16 ms·

Death of the Calorie

47 points by cyanbane 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
grantorshadow 8y ago
my first comment here on Hacker News. So cool !
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University in Boston, has found that labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an average of 18%. American government regulations allow such labels to understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure that consumers are not short-changed in terms of how much nutrition they receive). The information on some processed frozen foods misstates their calorific content by as much as 70%. I've found the problem is that they'll also vastly underestimate the size of a serving or a product. Things will be much larger than the nutritional information would suggest. A food scale is a must.
coldtea 8y ago
Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Makes sense, a log of wood is several megacalories but you'll starve eating it
- dtech 8y ago
  Calories on food packaging have for decades been a calculation of absorbable nutrients. Your log would have a very low calorie count if it lay in stores.
  - rwmj 8y ago
    The article (which I have read) argues the opposite - that calorie counts on packaging are in fact rather unrelated to the availability of energy in the food. Most are calculated using an 100+ year outdated and never reproduced study of basic food groups which used a calorimeter (that burns the food). Your log would therefore have a pretty high calorie count.
    - dtech 8y ago
      This is incorrect. An bomb calorometer is almost never used in the US nowadays, and not allowed in the EU. A 1990 NLEA law [1] [2] requires calorie contents to be based on nutritional components. The article of this post does not explicitly state that a bomb calorometer is still in use, but it is very implied. I do not really like to article because it omissions and framing like this to support its narrative. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Education_Act_of_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Educati... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manuf...
      - m0rose 8y ago
        Since we're being blunt: This is misleading. We don't use the bomb calorimeter today, but we still use the Atwater system (with a quick tweak for fiber) for those "nutritional components." All that means is instead of burning the food ourselves we're looking at a table that the guy who burned the foods created... with his bomb calorimeter.[1] The only reason we're marginally better now is because we're starting to take into account digestibility (e.g. Carbs have non-digestible fiber subtracted before the calories are calculated).[2] [1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manuf... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system#Modified_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system#Modified_system
        dtech 8y ago
        So you're repeating the exact point I was making. A bomb calorimeter is not used anymore today. Altough it is very interesting that the 4 kcal/g protein etc values are still used based on that research, I thought the values had been better determined nowadays. At least progress is possible and being made. But still, what the gp says was that a wooden log would have a food label with a high calorie content. That is not correct.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
I recently watched the documentary "Cooked" on Netflix. In it, Michael Pollan makes some interesting observations about "real food" vs "industrial food", and the benefits of long cooking times, sourdough bread vs. yeast bread and so on. It echoes many of the same observations as this article. That's not to say that he's 100% right about everything, but I think there is a very good point to be made that we ought to eat more home-cooked food, instead of fast food and processed food products optimized for production costs and shelf life.
- atomical 8y ago
  Bread is a processed food and sourdough seems pretty trendy right now.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    I very specifically wrote "processed food products optimized for production costs and shelf life".
kaiju0 8y ago
In this case perfect is the enemy of good. The calorie is not perfect but I don't think there is a perfect measure. Is it good enough for a diet? Yep. Make a diet plan. Eat for two weeks. Record result. If you are losing 2 lb a week good. If not adjust percentages. You will be hungry. The end.
- citeguised 8y ago
  Yes! Refinement is the key. Losing weight by counting kcal is a skill which requires practise and consciousness. I need to get to know what kinds of food work for me; how I handle certain situations like sickness or times with travel (anything off routine, really). After quite a long time of doing it, I believe the reason it works for me personally, is that the accountability towards the calorie-app keeps me off chocolate (big candy-bowl at work which I pass multiple times a day). My problem is: As soon as I stop counting, the accountability towards the counting-app is lost, and the junk-food is back on the plate. After several months I'm back to ~95 kg and it's on to counting again (usually triggered by too-tight pants).
- chongli 8y ago
  That approach has been shown not to work for the vast majority of people. The problem is the "you will be hungry" bit. Scott Alexander blogged about an hypothesis for the obesity crisis that points to high-reward, high-calorie, low-satiety foods as the problem [1]. I find this argument compelling, as it fits well with Paul Graham's compelling thesis that capitalism optimizes for addictiveness [2]. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry-brain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry... [2] http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    The Slate Star Codex link is really interesting > In the 1970s, scientists wanted to develop new rat models of obesity. This was harder than it sounded; rats ate only as much as they needed and never got fat... Then, almost by accident, someone tried feeding the rats human snack food, and they ballooned up to be as fat as, well, humans.
man-and-laptop 8y ago
The advantage of calorie-counting is that it's quite easy - especially when you use something like My Fitness Pal. That doesn't mean it's correct, of course. What alternative is this article advocating?
- plopz 8y ago
  I only skimmed the article but it doesn't really advocate an alternative. It highlights that the person they were following "eat real food, not food ‘products’" and that weight watchers uses points instead of calories. So it doesn't seem like there is a nice actionable item that someone could take away from the article and apply to their own life.
- citeguised 8y ago
  I guess lots of people do the mistake of having a too-small daily deficit while counting. It's obviously not an exact science. If you go with a daily reduction of 1000 kcal, then it doesn't matter if you have an error-margin of 300-500 kcal, you still lose weight. If you only try to save 500 a day, and maybe are not too exact in your logging, you might not see an effect at all.
- unsignedint 8y ago
  I don't think the article really advocates any alternative, but I think things the best benefit of MyFitnessPal is to promote awareness of what you are intaking. I have been receiving health coaching for last 4 months or so, and most important part that working for me is to be able to be conscious about food choices, and also being able to reflect what I have been eating and doing how well I'm doing with sugar, carbs, protein, fiber, etc., rather than just looking at the calories count. (and I do eat unhealthy stuff time to time, and I don't think my health coach is necessarily against that -- unless that's my regular habit, that is. It's more important to know how they balance out in the overall intake,) It never occurred to me before I start measuring what I eat using MyFitnessPal. But now, seeing those numbers, I tend to consciously adjust my intake, for example, I will just eat 1/5 of that chips I wanted to eat, because I had bit of carbs today, etc., etc.,
ordinaryperson 8y ago
To summarize some of the major points: 1. Calorie counts on labels undercount by up to 18% 2. Other factors to weight than pure calories, including genetics 3. Certain foods have low calorie counts but are worse than others with higher counts 4. Eating whole foods is better than non-whole foods and helped the subject of this article lose weight better than calorie counting & exercise Worshipping whole foods is not the answer, you need balance. Plus who wants to live life like a Buddhist monk? Having a burger or pizza every once in a while is fun, it's just about moderation. I'm calorie counting right now via a food journal, trying to stay under 2K a day (I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day), and I'm oddly enjoying the experience. One, I can't cheat myself. Before I'd get frustrated trying to lose weight and failing, feeling like I tried really hard and "deserved" it. But with the calorie count you know if you did or didn't. It's very easy to forget or not realize how much you're eating exactly, that's why you write it down. Also, I feel rewarded if I eat salads every day, like I'm getting points in a game or something. Not everyone's brain works that way but for me calorie counting makes dieting more scientific, at least somewhat. Articles like these are somewhat unhelpful because yes it's great to eat whole foods but so is 1) watching what you eat 2) relying on moderation and 3) exercising. P.S. Didn't like how the article implicitly denigrates running as a weight loss tool just because this one person didn't succeed doing it -- not exactly a rigorous analysis.
- victor106 8y ago
  > I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day 2x a day I think is key. It worked amazingly for me. I think it just kept up my metabolism rate very high through the day. I lost weight even if I had a few days of high calorie food.
- lukifer 8y ago
  Moderation is great if it works for you; personally, I’ve found it easier to give something up entirely than to moderate. If I don’t eat sugar for a couple weeks, I don’t miss it, and it takes no effort to stay off it; if I have something sweet, the cravings come back with ferocity.
  - glass_of_water 8y ago
pochamago 8y ago
I just cannot take seriously anything that claims exercise and calorie restriction are ever ineffective. It's literally always user error. The law of thermodynamics dictates this, any other opinion is pseudoscience. It might be difficult or impossible for the individual to stick to the plan, but if you start off your article by claiming they did everything right and it still didn't work, then I know the writer has no interest in facts.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Maybe take "user error" more seriously? If most people can't or won't follow the plan, you need a better plan.
  - brandonmenc 8y ago
    If people can't or won't take their medicine, is it the medicine's fault? When people lack the intelligence, willpower, or consistency needed to make prescriptions (of pills, exercise, or diet) work, there's not much you can do for them except lock them up and force them to do the things. If you need to be on a diet and you can't stick to it, there's not much we can do for you except maybe come up with a pill that makes your brain hurt less when you're on the diet, like we do with curing drug addiction.
    - randallsquared 8y ago
      There already is a pill like that (well, at least one: phentermine), but it has side effects which are dangerous for some and unpleasant for some.
    - skybrian 8y ago
      There may be tricks to help people stick to a diet or exercise plan, but you won't find them by just calling it "user error".
    - watwut 8y ago
      Yes, if it is not possible for majority of humans to take medicine as prescribed in long term then medicine is wrong. What you can do in that situation is to try to give them different advice and improve advice untill it actually works.
krupan 8y ago
Behold, The Hacker's Diet: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ Written sometime back in the 1990's, the author (creator of Autocad) determined that weight gain and loss is simply a feedback and control problem. Most of us eat open loop. By counting calories in and calculating your weight trend[1], and adjusting calorie intake accordingly you can deliberately control your weight. Simple, right? :-) Iv'e tried it. It actually does work. Mostly. The cool thing about it is you don't even have to count every calorie you eat. Just eat normal and start the weight trend measurements. After a while you'll see what your trend is and his online tools will calculate how many calories of intake you should reduce (or increase) to give you your desired rate of weight loss (or gain). Finding a way to cut 200 calories a day, for example, is easier than counting every calorie. The downside is, I think, what this article gets at. Twice I've focused hard on using The Hacker's Diet and lost a good amount of weight, but as I dropped I started to get really hungry and fatigued all the time. It was weird. At first it felt really good to weigh less, but it became very hard to maintain. My best guess, and this article seems to support this, is that the composition of my calorie intake wasn't optimal (or even close to it). Both times I lost my will and gained the weight back. It's interesting to note that he mentions in the book that he's "weird" in that he eats all his calories for the day in one big meal in the middle of the day. "You don't have to do this," he assures. And now, 30 years later, there is a loud group of people who do exactly that in order to lose weight (see: Intermittent Fasting). This article also mentions eating 3 meals with no snacking in between is better than grazing all day. Anyway, just thought I'd share that in case anyone is interested. I have no easy answers. I'm not hugely overweight, the gains and losses I'm talking about here are on the order of 20 to 30 lbs over the course of a few years each time. Take all this as is. 1. weigh yourself everyday, calculate an exponentially smoothed moving average
kbouck 8y ago
Long article, but main points that I got: - That fat creation is influenced more by how fast sugar enters the system (and the insulin response that follows) than caloric content. - Simple carbs (white bread, pasta) are quickly broken down into sugar - The rate at which sugar enters system (glycemic index) triggers a proportional insulin spike - Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat - Counting calories without also considering more influential factors like glycemic index of foods plays a major role in failing of weight-loss initiatives. - Exercise is healthy, but diet plays a larger factor in body weight: ~75% for most people.
- allover 8y ago
  > Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat This is the key, and completely unproven point as far as I know. This is called the 'insulin hypothesis'. And there's still ZERO evidence for it. So as far as we know right now, it's all down to calories <shrug>.
  - pacala 8y ago
    I’ve moved to a diet mostly based on unlimited fresh fruits and veggies, plus limited cheese and meat. Three months and twenty pounds later, I can tell with some degree of confidence that it is quite difficult to load up on calories from apples, bananas, oranges, lettuce or snap peas. While the insulin hypothesis may be wrong, there is so much food one ingests in a 24 hours period, and if this food is low on calories the grand total will be on the low side.
l0b0 8y ago
Here's a fact which blew my mind when looking for a healthy cereal: most ice creams have fewer calories per weight than even the low-calorie cereals. Right now comparing Weetbix (97% wheat, considered basically health food by lots of people) to a pack of RJ's licorice (37% sugar, definitely tip of the nutrition pyramid), the Weetbix is listed as containing more energy by weight. That at least intuitively seems completely broken.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  Cereal is much drier than other foods; dehydrate that licorice and compare again.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  What about when comparing by volume rather than weight, though? Most cereal is pretty low-density.
work_is_play 8y ago
Bullshit. Yeah, calorie counts on packaging is imprecise. Yes it's difficult to know for sure. Yes there are a lot of small factors that go into it. You know what you do with fuzzy measurements and personal bias? You over-count calories and round up deliberately to off-set it. You know what you say when someone tells you that your micronutrient balance isn't just right? "Probably. But obesity will kill me before that will." Source: one drunk guy who has lost >100 pounds and kept it off for 3 years.
babyslothzoo 8y ago
Quite a headline, I was hoping for some revolutionary new model or adjustment to physics and the known laws of thermodynamics but instead I found the same tired arguments of denialism and ignorance about dietary guidelines and why people are fat to begin with (hint: fat is stored excess energy, that excess energy enters the body through the mouth). > Most government guidelines indicated that, as a man, he needed 2,500 calories a day to maintain his weight (the target for women is 2,000) Those guidelines alone are a recipe for rampant morbid obesity, and most people eat far more than that as evidenced by the rapidly expanding obesity rate. The majority of people are simply far too sedentary to recommend anywhere near that level of caloric intake, given the levels of obesity they could easily cut those guidelines by a third if not in half. Or even less if they wanted to promote cures to obesity related disease like type-2 diabetes. By the way, eating about 800 calories a day will cause weight loss (not surprising, laws of physics still apply) and reverse type-2 diabetes. https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-diabetes-can-be-reversed-with-a-low-calorie-diet https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-... Oh well, let the science denial continue. Whether it is weight and obesity, evolution, climate, pollution, biological sex, evolution, flat earth, creationism, in the modern era facts no longer matter.
11235813213455 8y ago
A key is to eat fruit/vegetables, with no limit, with their fibers and flesh. They act like a sponge in the digestive system, releasing nutrients very slowly and uniformly Also, get used to fasting (18 hours and more), that's actually very regenerative for the body
aidenn0 8y ago
It sounds like the person described in the article consumed a lot of calories from sugary drinks (gatorade and fruit juice are both mentioned). Considering that sugary drinks tend to have very low effects on satiety, it's not surprising he was hungry all the time. Many of the effective non-calorie-counting diets have turned out to just be good ways to reduce calorie intake.
cuspycode 8y ago
The first paragraph of the article mentions that Camacho was traumatized by a kidnapping that involved torture and a mock execution. That made him a victim of PTSD that made him put on weight. It's not clear how relevant this is to the rest of the story, but to an amateur like me it seems obvious that treating the PTSD directly would be a better approach than solving the problem by counting calories. Of course it's still trivially true that calorie balance completely determines weight stability, so it would be stupid to dismiss calorie counting if you have trouble with keeping your weight stable, whether it's too high or too low.

47 points by cyanbane 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

grantorshadow 8y ago

my first comment here on Hacker News. So cool !

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

> Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University in Boston, has found that labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an average of 18%. American government regulations allow such labels to understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure that consumers are not short-changed in terms of how much nutrition they receive). The information on some processed frozen foods misstates their calorific content by as much as 70%. I've found the problem is that they'll also vastly underestimate the size of a serving or a product. Things will be much larger than the nutritional information would suggest. A food scale is a must.

coldtea 8y ago

Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Makes sense, a log of wood is several megacalories but you'll starve eating it

dtech 8y ago
Calories on food packaging have for decades been a calculation of absorbable nutrients. Your log would have a very low calorie count if it lay in stores.
- rwmj 8y ago
  The article (which I have read) argues the opposite - that calorie counts on packaging are in fact rather unrelated to the availability of energy in the food. Most are calculated using an 100+ year outdated and never reproduced study of basic food groups which used a calorimeter (that burns the food). Your log would therefore have a pretty high calorie count.
  - dtech 8y ago
    This is incorrect. An bomb calorometer is almost never used in the US nowadays, and not allowed in the EU. A 1990 NLEA law [1] [2] requires calorie contents to be based on nutritional components. The article of this post does not explicitly state that a bomb calorometer is still in use, but it is very implied. I do not really like to article because it omissions and framing like this to support its narrative. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Education_Act_of_1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition_Labeling_and_Educati... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manuf...
    - m0rose 8y ago
      Since we're being blunt: This is misleading. We don't use the bomb calorimeter today, but we still use the Atwater system (with a quick tweak for fiber) for those "nutritional components." All that means is instead of burning the food ourselves we're looking at a table that the guy who burned the foods created... with his bomb calorimeter.[1] The only reason we're marginally better now is because we're starting to take into account digestibility (e.g. Carbs have non-digestible fiber subtracted before the calories are calculated).[2] [1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manufacturers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-food-manuf... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system#Modified_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_system#Modified_system
      - dtech 8y ago
        So you're repeating the exact point I was making. A bomb calorimeter is not used anymore today. Altough it is very interesting that the 4 kcal/g protein etc values are still used based on that research, I thought the values had been better determined nowadays. At least progress is possible and being made. But still, what the gp says was that a wooden log would have a food label with a high calorie content. That is not correct.

KozmoNau7 8y ago

I recently watched the documentary "Cooked" on Netflix. In it, Michael Pollan makes some interesting observations about "real food" vs "industrial food", and the benefits of long cooking times, sourdough bread vs. yeast bread and so on. It echoes many of the same observations as this article. That's not to say that he's 100% right about everything, but I think there is a very good point to be made that we ought to eat more home-cooked food, instead of fast food and processed food products optimized for production costs and shelf life.

atomical 8y ago
Bread is a processed food and sourdough seems pretty trendy right now.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  I very specifically wrote "processed food products optimized for production costs and shelf life".

kaiju0 8y ago

In this case perfect is the enemy of good. The calorie is not perfect but I don't think there is a perfect measure. Is it good enough for a diet? Yep. Make a diet plan. Eat for two weeks. Record result. If you are losing 2 lb a week good. If not adjust percentages. You will be hungry. The end.

citeguised 8y ago
Yes! Refinement is the key. Losing weight by counting kcal is a skill which requires practise and consciousness. I need to get to know what kinds of food work for me; how I handle certain situations like sickness or times with travel (anything off routine, really). After quite a long time of doing it, I believe the reason it works for me personally, is that the accountability towards the calorie-app keeps me off chocolate (big candy-bowl at work which I pass multiple times a day). My problem is: As soon as I stop counting, the accountability towards the counting-app is lost, and the junk-food is back on the plate. After several months I'm back to ~95 kg and it's on to counting again (usually triggered by too-tight pants).
chongli 8y ago
That approach has been shown not to work for the vast majority of people. The problem is the "you will be hungry" bit. Scott Alexander blogged about an hypothesis for the obesity crisis that points to high-reward, high-calorie, low-satiety foods as the problem [1]. I find this argument compelling, as it fits well with Paul Graham's compelling thesis that capitalism optimizes for addictiveness [2]. [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry-brain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry... [2] http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
- paulsutter 8y ago
  The Slate Star Codex link is really interesting > In the 1970s, scientists wanted to develop new rat models of obesity. This was harder than it sounded; rats ate only as much as they needed and never got fat... Then, almost by accident, someone tried feeding the rats human snack food, and they ballooned up to be as fat as, well, humans.

man-and-laptop 8y ago

The advantage of calorie-counting is that it's quite easy - especially when you use something like My Fitness Pal. That doesn't mean it's correct, of course. What alternative is this article advocating?

plopz 8y ago
I only skimmed the article but it doesn't really advocate an alternative. It highlights that the person they were following "eat real food, not food ‘products’" and that weight watchers uses points instead of calories. So it doesn't seem like there is a nice actionable item that someone could take away from the article and apply to their own life.
citeguised 8y ago
I guess lots of people do the mistake of having a too-small daily deficit while counting. It's obviously not an exact science. If you go with a daily reduction of 1000 kcal, then it doesn't matter if you have an error-margin of 300-500 kcal, you still lose weight. If you only try to save 500 a day, and maybe are not too exact in your logging, you might not see an effect at all.
unsignedint 8y ago
I don't think the article really advocates any alternative, but I think things the best benefit of MyFitnessPal is to promote awareness of what you are intaking. I have been receiving health coaching for last 4 months or so, and most important part that working for me is to be able to be conscious about food choices, and also being able to reflect what I have been eating and doing how well I'm doing with sugar, carbs, protein, fiber, etc., rather than just looking at the calories count. (and I do eat unhealthy stuff time to time, and I don't think my health coach is necessarily against that -- unless that's my regular habit, that is. It's more important to know how they balance out in the overall intake,) It never occurred to me before I start measuring what I eat using MyFitnessPal. But now, seeing those numbers, I tend to consciously adjust my intake, for example, I will just eat 1/5 of that chips I wanted to eat, because I had bit of carbs today, etc., etc.,

ordinaryperson 8y ago

To summarize some of the major points: 1. Calorie counts on labels undercount by up to 18% 2. Other factors to weight than pure calories, including genetics 3. Certain foods have low calorie counts but are worse than others with higher counts 4. Eating whole foods is better than non-whole foods and helped the subject of this article lose weight better than calorie counting & exercise Worshipping whole foods is not the answer, you need balance. Plus who wants to live life like a Buddhist monk? Having a burger or pizza every once in a while is fun, it's just about moderation. I'm calorie counting right now via a food journal, trying to stay under 2K a day (I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day), and I'm oddly enjoying the experience. One, I can't cheat myself. Before I'd get frustrated trying to lose weight and failing, feeling like I tried really hard and "deserved" it. But with the calorie count you know if you did or didn't. It's very easy to forget or not realize how much you're eating exactly, that's why you write it down. Also, I feel rewarded if I eat salads every day, like I'm getting points in a game or something. Not everyone's brain works that way but for me calorie counting makes dieting more scientific, at least somewhat. Articles like these are somewhat unhelpful because yes it's great to eat whole foods but so is 1) watching what you eat 2) relying on moderation and 3) exercising. P.S. Didn't like how the article implicitly denigrates running as a weight loss tool just because this one person didn't succeed doing it -- not exactly a rigorous analysis.

victor106 8y ago
> I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day 2x a day I think is key. It worked amazingly for me. I think it just kept up my metabolism rate very high through the day. I lost weight even if I had a few days of high calorie food.
lukifer 8y ago
Moderation is great if it works for you; personally, I’ve found it easier to give something up entirely than to moderate. If I don’t eat sugar for a couple weeks, I don’t miss it, and it takes no effort to stay off it; if I have something sweet, the cravings come back with ferocity.
- glass_of_water 8y ago

pochamago 8y ago

I just cannot take seriously anything that claims exercise and calorie restriction are ever ineffective. It's literally always user error. The law of thermodynamics dictates this, any other opinion is pseudoscience. It might be difficult or impossible for the individual to stick to the plan, but if you start off your article by claiming they did everything right and it still didn't work, then I know the writer has no interest in facts.

skybrian 8y ago
Maybe take "user error" more seriously? If most people can't or won't follow the plan, you need a better plan.
- brandonmenc 8y ago
  If people can't or won't take their medicine, is it the medicine's fault? When people lack the intelligence, willpower, or consistency needed to make prescriptions (of pills, exercise, or diet) work, there's not much you can do for them except lock them up and force them to do the things. If you need to be on a diet and you can't stick to it, there's not much we can do for you except maybe come up with a pill that makes your brain hurt less when you're on the diet, like we do with curing drug addiction.
  - randallsquared 8y ago
    There already is a pill like that (well, at least one: phentermine), but it has side effects which are dangerous for some and unpleasant for some.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    There may be tricks to help people stick to a diet or exercise plan, but you won't find them by just calling it "user error".
  - watwut 8y ago
    Yes, if it is not possible for majority of humans to take medicine as prescribed in long term then medicine is wrong. What you can do in that situation is to try to give them different advice and improve advice untill it actually works.

krupan 8y ago

Behold, The Hacker's Diet: http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ Written sometime back in the 1990's, the author (creator of Autocad) determined that weight gain and loss is simply a feedback and control problem. Most of us eat open loop. By counting calories in and calculating your weight trend[1], and adjusting calorie intake accordingly you can deliberately control your weight. Simple, right? :-) Iv'e tried it. It actually does work. Mostly. The cool thing about it is you don't even have to count every calorie you eat. Just eat normal and start the weight trend measurements. After a while you'll see what your trend is and his online tools will calculate how many calories of intake you should reduce (or increase) to give you your desired rate of weight loss (or gain). Finding a way to cut 200 calories a day, for example, is easier than counting every calorie. The downside is, I think, what this article gets at. Twice I've focused hard on using The Hacker's Diet and lost a good amount of weight, but as I dropped I started to get really hungry and fatigued all the time. It was weird. At first it felt really good to weigh less, but it became very hard to maintain. My best guess, and this article seems to support this, is that the composition of my calorie intake wasn't optimal (or even close to it). Both times I lost my will and gained the weight back. It's interesting to note that he mentions in the book that he's "weird" in that he eats all his calories for the day in one big meal in the middle of the day. "You don't have to do this," he assures. And now, 30 years later, there is a loud group of people who do exactly that in order to lose weight (see: Intermittent Fasting). This article also mentions eating 3 meals with no snacking in between is better than grazing all day. Anyway, just thought I'd share that in case anyone is interested. I have no easy answers. I'm not hugely overweight, the gains and losses I'm talking about here are on the order of 20 to 30 lbs over the course of a few years each time. Take all this as is. 1. weigh yourself everyday, calculate an exponentially smoothed moving average

kbouck 8y ago

Long article, but main points that I got: - That fat creation is influenced more by how fast sugar enters the system (and the insulin response that follows) than caloric content. - Simple carbs (white bread, pasta) are quickly broken down into sugar - The rate at which sugar enters system (glycemic index) triggers a proportional insulin spike - Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat - Counting calories without also considering more influential factors like glycemic index of foods plays a major role in failing of weight-loss initiatives. - Exercise is healthy, but diet plays a larger factor in body weight: ~75% for most people.

allover 8y ago
> Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat This is the key, and completely unproven point as far as I know. This is called the 'insulin hypothesis'. And there's still ZERO evidence for it. So as far as we know right now, it's all down to calories <shrug>.
- pacala 8y ago
  I’ve moved to a diet mostly based on unlimited fresh fruits and veggies, plus limited cheese and meat. Three months and twenty pounds later, I can tell with some degree of confidence that it is quite difficult to load up on calories from apples, bananas, oranges, lettuce or snap peas. While the insulin hypothesis may be wrong, there is so much food one ingests in a 24 hours period, and if this food is low on calories the grand total will be on the low side.

l0b0 8y ago

Here's a fact which blew my mind when looking for a healthy cereal: most ice creams have fewer calories per weight than even the low-calorie cereals. Right now comparing Weetbix (97% wheat, considered basically health food by lots of people) to a pack of RJ's licorice (37% sugar, definitely tip of the nutrition pyramid), the Weetbix is listed as containing more energy by weight. That at least intuitively seems completely broken.

aidenn0 8y ago
Cereal is much drier than other foods; dehydrate that licorice and compare again.
crooked-v 8y ago
What about when comparing by volume rather than weight, though? Most cereal is pretty low-density.

work_is_play 8y ago

Bullshit. Yeah, calorie counts on packaging is imprecise. Yes it's difficult to know for sure. Yes there are a lot of small factors that go into it. You know what you do with fuzzy measurements and personal bias? You over-count calories and round up deliberately to off-set it. You know what you say when someone tells you that your micronutrient balance isn't just right? "Probably. But obesity will kill me before that will." Source: one drunk guy who has lost >100 pounds and kept it off for 3 years.

babyslothzoo 8y ago

Quite a headline, I was hoping for some revolutionary new model or adjustment to physics and the known laws of thermodynamics but instead I found the same tired arguments of denialism and ignorance about dietary guidelines and why people are fat to begin with (hint: fat is stored excess energy, that excess energy enters the body through the mouth). > Most government guidelines indicated that, as a man, he needed 2,500 calories a day to maintain his weight (the target for women is 2,000) Those guidelines alone are a recipe for rampant morbid obesity, and most people eat far more than that as evidenced by the rapidly expanding obesity rate. The majority of people are simply far too sedentary to recommend anywhere near that level of caloric intake, given the levels of obesity they could easily cut those guidelines by a third if not in half. Or even less if they wanted to promote cures to obesity related disease like type-2 diabetes. By the way, eating about 800 calories a day will cause weight loss (not surprising, laws of physics still apply) and reverse type-2 diabetes. https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-diabetes-can-be-reversed-with-a-low-calorie-diet https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-... Oh well, let the science denial continue. Whether it is weight and obesity, evolution, climate, pollution, biological sex, evolution, flat earth, creationism, in the modern era facts no longer matter.

11235813213455 8y ago

A key is to eat fruit/vegetables, with no limit, with their fibers and flesh. They act like a sponge in the digestive system, releasing nutrients very slowly and uniformly Also, get used to fasting (18 hours and more), that's actually very regenerative for the body

aidenn0 8y ago

It sounds like the person described in the article consumed a lot of calories from sugary drinks (gatorade and fruit juice are both mentioned). Considering that sugary drinks tend to have very low effects on satiety, it's not surprising he was hungry all the time. Many of the effective non-calorie-counting diets have turned out to just be good ways to reduce calorie intake.

cuspycode 8y ago

The first paragraph of the article mentions that Camacho was traumatized by a kidnapping that involved torture and a mock execution. That made him a victim of PTSD that made him put on weight. It's not clear how relevant this is to the rest of the story, but to an amateur like me it seems obvious that treating the PTSD directly would be a better approach than solving the problem by counting calories. Of course it's still trivially true that calorie balance completely determines weight stability, so it would be stupid to dismiss calorie counting if you have trouble with keeping your weight stable, whether it's too high or too low.