9 ms·

Why the calorie is broken

54 points by antouank 11y ago

blakesterz 11y ago
So Ars reprinted that from the original at mosaicscience.com and I guess that's from a Gastropod episode or at least that's a podcast companion to the story. It's on soundcloud.com iTunes Really interesting read on why it's so damn hard to figure out how to lose weight, or why it's so hard to control our eating sometimes. Is it genetics, gut microbes, insulin, existing fat cells? All of the above? More and more the science seems to agree stop eating sugar/carbs/whatever and that seems to help most people. BUT not everyone responds to sugar/carbs/whatever the same way if you measure blood sugar after you eat. AND it's hard to actually measure calories. Sure was much easier when all we had to do was "avoid fats", but apparently that was just wrong. http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-calorie-broken http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-calorie-broken https://soundcloud.com/gastropodcast/the-end-of-the-calorie https://soundcloud.com/gastropodcast/the-end-of-the-calorie https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-of-the-calorie/id918896288?i=361353657&mt=2 https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-of-the-calor...
- s54b32dd 11y ago
  "avoiding fats" was quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to the American diet, mainly because they got replaced by sugars in most situations.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- noondip 11y ago
  > trying to follow popular nutrition advice, like cutting out fats, meat, animal products, etc... frequently only lead to lack of proteins, sometimes in a serious manner Frequently? Can you cite even one case study of someone becoming protein deficient by way of cutting out animal products?
Someone1234 11y ago
Calories definitely aren't accurate but they're "accurate enough." Just as different foods likely result in more human fat development per calorie than others (see bleeding edge research), but ultimately none of that is hugely important because by cutting all calories you're likely cutting the "bad" kind too (namely sugars and complex carbohydrates). Counting sugars and those foods that easily metabolise into sugars is just as effective as actual calorie counting for weight loss. One key thing to remember is: You cannot outrun a bad diet. Meaning it isn't realistic to achieve substantial weight loss through exercise. Thirty minutes of jogging could be undone by one extra chocolate bar, a Big Mac, or a soda. If you already have control over your diet exercise can HELP with weight loss goals (e.g. extra pound of body weight a week) but a lot of people assume they can run off 20-30-40 pounds of excess body weight which is just totally unrealistic. Base metabolic rate is the primary means of weight loss. As simplistic as this sounds, the goal remains to consume less than you burn through BMR, and the latest research on calorie's inherent inadequacies haven't yet changed that.
- finkin1 11y ago
  You expressed the sentiment I came here to share beautifully - thank you. I think a lot of people fail to understand that exercise isn't that important when trying to lose weight. Another issue I think is extremely pervasive is moral licensing: apparently, doing something that helps to strengthen our positive self-image also makes us less worried about the consequences of bad behavior, and therefore more likely to make bad choices. This can translate to internal conversations like, "I did good by exercising today, I guess I'll order dessert." I think this error in thinking causes serious problems for a lot of people. There are no "good" or "bad" actions - only actions that add or detract from whatever the goal is.
- QSIITurbo 11y ago
  This is the correct answer. The example person is about 177cm and 110kg, i.e., a clearly fat person, trouble moving and likely some problems with breathing already. If he doesn't have a metabolical disorder, with that amount of body mass, it should be _really_ easy for him to drop weight by reducing calorie intake -- just by not constantly eating or drinking. But since he's used to eating like a pig, it's not so easy. And I'm not saying this to mock him, it's a fact of how his body has adapted to eating lots of calories. A single Mars bar can contain the calorie count of half of a meal, which is why these people are not losing weight. After all, it's just a Mars bar!
MCRed 11y ago
For me, and I believe there are at least two different types of people in this regard, the key to losing weight was insulin levels. Namely, I went on a low carb diet and lost around 100 pounds. Some people, I believe, are insulin resistant and some are insulin sensitive. The sensitive ones tend to be skinny and have to really overeat to gain weight, while the resistant ones find it easy to gain weight. I have dieted for years attempting to lose weight, but cutting out carbs was a game changer. Suddenly losing weight became easy. And who doesn't like an all BBQ diet?? (ok, well, even BBQ gets tiring after awhile, but I eat a variety of stuff, and even have managed to work out how to make a low carb pizza (almond meal+cheese for the crust, tastes like whole wheat).) I do not believe all calories are the same. I eat a high fat, high calorie diet, I never worry about calories. If I'm hungry I eat. I only ever budget for carbs. So long as I'm eating meat and cheese, say, for a snack, I can eat as much as I want- and I do. (Though one of the side effects of low carb / high fat, is as your body becomes fat adapted, you find yourself hungry less often. I have on occasions simply forgotten to eat for an entire 36 hour period.) OF course this is anecdote, and I do think that in regards to insulin sensitivity there are at least two types of people. And in fact, that's part of my point. The monotonous "just cut out fats and eat all the pasta you want and you'll lose weight" Official Government Propaganda Diet is not working- it presumes that everyone is the same too. Low carb may not work for everybody, I dunno. But it worked for me, spectacularly. For the first time in my life I'm confronting the prospect of being normal sized. Skinny even. That's going to be weird!
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Insulin resistance is considered a medical condition. At first, prediabetes. Later, Type 2 diabetes. There may indeed be differences in "normal" insulin response, but it probably doesn't make sense to label one end of that range as insulin resistant, insulin is a hormone that is deeply involved in energy metabolism. The failure to respond to it is a dysfunction.
1_player 11y ago
I've been fascinated by low carb diets for a while now, and in the past month I've been religiously counting everything I ingest, and found I settle naturally towards a very high fat, low carb diet (5% carbs, 25% prots, 70% fat) My flatmate, who's dieting with me, is appaled by the amount of fat I'm eating, constantly asking me if it's healthy or whether I'm just going to get fat even if I am well below my TDEE. My response is basically "a calorie is a calorie", i.e. I'm below my TDEE => I'm losing weight. I know that the reality is more complicated, and the article does explain that very well; satiety is more important for dieters, and there's also the unknown factor of gut microbes: am I comfortable low carbing because of satiety or just because my gut flora is different? Nobody knows actually. This is a fascinating subject and there are far too many experts and anecdata that everybody's right and wrong at the same time. Experiment, if you feel physically good and are not overeating (by counting calories) you're on the right track. Take dieting advices with tons of salt. Make them your own. Personally I struggle having more than two meals a day and eating more than 1800 cals (I'm 1.86m and 88 kg). If I were high carbing I'd go over the limit just to keep my hunger at bay. I once binged (on processed crap I was craving) and ate around 4K cals. I honestly don't know how to do that on low carb, and especially eating healty. Unless I eat nuts: can eat over 1K cals in nuts in a single sitting. And whoever said you NEED to eat n times a day: shut up, you're wrong. My advice: eat when you are hungry, eat real food, forget about macros.
- criddell 11y ago
  > is appaled by the amount of fat I'm eating, constantly asking me if it's healthy or whether I'm just going to get fat I wonder how much of the fear of fat comes from people believing the saying "you are what you eat"?
  - dahart 11y ago
    I don't know, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion; there are real reasons to be careful with fat. Fat is 9 calories per gram, while carbs and proteins are 4. If you have a budget and you're counting calories, fat is more expensive per gram, so you might naturally develop an aversion to spending your budget on what appears to be less food (even if it's only appearance). Too much fat is also unhealthy. How much is too much is still being debated, but there is a difference between a weight loss diet and a healthy diet. All things being equal, a 2000 calorie diet of buttered bacon doughnuts is still likely to cause more problems than a 2000 calorie diet of vegetables, fruits and nuts.
Tepix 11y ago
I'd say the calorie is fine (other than being obsolete, you should use Joule. 1c = 4.2j). It may not be easy to measure with high accuracy. That's not going to change with a new system. Also, just because the body sometimes can't use parts of the calories you feed it, doesn't mean it's broken.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Food calories are 4200 joules.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    4,186 J actually, to get the sig figs right.
  - lorenzhs 11y ago
    A calorie is still 4.18... Joules whether in food or in physics homework. It's just that nobody says "kilocalories" even though the label says "kcal" ;)
    - roel_v 11y ago
      No. A 'food calorie' ('1 Cal') = 1000 calories ('1000 cals').
      - lorenzhs 11y ago
        Interesting, the American usage seems to be quite different from usage in Germany. There is no such thing as a "food calorie" here, they're labelled as "kcal" (kilocalories). From the German Wikipedia article on "Kalorie": > Umgangssprachlich werden oft Nährwertangaben in Kilokalorien fälschlich > als „Kalorien“ bezeichnet. In den USA ist bei Nährwertangaben > die Bezeichnung calorie für Kilokalorien auch offiziell zulässig. In English: Informally, kilocalories in food are often referred to simply as "calories". In the USA, using "calories" instead of "kilocalories" in nutritional information is officially allowed. Here it's not allowed to label them as calories, they have to be labelled as kilocalories. They're still called "calories" informally though.
noobie 11y ago
>Haelle is a freelance science journalist....“I’m kind of pissed at the scientific community for not coming up with something better for us,” she confesses Pissed?
- shawabawa3 11y ago
  British English for "annoyed"
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    Nope. We British wouldn't use "pissed at" we'd use "pissed off with". And in writing we'd never write that because it's actually quite strong language for us. We'd write "annoyed with"
    - philh 11y ago
      I'm British too, and I'm a bit pissed at you for trying to tell people how I speak and write.
      - SixSigma 11y ago
        You sound like some sort of foreigner. Stop watching so much US tv and get back on to Dad's Army.
  - noobie 11y ago
    No, I am aware of that. My "point" was that getting pissed at a community won't get things done. She's a science journalist so she can be qualified enough to work on alternatives herself.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    in british english, "pissed" means drunk. in american english, it means mildly angry
vzip 11y ago
Why We Get Fat is an excellent book that investigates this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259/ http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259/ In short, for most of us, our fat tissue is regulated primarily through our response to insulin.
- rogeryu 11y ago
  An interesting read is Why Zebras don't get Ulcers by Sapolsky. It's a book about stress. Eating, fat, insulin and weight are an interesting part of it, and their relation to stress and health in general. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Zebras-Dont-Get-Ulcers/dp/0716732106/ http://www.amazon.com/Why-Zebras-Dont-Get-Ulcers/dp/07167321...
invesari 11y ago
I am always surprised how little focus there is on the mental aspects of overeating. Losing weight is really simple - consume fewer calories, eat less processed stuff. And yet so many smart, otherwise capable people struggle with weight loss despite having an excellent knowledge of modern diet plans. Food doesn't get in a person's stomach by accident, a decision is made with every meal, especially when a person is aware of being overweight. So why do people continuously keep making wrong decisions for many months and years? My case was simple - I was depressed and food made me happy. Making a decision not to eat something was mentally painful. Fixing things that were wrong with my life eliminated both my depression and my issues with overeating.
- tdkl 11y ago
  Having the guts to admit yourself you were "fixing" the depressed feeling with food was half the victory already. Now if it was so easy to convince the population ...
funkyy 11y ago
I see a lot of people have big problem with calories. The simple way to count it better is to round it up to 50. So if you had a tea with sugar - thats 50. If you had coffee, instead of 70 - thats 100. Then I also see a lot of people wont count snacks. Snacks and "bites" in between meals is a huge problem. Check how much calories have one slice of cheese or few M&Ms.
roel_v 11y ago
Losing weight is like a Perlin noise function. The 'primary signal' is food intake. The 'secondary signal' is caloric expenditure (be it from the base metabolism or exercise). All the rest are tertiary signals. Yes, one can debate about the amplitude of each of the signals, but the message is: want to lose weight? Eat less. The problem with articles like this is that it sends the signal: 'losing weight is hard, don't bother trying'. Or 'nobody knows how this works! What we've thought for decades is completely wrong!'. Which is a poisonous message. It doesn't matter that we don't know the exact details, or that we can't measure to the last 25 Cals. The higher-level principle (i.e.: yes, you body obeys the laws of thermodynamics) is still valid.
vnprc 11y ago
This article seems to be based on a mistaken premise. There is nothing wrong with the calorie as a unit of measurement. The problem is an inability to accurately measure it. There is simply not a good way to measure human calorie expenditure. Fitbits and their ilk are, to put it bluntly, useless. They measure the number of movements, not the work expended for each movement. They cannot distinguish between a step taken on flat ground or an incline (or decline) or even the difference between an arm movement and a body movement. It wouldn't be impossible to measure total calorie expenditure, but it would be pretty impractical. You'd basically need to isolate the person from the external environment and measure the total heat produced by that person's body. But, like other commenters have pointed out, you don't even need to measure calorie expenditure to lose weight. You just need a running average of calorie intake and of weight loss. If weight loss is too low or too high, adjust your calorie intake and wait for more data. Repeat as needed.
vnprc 11y ago
This article seems to be based on a mistaken premise. There is nothing wrong with the calorie as a unit of measurement. The problem is an inability to accurately measure it. There is simply not a good way to measure human calorie expenditure. Fitbits and their ilk are, to put it bluntly, useless. They measure the number of movements, not the work expended for each movement. They cannot distinguish between a step taken on flat ground or an incline (or decline) or even the difference between an arm movement and a body movement. It wouldn't be impossible to measure total calorie expenditure, but it would be pretty impractical. You'd basically need to isolate the person from the external environment and measure the total heat produced by that person's body. But, like other commenters have pointed out, you don't even need to measure calorie expenditure to lose weight. You just need a running average of calorie intake and of weight loss. If weight loss is too low or too high, adjust your calorie intake and wait for more data. Repeat as needed.

54 points by antouank 11y ago

So Ars reprinted that from the original at mosaicscience.com and I guess that's from a Gastropod episode or at least that's a podcast companion to the story. It's on soundcloud.com iTunes Really interesting read on why it's so damn hard to figure out how to lose weight, or why it's so hard to control our eating sometimes. Is it genetics, gut microbes, insulin, existing fat cells? All of the above? More and more the science seems to agree stop eating sugar/carbs/whatever and that seems to help most people. BUT not everyone responds to sugar/carbs/whatever the same way if you measure blood sugar after you eat. AND it's hard to actually measure calories. Sure was much easier when all we had to do was "avoid fats", but apparently that was just wrong. http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-calorie-broken http://mosaicscience.com/story/why-calorie-broken https://soundcloud.com/gastropodcast/the-end-of-the-calorie https://soundcloud.com/gastropodcast/the-end-of-the-calorie https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-of-the-calorie/id918896288?i=361353657&mt=2 https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-end-of-the-calor...

s54b32dd 11y ago
"avoiding fats" was quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to the American diet, mainly because they got replaced by sugars in most situations.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

noondip 11y ago
> trying to follow popular nutrition advice, like cutting out fats, meat, animal products, etc... frequently only lead to lack of proteins, sometimes in a serious manner Frequently? Can you cite even one case study of someone becoming protein deficient by way of cutting out animal products?

Someone1234 11y ago

Calories definitely aren't accurate but they're "accurate enough." Just as different foods likely result in more human fat development per calorie than others (see bleeding edge research), but ultimately none of that is hugely important because by cutting all calories you're likely cutting the "bad" kind too (namely sugars and complex carbohydrates). Counting sugars and those foods that easily metabolise into sugars is just as effective as actual calorie counting for weight loss. One key thing to remember is: You cannot outrun a bad diet. Meaning it isn't realistic to achieve substantial weight loss through exercise. Thirty minutes of jogging could be undone by one extra chocolate bar, a Big Mac, or a soda. If you already have control over your diet exercise can HELP with weight loss goals (e.g. extra pound of body weight a week) but a lot of people assume they can run off 20-30-40 pounds of excess body weight which is just totally unrealistic. Base metabolic rate is the primary means of weight loss. As simplistic as this sounds, the goal remains to consume less than you burn through BMR, and the latest research on calorie's inherent inadequacies haven't yet changed that.

finkin1 11y ago
You expressed the sentiment I came here to share beautifully - thank you. I think a lot of people fail to understand that exercise isn't that important when trying to lose weight. Another issue I think is extremely pervasive is moral licensing: apparently, doing something that helps to strengthen our positive self-image also makes us less worried about the consequences of bad behavior, and therefore more likely to make bad choices. This can translate to internal conversations like, "I did good by exercising today, I guess I'll order dessert." I think this error in thinking causes serious problems for a lot of people. There are no "good" or "bad" actions - only actions that add or detract from whatever the goal is.
QSIITurbo 11y ago
This is the correct answer. The example person is about 177cm and 110kg, i.e., a clearly fat person, trouble moving and likely some problems with breathing already. If he doesn't have a metabolical disorder, with that amount of body mass, it should be _really_ easy for him to drop weight by reducing calorie intake -- just by not constantly eating or drinking. But since he's used to eating like a pig, it's not so easy. And I'm not saying this to mock him, it's a fact of how his body has adapted to eating lots of calories. A single Mars bar can contain the calorie count of half of a meal, which is why these people are not losing weight. After all, it's just a Mars bar!

MCRed 11y ago

For me, and I believe there are at least two different types of people in this regard, the key to losing weight was insulin levels. Namely, I went on a low carb diet and lost around 100 pounds. Some people, I believe, are insulin resistant and some are insulin sensitive. The sensitive ones tend to be skinny and have to really overeat to gain weight, while the resistant ones find it easy to gain weight. I have dieted for years attempting to lose weight, but cutting out carbs was a game changer. Suddenly losing weight became easy. And who doesn't like an all BBQ diet?? (ok, well, even BBQ gets tiring after awhile, but I eat a variety of stuff, and even have managed to work out how to make a low carb pizza (almond meal+cheese for the crust, tastes like whole wheat).) I do not believe all calories are the same. I eat a high fat, high calorie diet, I never worry about calories. If I'm hungry I eat. I only ever budget for carbs. So long as I'm eating meat and cheese, say, for a snack, I can eat as much as I want- and I do. (Though one of the side effects of low carb / high fat, is as your body becomes fat adapted, you find yourself hungry less often. I have on occasions simply forgotten to eat for an entire 36 hour period.) OF course this is anecdote, and I do think that in regards to insulin sensitivity there are at least two types of people. And in fact, that's part of my point. The monotonous "just cut out fats and eat all the pasta you want and you'll lose weight" Official Government Propaganda Diet is not working- it presumes that everyone is the same too. Low carb may not work for everybody, I dunno. But it worked for me, spectacularly. For the first time in my life I'm confronting the prospect of being normal sized. Skinny even. That's going to be weird!

maxerickson 11y ago
Insulin resistance is considered a medical condition. At first, prediabetes. Later, Type 2 diabetes. There may indeed be differences in "normal" insulin response, but it probably doesn't make sense to label one end of that range as insulin resistant, insulin is a hormone that is deeply involved in energy metabolism. The failure to respond to it is a dysfunction.

1_player 11y ago

I've been fascinated by low carb diets for a while now, and in the past month I've been religiously counting everything I ingest, and found I settle naturally towards a very high fat, low carb diet (5% carbs, 25% prots, 70% fat) My flatmate, who's dieting with me, is appaled by the amount of fat I'm eating, constantly asking me if it's healthy or whether I'm just going to get fat even if I am well below my TDEE. My response is basically "a calorie is a calorie", i.e. I'm below my TDEE => I'm losing weight. I know that the reality is more complicated, and the article does explain that very well; satiety is more important for dieters, and there's also the unknown factor of gut microbes: am I comfortable low carbing because of satiety or just because my gut flora is different? Nobody knows actually. This is a fascinating subject and there are far too many experts and anecdata that everybody's right and wrong at the same time. Experiment, if you feel physically good and are not overeating (by counting calories) you're on the right track. Take dieting advices with tons of salt. Make them your own. Personally I struggle having more than two meals a day and eating more than 1800 cals (I'm 1.86m and 88 kg). If I were high carbing I'd go over the limit just to keep my hunger at bay. I once binged (on processed crap I was craving) and ate around 4K cals. I honestly don't know how to do that on low carb, and especially eating healty. Unless I eat nuts: can eat over 1K cals in nuts in a single sitting. And whoever said you NEED to eat n times a day: shut up, you're wrong. My advice: eat when you are hungry, eat real food, forget about macros.

criddell 11y ago
> is appaled by the amount of fat I'm eating, constantly asking me if it's healthy or whether I'm just going to get fat I wonder how much of the fear of fat comes from people believing the saying "you are what you eat"?
- dahart 11y ago
  I don't know, but I wouldn't jump to that conclusion; there are real reasons to be careful with fat. Fat is 9 calories per gram, while carbs and proteins are 4. If you have a budget and you're counting calories, fat is more expensive per gram, so you might naturally develop an aversion to spending your budget on what appears to be less food (even if it's only appearance). Too much fat is also unhealthy. How much is too much is still being debated, but there is a difference between a weight loss diet and a healthy diet. All things being equal, a 2000 calorie diet of buttered bacon doughnuts is still likely to cause more problems than a 2000 calorie diet of vegetables, fruits and nuts.

Tepix 11y ago

I'd say the calorie is fine (other than being obsolete, you should use Joule. 1c = 4.2j). It may not be easy to measure with high accuracy. That's not going to change with a new system. Also, just because the body sometimes can't use parts of the calories you feed it, doesn't mean it's broken.

maxerickson 11y ago
Food calories are 4200 joules.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  4,186 J actually, to get the sig figs right.
- lorenzhs 11y ago
  A calorie is still 4.18... Joules whether in food or in physics homework. It's just that nobody says "kilocalories" even though the label says "kcal" ;)
  - roel_v 11y ago
    No. A 'food calorie' ('1 Cal') = 1000 calories ('1000 cals').
    - lorenzhs 11y ago
      Interesting, the American usage seems to be quite different from usage in Germany. There is no such thing as a "food calorie" here, they're labelled as "kcal" (kilocalories). From the German Wikipedia article on "Kalorie": > Umgangssprachlich werden oft Nährwertangaben in Kilokalorien fälschlich > als „Kalorien“ bezeichnet. In den USA ist bei Nährwertangaben > die Bezeichnung calorie für Kilokalorien auch offiziell zulässig. In English: Informally, kilocalories in food are often referred to simply as "calories". In the USA, using "calories" instead of "kilocalories" in nutritional information is officially allowed. Here it's not allowed to label them as calories, they have to be labelled as kilocalories. They're still called "calories" informally though.

noobie 11y ago

>Haelle is a freelance science journalist....“I’m kind of pissed at the scientific community for not coming up with something better for us,” she confesses Pissed?

shawabawa3 11y ago
British English for "annoyed"
- SixSigma 11y ago
  Nope. We British wouldn't use "pissed at" we'd use "pissed off with". And in writing we'd never write that because it's actually quite strong language for us. We'd write "annoyed with"
  - philh 11y ago
    I'm British too, and I'm a bit pissed at you for trying to tell people how I speak and write.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      You sound like some sort of foreigner. Stop watching so much US tv and get back on to Dad's Army.
- noobie 11y ago
  No, I am aware of that. My "point" was that getting pissed at a community won't get things done. She's a science journalist so she can be qualified enough to work on alternatives herself.
- knodi123 11y ago
  in british english, "pissed" means drunk. in american english, it means mildly angry

vzip 11y ago

Why We Get Fat is an excellent book that investigates this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259/ http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259/ In short, for most of us, our fat tissue is regulated primarily through our response to insulin.

rogeryu 11y ago
An interesting read is Why Zebras don't get Ulcers by Sapolsky. It's a book about stress. Eating, fat, insulin and weight are an interesting part of it, and their relation to stress and health in general. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Zebras-Dont-Get-Ulcers/dp/0716732106/ http://www.amazon.com/Why-Zebras-Dont-Get-Ulcers/dp/07167321...

invesari 11y ago

I am always surprised how little focus there is on the mental aspects of overeating. Losing weight is really simple - consume fewer calories, eat less processed stuff. And yet so many smart, otherwise capable people struggle with weight loss despite having an excellent knowledge of modern diet plans. Food doesn't get in a person's stomach by accident, a decision is made with every meal, especially when a person is aware of being overweight. So why do people continuously keep making wrong decisions for many months and years? My case was simple - I was depressed and food made me happy. Making a decision not to eat something was mentally painful. Fixing things that were wrong with my life eliminated both my depression and my issues with overeating.

tdkl 11y ago
Having the guts to admit yourself you were "fixing" the depressed feeling with food was half the victory already. Now if it was so easy to convince the population ...

funkyy 11y ago

I see a lot of people have big problem with calories. The simple way to count it better is to round it up to 50. So if you had a tea with sugar - thats 50. If you had coffee, instead of 70 - thats 100. Then I also see a lot of people wont count snacks. Snacks and "bites" in between meals is a huge problem. Check how much calories have one slice of cheese or few M&Ms.

roel_v 11y ago

Losing weight is like a Perlin noise function. The 'primary signal' is food intake. The 'secondary signal' is caloric expenditure (be it from the base metabolism or exercise). All the rest are tertiary signals. Yes, one can debate about the amplitude of each of the signals, but the message is: want to lose weight? Eat less. The problem with articles like this is that it sends the signal: 'losing weight is hard, don't bother trying'. Or 'nobody knows how this works! What we've thought for decades is completely wrong!'. Which is a poisonous message. It doesn't matter that we don't know the exact details, or that we can't measure to the last 25 Cals. The higher-level principle (i.e.: yes, you body obeys the laws of thermodynamics) is still valid.

vnprc 11y ago

This article seems to be based on a mistaken premise. There is nothing wrong with the calorie as a unit of measurement. The problem is an inability to accurately measure it. There is simply not a good way to measure human calorie expenditure. Fitbits and their ilk are, to put it bluntly, useless. They measure the number of movements, not the work expended for each movement. They cannot distinguish between a step taken on flat ground or an incline (or decline) or even the difference between an arm movement and a body movement. It wouldn't be impossible to measure total calorie expenditure, but it would be pretty impractical. You'd basically need to isolate the person from the external environment and measure the total heat produced by that person's body. But, like other commenters have pointed out, you don't even need to measure calorie expenditure to lose weight. You just need a running average of calorie intake and of weight loss. If weight loss is too low or too high, adjust your calorie intake and wait for more data. Repeat as needed.

vnprc 11y ago