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> I think it's meant to drive home the point is the only thing that actually matters is total energy expenditure and calorie intake It's not though. That's not
by klmadfejno 6y ago
> I think it's meant to drive home the point is the only thing that actually matters is total energy expenditure and calorie intake
It's not though. That's not what the papers are saying. They're saying a calorie is a calorie. But calories turned into long term fat reserves are not equal to calories put in mouth - calories used in exercise. You can change the outcome of your diet by changing the composition of your diet while holding total calories the same.
- Spivak 6y agoI feel like we're talking past each other. There are two truths here: * total energy intake and expenditure are the only things that really matter for weight loss * for some foods, there is a difference between the nutrition info listed calories and the metabolized calories Which implies what you're saying. If you play with your diet you can potentially keep the nutrition info listed calories constant while reducing your "real" energy intake. This feels like semantics because all you're really saying is that commonly understood nutrition info is inaccurate (which is true -- hell nutrition labels are allowed by the FDA to be off by 20%). In a perfect world with perfect information counting calories would be counting metabolized calories. But unless you're raising cattle on narrow diets the problem ranges from hard to impossible for real food. So the normal calorie counts that dieters use acts as a proxy and if done right, a rough upper bound.