6 ms·

Eating less calorie will give you the same benefit.

bityard 5y ago
The human body's energy management system is incredibly complicated and rife with subtleties. To the point that the whole "calories in == calories out" meme, while not factually untrue by the standard of Newtonian physics, is just about as useful as saying that gravity is the cause of all airplane crashes.
- Engineering-MD 5y ago
  Yet people seem to forget about that with diets and that is why it’s useful to remind people in some cases. Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. I see it more as a first test of reasonability of a diet, a law of weight loss if you will.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    > Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. This isn't true though, it's not the amount of calories you consume but the amount of calories your body actually accesses out of those consumed. If most of the calories you consume simply pass through or get consumed by the parasites living in your large intestine, calories consumed can exceed calories expended by you while still losing weight. The researcher who discovered the general role a pancreas plays in weight gain back in the 1800s had dogs living normal lives after removing their pancreases. Except no matter how much food they consumed, they continuously lost weight, and eventually died as if they'd starved to death. He discovered their urine was sweet after seeing flies were more attracted to their urine than the normal; without pancreas-created insulin the fat cells wouldn't store the energy, it was leaving the system in the urine. This illustrates the role hormones play in energy storage/release. Everyone's hormone levels are different, and how they respond to different foods varies, it's all very subjective, sex, and age-dependent. So even within those calories accessed via the GI tract, there's hormonal variability in what gets stored vs. used vs. excreted. Calories consumed only sets an upper bound; if you consume less calories than expended, you will lose weight. It's not a symmetric relationship like your statement assumes.
    - maximus-decimus 5y ago
      you can basically ignore the effect of your intestinal worm and whatever else by just calculating yourself the amount of calories you need to keep the same weight. Eat 2000 calories and lose 1 pound per week? your baseline is ~2500 calories. Gained a pound? your baseline is ~1500 calories. The fact you don't absorb it all doesn't change the principle in any way. It just mean you need to recalibrate. But since you can't measure EXACTLY how many calories you're actually eating anyway or that you can predict EXACTLY how many calories you need with a calculator, you need to calibrate anyway. So really not absorbing all calories changes literally nothing about the calorie counting method. The biggest advantage of calorie counting is it's more reliable than looking at the balance everyday because a ton of stuff will make you a few pounds heavier/lighter at any time it fluctuates too much. The scale doesn't move for weeks and people panic but really it was just random and then they lose 5 pounds on the 5th week and they think "omg, i must have lost all the weight at once because i ate that one apple!" You just can't use a scale short term. But all you have to do is count the calories, believe in the process, and if after months it doesn't work, you adjust your estimate of how many calories you burn and change your diet based on that.
      - jasonmclaren 5y ago
        I would echo this general idea of recalibrating, and add a refinement. Instead of believing the process and waiting for months to see if it works, you can weigh yourself every day and look at the moving average. That will let you ignore the natural daily fluctuations, but still give you regular feedback. In my experience, that regular feedback really helps with the motivation to keep doing the calorie counting.
        maximus-decimus 5y ago
        I did that, but even then it takes weeks if not months to get a good idea from my experience. Basically, my weight would vary by 2 pounds, but i was aiming at losing 1 pound per week, so it took at least 2 weeks before my progress wouldn't get lost in the noise. I've also heard the argument it's worse for women because weight changes with the menstrual cycles, so then you really have to look at the very least one month of data.
sosborn 5y ago
You aren't wrong, but keeping things to an 8-hour window makes it easy to stay within the right calorie range, especially if you pay attention to macros.
- f311a 5y ago
  Low level of blood glucose before sleep is also very important.
  - thesz 5y ago
    Please find more about orexin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin Let me quote: Orexin (/ɒˈrɛksɪn/), also known as hypocretin, is a neuropeptide that regulates arousal, wakefulness, and appetite.[1] The most common form of narcolepsy, type 1, in which the sufferer experiences brief losses of muscle tone (cataplexy), is caused by a lack of orexin in the brain due to destruction of the cells that produce it. And another quote: Orexin-producing cells have recently been shown to be inhibited by leptin (through the leptin receptor pathway), but are activated by ghrelin and hypoglycemia (glucose inhibits orexin production). To have a good sleep you probably need relatively high glucose level.
    - f311a 5y ago
      Liver and muscles have enough storage of glucose. Low levels of insulin and glucose are pretty important for cardiovascular and liver health. IIRC, some recovery processes and hormone levels in our body depend on the glucose levels and we want to have them during the whole sleep.
ygjb 5y ago
I mean, parent post literally wrote that. Cutting carbohydrates and sugars will reduce calories (unless ones diet consists of psyllium husks and sugar alcohols as the carbohydrates and sugars).

The human body's energy management system is incredibly complicated and rife with subtleties. To the point that the whole "calories in == calories out" meme, while not factually untrue by the standard of Newtonian physics, is just about as useful as saying that gravity is the cause of all airplane crashes.

Engineering-MD 5y ago
Yet people seem to forget about that with diets and that is why it’s useful to remind people in some cases. Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. I see it more as a first test of reasonability of a diet, a law of weight loss if you will.
- pengaru 5y ago
  > Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. This isn't true though, it's not the amount of calories you consume but the amount of calories your body actually accesses out of those consumed. If most of the calories you consume simply pass through or get consumed by the parasites living in your large intestine, calories consumed can exceed calories expended by you while still losing weight. The researcher who discovered the general role a pancreas plays in weight gain back in the 1800s had dogs living normal lives after removing their pancreases. Except no matter how much food they consumed, they continuously lost weight, and eventually died as if they'd starved to death. He discovered their urine was sweet after seeing flies were more attracted to their urine than the normal; without pancreas-created insulin the fat cells wouldn't store the energy, it was leaving the system in the urine. This illustrates the role hormones play in energy storage/release. Everyone's hormone levels are different, and how they respond to different foods varies, it's all very subjective, sex, and age-dependent. So even within those calories accessed via the GI tract, there's hormonal variability in what gets stored vs. used vs. excreted. Calories consumed only sets an upper bound; if you consume less calories than expended, you will lose weight. It's not a symmetric relationship like your statement assumes.
  - maximus-decimus 5y ago
    you can basically ignore the effect of your intestinal worm and whatever else by just calculating yourself the amount of calories you need to keep the same weight. Eat 2000 calories and lose 1 pound per week? your baseline is ~2500 calories. Gained a pound? your baseline is ~1500 calories. The fact you don't absorb it all doesn't change the principle in any way. It just mean you need to recalibrate. But since you can't measure EXACTLY how many calories you're actually eating anyway or that you can predict EXACTLY how many calories you need with a calculator, you need to calibrate anyway. So really not absorbing all calories changes literally nothing about the calorie counting method. The biggest advantage of calorie counting is it's more reliable than looking at the balance everyday because a ton of stuff will make you a few pounds heavier/lighter at any time it fluctuates too much. The scale doesn't move for weeks and people panic but really it was just random and then they lose 5 pounds on the 5th week and they think "omg, i must have lost all the weight at once because i ate that one apple!" You just can't use a scale short term. But all you have to do is count the calories, believe in the process, and if after months it doesn't work, you adjust your estimate of how many calories you burn and change your diet based on that.
    - jasonmclaren 5y ago
      I would echo this general idea of recalibrating, and add a refinement. Instead of believing the process and waiting for months to see if it works, you can weigh yourself every day and look at the moving average. That will let you ignore the natural daily fluctuations, but still give you regular feedback. In my experience, that regular feedback really helps with the motivation to keep doing the calorie counting.
      - maximus-decimus 5y ago
        I did that, but even then it takes weeks if not months to get a good idea from my experience. Basically, my weight would vary by 2 pounds, but i was aiming at losing 1 pound per week, so it took at least 2 weeks before my progress wouldn't get lost in the noise. I've also heard the argument it's worse for women because weight changes with the menstrual cycles, so then you really have to look at the very least one month of data.

sosborn 5y ago

You aren't wrong, but keeping things to an 8-hour window makes it easy to stay within the right calorie range, especially if you pay attention to macros.

f311a 5y ago
Low level of blood glucose before sleep is also very important.
- thesz 5y ago
  Please find more about orexin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin Let me quote: Orexin (/ɒˈrɛksɪn/), also known as hypocretin, is a neuropeptide that regulates arousal, wakefulness, and appetite.[1] The most common form of narcolepsy, type 1, in which the sufferer experiences brief losses of muscle tone (cataplexy), is caused by a lack of orexin in the brain due to destruction of the cells that produce it. And another quote: Orexin-producing cells have recently been shown to be inhibited by leptin (through the leptin receptor pathway), but are activated by ghrelin and hypoglycemia (glucose inhibits orexin production). To have a good sleep you probably need relatively high glucose level.
  - f311a 5y ago
    Liver and muscles have enough storage of glucose. Low levels of insulin and glucose are pretty important for cardiovascular and liver health. IIRC, some recovery processes and hormone levels in our body depend on the glucose levels and we want to have them during the whole sleep.

ygjb 5y ago

I mean, parent post literally wrote that. Cutting carbohydrates and sugars will reduce calories (unless ones diet consists of psyllium husks and sugar alcohols as the carbohydrates and sugars).