,” state the authors.

image link


(bulkbiker) #4

Is that exogenous or does it “take” seven units of energy to produce an endogenous ketone body?

Is that where weight loss comes from … extra energy utilised creating ketone bodies…?


(Bob M) #5

Except this is complete garbage. It’s a gross estimate, and studies cannot and do not show this to be correct. Why? Because you lower calories, your body lowers energy output. You raise calories, your body raises energy output. I see studies all the time where they measure calories and the amount of fat lost (or gained) has no relationship at all with the change in calories, and furthermore it’s very person specific. For instance, you overfeed people. Some will gain no weight, others will gain some, but none of them (save by random chance) will have fat gain corresponding to the amount of extra calories they are eating.


(Bunny) #6

Good question, I wonder that myself;

We have electrical (thermal), chemical, and mechanical things going on all at once?

On the molecular level mitochondria containing tissue like the liver would have to expend more energy when fatty acids are released to be turned into a ketone or byproduct of fatty acid oxidation or reabsorbed (back into the fat cell: re-esterification of fatty acids) if not burned and then reuse the ketones for fuel?

It takes way more energy to burn fat for energy but it is long lived, glucose has the half life but a higher peaking source of energy than protein and protein cannot out-do fat; it is a long enduring continuum of energy with no hikes or peaks and you won’t bonk.

On the Atomic level;

Scientists say burned fat isn’t converted into energy — here’s where it goes

Most of us have been told when someone loses weight, their fat is “burned off” or turns into energy. But two experts say what we think we know about fat loss is completely wrong. Writing a followup piece in The Conversation last week to their 2014 study about losing fat, assistant scientists Ruben Meerman and Andrew Brown of the University of New South Wales, said fat is converted to carbon dioxide and water, which we either exhale, urinate or sweat out.

Speaking with Global News, Meerman says when we exhale carbon atoms, they have to come from a source.

“They come from your most recent meal, but if you stop eating, they come from fat. If you put less carbon atoms back into your body than you exhale, you lose weight. If you put in more, you gain weight,” he says via email.

READ MORE: This is what crash diets do to your body — and there are healthier ways to lose weight, anyway

He says he decided to do a followup on his older study because the topic is still causing confusion among professionals and consumers.

He adds health professionals (his research surveyed 150 doctors, dietitians and personal trainers), still have the mindset that fat is converted into energy. In his 2014 research, only three survey respondents gave the right answer, he adds.

“I am still working on how we can improve this gap in the health literacy of students at every level of the education system,” he says. “I’m currently working on a community health education/literacy project will all the residents of a medium-sized community… that their bodies are made of the atoms that they ate, and that they exhale all of the carbon atoms in macronutrients.”

But registered dietitian Desiree Nielsen of Vancouver says while this study is a clever way to look at human biochemistry, fat can still create energy.

“When our fat cells release lipids, they are in fact used to create energy in the body,” she tells Global News. “So while yes, it is true that fat doesn’t transform into energy… it is the transformation of fat into carbon dioxide that creates energy.” …More

Footnotes:

[1] “…I am assuming “moving more” is more about breathing as each human breath contains 33 mg. CO2 with 8.9 mg comprised of carbon output.

Each calorie: carbohydrates (sugar; is almost like charcoal), fat and protein contains 2 carbon atoms or may even contain up to 4 for output?[5][6]

Hard for some to swallow but the human body can be in several different states simultaneously or more of one and not enough of the other; chemical, mechanical or thermal but notice it says “Majority?” It does not say ‘all of the weight loss occurs this way’ ??? …” - Bunny


(Bunny) #7

That’s because they have more muscle than body fat.

The more you move mimics caloric restriction. If you have the muscle and endurance to move it?

On the contrary the information being gathered is correct even if not to our liking, we just don’t know the exact minor details to explain it yet.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

Not really. You will notice that fat is typically considered to yield 9 calories per gram (actually, depending on the fatty acid in question, the caloric yield ranges from six-point-something to over nine), whereas ketone bodies yield 7 cal/g. The missing two calories were yielded up in the production process, since ketone bodies are partially metabolised fatty acids.

My understanding is that there is an energetic cost to getting the metabolic reactions started (though less than might appear—this is what catalysts are for), but that the caloric yields are not the same thing as the energy yield from the metabolism of the macronutrients. The calorie figures were derived from burning foods in bomb calorimeters, whereas the metabolic yield should really be calculated on the basis of the net quantity of ATP produced.

In any case, the loss occurs when the water and carbon dioxide, which are the end-products of the process of metabolism, are exhaled.


(Bunny) #9

Ah yes forgot about that, good point! :+1:


(bulkbiker) #10

Yes but … if we aren’t ingesting ketones… unlike protein, fat and carbs then they must come from somewhere… hence if the body is making them then the calories that they contain must come from somewhere…? Either ingested foods or fat stores?
We don;t eat ketones (well most of us wouldn’t anyways).


(Doug) #11

Nice going, Cristian. :clap:

Hey, you’re not drinkin,’ right? Can I have your share? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:


(Doug) #12

Bob, it’s really not. That “energy in matter for humans” figure comes comes from the maximum possible (like by oxidation, for example), which is then corrected for how digestible it is for us, and for how much of the energy is actually available for us. What’s the alternative - that we throw up our hands and yell, "It’s all just magic!"?

If we can agree on a gram of fat having ~9 calories, then surely we can agree on a different weight measure of it (a pound, in this case), no? What you describe certainly happens, but you are going the other way - looking at the effect of food on different people and in different situations. Our stored fat is already in there, and to lose that pound of body fat, we need to have the body take it out of storage and metabolize it, and it’s pure triglycerides; it’s all usable - there really isn’t much mystery about the energy content. (Sadly, if anything I’d say the pound of body fat has a few more calories than 3500, due to the 100% availability.)


(bulkbiker) #13

But you are making the same mistake that all CICO-paths make…

That a pound of body fat which is weight has a “calorific” value that is the same as a pound of dietary fat… ?

Has anyone ever burned a pound of body fat in a bomb calorimeter to see how many calories it contains?

Edit to add calories are a unit of energy… I don’t weigh myself in calories just like I don’t eat them… I eat food and weigh in pounds.


(Bunny) #14

I was thinking about this more and I was reading about ATP Synthase and ‘Proton Leaks’ (somewhere); that not all ____ goes through ATP synthase. I want to look at this more.

References:

[1] “…However, protons can migrate to the matrix independent of ATP synthase , a process known as “ proton leak ”. Proton leak can also be defined as the dissipation of ΔP in the presence of ATP synthase inhibitor Oligomycin in both isolated mitochondria and intact cells. …” …More

[2] Mitochondrial proton and electron leaks: “…This coupling of ATP synthesis and substrate oxidation is not complete, as protons can return to the matrix independently of ATP synthase. …” …More

[3] “…Mitochondria couple respiration to ATP synthesis through an electrochemical proton gradient. Proton leak across the inner membrane allows adjustment of the coupling efficiency. The aim of this review is threefold: 1) introduce the unfamiliar reader to proton leak and its physiological significance, 2) review the role and regulation of uncoupling proteins, and 3) outline the prospects of proton leak as an avenue to treat obesity, diabetes, and age-related disease. …” …More

[4] Contribution of proton leak to oxygen consumption in skeletal muscle during intense exercise is very low despite large contribution at rest

[5] Mitochondrial Proton Leak Compensates for Reduced Oxidative Power during Frequent Hypothermic Events in a Protoendothermic Mammal, Echinops telfairi

[6] Active proton leak in mitochondria: A new way to regulate substrate oxidation

[7] Mitochondrial F-ATP Synthase and Its Transition into an Energy-Dissipating Molecular Machine

[8] Scientists discover that cells contain mitochondria specialized to build fats

[9] Your mitochondria are what you eat: a high‐fat or a high‐sucrose diet eliminates metabolic flexibility in isolated mitochondria from rat skeletal muscle


(Doug) #15

:smile: That’s a good one, Mark.

I think CICO gets a bad rap - it’s saying “Take in less than you expend if you want to lose weight.” Then - as Bob refers to, above -

So people start looking daggers at CICO, but CICO says, “Well good grief - you didn’t do the program…”

No, did not say that, and I specifically mentioned that there’s a difference between the digestibility and availability of things. In practice, the pound of body fat will have more available calories than a pound of dietary fat (barring some very substantial difference in caloric density - I’m not even sure that’s possible); the body fat is all available to us. Aside from this consideration, we are still just talking about different weights - if we can agree that a gram of fat has ~9 calories, then why would we disagree about a pound of fat?

Not that I know of. However, I think the poor old ‘bomb calorimeter’ also frequently is the object of scorn and derision, while it’s actually very accurate.

It is not that people simply take the bomb calorimeter figures and declare that a given substance has X amount of calories in it for humans. Digestibility and availability are also taken into consideration (they were thinking about this stuff more than a hundred years ago) - this goes back to Wilbur Atwater and the ‘Atwater System’ which is still largely in use today. It’s not perfect, but It’s pretty darn good.

If anything, in practice foods will often have more calories that what is claimed. The current incentive for food producers to understate things is obvious, and the same for restaurants, probably compounded by human error:

That doesn’t affect what we’re talking about here - it all goes to ATP, etc., as Paul mentioned, above. We eat something - we use it, store it or excrete it, nothing else goes on and there’s no ‘magic’ involved - we’re still only talking about molecules, atoms and their location and energy state.

Sure, weight and energy are not “the same,” per se. But if we want to lose that pound of body weight, there needs to be an inducement for the body to require the energy it will get from it, and to take it out of storage.

You eat food, sure, but as it relates to body weight it almost entirely comes down to just a few elements - carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. When we’re talking about body fat or dietary fat or carbohydrates, that’s all there is. Protein is ~1/6 nitrogen but nitrogen is not involved in ATP production like C, H, and O are.


(bulkbiker) #16

Yes indeed but there is zero evidence that reducing what I eat by a notional 500 “calories” daily over a week will mean I lose a pound of body fat… and if any of these mathematical equations work (which of course they don’t because its far more complicated) then that has to be the case or the hypothesis is false and you have your black swan.

This is exactly why “calories” is rubbish…


(Doug) #17

Paul, could there be a density difference between fat and ketones, there? I looked around the internet and can’t find any density figures for ketones. :neutral_face: I’m wondering if 1 gram of body fat means 1 gram of ketones after it’s broken down - it would alter things if it’s not so. Never thought about this before - it just seems like losing 2 out of 9 calories is awfully inefficient, while most times our bodies are disappointingly efficient, from a weight-loss point of view, when it comes to using energy and avoiding starvation - that old evolutionary ‘fear’ our bodies have, if anything.

Yes - there will be some amount of ‘loss’ every step of the way (but I fear it’s not much at all :slightly_frowning_face::wink:).

ATP is amazing - if we’re just a little bit active, we recycle all the ATP in our bodies about every 2 minutes, and we can go through our body weight of it in one day.


(Bunny) #18

But also you forget how much your moving, you have to exhale a certain number of times for that to occur? If your a certain number of breaths behind which could be in the thousands then you may not see the results.

Variations in physical activity is key and muscle volume to adipose ratio is crucial.

All the nay sayers about CICO simply have not explored it deep enough and simply don’t understand what they are looking at.

You can only eat as much; as much as the amount your mitochondria you have to work with and type of mitochondria ect.


A Calorie is Not A Calorie - A Discussion of Thermodynamics
(Doug) #19

But nobody is claiming that. Granted that there are hormonal issues, metabolic differences between people, etc. - this forum is chock-full of this stuff. I totally agree that before the fact there is no way to necessarily predict what will happen to body weight for a given person - we don’t have sufficient information.

There are calorimeters large enough to have a person inside them - this is the best way to find one’s metabolic rate. (Indirect calorimetry is cheaper and usually faster, but it’s not as good.)

If we take your metabolic rate and find that you have been taking in ~500 calories less per day than what you expended, then you will lose close to a pound of body fat in a week. This is after the fact, not before. A big difference because now we know that the caloric deficit actually occurred. In practice it can be affected by the amount of non-fat tissue consumed by the body, but the principle is the same - there is an overall energy balance that is always at work, and there is no way to get around that fact.

The equations always work - we are talking about physical reality, those ‘laws of the universe’ which on our Newtonian world we have no rational reason to doubt. We’re not talking about nuclear reactions where matter and energy are somewhat interchangeable. The laws of conservation of mass and energy apply.

What’s “rubbish” is to deny the premise. Again, we’re really just talking about carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. If enough of those go out, versus coming in, then weight will be lost. It’s ‘magical thinking’ to suggest otherwise.

‘CICO’ in effect says, “Do this and you will lose weight.”

Person (does not follow the instructions yet says), “You’re wrong, CICO!”

The logical disconnect is obvious.


(Doug) #20

So much of this type of discussion is aimed at losing body fat. We want to lose body fat - if there are reasons why we can’t access it, like high insulin, then we need to address them. Once that’s taken care of, there still needs to be a reason for the body to use that fat…