8 ms·

Also, don't forget that the food pyramid is defined by the Department of Agriculture (whose job it is to sell food and maintain food surplus) and not the Depart

• temp246810 10y ago
  Don't let r/fitness see this or you will get absolutely destroyed. I agree with you - but saying a calorie is a calorie makes people feel like they are gifted physicists preaching to people that live in the dark ages. Nutrition's become a bit of a religious/political issue.
  • qeternity 10y ago
    The reason r/fitness says this is because for active people it largely holds true, with the exception of certain bulking/cutting phases for lifters. It's people who are sedentary, or in chronic caloric surplus where the macros become more of a concern. You're not going to wreak havoc on your insulin sensitivity by having a Coke every day if you get up and run a 10k every morning, because things like glycogen levels will be replenished. But if you're sedentary, your body deals with it very differently.
    • xherberta 10y ago
      The composition of one's microbiome is also a major factor in metabolism (and is interrelated with activity level, too.) https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Firmicutes_and_Obesity https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Firmicutes_and_Obes... The article didn't tread much into the satiety effect: while sugar- and carb-laden foods generally leave you wanting more, it's difficult to overeat naturally fatty things like bacon, cream, or eggs. Until just now, these foods have been frowned upon so hard that few people think of combining them with veggies to create tasty, affordable, satisfying, and nutritious meals.
      • kmm 10y ago
        The linked page doesn't say the microbiome influences metabolism, only that it is suspected to be involved in digestion and fat absorption. Metabolism doesn't happen in the gut, but in the cells and mostly in the mitochondria. It is controlled by the hypothalamus, which keeps your body at the same temperature, as this is the bulk of what food energy is used for.
      • kapauldo 10y ago
        This does not explain the 600% obesity increase.
    • jrowley 10y ago
      Yes this is it exactly. It's not so clean cut to say a 'calorie isn't a calorie' because for me an active recreational distance runner, I can pretty much eat/drink my calories however I please while remaining relatively thin.
    • Y201K 10y ago
      Definitely. However, it's also just the most important factor in weight control, with macronutrients, nutrient timing, and food composition playing lesser roles.
  • narag 10y ago
    Nutrition's become a bit of a religious/political issue. It just makes sense if you believe that studies are biased. It seems like trust in authorities (in this case to determine dietetic recommendations) would be a common factor with religious/political differences between persons. Edit: or you could say that some people seems to trust facts more, other ones trust persons more.
  • EpicEng 10y ago
    Well, /r/fitness isn't necessarily meant for everyone. I work out regularly and heavily. For me, a calorie is pretty much a calorie. I'm well above average in terms of fitness and can eat a ton of food without gaining any weight. Not good advice for Joe schmoe
    • antisthenes 10y ago
      The sequitur from this isn't that "calorie is a calorie" is wrong, it's that Joe Schmoe is wrong about nutrition and uneducated about the consequences of his habits. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Has the concept been abolished in the last decade? Another tidbit in evidence of CIAC holding true is that 99.9% of people would lose weight if they cut their meal sizes in the same proportion (let's say by 20%). They wouldn't lose equal amounts, but they would all lose weight.
• diabeetusman 10y ago
  I'm seeing studies showing the reverse-- endorphins can suppress insulin creation (and lead to hyperglycemia) (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2944808 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2944808). Got any links? Really interested in reading more (see username)
  • snarf21 10y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20648910 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20648910 Also, more anecdotally, how many people do you know who get hangry from low blood sugar? How many people eat when they are sad to feel better?
    • GordonS 10y ago
      I'm not sure if 'hangry' was meant to be 'angry' or 'hungry', but low blood sugar can cause both. A medical condition means I can get hypoglycemic, and when I do I can become completely irrational and very aggressive. Also, a drop in blood sugar can signal hunger.
      • mediocrejoker 10y ago
        Hangry is a deliberate portmanteau of hungry and angry
  • opportune 10y ago
    Warning, informal logic ahead: A substance A can be a net promoter of both a compound B and a compound C, even if the compound B suppresses C, provided that the direct promotion of A on C is greater than the direct suppression of B on C per the changed in B. In other words, when I ignite a pile of wood(A), the wood releases (among other things) both water(B) and smoke(C). Now, independently high amounts of water will tend to put out smoke, but in these quantities much more smoke is released than the water required to put it out. I don't have a source on how much endorphins sugar releases but I would imagine it's an analogous case. In fact, things like this are really common in the human body because if the half lives of action are different, they can help return the body to homeostasis. In this case, I hypothesize that the endorphin effect on insulin could serve to reduce insulin to more normal levels in the blood-stream after the initial spike due to sugar intake.
• NikolaeVarius 10y ago
  The endorphin rush is completely independent of a calorie. If you eat less you will lose weight. It is physically impossible not to. You could be fed a drip of pure sugar and you will lose weight as long as you receive fewer calories that you burn.
  • ceejayoz 10y ago
    "Put me in solitary confinement with an IV drip" isn't a very feasible diet plan, so managing non-calorie stuff like satiety, glycemic index, etc. can still have value. Side note: "as long as you receive fewer calories that you burn" ignores the fact that how much you burn can change.
    • cheald 10y ago
      My own personal experience has been that managing nothing but calories is the most successful approach by a mile, but that sticking to decent macros is the best way to manage my satiation and stick to my calorie budget. If you're managing satiety and glycemic index and ignoring calorie intake, you're not going to manage weight well. These are all tools in managing calorie inputs, not replacements for it.
  • joecool1029 10y ago
    While there is some truth to that... (Google 'potato hack') there's a ton of biochemical signaling that goes on to affect satiety and whether the cells burn or store that calorie input. Here's a blog post breaking down a recent paper on the topic: http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/boiled-mashed-potatoes-for-miracle.html http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/boiled-mash...
    • antisthenes 10y ago
      Satiety is orthogonal to losing weight. So saying there is some truth to that is extremely snarky and dismissive.
  • opportune 10y ago
• QSIITurbo 10y ago
  Anecdotal evidence _for_ a calorie being a calorie: lost 5 kgs in three months by cutting food intake evenly by just reducing the size of meals. Also consumed slightly over 10% of daily intake in sugar (saccarose) which surpasses the recommended level (10% absolute max). Otherwise stuck to official recommendations. Sedentary lifestyle, moderate alcohol consumption. The magic trick is being able to measure your weight for the first week or two and then keep the same habits until the goal is reached. No fancy apps or diets or nutritionists or whatever required. So a calorie is a calorie.
  • snarf21 10y ago
    Don't take this as aggressive, I'm glad you've dropped some weight. I'm not sure how overweight you are/were. How much of a calorie deficit did you have on a daily basis? Also, I wouldn't count 10 lbs over 3 month proof that a calorie is a calorie. Actually, I think it proves the opposite. A person who is 30+ lbs over weight should drop 10lbs in around two weeks with a 500 calorie deficit per day. (Generally considered the max safe range for sustained weight loss) I'd really be curious to how much you would lose if you cut the sugar completely.
    • EpicEng 10y ago
      Where did you get those numbers? You're saying that 1lb for this person ~= 700 calories, which is absurdly low, based on my own personal experience as well as everything I've ever read on the topic.
      • snarf21 10y ago
        I never said all the weight was from calories, most of it is water and waste. For an "average" person they store 400g of glycogen in their muscles and 100g of glycogen in their liver. In this form, it is bound to 3-4 times as much water. So 500 * 3.5 is 2250g = 5 pounds just from this depletion. As far as fat burning, a pound of fat has about 3500 calories. A 500 per day deficit will lead to 1 pound of weight loss. However, fat is also bound to water in a roughly 1:1 ratio so you'll also lose a pound of water too. So call this 2 pounds for the second week. Add in all the weight in your digestive system over that two week period and you'll be ~10 pounds or more in two weeks. Again this assumes a person that is 30+ pounds overweight and has full glycogen stores.
• WorldMaker 10y ago
  I very much feel that food/nutrition calories are the last bastion of Phlogiston Theory in any science and that in every other scientific discipline the proponents of calories and calorie counting would be laughed at as unscientific, at best. Humans aren't ideal furnaces and food/drink energy content isn't just its temperature output when burnt in a furnace. It's maybe fine that that's our current best approximation, but seeing it as anything more than a seriously crazy, wild eyed approximation is not good math or science.
  • agumonkey 10y ago
    I feel alone when I cringe at the linear combustion engine metaphor from the 50s that drives nutrition. How many people don't agree with this ? our body is full of variables that can impede or accelerate processes. I could eat a nutella jar and not weight a gram, some people almost get fat at the sight of sweets.
  • kmm 10y ago
    > Humans aren't ideal furnaces and food/drink energy content isn't just its temperature output when burnt in a furnace. Yes we are. We get all our energy from oxidizing reduced carbon. The chemical equation is exactly the same and thus the energy produced must be as well. Burning a gram of sugar will yield 4 calories of heat, whether in a furnace or in a mitochondrion. And because the waste heat is useful in keeping us warm, it's a 100% efficient process. The sugar, fats or protein you ingest cannot simply stay in your body, and it's not leaving you either (feces has no nutritional value and unless you have diabetes your urine won't be sweet either). So if your body is already at the right temperature, it is going to be stored as fat. There is simply no other way for it to go! There is no significant interperson difference in metabolisms. Any difference would raise your body temperature, which is what banned dieting aids used to do (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol) Your comparison to phlogiston is frankly insulting. As a physicist, I'm not too fond of the practices in nutrition either, but this is just basic biochemistry that has been known for decades.
    • WorldMaker 10y ago
• 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
  A calorie is a calorie though. Try not eating. Cut down your calories to zero, insulin ain't going to keep you alive and you'll lose all your excess weight. Will it be fun and make you feel good? No. But you will lose weight I promise. You can lose weight by eating 1000 calories of french fries or 1000 calories of kale every day. Eating the kale will probably make you FEEL better and be easier to maintain over the long run, but both work. Ease of following the diet does not mean that calories are somehow an inaccurate way to measure though.
• agumonkey 10y ago
  Western lifestyle is built on such pretentious lies ...