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I want to put in a good word for old-school calorie counting. If you don't have good "gut intuition" for how much you're eating, you may find that IF just caus

I want to put in a good word for old-school calorie counting. If you don't have good "gut intuition" for how much you're eating, you may find that IF just causes you to eat more in the time you are allowed to eat. CC tells you how much you're taking in, so the numbers tell you when you've eaten enough. I often find that, when I stop at my calorie target (1500), I'm actually not that hungry... but I still have an urge to eat. Something I would have followed in the past. But with the number, I know exactly when I shouldn't follow that urge. The requirement to stop and calculate before you eat also makes you a lot more deliberate about what you do consume. It's definitely not the most spontaneous and fun approach, but I tried all the more spontaneous and fun approaches and CC is the one that is finally working for me. A couple details: I jot down each day's calories in a Google Note on my phone. I add a number to the list for each thing I eat and keep a tally as the day goes by. I don't use a calorie counting app. I just use the nutritional facts if available, and if not, I Google "calories in x 100g" and use a food scale.

crowbahr 5y ago
I've done CC a few times when I get close to being overweight. Starting January of this year I cut my calories down by 1000/day, 7k/week, which is roughly 2 pounds (just shy of 1kg) a week. It's now March 10th and I'm down 19 pounds in ~9 weeks. Is it a bit tedious to count calories? Yeah, but it's perfectly effective. Thermodynamically you're never going to be getting energy from nowhere. If you're consuming more calories than you're burning you're gaining weight; fewer you're losing it. My goal is to lose another 5ish pounds so that I stabilize roughly at my current weight with a maintenance period of the next year or so.
300bps 5y ago
Calorie counting is the one true answer. Everything else is an approximation. I used MyFitnessPal to count calories - makes it pretty easy.
- virtuallynathan 5y ago
  Do you know how many calories you burn? Do you actually know how many calories are in your food? I have a metabolic cart, and the answer surprises me sometimes on the former - just standing at my desk all day I burn >3300kcal. I actually went to talk to the guy in the Casey Neistat video about food labels, and almost bought a bomb calorimeter. Calorie counting, while not useless, is not very helpful. https://youtu.be/hE2lna5Wxuo https://youtu.be/hE2lna5Wxuo
  - 300bps 5y ago
    I know approximately how many calories are in my food. Like I said I use MyFitnessPal to track it. I know approximately how many calories I burn. In addition to using an Apple Watch I track my workouts. And honestly this is good enough. If I target a 500 calorie per day deficit, I miraculously lose 1 pound per week. Which makes sense because simple arithmetic says that there are 3,500 calories per pound and 7 days times 500 equals 3,500. It really is that simple. What on earth do you have a metabolic cart for? You wear that on your face all day every day tracking how much carbon dioxide you breathe out? And you really believe you’re burning 3,300 calories just standing? I could maybe believe that if you are in the morbidly obese BMI range. Calorie counting is extremely helpful. Ask anyone who did it for the first time and suddenly realized they were eating 9 servings of potato chips at a time without even thinking about it.
    - virtuallynathan 5y ago
      I'm a nerd with more money than sense, what can I say! I trust the output of the device I have, and I do truly believe I am burning 3300kcal/day just standing at my desk, walking to the bathroom, etc. I eat 3500kcal/day pretty regularly, and maintain weight. If you can target enough of a deficit and not be hungry, good for you. It's hard for most people. The input data is wrong, the output data is wrong/unknown, and one can only be hungry for so long.
  - fouc 5y ago
    video TL;DW: seems like it's basically safe to make an assumption that the reported calories in food could be 10%+ higher than expected, especially among packaged food. Larger restaurant chains like McDonald's and Subway seem to be slightly more accurate. The surprising part was that it took the science guy 10 hours to calculate the calories for 5 food items ? Would be nice if we could get that down to minutes and accessible to personal consumers.
layer8 5y ago
I found CC the only thing that works for me for losing weight. Combining it with IF just makes it easier to stick with the caloric restriction. IF also does make it easier to maintain weight later on without CC. Of course, everyone is different.
- civilized 5y ago
  I would prefer not to have to do CC forever so maybe this will be the way to go once I reach maintenance phase.
shlant 5y ago
"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against…thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." - Arthur Eddington

crowbahr 5y ago

I've done CC a few times when I get close to being overweight. Starting January of this year I cut my calories down by 1000/day, 7k/week, which is roughly 2 pounds (just shy of 1kg) a week. It's now March 10th and I'm down 19 pounds in ~9 weeks. Is it a bit tedious to count calories? Yeah, but it's perfectly effective. Thermodynamically you're never going to be getting energy from nowhere. If you're consuming more calories than you're burning you're gaining weight; fewer you're losing it. My goal is to lose another 5ish pounds so that I stabilize roughly at my current weight with a maintenance period of the next year or so.

300bps 5y ago

Calorie counting is the one true answer. Everything else is an approximation. I used MyFitnessPal to count calories - makes it pretty easy.

virtuallynathan 5y ago
Do you know how many calories you burn? Do you actually know how many calories are in your food? I have a metabolic cart, and the answer surprises me sometimes on the former - just standing at my desk all day I burn >3300kcal. I actually went to talk to the guy in the Casey Neistat video about food labels, and almost bought a bomb calorimeter. Calorie counting, while not useless, is not very helpful. https://youtu.be/hE2lna5Wxuo https://youtu.be/hE2lna5Wxuo
- 300bps 5y ago
  I know approximately how many calories are in my food. Like I said I use MyFitnessPal to track it. I know approximately how many calories I burn. In addition to using an Apple Watch I track my workouts. And honestly this is good enough. If I target a 500 calorie per day deficit, I miraculously lose 1 pound per week. Which makes sense because simple arithmetic says that there are 3,500 calories per pound and 7 days times 500 equals 3,500. It really is that simple. What on earth do you have a metabolic cart for? You wear that on your face all day every day tracking how much carbon dioxide you breathe out? And you really believe you’re burning 3,300 calories just standing? I could maybe believe that if you are in the morbidly obese BMI range. Calorie counting is extremely helpful. Ask anyone who did it for the first time and suddenly realized they were eating 9 servings of potato chips at a time without even thinking about it.
  - virtuallynathan 5y ago
    I'm a nerd with more money than sense, what can I say! I trust the output of the device I have, and I do truly believe I am burning 3300kcal/day just standing at my desk, walking to the bathroom, etc. I eat 3500kcal/day pretty regularly, and maintain weight. If you can target enough of a deficit and not be hungry, good for you. It's hard for most people. The input data is wrong, the output data is wrong/unknown, and one can only be hungry for so long.
- fouc 5y ago
  video TL;DW: seems like it's basically safe to make an assumption that the reported calories in food could be 10%+ higher than expected, especially among packaged food. Larger restaurant chains like McDonald's and Subway seem to be slightly more accurate. The surprising part was that it took the science guy 10 hours to calculate the calories for 5 food items ? Would be nice if we could get that down to minutes and accessible to personal consumers.

layer8 5y ago

I found CC the only thing that works for me for losing weight. Combining it with IF just makes it easier to stick with the caloric restriction. IF also does make it easier to maintain weight later on without CC. Of course, everyone is different.

civilized 5y ago
I would prefer not to have to do CC forever so maybe this will be the way to go once I reach maintenance phase.

shlant 5y ago

"If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against…thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." - Arthur Eddington