The 3 variables to weight loss/gain

(Bill C) #182

Of course, which is why I qualified it.

("Don't call it calories, call it food") #183

Hey! A couple thoughts and I am saying this in a kind voice so I am going to put lots of smiley faces in because I have learned that my written reaponses can be misinterpreted… :slight_smile:

  1. First is a question… Given the definition of a calorie, can you explain why the theory of calories in and calories out actually makes any intuitive/logical sense? I’ve long thought that any connection between calories and weight gain / loss must be completely coincidental. Our bodies are amazing, but they don’t have little men inside them burning fires. Now, it could be that my understanding of the definition of a calorie is outdated, but frankly it seems completely and utterly disconnected from any sort of biologically-based reality. Perhaps there is an explanation that you can offer as to why our scientific construct “calorie” makes logical sense. I think you’ve been offered a few thoughts that demonstrate why most of us don’t think it makes sense :slight_smile:

  2. When people agree with you that calories do matter, I halfway agree with them. I would rephrase the contention: “amount of food matters” and qualify it with the statement that macro breakdown matters as much as amount.

  3. Just a thought that your sources for your citations and support are not particularly winsome… I realize that probably sounds harsh, but I am saying it because I think you might enjoy reading published studies on PubMed or other similar types of articles. :slight_smile:

(Bill C) #184

I think we have to first agree whether a calorie has any meaning. Can we agree that it means it is a unit that is used to measure energy? Then we have to decide whether we believe that 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat and it’s estimated that you need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose that 1 pound of fat. Can we agree on these things? So if we are say 10 pounds overweight we need to burn roughly 35,000 calories in excess of what we are consuming. As I have said multiple times, every body is different but this gives us a rough estimate as to how many calories we must net burn to lose the 10 pounds. If this doesn’t make sense, please tell me how you estimate what you need to burn to lose 10 pounds?

It seems several of you are trying to make this an exact science, when I will be the first to concede, and have said many times, it is not, but it is the most accurate one can hope to attain. Sure, certain foods will process at different rates in our bodies, with each body bringing its own variables, but I think we can agree that food puts calories in the body and metabolism and activity will use up those calories.

When you say my sources are not “winsome” I have cited The Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and Stanford, so I’m not sure how you define winsome.

I also think this topic has garned a very disproportionate degree of attention. I keep hearing how CICO is wrong but as of yet I have not heard a better alternative from anyone.

I’m just trying to reach my weight loss goals and for some strange reason by measuring everything I am eating and everything I am burning I seem to be largely on target.

(Nathan Toben) #185

All arguments aside, what you are doing is working.

The reduction in stress as a result of not having to track calories probably has a caloric effect :).

The exactitude that goes along with keeping a closer eye on metrics probably has a thermogenic effect :).

My point is, after reading this thread in its entirety, despite what we WANT this thread to be about (to CICO or not to CICO), the ultimate and penultimate throughlines are illustrations of the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of linguistics and semantics when applied to self-appraisal and peer review.

(Empress of the Unexpected) #186

Sorry, but from a female point of view - you are way too skinny. My 65 year old ex husband does marathons - he is way too thin. Women like a bit of meat. Just sayin…

(Consensus is Politics) #187

Last post? Litterly the last one quoting me about Thermodynamics?

Well, you did ‘swear’ in it.

:roll_eyes:

(Consensus is Politics) #188

:thinking:

So, then my stall, might be a biological response. Keeping me in the gene pool zone?

I kinda like that idea :cowboy_hat_face:

“No, my weight loss stopped at this point because this is the point where it thinks a majority of females will think that I’m the most attractive”

That would be a typical evolutionar… Nah, I’m just stuck.

("Don't call it calories, call it food") #189

Hi Bill!

So I think you’ve hit the nail on the head –

I think this is where I disagree with you (in the context of human nutrition).

But, before I say why, I think it might be helpful for me to say: You don’t know me, so you probably don’t know that it is very very unusual for me to engage in debate. :slight_smile: But I am interested in this topic - and I don’t actually care emotionally whether CICO works or not. I think it would be great if it did, and perhaps it does - I am not sufficiently informed about the minutiae of the human body to be an expert. For me, this debate is not actually about Keto, though I will get to keto in a minute. And, I am perfectly happy to be proved wrong, which is hard to determine from a written tone. But, I doubted the logic of CICO long before I came to keto… and here is why:

You point out the generally agreed upon presumption that a calorie is a measure of energy. In a way, yes I agree with you. It is a measure of how much food you need to burn in a fire to raise the temperature of water 1 degree C. This is certainly a measure of “energy.” But what this has to do with how our body uses food is beyond me - I cannot see how anyone could have made the jump from thermal output to food energy… (I mean, I can see because the steps are apparent, but it makes no logical sense).*

I think what lots of us have come to believe (and, again, I am happy to be shown that I am wrong), is that, like you say, this is not an exact science. The combination of hormones, digestive systems and, as @Nathan_Toben alluded to, the HPA axis, determine how much energy you can a) use from your food and b) store from your food. I liken it to a Rube Goldberg machine. If even one part is out of place, the balls back up, or fall on the ground, or whatever.

For me - my out-of-place part was my HPA axis for years. With proper treatment of my adrenals, and later my thyroid, I had some loss of weight. Then - I had digestive issues due to lack of sufficient bile production.

Wait, you say, but those are not issues that “normal” people deal with, and we are talking about the idea of a calorie. And, Emma (that’s me), you even stated in your sentence “how much energy we can store/use from food,” which implies that there is energy in food - in other words, a calorie!! :slight_smile: Yes, there is energy in food - I just don’t think the “calorie” is the correct way to measure this energy… And, yes, it is correct that I am talking about malfunctioning systems, but I think that my bodily system, and the systems of many people here, demonstrate the truth of the idea that calories are not an accurate measure of the nutritional energy in food. If a calorie was a calorie was a calorie, and we could accurately determine the measure of energy in food by burning it, then it wouldn’t matter how healthy our various hormonal, endocrine, digestive and para-sympathetic nervous systems were. That is basic assumption of a calorie - that the energy available in a food is pre-determined and completely divorced from the biological processes inherent in a human body… I think we can see through many examples that people can put on weight by eating a caloric deficit (case in point: me with thyroid problems), and lose weight eating at a caloric surplus (case in point: many people on this forum).

I think many of us are doing the opposite of making this an exact science - we are pointing out that the human body is so complex that we cannot reduce it to a mathematical equation (calories in/calories out). I think you would agree with the complexity part.

You ask how we estimate what we need to burn ten pounds - and my answer is: “no” (this is me attempting to be funny, which my husband will tell you is always a disaster). I think the question is rather: how do we eat in a way that works in harmony with our bodily systems, and therefore heals these systems and/or does not trigger the systems that store fat? The answer that many of us have stumbled upon is keto (and lots of us on here are happy to admit that other people have found other ways to do this). Keto makes intuitive sense given the hormonal systems that govern fat storage and fat burning. Keto has been demonstrated to work for many of us here - I have lost almost 20 pounds eating quite large quantities of food.

A slight side-track (and I am sorry for the long-winded post). I think keto works because we end up setting up our body to basically function primarily on fat, and it is easy to see/understand/intuit/measure/feel how much fat you are eating - satiety signals work, tracking works (!), because we really are (for the most part) just increasing or decreasing fat when we adjust our energy input… And, in a keto body that has healthy systems, fat = energy available (though how to measure that, I could not say - I actually presume that there really is no real way to measure energy in food).**

How do we lose weight then? Learn our own bodies - heal them - listen to our hunger cues. Trust the complexity of the machine… Now we see but dimly.

Lastly - I am enjoying this debate! This topic has garnered lots of attention because I think that lots of us have spent years and years thinking about this. Many of us have been overweight and have spent hours tracking calories. Many of us have bemoaned our willpower, assuming that we weren’t losing weight because we just weren’t cutting back enough. And, like me, many of us have wondered in the back corner of our brain why there is any connection between burning food and eating it. Thus, we enjoy discussing it. I think most of us mean it when we say that it doesn’t bother us if anyone believes in CICO (it certainly doesn’t bother me!). And, as @Nathan_Toben and you both said, its working for you, so great! :slight_smile: I think that is wonderful.

I still like this conversation that you opened up though :slight_smile:

*Footnote: I could talk for hours (and bore you probably!) about why we need to marry logic/common sense with scientific assertions… For example, women were told for decades not to run because their uteruses would fall out. And we all know that a whole generation was told to smoke cigarettes to help their lung problems (my mother being one of them). A healthy dose of logic/common sense might have prevented people believing these things! :slight_smile:

** Do I think that theoretically it may be possible to determine an ideal measurement of energy in food - yes, maybe (though I doubt it), but it would have to take into account so many moving parts that I don’t know how we could ever make it accurate enough to be helpful.

(Bill C) #190

It’s not a matter of being too skinny or not. It is a matter of being in good health. Our society as a whole is terribly overweight to the point that we have come to accept obesity as the norm. It shouldn’t be. As we age, most of us seem to be content to be overweight. We don’t have to be.

(Consensus is Politics) #191

I can’t hit the like button one this enough times!

:cowboy_hat_face::cowboy_hat_face::cowboy_hat_face::cowboy_hat_face::cowboy_hat_face:
:clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

(Consensus is Politics) #192

About a month before I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes I had come to the conclusion that fat came with age, and it was just catching up with me.

In my search to rid myself of diabetes I rediscovered keto. After that I began to learn a lot more about insulin, et al.

(TJ Borden) #193

:joy::joy: I suppose. As you just did :joy::joy:

(Bill C) #194

Bottom line: keto works better for many in managing their weight. That is really all that matters. I have used keto successfully as well. There are many ways to skin a cat.

In originally stating in the OP that CICO was important I had no idea some would have such strong feelings about it. But, as I said, when weight has been so pivotal in some lives it stirs great emotions. The original OP was never intended to dispute what others have found works for them. It was intended to lay out a framework I was to follow in attempting to reach my goals, not to call into question others’ beliefs.

(Consensus is Politics) #195

:cold_sweat:
Don’t flag me brah!

#196

So: fat people don’t want to count calories because they want leeway to eat what they want and when they want; whereas those of us who want to get into excellent shape…

This sounds incredibly insulting to most people. Do you see the connection between this and the flak you’re getting on this thread?

(Consensus is Politics) #197

I do have a problem with the notion that restricting calories doesn’t work. Of course it CAN… you might have to restrict them to the point of fasting to make a difference. But by definition a fast is a restriction of calories.

But I do take offense when people try to make the argument about thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics are for a CLOSED SYSTEM. Not for something as dynamic as a human body. Science is science. It’s not open to consensus. A scientist that cherry picks his data to prove he is right should be called out as such, like Ansel Keyes, ozone hole nuts, and global warming theorists. They all have the same thing is common. Don’t even acknowledge the data that disproves them. Even if it’s in their own data collected. (Keyes left out data from other countries that showed low heart disease in countries that ate high fat, global warming theorists claim sea levels are rising, and even include numbers to prove it. Yet, the mud flats of the San Francisco Bay are still there, and the ozone hole is seasonal, not to mention volcanos spew forth more CFCs than mankind has created. I’m not saying any three of these studies were wrong. But all three are guilty of omission of data.

/off soapbox

(Bill C) #198

Just to show you how variable data collecting can be, I use One by 1. So, on Monday I weigh myself as soon as I get up, 184.6. I swim, 182. Then have lunch. Use the Precor a bit later, 179.6. That is a 5 lb swing in water weight in a single day.

Yesterday I weigh myself as soon as I get up, 184.4. I swim, 182.6. Then have lunch. Use the Precor a bit later, 183. No variation from the previous day, not even diet, yet one day doing the exact same workout I drop 5 lbs, the next 1.4 lbs. I think this is why so many people abandon a strict CICO approach, throwing up their hands saying it simply doesn’t work. And, of course, the larger the person, the greater the variation, so I understand fully how one would choose to abandon this approach.

But I maintain, over the long haul, it works. Not precisely all the time, but it works.

(Edith) #199

I have some thoughts and maybe some questions to ponder as I ramble on through this post:

Different ways of dieting result in fat loss, but some dieting methods also result in the loss of lean muscle. The idea of a well formed diet is to lose the fat, but keep the muscle.

Just restricting calories and doing lots of aerobic exercise, if I can recall correctly, can result in loss of fat but also loss of lean muscle mass, but keto and fasting maintain lean muscle.

It seems to me, that starving oneself and doing massive amounts of aerobic exercise to lose weight quickly is also going to result in lower LBM. That does ultimately result in lower metabolism over time due to less energy burning muscle, therefore needing less energy input/calories.

Okay, maybe no questions, just rambling thoughts to ponder.

(Consensus is Politics) #200

I beleive you are right about that, but I would argue (because I had been there myself) that those that are restricting calories usually restric the carbs and fat calories before restricting protein, to prevent the very thing you mentioned. But that’s those of them that know they will lose muscle mass, if not maintaining enough protein.

One of the most eye opening things I saw was data on how many calories are burned on a day you do exercise compared to a day you don’t do exercise. It’s been a while, so forgive me for not having the link to it, but the total calories burned difference was about 5%. I was sure I must have been wrong. I would have expected almost 10 times that much. Of course, the amount depends on just how much exercise you actually do. The example I saw was a basic 2 hour routine to keep fit. Like I used to do back in the late 80’s with my Nautilus membership everyday :sunglasses: (c’mon, don’t judge, it was the 1980’s. Corvette sunglasses, members only leather jacket, and a ZZtop bandana, and a RX-7. I even had a perm on the hair above my forehead) and people say the 60’s were bad​:roll_eyes:

(Edith) #201

We must be the same age. :grinning: