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It won’t last, calorie counts are not reliable indicators of how many calories you’re actually digesting (look up the thermic effect of food), and long term you

It won’t last, calorie counts are not reliable indicators of how many calories you’re actually digesting (look up the thermic effect of food), and long term you will not keep it off if you focus solely on calories, quality whole foods come first.

Latty 8y ago
That just makes no sense, unless you are suggesting that we magically generate matter, calorie counts are an upper bound on how many calories you are actually digesting.
- sbenitoj 8y ago
  That’s not what I’m suggesting. Certain foods generate more heat while being digested (like protein) than others (like sugar and white flour). Consuming 100 calories of protein results in fewer calories digested than consuming 100 calories of sugar.
  - Latty 8y ago
    Sure, but how does that in any way make calorie counting less effective? It's an upper bound. Sure, you could maybe eat a little more protein than you would otherwise budget for, but if you are aiming to lose weight, overestimating the count of an item a little isn't going to hurt.
    - sbenitoj 8y ago
      The broader point I’m trying to make is that calorie counting DOES NOT work long term. It’s exhausting. It’s monotonous. It’s inaccurate. It’s impossible to do unless you’re eating at chain restaurant all the time. And we are not robots where ONLY calories matter. In the short term people can willpower themselves to do almost anything. In the long term WHAT we eat has a bigger affect than HOW MUCH we eat. Different foods affect our hormones differently. You can’t eat 1,200 calories of sugar a day and expect to feel satiated from your diet, you will feel starving all the time. You can eat 1,200 calories of protein/veggies/healthy fat and feel satiated from your diet. Hormones drive our long-term hunger levels, and foods affect our hormone levels. People before the 1950s were almost all lean and they had no calorie counts. People have all the calorie counts they can stand today and most people are overweight in the West. The difference is people eat WAY more junk food now than they did before the 1950s, it wasn’t even available back then.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - cbo100 8y ago
        Dude, I can see what you're saying, but as somebody who apparently does this professionally you need to work on how you get your point across. I've lost over 15KG/35 pounds since the start of the year doing nothing but CICO - it's not incorrect to say that Calories is the king when it comes to how to lose the weight. For everything else you are saying, it's not wrong either - anybody who starts CICO pretty quickly discovers that "Yes I can eat anything, but my god I will be hungry at 7pm if I used all my Calories on KFC and Donuts" - but don't keep saying simply that "Counting calories is not going to work". Edit to add: and my wife and I have done this all with cooking home made meals at least 5-6 nights a week. It only takes a minute to enter a recipe in a calculator app.
        sbenitoj 8y ago
        Appreciate your comment. To be clear the population of people on HN is a self-selecting, techie group of ppl. Most people cannot do CICO long term. And even if you can you’ll realize it doesn’t work the leaner you get, quality becomes increasingly important at that point.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    The GP said UPPER BOUND. Sure, protein and fibrous foods require more energy to digest. Great, that's a nice bonus. However, if your counting calories then you're not taking that into account, therefore you're over counting. That leads to _more_ weight loss, never less.
dogma1138 8y ago
I’ve yet to see the caloric intake which cuts off 500-600 cals of your BMR which for most non bedridden people equates to about a 1000 calories daily deficit that wouldn’t result in weight loss regardless of the nutritional makeup of said calories.
- sbenitoj 8y ago
  Can you clarify your statement? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    What I’m saying is that while eating 1500 cals of pure sugar a day might not be good for your long term insulin sensitivity you’ll lose weight at about the same rate as eating 1500 “well balanced” cals of fat/protein/complex carbs a day.
    - sbenitoj 8y ago
      This is a statement that’s technically true but misses the most important point — sourcing your foods from fat/protein/veggies will naturally take care of the calories piece. All mammals, including humans, have the ability to naturally regulate their energy balance when they eat the foods they evolved to eat.
      - dogma1138 8y ago
        No it won’t if you eat a ribeye for lunch every day you’ll be hard pressed to lose weight unless you are The Rock. If your goal is to lose weight tracking calories is by far the most important factor in achieving that goal. You can’t just say eat meat and veggies and expect people to lose weight without enforcing a caloric restriction.
        sbenitoj 8y ago
        That is exactly how I get my many, many clients to lose weight — eating meat and veggies naturally causes people to reduce their calorie intake by increasing their feelings of satiety from the foods they’re eating.

Latty 8y ago

That just makes no sense, unless you are suggesting that we magically generate matter, calorie counts are an upper bound on how many calories you are actually digesting.

sbenitoj 8y ago
That’s not what I’m suggesting. Certain foods generate more heat while being digested (like protein) than others (like sugar and white flour). Consuming 100 calories of protein results in fewer calories digested than consuming 100 calories of sugar.
- Latty 8y ago
  Sure, but how does that in any way make calorie counting less effective? It's an upper bound. Sure, you could maybe eat a little more protein than you would otherwise budget for, but if you are aiming to lose weight, overestimating the count of an item a little isn't going to hurt.
  - sbenitoj 8y ago
    The broader point I’m trying to make is that calorie counting DOES NOT work long term. It’s exhausting. It’s monotonous. It’s inaccurate. It’s impossible to do unless you’re eating at chain restaurant all the time. And we are not robots where ONLY calories matter. In the short term people can willpower themselves to do almost anything. In the long term WHAT we eat has a bigger affect than HOW MUCH we eat. Different foods affect our hormones differently. You can’t eat 1,200 calories of sugar a day and expect to feel satiated from your diet, you will feel starving all the time. You can eat 1,200 calories of protein/veggies/healthy fat and feel satiated from your diet. Hormones drive our long-term hunger levels, and foods affect our hormone levels. People before the 1950s were almost all lean and they had no calorie counts. People have all the calorie counts they can stand today and most people are overweight in the West. The difference is people eat WAY more junk food now than they did before the 1950s, it wasn’t even available back then.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - cbo100 8y ago
      Dude, I can see what you're saying, but as somebody who apparently does this professionally you need to work on how you get your point across. I've lost over 15KG/35 pounds since the start of the year doing nothing but CICO - it's not incorrect to say that Calories is the king when it comes to how to lose the weight. For everything else you are saying, it's not wrong either - anybody who starts CICO pretty quickly discovers that "Yes I can eat anything, but my god I will be hungry at 7pm if I used all my Calories on KFC and Donuts" - but don't keep saying simply that "Counting calories is not going to work". Edit to add: and my wife and I have done this all with cooking home made meals at least 5-6 nights a week. It only takes a minute to enter a recipe in a calculator app.
      - sbenitoj 8y ago
        Appreciate your comment. To be clear the population of people on HN is a self-selecting, techie group of ppl. Most people cannot do CICO long term. And even if you can you’ll realize it doesn’t work the leaner you get, quality becomes increasingly important at that point.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- EpicEng 8y ago
  The GP said UPPER BOUND. Sure, protein and fibrous foods require more energy to digest. Great, that's a nice bonus. However, if your counting calories then you're not taking that into account, therefore you're over counting. That leads to _more_ weight loss, never less.

dogma1138 8y ago

I’ve yet to see the caloric intake which cuts off 500-600 cals of your BMR which for most non bedridden people equates to about a 1000 calories daily deficit that wouldn’t result in weight loss regardless of the nutritional makeup of said calories.

sbenitoj 8y ago
Can you clarify your statement? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  What I’m saying is that while eating 1500 cals of pure sugar a day might not be good for your long term insulin sensitivity you’ll lose weight at about the same rate as eating 1500 “well balanced” cals of fat/protein/complex carbs a day.
  - sbenitoj 8y ago
    This is a statement that’s technically true but misses the most important point — sourcing your foods from fat/protein/veggies will naturally take care of the calories piece. All mammals, including humans, have the ability to naturally regulate their energy balance when they eat the foods they evolved to eat.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      No it won’t if you eat a ribeye for lunch every day you’ll be hard pressed to lose weight unless you are The Rock. If your goal is to lose weight tracking calories is by far the most important factor in achieving that goal. You can’t just say eat meat and veggies and expect people to lose weight without enforcing a caloric restriction.
      - sbenitoj 8y ago
        That is exactly how I get my many, many clients to lose weight — eating meat and veggies naturally causes people to reduce their calorie intake by increasing their feelings of satiety from the foods they’re eating.