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Calorie counting functions properly for controlling weight. The physics and chemistry of it is sound. And the empirical proof is the many thousands of professio

Calorie counting functions properly for controlling weight. The physics and chemistry of it is sound. And the empirical proof is the many thousands of professionals who use it successfully: models who need to be a certain shape; football players who need to be heavy so they don't get lifted off their feet by their competitors; or dancers who need to be light so that they can get lifted off their feet by their partners. I say that up-front because there are a bunch of people out there who think that the basic science of calorie counting is wrong; that there are other hidden factors that keep some people thin and make other people fat. BUT, what is true--and which this article highlights--is that calorie counting is super hard to do. As a system, it's hard "operate". You can't make mistakes, like forget to enter a meal or a snack, or forget to properly record activity. And it's kind of miserable to live that way. That's probably one reason it's mostly professionals who really do it well. In software terms, calorie counting has terrible UX. And our food system has bad defaults. The cheapest, most heavily-advertised food is often high in calories per volume. And of course calorie-counting does nothing for your nutrient intake, which is arguably more important to think about now because foods across the board (i.e. even organic kale) seem to have falling nutrient content.

jhrmnn 6y ago
Very much agreed. I’ve once tried to count calories for about a month out of curiosity. Having Fitbit and tracking all my (amateur) cycling with a powermeter, I could record calorie output consistently. But if you want to eat out regularly, it becomes extremely difficult to estimate the intake right IMO.
marcosdumay 6y ago
> models who need to be a certain shape; football players who need to be heavy so they don't get lifted off their feet by their competitors; or dancers who need to be light so that they can get lifted off their feet by their partners. I have never seen or heard about a professional diet based on calorie counting. Every single diet is based on a prescription of nutrient types and quantities, when it's not a detailed prescription of food types and quantities. And the diets that end-up working are all revised several times after controlling by patient's health.
- wriq 6y ago
  >prescription of nutrient types and quantities How is that not essentially calorie counting? If a diet says at 8:00am eat 10g Fat, 30g protein 30g carbs that's still a way of saying eat 330 calories
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    If the diet says at 8:00am eat 330 calories, can you determine how much fat, protein and carbs you must eat? Do you notice now how they are not equivalent?
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Couple examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5356zt0JiDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5356zt0JiDY https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/448874/original/Fueling+for+Football-Weight+Gain.pdf https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/448874/original/Fueling+f...
spapas82 6y ago
Well the other, easier way to do it is have a diet program that you strictly follow each day. That way the calorie counting has been already done, usually by a professional. That way you just have to eat what your list says. I have found it impossible to count the calories I eat (and consume) each day but following a program is much easier!
majkinetor 6y ago
You are simply wrong. Calorie counting is impossible to do right and meaningful. All that experience you mention is simply a chance and has a tone of confouding variables. Your internals are not fixed like a machine, parts of the system can be shut down (such as reproductive system) and parts of it can demand more energy at specific times (like immune system) and parts of it can appear (like cancer). There are also other factors like hyperinsulinemia which is more like logistics problem (some parts of body get bunch of energy while others are starving). With this kind of dynamic, relying on calorie counting is simply usless as all people are on various states on this system. Sure, when you bring calories down to 0 you will certainly di of wasting but that has 0 practical value.
- conistonwater 6y ago
  Calorie counting is well supported by the studies in which people stay in metabolic wards and are fed a controlled calorie-counted diet. This is close enough to regular life experience to be meaningful, and would disprove your assertion that it's simply chance. You, on the other hand, bring up a lot of fairly extreme situations (immune system fighting an infection, cancer, shutting down the reproductive system), which simply do not happen nearly often enough to be relevant here. So the comment you're replying to is not "simply wrong".
  - watwut 6y ago
    It is not close enough to real life. The controlled calorie counted diet given to you by doctor is also designed to contain all iron you need, all vitamins of all kinds you need, fiber and so on. It is not random person food minus whatever that person finds easy or reasonable to kick out. The people in metabolic wards are also not expected to be performing in work simultaneously, they are not expected to perform family duties or handle stressful situations reasonably. That also makes it massive difference against normal life where needs like this contribute to peoples failure to keep perfect diet.
  - majkinetor 6y ago
    watwuf already said it nice, that is anything but real life. Not counted in is that there is also very serious selection criteria (so, not random people). On the other hand what you call extreme situation is nothing like that - most people have some type of chronic problem. The most improtant aspect is certainly longevity of treatment - callorie restriction can not be followed - it can for some time, but soon enough (months or years) you will sucumb. Its simply not a normal way to have a life. It must be sustainable life practice, not something you apply from time to time.
nothis 6y ago
I've only ever been slightly overweight but once wanted to lose 8kg to feel a little less chubby. All those highly complex miracle diets just overwhelmed me, I didn't want to limit my range of different food items and I didn't want to set schedules. Counting calories was by far the easiest solution. And it worked! You don't even have to carry a little notebook with you, entering exact numbers to the single digits and making charts. All you have to do is read the labels on footstuff from the supermarket and look up estimates for common dishes. Keep a rough number (+/- 100 calories) of today's calories consumed in the back of your head and try to stay beneath 2/3 of your body's base level and you're golden. It's so easy and often doesn't even feel like a sacrifice since it's usually just leaving out that stupid chocolate bar (reading those labels is half the exercise, it's a constant reminder that all the cliches about fast food and soft drinks making you fat are true). Now there's a lot of healthy things you can do to your diet that have nothing to do with losing weight and there's further optimizations that go beyond calorie counting. But if loosing weight is your singular goal, calorie counting is still the easiest way to do it. It might be inaccurate but you don't really need accuracy to remind yourself that this food fills you up 3 times as fast as that other food.
watwut 6y ago
Calorie counting alone will have you simply not have enough of nutritients you need in the long term. You will feel bad and sick and passive, you wont be able to focus, you will be sickly and depressive or angry, because you lack stuff your body needs. When you break it, it feels good. You start to be active and have better mood. Because your body is suddenly getting stuff it needs. I am speaking from personal experience here. > models who need to be a certain shape The way models ate and lived in the past was not healthy tho. There were periods where the expectation basically amounted to "eating disorder". > dancers [...] football players who need to be heavy so they don't get lifted off their feet by their competitors There is way more that goes to sport food. They dont focus on calories. They focus specifically on protein at specific times and what not. The thin vs large sport physics is absolutely not about calories only. It is a lot about what kind of sport you do, whether endurance or cardio or strength.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  What I said: > Calorie counting functions properly for controlling weight. That's an intentionally limited statement of what it works for. I agree with you on nutrients. > There is way more that goes to sport food. They dont focus on calories. They focus specifically on protein at specific times and what not. When they have specific weight targets, they do count calories. I posted some examples lower in this thread.
  - watwut 6y ago
    > Calorie counting functions properly for controlling weight. This is however completely useless goal if you dont add those other requirements like "while staying reasonably healthy and functional". > When they have specific weight targets, they do count calories. I posted some examples lower in this thread. The people who are trying to gain weight for sport really don't focus on calories. They focus on total amount of protein. They dont want sugar nearly as much and would not replace one with another.
tzs 6y ago
A bigger problem with calorie counting even if you get past the mechanical difficulties of keeping track of everything is that it doesn't do anything to adjust what your body "thinks" your needs are. If you are overweight but your body thinks that you are underweight cutting calories to lower your weight can be seen by your body as the onset of starvation and it can make adjustments to prioritize short term staying alive over long term health. Even if you are careful to not lower your calories so much as trigger that and do eventually get down to your target weight, as long as your body still thinks it is underweight its going to be trying to get gain it back. Any day you eat a little extra or your activity level is off a little your body is going to try to snatch onto that to put on some weight and hold on to at as it tries to claw back to what it thinks is your proper weight. A couple months ago there was very good episode of Nova on PBS about fat [1] that covers this (and much more--it's well worth watching). Unfortunately I don't think it is freely available at the moment. (The pattern with much PBS stuff is that after it is broadcast it is available for free streaming on the web and in their apps for a few weeks, then it becomes available only to people who donate at least $60/year to their local PBS stations. Looking at past seasons, some stuff is only for donors and some can be streamed free. I'm not sure what is going on there--whether a given one occasionally flips between donors-only and free, so there are just some that stay free and some that stay donor-only). [1] https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/nova/truth-about-fat-preview-mhvntq/ https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/nova/truth-about-fat-previ...

jhrmnn 6y ago

Very much agreed. I’ve once tried to count calories for about a month out of curiosity. Having Fitbit and tracking all my (amateur) cycling with a powermeter, I could record calorie output consistently. But if you want to eat out regularly, it becomes extremely difficult to estimate the intake right IMO.

marcosdumay 6y ago

> models who need to be a certain shape; football players who need to be heavy so they don't get lifted off their feet by their competitors; or dancers who need to be light so that they can get lifted off their feet by their partners. I have never seen or heard about a professional diet based on calorie counting. Every single diet is based on a prescription of nutrient types and quantities, when it's not a detailed prescription of food types and quantities. And the diets that end-up working are all revised several times after controlling by patient's health.

wriq 6y ago
>prescription of nutrient types and quantities How is that not essentially calorie counting? If a diet says at 8:00am eat 10g Fat, 30g protein 30g carbs that's still a way of saying eat 330 calories
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  If the diet says at 8:00am eat 330 calories, can you determine how much fat, protein and carbs you must eat? Do you notice now how they are not equivalent?
snowwrestler 6y ago
Couple examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5356zt0JiDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5356zt0JiDY https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/448874/original/Fueling+for+Football-Weight+Gain.pdf https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/448874/original/Fueling+f...

spapas82 6y ago

Well the other, easier way to do it is have a diet program that you strictly follow each day. That way the calorie counting has been already done, usually by a professional. That way you just have to eat what your list says. I have found it impossible to count the calories I eat (and consume) each day but following a program is much easier!

majkinetor 6y ago

You are simply wrong. Calorie counting is impossible to do right and meaningful. All that experience you mention is simply a chance and has a tone of confouding variables. Your internals are not fixed like a machine, parts of the system can be shut down (such as reproductive system) and parts of it can demand more energy at specific times (like immune system) and parts of it can appear (like cancer). There are also other factors like hyperinsulinemia which is more like logistics problem (some parts of body get bunch of energy while others are starving). With this kind of dynamic, relying on calorie counting is simply usless as all people are on various states on this system. Sure, when you bring calories down to 0 you will certainly di of wasting but that has 0 practical value.

conistonwater 6y ago
Calorie counting is well supported by the studies in which people stay in metabolic wards and are fed a controlled calorie-counted diet. This is close enough to regular life experience to be meaningful, and would disprove your assertion that it's simply chance. You, on the other hand, bring up a lot of fairly extreme situations (immune system fighting an infection, cancer, shutting down the reproductive system), which simply do not happen nearly often enough to be relevant here. So the comment you're replying to is not "simply wrong".
- watwut 6y ago
  It is not close enough to real life. The controlled calorie counted diet given to you by doctor is also designed to contain all iron you need, all vitamins of all kinds you need, fiber and so on. It is not random person food minus whatever that person finds easy or reasonable to kick out. The people in metabolic wards are also not expected to be performing in work simultaneously, they are not expected to perform family duties or handle stressful situations reasonably. That also makes it massive difference against normal life where needs like this contribute to peoples failure to keep perfect diet.
- majkinetor 6y ago
  watwuf already said it nice, that is anything but real life. Not counted in is that there is also very serious selection criteria (so, not random people). On the other hand what you call extreme situation is nothing like that - most people have some type of chronic problem. The most improtant aspect is certainly longevity of treatment - callorie restriction can not be followed - it can for some time, but soon enough (months or years) you will sucumb. Its simply not a normal way to have a life. It must be sustainable life practice, not something you apply from time to time.

nothis 6y ago

I've only ever been slightly overweight but once wanted to lose 8kg to feel a little less chubby. All those highly complex miracle diets just overwhelmed me, I didn't want to limit my range of different food items and I didn't want to set schedules. Counting calories was by far the easiest solution. And it worked! You don't even have to carry a little notebook with you, entering exact numbers to the single digits and making charts. All you have to do is read the labels on footstuff from the supermarket and look up estimates for common dishes. Keep a rough number (+/- 100 calories) of today's calories consumed in the back of your head and try to stay beneath 2/3 of your body's base level and you're golden. It's so easy and often doesn't even feel like a sacrifice since it's usually just leaving out that stupid chocolate bar (reading those labels is half the exercise, it's a constant reminder that all the cliches about fast food and soft drinks making you fat are true). Now there's a lot of healthy things you can do to your diet that have nothing to do with losing weight and there's further optimizations that go beyond calorie counting. But if loosing weight is your singular goal, calorie counting is still the easiest way to do it. It might be inaccurate but you don't really need accuracy to remind yourself that this food fills you up 3 times as fast as that other food.

watwut 6y ago

Calorie counting alone will have you simply not have enough of nutritients you need in the long term. You will feel bad and sick and passive, you wont be able to focus, you will be sickly and depressive or angry, because you lack stuff your body needs. When you break it, it feels good. You start to be active and have better mood. Because your body is suddenly getting stuff it needs. I am speaking from personal experience here. > models who need to be a certain shape The way models ate and lived in the past was not healthy tho. There were periods where the expectation basically amounted to "eating disorder". > dancers [...] football players who need to be heavy so they don't get lifted off their feet by their competitors There is way more that goes to sport food. They dont focus on calories. They focus specifically on protein at specific times and what not. The thin vs large sport physics is absolutely not about calories only. It is a lot about what kind of sport you do, whether endurance or cardio or strength.

snowwrestler 6y ago
What I said: > Calorie counting functions properly for controlling weight. That's an intentionally limited statement of what it works for. I agree with you on nutrients. > There is way more that goes to sport food. They dont focus on calories. They focus specifically on protein at specific times and what not. When they have specific weight targets, they do count calories. I posted some examples lower in this thread.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Calorie counting functions properly for controlling weight. This is however completely useless goal if you dont add those other requirements like "while staying reasonably healthy and functional". > When they have specific weight targets, they do count calories. I posted some examples lower in this thread. The people who are trying to gain weight for sport really don't focus on calories. They focus on total amount of protein. They dont want sugar nearly as much and would not replace one with another.

tzs 6y ago

A bigger problem with calorie counting even if you get past the mechanical difficulties of keeping track of everything is that it doesn't do anything to adjust what your body "thinks" your needs are. If you are overweight but your body thinks that you are underweight cutting calories to lower your weight can be seen by your body as the onset of starvation and it can make adjustments to prioritize short term staying alive over long term health. Even if you are careful to not lower your calories so much as trigger that and do eventually get down to your target weight, as long as your body still thinks it is underweight its going to be trying to get gain it back. Any day you eat a little extra or your activity level is off a little your body is going to try to snatch onto that to put on some weight and hold on to at as it tries to claw back to what it thinks is your proper weight. A couple months ago there was very good episode of Nova on PBS about fat [1] that covers this (and much more--it's well worth watching). Unfortunately I don't think it is freely available at the moment. (The pattern with much PBS stuff is that after it is broadcast it is available for free streaming on the web and in their apps for a few weeks, then it becomes available only to people who donate at least $60/year to their local PBS stations. Looking at past seasons, some stuff is only for donors and some can be streamed free. I'm not sure what is going on there--whether a given one occasionally flips between donors-only and free, so there are just some that stay free and some that stay donor-only). [1] https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/nova/truth-about-fat-preview-mhvntq/ https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/nova/truth-about-fat-previ...