Posted on 09/04/2014 8:16:11 AM PDT by detective
Exactly. Same amount of calories taken in -- but from different sources, so different outcome in caloric burn -- lean and vital when the calories burned come from one kind of food, weak and pudgy when they come from another kind of food.
It is true -- someone who is fat quite simply is ingesting more calories than he/she is using up. That is simple and that is TRUE.
Sure, if you burn more calories than you eat, you're going to lose weight. But that is not a daily model for living and never will be, carefully balancing calories in versus calories the same as balancing a checkbook. Efficient use of calories is crucial; calories may be "the same" in burn calculations, but they are as different in the real results as the food sources they represent in terms of nutrition.
Straight "calories-in-calories-out" computations are a deeply flawed way to loose weight. You have to RESPECT that the body is a biological machine in which the TYPE of calories in dramatically effect the QUALITY and RESULTS of calories burned via exercise.
“If you consume 1000 per day and you burn 1100 per day from whatever source, you can’t maintain your weight.”
If you consume 1300 calories a day and burn 1100 and poop out an extra 400, what will your weight do?
If you are satisfied on 1100 calories a day of protein, fat and some carbs, are you better off weight-wise than if you need to take in 1800 calories to be satisfied? How long with you stick with an eating plan that leaves you constantly craving more food?
BTW - last night’s meal was a meat-rich chili. So far to day, as of 3 PM, I’ve had coffee and an 8 oz glass of whole milk, and I’m doing fine. But when I ate cereal for breakfast, or had bagels, I was hungry by noon and starting to get a headache. Which way of eating - and I prefer not to call it a diet - will help me control my weight?
You should probably spend more time with people who actually studied human nutrition, and who are doing the research that says you're wrong. There are a lot of them, and their conclusions come from sound scientific research, not the self reported calorie studies used by charlatans to sell diet advice and supplements.
Let me know when you come up with evidence that repudiates the first law of thermodynamics. I'll be waiting. In the meantime, be sure and let Michael Phelps know, along with all the other athletes out there, that they are unhealthy and in danger of becoming obese if they don't get off the carbohydrates. Let them know that ketosis is the better option for their energy needs.
Common sense, where art thou?
I lived in Estonia for three years. Arriving at a U.S. airport made me want to gouge my eyes out.
Comparison of Weight Loss Among Named Diet Programs in Overweight and Obese Adults A Meta-analysis
The study referenced by the NYT's was a small study, but one that looked at the issue in a unique way. Unfortunately, they didn't follow it through to an end where they could determine if low carb dieters experienced fewer heart attacks. Maybe future research will pick up where they left off. This debate has been ongoing for a long time and there are lots of studies showing that low carb diets work better, but there are an equal number showing that low fat diets work better. I think people should stick with whatever works rather than arguing over which one is better.
Oh, good grief. This is such nonsense. The human body is very greedy when it comes to calories and it does a good job of absorbing them regardless of what you poop.
but it may well be as much muscle loss as fat.
No, that's not how your body works. Your body burns fat before going to muscle, and then to organs, for energy.
Humans are not machines.
The human body is a machine that runs on the food you eat. Those different macronutrients (fat, protein, carbs) can influence how much you eat or how quickly you become satiated, but people get fat for one reason, and that reason is consuming more energy than you expend. Period.
You go on believing the nonsense you are shoving. The US Government agrees with you...and doing what the US government says to do has caused an epidemic of fat people.
But the body doesn’t always burn fat first, as many dieters can attest. And the body is not 100% efficient at processing food. And the human body is not a machine, and anyone saying otherwise is biologically stupid.
Common sense, where art thou?
Did you have red herring for dinner? When and if Michael Phelps stops working out and becomes a couch potato, then yes, he should probably cut way back on carbs. The idea of a weight loss diet is to lose weight. I wasn't under the impression that Michael needed to lose weight. In fact, he might need the carbs for energy. And he certainly doesn't need to go into ketosis to supply his energy needs. Ketosis is to lose weight, and then to come out of it by gradually eating more carbs. When a person starts gaining weight again, they should cut back just a bit on the carbs to find their ideal carb intake. Exercise is always encouraged. A Michael Phelps is not comparable to your average person who simply needs to lose weight, although he does show that a very active person can eat just about anything they want. Unfortunately, we can't all be a Michael Phelps.
The NYT article touched on improved heart health for those on low-carb diets. Do some searching and you will see lots of other studies saying the same thing...
P.S. The first law of thermodynamics be damned. It's a simpleton's way of discussing human nutrition and losing weight. When losing weight, a calorie is not a calorie. It's just the way it is...
but fundamentally, it *IS* like gas- you can't keep driving if you don't put gas in the car. It's true that as you get near an optimum body weight or even lower the body becomes much more efficient, but I can't believe the level of basic scientific ignorance amongst some posters; you simply cannot gain or maintain weight if you burn off more calories than you eat; no more possible than floating away because you don't believe in gravity or violating basic physics any other way. It is possible to eat very little and hardly lose weight, but if you eat less than you burn your body will burn whatever it can, starting with carbs in the blood, going to fat and then catabolizing muscle.
You're welcome! Yes, I think I ran into the tag team already. I agree...
Go ahead and post the Krebs cycle, post beta oxidation of fat, post the deamination of amino acids. Are you an engineer? Before today, I had never seen a post by mase. I have raised lots of livestock kept track of feed efficiency, and done experiments using pigs, horses, cattle, and rodents. This is part of what I have been doing for several decades. Please post your metabolic pathways and inform us all. As an engineer do you follow the advice of the lay press or professional journals?
A few years ago I spotted a photograph of American G.I.’s purportedly taken right after they were freed from a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
The website displayed the photo as evidence of the starvation conditions under which the GI’s were held captive.
I could not believe my eyes, because the GI’s in the photo looked pretty trim and fit—nothing like people who suffered deprivation at all.
My only guess is that the normal sized men in the photo appeared to the person who posted the photo as if they were starved half to death, when in fact they seemed perfectly normal to me.
The only thing you have done for “several decades” is to fool yourself into thinking you are an authority on anything.””
Wow, even resorted to name calling. An engineer huh?
People are getting fatter from my observations.
I attend a lot of parent events at the school and I’m in the store a few times a week and I’ve noticed that people are fatter. When I go to the scouting events, I’m the smallest adults in the room and I’m a 180lb 6ft male.
They eat crappy, carbo loaded, “low fat” food, jam themselves into “yoga pants” and head off to Starbucks for a 800 calorie drink. Then they “exercise”.
> Really? What about the “we” who say, “I’ll pass on all the carbs and eat smart instead”?
Obese people are obese because of bad eating choices. No one is forcing them to make those choices. <
I agree with you that passing up the carbs is key. However, until the medical community quits beating the “low calorie, low fat” drum, we are going to see a high percentage of obese people. Americans eat more sugar today than they ever have. Registered dietitians tell diabetes patients to “eat healthy whole grains”, despite the physiological fact that grain products make even a healthy individual’s blood sugar rise.
As you know, cutting out processed starches acts as a natural appetite suppressant, so when you eat moderate protein, higher fat and get your carbohydrates from green vegetables, you do indeed end up losing weight. Now, if the medical professionals would quit spreading disinformation, perhaps the obese could actually make informed choices.
A good friend of mine has gone from 316 to 270 since April, just by eliminating starches from his diet.
Oooops! Here comes a major roadblock in the quest for higher wages for fast food workers- AUTOMATION.
http://www.businessinsider.com/momentum-machines-burger-robot-2014-8
Price yourself out of the labor market at your own risk.
Limited skills = limited value.
>It seems that every dieter who tries to lose weigh, but can’t, believes they have some special kind of physiology that defies science. That’s when they find their way to charlatans like Taubes who tell them what they want to hear....It’s not your fault.....then they come to forums like this to tell us all that it is a scientific fact that the first law of thermodynamics applies to everything on earth but them......because they can’t lose weight, and it’s not their fault.<
I’m not sure what this last statement has to do with the fact that eliminating processed starches from one’s diet can and does indeed allow a large percentage of people to shed pounds, when they have failed to do so by simple reduction of calories (made up from the standard American diet).
There is a fairly good-sized (pun intended) percentage of Freepers who have lost a lot of weight and who have kept it off simply by eating a diet that includes animal fats, moderate protein, green, low-carbohydrate veggies and by eliminating processed starches, grains and white potatoes from their plates.
By adopting such a diet, people do find their appetite drops and thus they do tend to eat less food over time.
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