8 ms·

No offence taken :-) I'm not a professional, and I didn't track anything except my body measurements and weight during this process so I don't know exactly whe

• tozeur 7y ago
  Energy in, energy out. You lost weight because your ate less than you burned, full stop. IF is just a way to curb hunger until later in the day, so you effectively take in less calories than you normally would.
  • icu 7y ago
    Respectfully you are coming from a certain frame. There is always the possibility that other frames exist that may be a more accurate representation of reality. If you are open, check out The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung.
    • Retric 7y ago
      Conservation of energy still applies. Weight management has a strong mental component, but only because of the current abundance of calories. PS: And yes we are included poop calories. That’s how olestra and artificial sweeteners work.
      • deleted 7y ago
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      • peripitea 7y ago
        Energy in/out, at least in the sense most people and your grandparent refer to, can be wrong without violating conservation of energy. E.g. if you poop out food from which not all calories have been used.
        • wtallis 7y ago
          The solution to this issue is not to start claiming things in violation of thermodynamics. Instead you should call attention to the fact that nutrition labels do not always accurately count the number of bioavailable calories ("calories in"), and that unusual circumstances can drastically change an individual's ability to extract energy from their diet. Rejecting "calories in = calories out" is a distraction from the real challenges, and has the side effect of making you sound much less scientifically credible. Edit: see this comment for an example of reasonable discussion that doesn't oversimplify to the point of contradicting basic science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20860678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20860678
          • DanBC 7y ago
            It's the CICO crowd who are ignoring basic science when they claim the human body will perfectly digest food. Across time a person's ability to extract calories from food changes because their gut flora changes.
            • wtallis 7y ago
              > It's the CICO crowd who are ignoring basic science when they claim the human body will perfectly digest food. That's not at all what anyone is claiming when they say you need to run a calorie deficit to lose weight.
          • beagle3 7y ago
            The thermodynamics matter only as much as they are a tautology (which means: not at all), or as an upper bound. Thermodynamics predict that you'd be better off drinking gasoline (12kcal/gr > fat's 9kcal/gr), and just as well eating wood chips (a carbohydrage) -- even though you get zero energy from either. "But we're not using calorimeter data, we're using atwater factors"; Well, those actually DO vary from person to person, IIRC as much as 50%; and other things also matter (e.g., adding activated carbon to your food will result in less energy extracted in general; using Ally would result in less energy extracted from fat). And that's just for the "calories in" part; metabolic rate can also vary as much as 80% along time and between people, depending on muscle volume, or other random, less understood factors - so without a proper measurement chamber you don't know the "calories out" either. The food labels and general activity tables serve as a good general approximation that describes probably 80% of the public quite well. But invoking thermodynamics (except as an upper bound for calories in) is not justified by our current understanding of metabolism.
    • deleted 7y ago
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  • henryaj 7y ago
    'Calories in, calories out' has been pretty widely debunked - at best it's part of the story. More important is meal timing (i.e. fasting), resting insulin levels, the source of those calories, etc.
    • RussianCow 7y ago
      > 'Calories in, calories out' has been pretty widely debunked Could you provide some sources? This is the first time I'm hearing of this.
      • jm__87 7y ago
        Not OP, but the general logic behind "calories in = calories out" is obviously fine. However, just knowing this doesn't really tell you anything about the best way to go about decreasing "calories in" or increasing "calories out" in a way that will result in meaningful fat loss and improved health. For example, it is plausible that someone could reduce "calories in" by eating less and their body could make up the difference by reducing "calories out" via lower BMR instead of having "calories out" remain constant with the difference being made up by burning fat stores. Maybe some fat loss will occur initially at the expense of being more tired and hungry but this change eventually becomes unsustainable/unhealthy if they aren't eating the right foods. On the flipside, you can increase calories out by exercising but you could end up starving and/or exhausted as your body tries to compensate for the increased activity, depending on what is going on in your body hormonally. Or you just have no energy to spare for exercise as it is right now, and have a very hard time getting in to an exercise routine. All this is to say that "calories in = calories out" is all fine, but these variables are not independent. Having some knowledge of how and when the human body burns fat and when it stores fat goes a long way in coming up with a strategy to lose weight. This is where these trends of low carb diets and (intermittent) fasting have originated from.
    • patmorgan23 7y ago
      You nerd to get a new Dr. or nutritionist if that's what they told you. If you just got that from rando internet bro science you should talk to a Dr. or nutritionist or try to back your statement up with some clinical research.
  • merpnderp 7y ago
    Why do you believe the calorie in calorie out hypothesis is correct? Do people digest all food equally? If I eat 4,000 calories of olive oil, will I metabolize every last bit of it without waste? Obviously not. But what about different ratios of fats and carbs. After to failing to lose much weight on a low fat diet I had resounding success on a low carb diet, and I can say without a doubt I consumed far more calories on the low carb diet.
    • cyphar 7y ago
      > If I eat 4,000 calories of olive oil, will I metabolize every last bit of it without waste? Obviously not. And if you were 200 meters tall or 5000 years old, the TDEE equations also wouldn't apply to you correctly. Most calorie counting studies are done with intake of "normal" foods, not just pure olive oil. In those circumstances, for the most part, calorie counting works well enough for you to lose weight. Yes, the TDEE equations aren't perfect (and neither are nutritional information labels) but they're all within enough of an error margin for you to be able to comfortably lose a kilo every 2 weeks without breaking a sweat. It is also true that you should tailor your diet not just for weight loss but also for general health (so cutting calories isn't enough, you should also change your eating habits) -- but weight loss is (for the most part, and the vast majority of people) just a matter of TDEE and counting calories. > After to failing to lose much weight on a low fat diet I had resounding success on a low carb diet, and I can say without a doubt I consumed far more calories on the low carb diet. Did you measure the changes in your fat weight? Low-carb diets can cause additional weight loss, which is not actually fat loss because some carbs are stored elsewhere in your body[1,2]. Now, that doesn't mean you didn't lose more weight. It just means that you didn't lose more fat. Whether or not that matters to you is a different question. [1]: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-calorie-counting-work#section5 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-calorie-counting-w... [subsection 3] [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1615908 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1615908
      • merpnderp 7y ago
        I lost 43lbs so obviously it was nearly all fat that I lost. How many people losing drastic amounts of weight on a low carb diet, while consuming more calories than before, would it take to convince you that counting calories is seriously flawed?
  • invalidOrTaken 7y ago
    The frame can be correct, but inefficient as a mental model. High-level languages may be "just" a way to run the right assembly code...but I still prefer them over assembler.
  • 0-_-0 7y ago
    You didn't contradict the person you responded to, if you consider "calorie counting is a myth" to mean that calorie counting doesn't help you lose weight.
  • dkersten 7y ago
    Different energy sources metabolize differently, so energy in, energy out is technically correct, but not very useful in real life. Additionally, as others have mentioned, there are other factors which affect how the energy in is handled or metabolized besides just the pure energy you consume.
  • tchaffee 7y ago
    This is misinformation that ignores the findings on gut biomes (and how they affect both our body and brain), how different foods affect insulin sensitivity, psychology, and other factors like effort and convenience. IF isn't "just" a way to curb hunger.
• cyphar 7y ago
  > my research indicated that calorie counting is a myth Given that calorie counting (or rather, being in a caloric deficit) emphatically does work[1] (it's roughly just a matter of thermodynamics), I would (respectfully) argue that your research was insufficient. It is true that the vast majority of people underestimate their calorie input, and there are some special cases (such as diabetics) where calorie counting doesn't give you the results you expect (insulin resistance increases the amount of energy required to "burn" a certain amount of fat because insulin is used in fat expenditure). A disturbing amount of weight-loss studies depend on subjects to self-report the amount of calories consumed -- which almost always invalidates the conclusion (people always underestimate their calorie consumption, doubly so when they've just started a diet!). However, for the vast majority of people, the standard formulas for total daily energy expenditure[2] are more than accurate enough for accurate weight loss (especially for people who are >15% body fat -- once you get really lean there are other considerations when trying to reduce body fat). They definitely aren't perfect, but they're usually accurate to around ~5-10% (more than enough to get a good idea of how many calories you should be consuming, and how much of a deficit you need to be in in order to lose a certain amount of fat at a certain rate). > Certainly, I always struggled with a calorie-restricted diet, so I knew that if I always felt hungry, anything I did wouldn't work. Did you change what kinds of food you ate when eating with caloric restrictions? Usually you want to eat very low-caloric-density foods like broccoli (your body's "fullness" reaction is determined by the volume of food you eat, not the nutritional content). A common mistake is that people will try to eat the same types of food (high-caloric-density), just less of it -- this is a recipe for disaster because it will lead to inevitable hunger tautologically (not to mention most high-caloric-density food has lots of sugar which triggers an insulin response -- causing more hunger after you've eaten it). The primary reason why people lose weight when doing intermittent fasting is because they consume less calories as a result (you would have to actively stuff your face to get the same amount of calories in 8 hours). Have you tried counting calories now that you intermittently fast, and compared it to how many calories you ate beforehand? You might be surprised to find that's where the real change lies. All of that being said, feel free to do whatever works for you. Personally, I found it easier to count calories and eat higher-density food. Then again, I usually skip breakfast so you could argue that I also intermittently fast. > I know it sounds crazy that you can eat as much as you like and still loose weight but it happened. I very strongly doubt this is true, purely due to thermodynamics. If you ate 10k calories every day (with intermittent fasting) you would gain weight (if you don't believe me, try it for a month and see what happens -- you should gain a few kilos a week depending on your existing weight). I would guess it's more likely that you simply felt that you ate more (but actually started eating less). Do you weigh your portions of food (most people are awful at estimating even how much mass of food they eat, let alone the caloric content)? [1]: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-calorie-counting-work https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-calorie-counting-w... [This goes through common tropes in papers which are often misunderstood to say that calorie counting doesn't work.] [2]: https://tdeecalculator.net/ https://tdeecalculator.net/