4 ms·

I'm a walking example of why it's not true in a more pragmatic sense. I used to weigh 350 pounds, every diet I tried was just caloric restriction nonsense that

I'm a walking example of why it's not true in a more pragmatic sense. I used to weigh 350 pounds, every diet I tried was just caloric restriction nonsense that just fed insulin resistance (thus making anyone who tries that without actual diet modification a dead walking zombie until they give up on the diet and remain fat).... So, for exactly one year, I did something new: I cut out all grains, refined sugars, dairy, and legumes, but kept CICO the same. After the end of one year, I weighed 214 (and kept going after the end of that year until 184). I do not exercise enough to explain losing 544 thousand calories (or about 1490 a day), nor did my diet suddenly drop 1490 calories (as I regularly eat 2000-2200 calories a day, before and after the diet modification). Afterwards, I realized two things were true: one, the calories in the little nutrition facts panel is wrong, based on very outdated science; and two, some foods contain chemicals that trick your body into increasing the rate at which carbs are transformed into fat. Once I quit tricking my body into shoving everything I ate into fat cells, I felt like I had lot more energy, my brain worked better, the fat just melted away, and I feel better than I ever have. Unless you truly have an eating disorder, you don't need to count calories. You need to just stop eating foods that cause you to be fat. It isn't how much, but what. The only problem I've found is people asking me what I did to lose the weight, and I tell them, and they look at me like I eat babies and worship Satan. "You stopped eating grains and refined sugars? But-but-but my doctor said count calories, he said nothing about grains and refined sugars! You must be wrong, or you're lying!" So yeah, you're fat because you want to be fat. There's an effective way out there, it worked for me when nothing else would and it was the lowest effort diet I ever did. Don't fucking shoot the messenger when he's giving you good news. Edit: and for the record, I was pre-diabetic at 350, was on my way to getting diabetes, which runs in my family (no, no one runs in my family), and now I have zero clinical signs of ever having had chronic insulin resistance (which is what being pre-diabetic, or having metabolic syndrome, means).

bena 8y ago
Congratulations on your success. However your story doesn't jive. If you were eating 2000-2200 calories a day before and after losing the weight, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. The difference between 200 pounds and 350 pounds is... about 1500 calories per day. Most people are really bad about tracking what they eat in their head. They think they're good at eating for sustenance. It's quite possible that changing to an Atkins-esque diet also cut out a lot of calories because you weren't eating bread or sugar anymore. Just like a lot of people experience success going on Fuhrman's plan. You cut out bread, sugar, oils, most animal products. What you are left with just isn't that calorie dense. It becomes difficult to overeat calories because you just can't physically fit that much inside of you. So while some of that may be true. There may be some variance in metabolism, nutrition labeling isn't 100% exact (and honestly, I don't see how it can be considering most of our methods of measuring are destructive so we're basing all values off of a sample), certain foods affect us differently. I don't believe that there is enough variance to account for some of the wild stories I hear like "I wasn't eating anything and not losing weight" or "I eat all day long and never gain a pound". There's only been one Tarrare. Everyone else who has made that claim has been found to be mistaken about how much or little they eat.
- mohn 8y ago
  > There's only been one Tarrare. Sure, but there was also a Charles Domery (AKA Domerz)[1]. They even overlapped in time, and were both in/around France. I like to imagine an alternate history in which a military conflict was settled not with battle, but by pitting these two against each other in an eat-off. They're both alleged cannibals, so I guess the logical end for that competition would have been for the winner to eat the loser. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Domery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Domery
- DiabloD3 8y ago
  Nope, I was tracking it using the labeling on the package... which goes back to my point, the labeling is grossly inaccurate to the point that it may be just random numbers. And no, it also isn't difficult to overheat on a diet that isn't calorie dense. I've since added OMAD, and can eat 2000 calories in one sitting. Just because you don't have grains and refined sugars as a hyper-dense calorie crutch doesn't mean you cant. It merely means you aren't used to it.
  - bena 8y ago
    So you can eat 2000 calories worth of lettuce in a sitting. Or 2000 calories worth of celery or 130 whole cucumbers. I didn't say a diet that isn't calorie dense. I implied foods. As a lot of the "named" diets happen to cut out the foods that are denser in calories. I also didn't say impossible. I said difficult. Most people aren't going to try and cram 130 cucumbers in a single daily meal. And by tracking it "using the labeling on the package" isn't really tracking. That's just looking. And not everything has labeling or packaging. I've always had success when I'm honest with myself and I ruthlessly record every single source of calories that I ingest.
    - DiabloD3 8y ago
      The argument I am making is quite literally "tracking by using the labeling isn't tracking", but not for the reasons you're stating. What I'm saying is that if you eat a serving of something, the package says x calories per package (and x servings per package, for those packages that are clearly one serving but say 2), and you write down all of those values you ate, and you arrive at a number... that number is entirely fictional. When I say I ate around 2000 calories a day on the SAD (standard American diet), I have no clue. That is the problem with processed food, you have to trust the numbers on the box are correct because you have no clue what the recipe is, if the food could even be expressible in terms of normal ingredients. Once you cook everything yourself, which also came with the diet change (because everything is contaminated with grains, refined sugars, and just weird strange shit), which makes it much easier to track calories (as USDA values for generic foods seem to actually be in the realm of reality).

bena 8y ago

Congratulations on your success. However your story doesn't jive. If you were eating 2000-2200 calories a day before and after losing the weight, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. The difference between 200 pounds and 350 pounds is... about 1500 calories per day. Most people are really bad about tracking what they eat in their head. They think they're good at eating for sustenance. It's quite possible that changing to an Atkins-esque diet also cut out a lot of calories because you weren't eating bread or sugar anymore. Just like a lot of people experience success going on Fuhrman's plan. You cut out bread, sugar, oils, most animal products. What you are left with just isn't that calorie dense. It becomes difficult to overeat calories because you just can't physically fit that much inside of you. So while some of that may be true. There may be some variance in metabolism, nutrition labeling isn't 100% exact (and honestly, I don't see how it can be considering most of our methods of measuring are destructive so we're basing all values off of a sample), certain foods affect us differently. I don't believe that there is enough variance to account for some of the wild stories I hear like "I wasn't eating anything and not losing weight" or "I eat all day long and never gain a pound". There's only been one Tarrare. Everyone else who has made that claim has been found to be mistaken about how much or little they eat.

mohn 8y ago
> There's only been one Tarrare. Sure, but there was also a Charles Domery (AKA Domerz)[1]. They even overlapped in time, and were both in/around France. I like to imagine an alternate history in which a military conflict was settled not with battle, but by pitting these two against each other in an eat-off. They're both alleged cannibals, so I guess the logical end for that competition would have been for the winner to eat the loser. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Domery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Domery
DiabloD3 8y ago
Nope, I was tracking it using the labeling on the package... which goes back to my point, the labeling is grossly inaccurate to the point that it may be just random numbers. And no, it also isn't difficult to overheat on a diet that isn't calorie dense. I've since added OMAD, and can eat 2000 calories in one sitting. Just because you don't have grains and refined sugars as a hyper-dense calorie crutch doesn't mean you cant. It merely means you aren't used to it.
- bena 8y ago
  So you can eat 2000 calories worth of lettuce in a sitting. Or 2000 calories worth of celery or 130 whole cucumbers. I didn't say a diet that isn't calorie dense. I implied foods. As a lot of the "named" diets happen to cut out the foods that are denser in calories. I also didn't say impossible. I said difficult. Most people aren't going to try and cram 130 cucumbers in a single daily meal. And by tracking it "using the labeling on the package" isn't really tracking. That's just looking. And not everything has labeling or packaging. I've always had success when I'm honest with myself and I ruthlessly record every single source of calories that I ingest.
  - DiabloD3 8y ago
    The argument I am making is quite literally "tracking by using the labeling isn't tracking", but not for the reasons you're stating. What I'm saying is that if you eat a serving of something, the package says x calories per package (and x servings per package, for those packages that are clearly one serving but say 2), and you write down all of those values you ate, and you arrive at a number... that number is entirely fictional. When I say I ate around 2000 calories a day on the SAD (standard American diet), I have no clue. That is the problem with processed food, you have to trust the numbers on the box are correct because you have no clue what the recipe is, if the food could even be expressible in terms of normal ingredients. Once you cook everything yourself, which also came with the diet change (because everything is contaminated with grains, refined sugars, and just weird strange shit), which makes it much easier to track calories (as USDA values for generic foods seem to actually be in the realm of reality).