12 ms·

Complete Notes to Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes | Higher Thought

49 points by pelle 17y ago

karzeem 17y ago
Sorry for the threadjacking, but any HNers doing caloric restriction? I'm at a normal weight, but a checkup a few months ago revealed a personal-worst blood pressure of 128/75, so I've been on CRON since then. Latest blood pressure is 110/65.
- thomas11 17y ago
  128/75 is just fine, though, according to standard guidelines, even if the 128 is a bit close to the upper limit of the normal range.
- jessep 17y ago
  I'd love to hear about your experience, as I'm intrigued by the idea of trying caloric restriction but am somewhat stymied by the details. Specifically, how did you transition to a restricted diet? How have you felt, both emotionally and physically, throughout the process? What is a typical day like in terms of intake? Where do you get recipes? Do you count calories?
  - karzeem 17y ago
    I transitioned pretty much in one day. I'm not sure if I'm doing it perfectly, but it's gone quite well so far. I got some background on it from this article in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html... and the details from a vigorous Googling. I'm 6 feet tall, 165 lbs, and probably moderately physically active, so I picked a daily target of 1800 calories. That was based on some online calculators I found and anecdotes from people doing caloric restriction. You can eat anything. The trick is not using up your whole quota on empty calories. If I have a can of soda and a cup of Ben and Jerry's, that's 37% of the day's calories right there, with pretty much no nutritional value. So you can have junk food, but not so much that it's going to make it hard to get all the nutrients to need while staying under your whole quota. Another guideline is that if you end every day hungry, you're doing it wrong. Cheese will fill up your quota without filling you up. Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are filling and nutritious without packing a lot of calories. I shoot for a roughly even three-way split between calories from fat, protein, and carbs. I don't really use "special" caloric restriction recipes; I just cook/prepare whatever I want, while staying within the rules. I eat out a few times a week too. Typical breakfast is eggs, maybe with mushrooms or something thrown in, and a fruit. A lunch might be chicken or fish with salad, or maybe a sandwich (bread is calorically dense, though, so careful). Dinner is pretty much the same as lunch, except that it's almost never a sandwich, is probably a bit more food, and includes red meat more frequently. Lentils and beans are all-around excellent, by the way. I do count calories, because it would be too easy to lose track or cheat otherwise. I use Daily Burn, which has a huge number of foods in their database, and if I eat something they don't have, I guesstimate using things they do have. Counting calories makes it a lot easier to stick with it, because the more aware you are of what you're eating, the less tempted you are to be naughty.
    - jessep 17y ago
      Thanks! This is helpful, and I think I'll give it a shot. I've pretty much already transitioned to eating mostly fruits/veggies/meats/whole grains, so I guess the main thing would be simply focus less on the grains and start counting calories.
- unexpected 17y ago
  I lost almost 85 lbs with a combination of calorie-restriction + low carb.
  - GFischer 17y ago
    I'm on a diet right now (calorie restriction + low carb, too), and I lost 22 pounds (10 kg) so far (goal is losing 40 pounds/18 kg overall).
kowen 17y ago
Taubes' take on the caloric balance equation (thermodynamic law) is fascinating. Change in energy stores = Energy intake – Energy expenditure According to my biochemistry professor in college, this had one - and only one - interpretation: The change in energy stores is controlled by energy intake and energy expenditure. The right side of the equation controls the left side of the equation. Also, there was an implied "just eat less and exercise more" (that energy intake and expenditure are independent variables). But Taubes suggests that the causation could be reversed, and that energy intake and expenditure are dependent variables. In other words, a metabolic change could cause a change in energy stores, and energy intake and expenditure would change to match. That (amazingly!) translates to: if you are losing weight you are likely to be less hungry and likely to have more energy. Or perhaps, if your metabolic state is such that you are losing weight, your hunger will adjust to match your activity level. Or even, if you're burning fat, you will only eat to make up for what you aren't getting from stored fuel. It makes sense to think that if your energy stores are releasing fuel into the blood stream you would be less hungry (I'm assuming that hunger signals are a function of available fuel to some extent). Naturally, we eat for nutrition as well as fuel, so I suppose it can't all be broken into thermodynamics, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it!
- nova 17y ago
  Just write the equation like this: Energy intake - Energy expenditure - Change in energy stores = 0 There. Just f(x,y,z)=0. That's what the first law really says. There is no causality implied, it just a first integral of the "motion" of metabolism that the body, naturally, has to follow. It does NOT say what variables are free to independently modify. It's just a relation the three of them have to obey.
  - jessep 17y ago
    I'm confused by the application of this law to food. My reason: excrement. You put some mass that contains chemical energy into your body. Then that mass comes out of your body, minus SOME of the chemical energy. How much of it is extracted? What determines this? I have no idea. That said, I think it is funny to treat it as if the only way to get rid of energy is expenditure. How about: Energy intake - Energy Ependiture - Energy still in food when it comes out the other end = Change in energy stores
lionhearted 17y ago
Previously, I never believed the notion that calories in/calories out was wrong - it always seemed too much like "feel good science" to me. Y'know, where a diet says it's not your fault that you're overweight, it's just because of the darn environment around you, so feel good about yourself, etc, etc. I think I was mistaken. There was a thread on here with a video that was just incredibly insightful and it was a big part of what convinced me. I'm starting to rethink my own nutrition and diet. "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", +132 points, 86 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980 Takes a while to watch the video, but it was very worthwhile for me and highly recommended.
- JulianMorrison 17y ago
  It's obviously right by conservation of energy, but it's equivocating the word "in". Food is "in" when you eat it, but calories are "in" when they're digested and metabolized - that's several steps further down the pipeline.
  - billjings 17y ago
    That's part of the issue. Eating slower has been suggested to help losing weight for that reason - it gives your satiety response time to kick in. The issue with calories in minus calories out is not equivocating the word "in", though. It is that it doesn't provide a useful model of how weight gain works. "Calories in" and "Calories out" are not independent variables, they are managed by the body's various feedback systems. Changing one of them will almost always change the other. Going for a run will make you hungrier, and undereating will lower your energy level and probably make you hungrier as well. Based on a lecture of his I've seen, I'm convinced that his major hypothesis is God's own truth - that "calories in - calories out" is not a useful model for controlling weight, and that the regulatory systems of the body are what you have to get at to have a real effect on body weight. I am sold on the idea that diet is one way to get at those systems effectively. I'm eager to read his book to find out more about the case he's making.
    - Psyonic 17y ago
nickpp 17y ago
Please ignore my opinion, I only briefly read the notes and I am an ignoramus in nutrition. After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet: less carbs lots of fat. No thanks. Read a little Dr. Fuhrman for a different approach to nutrition: more nutrients, less calories. Greens in other words. More carbs though. Who's right?
- nova 17y ago
  After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet Taubes' book is not a diet book, it's a thick book on all the things that are wrong on modern research on nutrition. It explains why the problem is not fats (nor greens), but refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour. Very worth your time, really.
  - lacrossegm 17y ago
    American obsesity can correlated to eating too much salt, sugar and fat. Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda, coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring, preservatives, etc.) If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish and lean meat.
    - jerf 17y ago
      Look, you just spouted the dietary dogma in the face of a book that has dozens upon dozens of references to scientific literature. The only thing stopping me saying "hundreds" is I'm not quite sure if it gets up to 200, though I bet it does. (I don't have it in front of me to check.) Even if you're completely right (which I do not believe despite being raised on that theory), simply re-spouting it is not an adequate response to this book. That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch up to modern science. Salt especially; current science strongly indicates that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science. Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty good.
jules 17y ago
If this is true then why are the vegetarians I know are lean and the people who eat a lot of meat are not?
- pelle 17y ago
  The issue is not if you eat a lot of meat or not, it is if you eat a lot of carbohydrates or not. I know plenty of fat vegans including a family member who became diabetic and suffered a stroke because of it. Of course your and my experiences are both anecdotal, but I do believe I have heard studies showing that vegetarians do suffer disproportionately of heart disease. I'll try and google it.
  - jerf 17y ago
    Followup to that, because vegetarians eat things that are less dense in some vital nutrients, a good health-aware vegetarian will discover they need to stay away from the high-carb veggies like potatoes because they also have no nutrient value to speak of, and filling up on potatoes means you're not filling up on things high in iron (for example). (Yes, part of the reason some vegetarians are vegetarians is because plants can be more rich in nutrients, but it is not automatically balanced, and some vital nutrients are more challenging to get than others.) In that case, a vegetarian ends up eating a not-excessively-large portion of carbs naturally. A bad vegetarian who assumes if it's not meat it must be healthy can still get in trouble, not just on this front but on others as well. It's not that simple. (I've resolved that if any of my children ever want to be vegetarians, I'm OK with that, but a critical precondition is that they demonstrate that they have done their homework and understand the nutritional implications. I believe it can be done safely, but it's not trivial; it takes work in our environment.)
    - anonjon 17y ago
      "(I've resolved that if any of my children ever want to be vegetarians, I'm OK with that, but a critical precondition is that they demonstrate that they have done their homework and understand the nutritional implications. I believe it can be done safely, but it's not trivial; it takes work in our environment.)" You legitimately have a point that there are certain nutritional deficiencies that vegans/vegetarians are more prone to. That said, I would hope that whether or not the child is a vegan, you would have him understand the nutritional implications of what he is eating. Being an omnivore safely is also quite difficult.

49 points by pelle 17y ago

Sorry for the threadjacking, but any HNers doing caloric restriction? I'm at a normal weight, but a checkup a few months ago revealed a personal-worst blood pressure of 128/75, so I've been on CRON since then. Latest blood pressure is 110/65.

thomas11 17y ago
128/75 is just fine, though, according to standard guidelines, even if the 128 is a bit close to the upper limit of the normal range.
jessep 17y ago
I'd love to hear about your experience, as I'm intrigued by the idea of trying caloric restriction but am somewhat stymied by the details. Specifically, how did you transition to a restricted diet? How have you felt, both emotionally and physically, throughout the process? What is a typical day like in terms of intake? Where do you get recipes? Do you count calories?
- karzeem 17y ago
  I transitioned pretty much in one day. I'm not sure if I'm doing it perfectly, but it's gone quite well so far. I got some background on it from this article in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11Calories-t.html... and the details from a vigorous Googling. I'm 6 feet tall, 165 lbs, and probably moderately physically active, so I picked a daily target of 1800 calories. That was based on some online calculators I found and anecdotes from people doing caloric restriction. You can eat anything. The trick is not using up your whole quota on empty calories. If I have a can of soda and a cup of Ben and Jerry's, that's 37% of the day's calories right there, with pretty much no nutritional value. So you can have junk food, but not so much that it's going to make it hard to get all the nutrients to need while staying under your whole quota. Another guideline is that if you end every day hungry, you're doing it wrong. Cheese will fill up your quota without filling you up. Fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, are filling and nutritious without packing a lot of calories. I shoot for a roughly even three-way split between calories from fat, protein, and carbs. I don't really use "special" caloric restriction recipes; I just cook/prepare whatever I want, while staying within the rules. I eat out a few times a week too. Typical breakfast is eggs, maybe with mushrooms or something thrown in, and a fruit. A lunch might be chicken or fish with salad, or maybe a sandwich (bread is calorically dense, though, so careful). Dinner is pretty much the same as lunch, except that it's almost never a sandwich, is probably a bit more food, and includes red meat more frequently. Lentils and beans are all-around excellent, by the way. I do count calories, because it would be too easy to lose track or cheat otherwise. I use Daily Burn, which has a huge number of foods in their database, and if I eat something they don't have, I guesstimate using things they do have. Counting calories makes it a lot easier to stick with it, because the more aware you are of what you're eating, the less tempted you are to be naughty.
  - jessep 17y ago
    Thanks! This is helpful, and I think I'll give it a shot. I've pretty much already transitioned to eating mostly fruits/veggies/meats/whole grains, so I guess the main thing would be simply focus less on the grains and start counting calories.
unexpected 17y ago
I lost almost 85 lbs with a combination of calorie-restriction + low carb.
- GFischer 17y ago
  I'm on a diet right now (calorie restriction + low carb, too), and I lost 22 pounds (10 kg) so far (goal is losing 40 pounds/18 kg overall).

kowen 17y ago

Taubes' take on the caloric balance equation (thermodynamic law) is fascinating. Change in energy stores = Energy intake – Energy expenditure According to my biochemistry professor in college, this had one - and only one - interpretation: The change in energy stores is controlled by energy intake and energy expenditure. The right side of the equation controls the left side of the equation. Also, there was an implied "just eat less and exercise more" (that energy intake and expenditure are independent variables). But Taubes suggests that the causation could be reversed, and that energy intake and expenditure are dependent variables. In other words, a metabolic change could cause a change in energy stores, and energy intake and expenditure would change to match. That (amazingly!) translates to: if you are losing weight you are likely to be less hungry and likely to have more energy. Or perhaps, if your metabolic state is such that you are losing weight, your hunger will adjust to match your activity level. Or even, if you're burning fat, you will only eat to make up for what you aren't getting from stored fuel. It makes sense to think that if your energy stores are releasing fuel into the blood stream you would be less hungry (I'm assuming that hunger signals are a function of available fuel to some extent). Naturally, we eat for nutrition as well as fuel, so I suppose it can't all be broken into thermodynamics, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it!

nova 17y ago
Just write the equation like this: Energy intake - Energy expenditure - Change in energy stores = 0 There. Just f(x,y,z)=0. That's what the first law really says. There is no causality implied, it just a first integral of the "motion" of metabolism that the body, naturally, has to follow. It does NOT say what variables are free to independently modify. It's just a relation the three of them have to obey.
- jessep 17y ago
  I'm confused by the application of this law to food. My reason: excrement. You put some mass that contains chemical energy into your body. Then that mass comes out of your body, minus SOME of the chemical energy. How much of it is extracted? What determines this? I have no idea. That said, I think it is funny to treat it as if the only way to get rid of energy is expenditure. How about: Energy intake - Energy Ependiture - Energy still in food when it comes out the other end = Change in energy stores

lionhearted 17y ago

Previously, I never believed the notion that calories in/calories out was wrong - it always seemed too much like "feel good science" to me. Y'know, where a diet says it's not your fault that you're overweight, it's just because of the darn environment around you, so feel good about yourself, etc, etc. I think I was mistaken. There was a thread on here with a video that was just incredibly insightful and it was a big part of what convinced me. I'm starting to rethink my own nutrition and diet. "Sugar: The Bitter Truth", +132 points, 86 comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006980 Takes a while to watch the video, but it was very worthwhile for me and highly recommended.

JulianMorrison 17y ago
It's obviously right by conservation of energy, but it's equivocating the word "in". Food is "in" when you eat it, but calories are "in" when they're digested and metabolized - that's several steps further down the pipeline.
- billjings 17y ago
  That's part of the issue. Eating slower has been suggested to help losing weight for that reason - it gives your satiety response time to kick in. The issue with calories in minus calories out is not equivocating the word "in", though. It is that it doesn't provide a useful model of how weight gain works. "Calories in" and "Calories out" are not independent variables, they are managed by the body's various feedback systems. Changing one of them will almost always change the other. Going for a run will make you hungrier, and undereating will lower your energy level and probably make you hungrier as well. Based on a lecture of his I've seen, I'm convinced that his major hypothesis is God's own truth - that "calories in - calories out" is not a useful model for controlling weight, and that the regulatory systems of the body are what you have to get at to have a real effect on body weight. I am sold on the idea that diet is one way to get at those systems effectively. I'm eager to read his book to find out more about the case he's making.
  - Psyonic 17y ago

nickpp 17y ago

Please ignore my opinion, I only briefly read the notes and I am an ignoramus in nutrition. After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet: less carbs lots of fat. No thanks. Read a little Dr. Fuhrman for a different approach to nutrition: more nutrients, less calories. Greens in other words. More carbs though. Who's right?

nova 17y ago
After (a very brief) look this seems to me like another Atkins-style diet Taubes' book is not a diet book, it's a thick book on all the things that are wrong on modern research on nutrition. It explains why the problem is not fats (nor greens), but refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour. Very worth your time, really.
- lacrossegm 17y ago
  American obsesity can correlated to eating too much salt, sugar and fat. Fast food makes it cheap and easy to get into a pattern where a significant portion of your daily intake is essentially a combination of sugar (soda, coffee, tea, etc), fat (burgers, fries, tacos, etc) and salt (flavoring, preservatives, etc.) If we went back to the diet before there was fast-food then we'd have a lot less obesity. People would be eating more whole grains, fruits, veggies, fish and lean meat.
  - jerf 17y ago
    Look, you just spouted the dietary dogma in the face of a book that has dozens upon dozens of references to scientific literature. The only thing stopping me saying "hundreds" is I'm not quite sure if it gets up to 200, though I bet it does. (I don't have it in front of me to check.) Even if you're completely right (which I do not believe despite being raised on that theory), simply re-spouting it is not an adequate response to this book. That theory simply doesn't explain all the observations, and you need to catch up to modern science. Salt especially; current science strongly indicates that salt is not a problem for a normal person, it only matters if you already have a blood pressure problem (and I still think it may yet be revealed that it actually has no effect at all and it's all sugar). This isn't even from Taubes' book, this is simply the current state of the science. Running on the dietary theories of the 1960s leaves you defenseless in the face of our current food environment, and when you get in trouble it doesn't give you a way out. Check this new stuff out. Check out the sugar video lionhearted referenced, it's free and the source is unimpeachable, and unlike reading the book which has the step of obtaining a book, that video is as easy to watch as any other video on YouTube. It has biochemistry in it. It's pretty good.

jules 17y ago

If this is true then why are the vegetarians I know are lean and the people who eat a lot of meat are not?

pelle 17y ago
The issue is not if you eat a lot of meat or not, it is if you eat a lot of carbohydrates or not. I know plenty of fat vegans including a family member who became diabetic and suffered a stroke because of it. Of course your and my experiences are both anecdotal, but I do believe I have heard studies showing that vegetarians do suffer disproportionately of heart disease. I'll try and google it.
- jerf 17y ago
  Followup to that, because vegetarians eat things that are less dense in some vital nutrients, a good health-aware vegetarian will discover they need to stay away from the high-carb veggies like potatoes because they also have no nutrient value to speak of, and filling up on potatoes means you're not filling up on things high in iron (for example). (Yes, part of the reason some vegetarians are vegetarians is because plants can be more rich in nutrients, but it is not automatically balanced, and some vital nutrients are more challenging to get than others.) In that case, a vegetarian ends up eating a not-excessively-large portion of carbs naturally. A bad vegetarian who assumes if it's not meat it must be healthy can still get in trouble, not just on this front but on others as well. It's not that simple. (I've resolved that if any of my children ever want to be vegetarians, I'm OK with that, but a critical precondition is that they demonstrate that they have done their homework and understand the nutritional implications. I believe it can be done safely, but it's not trivial; it takes work in our environment.)
  - anonjon 17y ago
    "(I've resolved that if any of my children ever want to be vegetarians, I'm OK with that, but a critical precondition is that they demonstrate that they have done their homework and understand the nutritional implications. I believe it can be done safely, but it's not trivial; it takes work in our environment.)" You legitimately have a point that there are certain nutritional deficiencies that vegans/vegetarians are more prone to. That said, I would hope that whether or not the child is a vegan, you would have him understand the nutritional implications of what he is eating. Being an omnivore safely is also quite difficult.