4 ms·

You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my poi

You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my point. You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.

coldtea 10y ago
>You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting. No, that's exactly calorie counting in the real world. This is not advanced math or chemistry lab, and you don't need to get to even 80% accuracy for everything. Just to be consistent and get a good feel.
fredophile 10y ago
It's close enough to get results. Nobody is going to put a sandwich from the local sandwich shop into a bomb calorimeter to figure out how many sandwiches they can eat and still lose weight. If you're going to get hung up on the term calories let's call them approximate calories (or ACs) instead. If I eat mostly the same foods all the time I can use reasonable guesses to get the ACs in each food. Foods I eat infrequently will probably have a greater deviation between my ACs and the actual calories but that doesn't matter much because I don't eat them very often. Foods I eat frequently will probably have less error and the error doesn't matter much as long as I'm consistent with the numbers. Let's say I decide I want to lose weight. I can start off with the general rule that for a male of my age, build and activity levels I need about 2500 calories a day to maintain weight. Since I want to lose some weight I'll set my daily AC allowance at 2000. After a couple weeks I check how the weight loss is going. Am I losing weight too slowly? Drop the ACs a bit. Am I losing weight too quickly? Increase the ACs a bit. Keep checking and adjusting every couple weeks until I'm happy with the weight loss. This approach works in the real world. I do weigh and measure some of my food but if I had to weigh everything down to the last gram to make sure I ate exactly 1947 calories per day for ideal weight loss I'd quit pretty quickly.
flat6turbo 10y ago
mixing g and oz - that's a novel and interesting excuse to avoid the work of weight loss. usually people just blame their thyroid but this bullshit excuse at least has some kind of passable scientific pedantry behind it. i'll have to file that one for later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
- jackvalentine 10y ago
  Who said anything about avoiding weight loss? I've had far more success just keeping a simple food diary and going "wow I eat a lot of cakes" and cutting them out. I have a theory that 'calorie counters' are shockingly inaccurate (one other poster mentioned a 25% margin is 'fine'!) and their success comes from the very act of attempting to quantify what they're eating being a defacto food diary.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I have a theory that 'calorie counters' are shockingly inaccurate (one other poster mentioned a 25% margin is 'fine'!) Accurate or inaccurate is only meaningful related to the task and its requirements. 25% can be totally acceptable margin of error for the task. We use even bigger margins in lots of ventures (determining which startup will have a succesful exit to fund, for one). And yes, the mere act of quantifying helps. But quantifying with even 25% error is still better than just writing down "ate 5 cakes", especially if one doesn't eat too many repeats of the same food. Not sure in what reasoning one can complain for a method with 25% margin of error (say), but be OK with a method like "5 cakes" which still applies quantification, just in an even more vague and hazy sense. 5 cakes is much worse than 5 carrots, for example, but with merely writing down how many you ate, you have to rely on a far more relative guesstimation of their relative harm than you would be if you were counting their calories and being off by 25%).
    - jackvalentine 10y ago
      > Not sure in what reasoning one can complain for a method with 25% margin of error (say), but be OK with a method like "5 cakes" which still applies quantification, just in an even more vague and hazy sense. One method implies rigour and the other one is honest about what it is setting out to do

coldtea 10y ago

>You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting. No, that's exactly calorie counting in the real world. This is not advanced math or chemistry lab, and you don't need to get to even 80% accuracy for everything. Just to be consistent and get a good feel.

fredophile 10y ago

It's close enough to get results. Nobody is going to put a sandwich from the local sandwich shop into a bomb calorimeter to figure out how many sandwiches they can eat and still lose weight. If you're going to get hung up on the term calories let's call them approximate calories (or ACs) instead. If I eat mostly the same foods all the time I can use reasonable guesses to get the ACs in each food. Foods I eat infrequently will probably have a greater deviation between my ACs and the actual calories but that doesn't matter much because I don't eat them very often. Foods I eat frequently will probably have less error and the error doesn't matter much as long as I'm consistent with the numbers. Let's say I decide I want to lose weight. I can start off with the general rule that for a male of my age, build and activity levels I need about 2500 calories a day to maintain weight. Since I want to lose some weight I'll set my daily AC allowance at 2000. After a couple weeks I check how the weight loss is going. Am I losing weight too slowly? Drop the ACs a bit. Am I losing weight too quickly? Increase the ACs a bit. Keep checking and adjusting every couple weeks until I'm happy with the weight loss. This approach works in the real world. I do weigh and measure some of my food but if I had to weigh everything down to the last gram to make sure I ate exactly 1947 calories per day for ideal weight loss I'd quit pretty quickly.

flat6turbo 10y ago

mixing g and oz - that's a novel and interesting excuse to avoid the work of weight loss. usually people just blame their thyroid but this bullshit excuse at least has some kind of passable scientific pedantry behind it. i'll have to file that one for later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

jackvalentine 10y ago
Who said anything about avoiding weight loss? I've had far more success just keeping a simple food diary and going "wow I eat a lot of cakes" and cutting them out. I have a theory that 'calorie counters' are shockingly inaccurate (one other poster mentioned a 25% margin is 'fine'!) and their success comes from the very act of attempting to quantify what they're eating being a defacto food diary.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I have a theory that 'calorie counters' are shockingly inaccurate (one other poster mentioned a 25% margin is 'fine'!) Accurate or inaccurate is only meaningful related to the task and its requirements. 25% can be totally acceptable margin of error for the task. We use even bigger margins in lots of ventures (determining which startup will have a succesful exit to fund, for one). And yes, the mere act of quantifying helps. But quantifying with even 25% error is still better than just writing down "ate 5 cakes", especially if one doesn't eat too many repeats of the same food. Not sure in what reasoning one can complain for a method with 25% margin of error (say), but be OK with a method like "5 cakes" which still applies quantification, just in an even more vague and hazy sense. 5 cakes is much worse than 5 carrots, for example, but with merely writing down how many you ate, you have to rely on a far more relative guesstimation of their relative harm than you would be if you were counting their calories and being off by 25%).
  - jackvalentine 10y ago
    > Not sure in what reasoning one can complain for a method with 25% margin of error (say), but be OK with a method like "5 cakes" which still applies quantification, just in an even more vague and hazy sense. One method implies rigour and the other one is honest about what it is setting out to do