3 ms·

I'm frustrated reading comments here that repeatedly say "Calories in, calories out", "law of thermodynamics", etc. Frustrated because, for one thing, this app

I'm frustrated reading comments here that repeatedly say "Calories in, calories out", "law of thermodynamics", etc. Frustrated because, for one thing, this approach is extremely discouraging to people who want to, or are in the process of, losing weight. "Jesus you're so dumb, how can you not understand this one simple thing that you merely have to eat less?" 1. What works/worked for you/your friends/whoever you read about on the internet may not work for everyone. That's because when talking to each other, neither party has the full picture. Neither party knows exactly the level of activity and food habits of the other. "I simply cut X calories from my diet and it worked!" -- yes, but you also forgot to mention you bike to work and back home every day. 2. Calories in != Calories out. CICO is an approximation, a pretty good one in terms of nutrition, but different foods break down very differently in the body. I recommend watching "Sugar: The Bitter Truth". TLDW: It's a long presentation that talks about how glucose and fructose are broken down by the body. Furthermore, CICO is super misleading on two levels: - It completely ignores hunger. Telling someone "Go down to 1400 calories / day" can be a horrible idea if they don't radically change their diet. It's not just about cutting, it's about replacing. There's high-calorie-budget things you can't keep eating/drinking, and low-calorie-budget things that make you feel fuller that have to be introduced. - Metabolism matters. As I was saying further down in the thread, depending on your metabolism (influenced both by genetics and overall activity level), two people may burn different amounts of energy, both when they're active and even passively by merely existing. So, for all intents and purposes, yes, calories in == calories out. But that's not the only thing that matters. Get your diet sorted out, get your exercise plan sorted out, find a strategy that works long term (not just a crash diet) and that is and feels comfortable. Anything that is uncomfortable/unpleasant is not something that can be maintained long term. Also, like the post says, get a digital body scale to start recording your weight. I got a Nokia Health smart scale which gives me graphs of my weight automatically. Being able to see the trends is the most critical tool. Can you imagine getting good performance at load on your servers without instrumentation, merely by just running top once in a while? PS, if you're downvoting, take the time to leave a comment. All the above is from hard-earned experience.

radix07 8y ago
CICO IS all that matters at the end of the day. Yes, some people may be hungry, some may have a faster metabolism, some may do it better with less carbs, some with less fat, some prefer to only eat within a 4 hour window, others may just want to lift heavy or run far. That's all great, but we can't do much about what works best for each individual and everyone needs to find what works for them. In the end it's all just tricks and moving things around to consume less calories than we use.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  This is like saying "cpu instructions is all that matters [to programming] at the end of the day". CICO is what it breaks down to. But it implies that you can start counting calories, mathing it out against exercise, and be done. The road to get to that equation actually working is a long one, one that involves eating better (not just less), and getting long term strategies in place. (This comment is excellent to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392744)
  - radix07 8y ago
    CICO is more like Python: print 'hello world!'. It's crazy simple and there is a ton going on beneath the hood, but nobody needs to go that deep to get the job done. If you find some other libraries/tricks that help make your life easier, use them! If you really want to start optimizing metabolic timings and portioning and macros and micros and all that, that's great too! But I don't see why getting started with a healthy diet has to be so complicated: eat healthy, eat less, burn calories. Don't over think it.
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      I'm ok with this analogy, but: > But I don't see why getting started with a healthy diet has to be so complicated This is a failure on your part. Dieting is an extremely hard and complicated thing for many, many people, as you can plainly see in this thread. That you don't see what's so complicated about your suggestion is a hint that you're missing a part of the picture. Let's start with "Eat healthy": How do you do that? What do you define as healthy? How do you do it when you're strapped for cash? How do you even find healthy food, even if you know what to look for? "Eat less": How do you determine what to cut? How much of it do you cut? Will cutting something cause you to crave something else? "Burn calories": This is the hardest one. There's no easy way of checking how many calories you burn every day. "20 minutes of running" is very different from one person to the next, so even timing yourself isn't always enough. At the gym, machines sometimes have estimates for how much you're burning... but that's all they are, and it's a tiny tiny portion of how much you are burning. "Don't over think it": I like what a poster said elsewhere in the comments: We need to start treating obesity as we treat mental illness. Just as "Just cheer up" is not an appropriate thing to tell someone clinically depressed, your suggestions are not useful to someone who is unable to lose weight. Do you think they haven't tried? What do you think is supposed to happen when people keep telling them "Just eat less" and it's not working, are they not supposed to overthink it?

radix07 8y ago

CICO IS all that matters at the end of the day. Yes, some people may be hungry, some may have a faster metabolism, some may do it better with less carbs, some with less fat, some prefer to only eat within a 4 hour window, others may just want to lift heavy or run far. That's all great, but we can't do much about what works best for each individual and everyone needs to find what works for them. In the end it's all just tricks and moving things around to consume less calories than we use.

scrollaway 8y ago
This is like saying "cpu instructions is all that matters [to programming] at the end of the day". CICO is what it breaks down to. But it implies that you can start counting calories, mathing it out against exercise, and be done. The road to get to that equation actually working is a long one, one that involves eating better (not just less), and getting long term strategies in place. (This comment is excellent to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17392744)
- radix07 8y ago
  CICO is more like Python: print 'hello world!'. It's crazy simple and there is a ton going on beneath the hood, but nobody needs to go that deep to get the job done. If you find some other libraries/tricks that help make your life easier, use them! If you really want to start optimizing metabolic timings and portioning and macros and micros and all that, that's great too! But I don't see why getting started with a healthy diet has to be so complicated: eat healthy, eat less, burn calories. Don't over think it.
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    I'm ok with this analogy, but: > But I don't see why getting started with a healthy diet has to be so complicated This is a failure on your part. Dieting is an extremely hard and complicated thing for many, many people, as you can plainly see in this thread. That you don't see what's so complicated about your suggestion is a hint that you're missing a part of the picture. Let's start with "Eat healthy": How do you do that? What do you define as healthy? How do you do it when you're strapped for cash? How do you even find healthy food, even if you know what to look for? "Eat less": How do you determine what to cut? How much of it do you cut? Will cutting something cause you to crave something else? "Burn calories": This is the hardest one. There's no easy way of checking how many calories you burn every day. "20 minutes of running" is very different from one person to the next, so even timing yourself isn't always enough. At the gym, machines sometimes have estimates for how much you're burning... but that's all they are, and it's a tiny tiny portion of how much you are burning. "Don't over think it": I like what a poster said elsewhere in the comments: We need to start treating obesity as we treat mental illness. Just as "Just cheer up" is not an appropriate thing to tell someone clinically depressed, your suggestions are not useful to someone who is unable to lose weight. Do you think they haven't tried? What do you think is supposed to happen when people keep telling them "Just eat less" and it's not working, are they not supposed to overthink it?