5 ms·

This article makes a case against a calorie-centric approach to dieting. It boils down to something like Michael Pollan's "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants

by qntty 7y ago

This article makes a case against a calorie-centric approach to dieting. It boils down to something like Michael Pollan's "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." A guy (who has since become an expert in public health) wasn't able to control his weight using standard calorie-counting techniques and had a lot of success changing his diet to "high quality" (as opposed to "highly processed") food. The article isn't super clear on specifics of what that means but it sounds like there might be something to it. Also worth noting that he began exercising in between this switch. https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Eh. the articles argument appears to be that even though nutritionists, physicists, and dieters all agree that eating fewer calories than you expend causes weight loss, it isn't easy for a variety of factors. No shit. The thing is, it is the simplest expression of what needs to happen, and there is no getting around it. I was once well north of the weight of the subject in the article and have since shed about half of it and kept it off for years. I've been through all the games your brain and body play to try and get you to eat more, and all the fad diets out there sound to me exactly like those games. It's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals, but it isn't true and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
- mcfunk 7y ago
  There's also good evidence that people don't maintain that weight loss over time despite maintaining their lower calorie consumption. Because base metabolic rate is something that the body can adjust, just like if you had less money to pay for heat, you could just put less heat into the house. The role of hormones (especially insulin) in regulating fat storage and whether stored fat is available to the body as energy is better understood now, and much has been documented about how high insulin combined with low calories over time results in a lowering of the metabolic rate (resulting in stalling weight loss and then weight gain) rather than sustainable weight loss. Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss. Fat is immoral, suffering is virtue, therefore in order to lose your immoral fat you must suffer. Just look at all the massive success of those in the IF and keto community in living joyful lives, not deprived, losing fat etc. etc. And then look at all the people for whom calorie counting has completely failed. The information is out there (shruggie)
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >There's also good evidence that people don't maintain that weight loss over time despite maintaining their lower calorie consumption. Because base metabolic rate is something that the body can adjust, just like if you had less money to pay for heat, you could just put less heat into the house. Well, it's not just some fixed calorie amount they need to take for an eternity. It's the amount that corresponds to their current weight and muscle mass. As those change over time (and their base metabolic rate changes), they should change their calorie target too. >Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss. Fat is immoral, suffering is virtue, therefore in order to lose your immoral fat you must suffer. Actually the 'silver bullet' is more typical of the american "understanding" of weight loss. There's no silver bullet. No pain, no (weight) loss.
    - mcfunk 7y ago
      LOL ok, so "eat a diet and time your eating in a way that promotes healthy hormone balance and use of fat as energy" is a silver bullet but "use our magic equations based on state of the art info from 1958 to calculate your daily food needs and all your food and exercise as numbers and if your equation balances you'll lose weight" isn't. Sure.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        You don't need any magic equations. It's really much more simple than that: if you're not losing weight, eat fewer calories until you are.
        coldtea 7y ago
        In fact, just weight yourself each day, and unless you weight less than the day before, eat very little. Repeat, and you'll shed weight (the so-called "graph/grid paper diet"). https://kottke.org/09/07/the-steve-ward-diet https://kottke.org/09/07/the-steve-ward-diet
      - 7y ago
- coldtea 7y ago
  Yeah, it's one of the regular "personal anecdote + some few random expert quotes" sensationalist article that comes several times per year pointing to this or that direction.
coldtea 7y ago
People self-report they did "all the right things" and when checked found out they undercounted, cheated, etc all the time. In fact, the article says "He kept to low-fat, low-calorie food for three years. It simply didn’t work. At one point he lost about 10kg but his weight rebounded, though he still restricted his calories." Keeping a diet like low-carb or low-fat etc (and other fads), is difficult, so many rebounce. But the true lifestyle change of a balanced diet is difficult anyway too, and most can't do that either. (And you do need a balanced diet, whether you follow the calories/in out or not). This doesn't invalidate the calories in/out, just their ability to apply it (and it's not necessarily their fault, they can have all kinds of impediments causing them to overeat, eg. situational depression). On the other hand, if you know 100% your calories, you can diet even with the most surprising foods: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profes...
- qntty 7y ago
  Right. It seems like the issue is that "calorie in/out" means different things to different people. For some people it refers to the simple fact that humans are subject to the laws of thermodynamics. For people trying to lose weight, it refers to diets which are structured around counting your calories. It's hard to doubt that lowering your calories consumed will cause weight loss. However, it's not obvious that the physical mechanism behind weight loss in itself provides enough structure for people to use as a practical tool for weight loss. It's like if someone is trying to pitch a faster baseball and their coach introduces them to the "conservation of momentum" strategy for throwing faster. The idea being that if you want to move the ball faster, you have to move your arm faster too. Well, duh, but it's not obvious whether this will help anybody. It might be the case that practical strategies for pitching faster never make reference to the principle of conservation of momentum. That doesn't mean that conservation of momentum doesn't ultimately explain why every different strategy works, but it doesn't make "conservation of momentum" a strategy all by itself. "Eat high quality foods" may very well be a better strategy for losing weight than counting your calories. It might be easier and more healthy than calorie counting for most people. That doesn't mean that "calorie in/out" doesn't on some level explain why this strategy works (although, there might be good reason to doubt this in some cases, new research suggests that the interaction between gut bacteria and food are an important factor in how people respond to different diets). But the fact that "calorie in/out" explains weight loss doesn't mean that it needs to be the central concept in everybody's dieting decisions.

by qntty 7y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Eh. the articles argument appears to be that even though nutritionists, physicists, and dieters all agree that eating fewer calories than you expend causes weight loss, it isn't easy for a variety of factors. No shit. The thing is, it is the simplest expression of what needs to happen, and there is no getting around it. I was once well north of the weight of the subject in the article and have since shed about half of it and kept it off for years. I've been through all the games your brain and body play to try and get you to eat more, and all the fad diets out there sound to me exactly like those games. It's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals, but it isn't true and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

mcfunk 7y ago
There's also good evidence that people don't maintain that weight loss over time despite maintaining their lower calorie consumption. Because base metabolic rate is something that the body can adjust, just like if you had less money to pay for heat, you could just put less heat into the house. The role of hormones (especially insulin) in regulating fat storage and whether stored fat is available to the body as energy is better understood now, and much has been documented about how high insulin combined with low calories over time results in a lowering of the metabolic rate (resulting in stalling weight loss and then weight gain) rather than sustainable weight loss. Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss. Fat is immoral, suffering is virtue, therefore in order to lose your immoral fat you must suffer. Just look at all the massive success of those in the IF and keto community in living joyful lives, not deprived, losing fat etc. etc. And then look at all the people for whom calorie counting has completely failed. The information is out there (shruggie)
- coldtea 7y ago
  >There's also good evidence that people don't maintain that weight loss over time despite maintaining their lower calorie consumption. Because base metabolic rate is something that the body can adjust, just like if you had less money to pay for heat, you could just put less heat into the house. Well, it's not just some fixed calorie amount they need to take for an eternity. It's the amount that corresponds to their current weight and muscle mass. As those change over time (and their base metabolic rate changes), they should change their calorie target too. >Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss. Fat is immoral, suffering is virtue, therefore in order to lose your immoral fat you must suffer. Actually the 'silver bullet' is more typical of the american "understanding" of weight loss. There's no silver bullet. No pain, no (weight) loss.
  - mcfunk 7y ago
    LOL ok, so "eat a diet and time your eating in a way that promotes healthy hormone balance and use of fat as energy" is a silver bullet but "use our magic equations based on state of the art info from 1958 to calculate your daily food needs and all your food and exercise as numbers and if your equation balances you'll lose weight" isn't. Sure.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      You don't need any magic equations. It's really much more simple than that: if you're not losing weight, eat fewer calories until you are.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        In fact, just weight yourself each day, and unless you weight less than the day before, eat very little. Repeat, and you'll shed weight (the so-called "graph/grid paper diet"). https://kottke.org/09/07/the-steve-ward-diet https://kottke.org/09/07/the-steve-ward-diet
    - 7y ago
coldtea 7y ago
Yeah, it's one of the regular "personal anecdote + some few random expert quotes" sensationalist article that comes several times per year pointing to this or that direction.

coldtea 7y ago

People self-report they did "all the right things" and when checked found out they undercounted, cheated, etc all the time. In fact, the article says "He kept to low-fat, low-calorie food for three years. It simply didn’t work. At one point he lost about 10kg but his weight rebounded, though he still restricted his calories." Keeping a diet like low-carb or low-fat etc (and other fads), is difficult, so many rebounce. But the true lifestyle change of a balanced diet is difficult anyway too, and most can't do that either. (And you do need a balanced diet, whether you follow the calories/in out or not). This doesn't invalidate the calories in/out, just their ability to apply it (and it's not necessarily their fault, they can have all kinds of impediments causing them to overeat, eg. situational depression). On the other hand, if you know 100% your calories, you can diet even with the most surprising foods: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profes...

qntty 7y ago
Right. It seems like the issue is that "calorie in/out" means different things to different people. For some people it refers to the simple fact that humans are subject to the laws of thermodynamics. For people trying to lose weight, it refers to diets which are structured around counting your calories. It's hard to doubt that lowering your calories consumed will cause weight loss. However, it's not obvious that the physical mechanism behind weight loss in itself provides enough structure for people to use as a practical tool for weight loss. It's like if someone is trying to pitch a faster baseball and their coach introduces them to the "conservation of momentum" strategy for throwing faster. The idea being that if you want to move the ball faster, you have to move your arm faster too. Well, duh, but it's not obvious whether this will help anybody. It might be the case that practical strategies for pitching faster never make reference to the principle of conservation of momentum. That doesn't mean that conservation of momentum doesn't ultimately explain why every different strategy works, but it doesn't make "conservation of momentum" a strategy all by itself. "Eat high quality foods" may very well be a better strategy for losing weight than counting your calories. It might be easier and more healthy than calorie counting for most people. That doesn't mean that "calorie in/out" doesn't on some level explain why this strategy works (although, there might be good reason to doubt this in some cases, new research suggests that the interaction between gut bacteria and food are an important factor in how people respond to different diets). But the fact that "calorie in/out" explains weight loss doesn't mean that it needs to be the central concept in everybody's dieting decisions.