4 ms·

I think the whole point of the article is that you don't need to do anything crazy to lose weight or be healthy, you really just have to eat healthier foods and

I think the whole point of the article is that you don't need to do anything crazy to lose weight or be healthy, you really just have to eat healthier foods and move around more in general. A lot of people think a diet is this magical thing that makes it easy for you, but the truth is that it ultimately comes down to choosing foods that are good for you, rather than taking diet pills or doing some extreme diet like keto or carnivore. And that can be _hard_, because eating good food and being lazy are very easy to do and can be quite enjoyable.

thelittleone 4y ago
>you really just have to eat healthier foods and move around more in general. Actually it's even more simple. You don't need to eat healthier or move around more. You simply need to consume approx 100-150 calories less than you burn per day (BMR + additional activities). If you do this, you will lose weight whether you get all those calories from only burgers or from lean chicken salad.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  It's simple in a very reductionist sense. In reality this is likely to either not work or to not be optimal. The first problem with that simple math is that calorie counts on packaging can be off by a substantial amount. In the United States, the FDA allows calorie counts on packaging to be as inaccurate as 20%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605747/ This doesn't mean all foods are going to deviate by 20% but that potential is there, and even around a 7% over or underestimation can still be a big deal if you're really going to be bean-counting calories to such an extent. Good luck accurately determining your individual BMR with a simple calculator (Harris-Benedict formula) or your TDEE. Those formulae can be off by hundreds of calories, and are likely to be even less accurate the more obese a person is. > If you do this, you will lose weight whether you get all those calories from only burgers or from lean chicken salad. If, hypothetically, someone drinks milkshakes day in and day out, a 150 calorie TDEE deficit is going to be meaningless. Energy substrates aren't equivalent. Every macro, and even different molecules have their own metabolic pathways and the body utilizes them in very different ways.
  - tbrownaw 4y ago
    Just because directly calculating your exact calorie balance is untenable, doesn't mean you can't make intentional relative adjustments to it. Even if it does sometimes take a few tries to make work ("oh, eating less made me tired and cranky, let's try it this other way").
    - ravenstine 4y ago
      > Just because directly calculating your exact calorie balance is untenable It's not only untenable, it's infeasible. The only way to "directly" calculate one's energy expenditure is to either place them inside a direct calorimeter or to use respiratory gas analysis, and to adhere to very strict protocols. And no, fitness bands and watches are not accurate enough to overcome the margin of error. Sure, one can keep lowering the amount of food they eat until they get some kind of result from it. In that case, there's almost no point in trying any sort of BMR calculation flim-flam whatsoever. They'd be better off just eyeballing how much they eat and reducing the volume and the frequency. Regardless, my point stands. Suggesting that the answer is to "simply" intake ~150 fewer calories of energy per day is to suggest that the vast majority of people are equipped with the skills and knowledge to even get close to that kind of accuracy in any sort of calculation. Maybe one can get lucky and see results from such a "simple" calculation because of their individual biology and eating habits, but the margin of error is still very high. Let's set aside reality for a moment and pretend that calorie counts on packaging were perfectly accurate and that the Harris-Benedict equation works perfectly for everyone. That still wouldn't matter the inference of calories of food are/were measured as heat in a bomb calorimeter (i.e. setting food on fire and recording how much heat is emitted). The calorie count that appears on a food package is a guess based on the composition of macronutrients. With the exception of fiber, the calories of fat, protein, and carbs are combined together to form the single count based on how they typically burn in a calorimeter. This introduces more inaccuracy depending on the type of fiber since it may be fermented into digestible substrate. The human body is nothing like a bomb calorimeter. It treats different forms of energy differently, and different forms of energy are utilized to varying amounts, and are even utilized differently in the presence of one another. If you take a dump, let it dry and then light it on fire, it will burn because there's excess energy being passed through and not converted to heat by the body. Food may pass faster or slower depending on what it's composed of. Fiber can not only do that but also prevent the digestion of nutrients. A diet that mixes lots of fat and carbs together facilitates the storage of more energy as fat than if either of them were eaten in isolation. Protein has more of a thermic effect (the body emitting more heat) than either carbs or fat. Point being, if one really does not want to lose weight by actually choosing to eat foods that are appropriate for their digestive system, or to eat food that is low in energy density (ex. leafy greens), then they might as well cut down on food to such an extent that they would be able to notice it without punching numbers into a calculator. A substantial amount would have to be reduced from the diet to have a reasonable amount of confidence that one is indeed eating less energy than the body is expending in a day.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  Eating less is easier if your choice of diet leaves you feeling not-hungry for longer after eating. Staying active both burns calories directly, and iirc keeps your metabolism a bit above idle. Both of these things make it easier to actually get that calorie deficit.
slothtrop 4y ago
In the capacity of losing weight, the requirement is caloric restriction, irrespective of whether the food intake is healthy or not. Healthy food, however, facilitates the process, because fiber and protein, and lower insulin responses from sugar restriction, improves satiety and cravings. Coming from a standard westernized diet high in processed foods, you'll probably lose some weight just by changing makeup of diet, but if you're overweight you won't lose all of the excess without sustained caloric restriction.
majkinetor 4y ago
That is definitelly NOT the truth. The "advice" is so non actionable that one doesn't know where to start - what is "good" food? you never take pills? Move around more in general? How much more? All day or every minute counts?... The comments like this are just noise from the folks that probably never had an issue with those stuff.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  Exactly. And what most people tend to think is "healthy" is not based on sound science of any kind. These questions you ask are important because one can't take something like diet and exercise and treat them in a reductive sense. One can lose weight by eating nothing but plant leaves. Is that "good" food or a "good" diet? Such a diet would be unsustainable in the long run simply because said food is neither dense enough in energy nor dense enough in nutrients. That doesn't sound particularly good to me. But many people equate salad to being "healthy", such that they will add lettuce to the things they actually want to eat because of a mystical believe that plant material is inherently good.
  - majkinetor 4y ago
    Of course. People like to reduce it to 2 binary things as usual, but there is nothing simple or easy or cheap about maintaining your health. Its extremely hard. You need to measure things yourself all the time, know a lot of theory, and experiment a lot, because due to bio-individuality you can extrapolate from other people findings in a limited manner.
ravenstine 4y ago
> you really just have to eat healthier foods I'll give the article credit for mentioning processed foods, but otherwise, many people and even experts disagree on what makes a food healthy. Telling people to just not "eat crap" and to cut out processed and fried foods is barely specific enough to be useful. The utility of eating a specific diet is that it actually identifies what foods should be avoided and why. If uneducated individuals just "eat healthy", they are likely to do things that either won't work or will backfire in the long run. > A lot of people think a diet is this magical thing that makes it easy for you Yes, because that's what an appropriate diet tends to do. When you eat a diet that doesn't overly engage the Randle cycle or raise insulin, losing body fat usually follows whether one counts their calories or not. If someone is overweight and they eat a low insulinogenic diet, and their food is satiating, both their eating frequency and their biology is likely to shift to not hold on to so much body fat anymore. The only thing that's not easy about such a diet is not being tempted by all the common foods that interfere with the metabolism. > you really just have to eat healthier foods That means very little. What does that mean? Eating Raisin Bran? Eating lots of leaves? Cutting out red meat? Eating lots of fruit? > move around in general Moving around can certainly help, but for weight loss and maintenance, it's far more efficient to eat an appropriate fuel substrate and to not eat excessively. You could burn 235 calories climbing the Empire State building for 30 minutes, or you could simply not eat those 235 calories and do something more interesting or productive with that time. This isn't to say that there aren't possible cardiovascular benefits from exercise, but it's not as efficient for fat burning as people think. For most of that 30 minutes the human body will be burning primarily glucose, so unless one is fasted they won't be shredding fat from the second they start climbing those stairs. > the truth is that it ultimately comes down to choosing foods that are good for you Again, any individual is unlikely to actually know what that means or come to a consensus with the next person on what that means. "eat healthy" means nothing. > rather than taking diet pills Yeah, they probably shouldn't do that. > or doing some extreme diet like keto or carnivore Neither of those are particularly "extreme" except that they eliminate many of the things that cause the human body to keep holding on to fat. As it turns out, they're both low-insulin diets, and the latter diet is the one that is most species-appropriate out of just about any other diet. No one has to eat keto or carnivore, but to suggest people shouldn't eat either form of diet is based on... what, exactly? > And that can be _hard_, because eating good food and being lazy are very easy to do and can be quite enjoyable. I agree. Eating good food is easy and enjoyable once one breaks past the standard advice of "eat healthy."

thelittleone 4y ago

>you really just have to eat healthier foods and move around more in general. Actually it's even more simple. You don't need to eat healthier or move around more. You simply need to consume approx 100-150 calories less than you burn per day (BMR + additional activities). If you do this, you will lose weight whether you get all those calories from only burgers or from lean chicken salad.

ravenstine 4y ago
It's simple in a very reductionist sense. In reality this is likely to either not work or to not be optimal. The first problem with that simple math is that calorie counts on packaging can be off by a substantial amount. In the United States, the FDA allows calorie counts on packaging to be as inaccurate as 20%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3605747/ This doesn't mean all foods are going to deviate by 20% but that potential is there, and even around a 7% over or underestimation can still be a big deal if you're really going to be bean-counting calories to such an extent. Good luck accurately determining your individual BMR with a simple calculator (Harris-Benedict formula) or your TDEE. Those formulae can be off by hundreds of calories, and are likely to be even less accurate the more obese a person is. > If you do this, you will lose weight whether you get all those calories from only burgers or from lean chicken salad. If, hypothetically, someone drinks milkshakes day in and day out, a 150 calorie TDEE deficit is going to be meaningless. Energy substrates aren't equivalent. Every macro, and even different molecules have their own metabolic pathways and the body utilizes them in very different ways.
- tbrownaw 4y ago
  Just because directly calculating your exact calorie balance is untenable, doesn't mean you can't make intentional relative adjustments to it. Even if it does sometimes take a few tries to make work ("oh, eating less made me tired and cranky, let's try it this other way").
  - ravenstine 4y ago
    > Just because directly calculating your exact calorie balance is untenable It's not only untenable, it's infeasible. The only way to "directly" calculate one's energy expenditure is to either place them inside a direct calorimeter or to use respiratory gas analysis, and to adhere to very strict protocols. And no, fitness bands and watches are not accurate enough to overcome the margin of error. Sure, one can keep lowering the amount of food they eat until they get some kind of result from it. In that case, there's almost no point in trying any sort of BMR calculation flim-flam whatsoever. They'd be better off just eyeballing how much they eat and reducing the volume and the frequency. Regardless, my point stands. Suggesting that the answer is to "simply" intake ~150 fewer calories of energy per day is to suggest that the vast majority of people are equipped with the skills and knowledge to even get close to that kind of accuracy in any sort of calculation. Maybe one can get lucky and see results from such a "simple" calculation because of their individual biology and eating habits, but the margin of error is still very high. Let's set aside reality for a moment and pretend that calorie counts on packaging were perfectly accurate and that the Harris-Benedict equation works perfectly for everyone. That still wouldn't matter the inference of calories of food are/were measured as heat in a bomb calorimeter (i.e. setting food on fire and recording how much heat is emitted). The calorie count that appears on a food package is a guess based on the composition of macronutrients. With the exception of fiber, the calories of fat, protein, and carbs are combined together to form the single count based on how they typically burn in a calorimeter. This introduces more inaccuracy depending on the type of fiber since it may be fermented into digestible substrate. The human body is nothing like a bomb calorimeter. It treats different forms of energy differently, and different forms of energy are utilized to varying amounts, and are even utilized differently in the presence of one another. If you take a dump, let it dry and then light it on fire, it will burn because there's excess energy being passed through and not converted to heat by the body. Food may pass faster or slower depending on what it's composed of. Fiber can not only do that but also prevent the digestion of nutrients. A diet that mixes lots of fat and carbs together facilitates the storage of more energy as fat than if either of them were eaten in isolation. Protein has more of a thermic effect (the body emitting more heat) than either carbs or fat. Point being, if one really does not want to lose weight by actually choosing to eat foods that are appropriate for their digestive system, or to eat food that is low in energy density (ex. leafy greens), then they might as well cut down on food to such an extent that they would be able to notice it without punching numbers into a calculator. A substantial amount would have to be reduced from the diet to have a reasonable amount of confidence that one is indeed eating less energy than the body is expending in a day.
tbrownaw 4y ago
Eating less is easier if your choice of diet leaves you feeling not-hungry for longer after eating. Staying active both burns calories directly, and iirc keeps your metabolism a bit above idle. Both of these things make it easier to actually get that calorie deficit.

slothtrop 4y ago

In the capacity of losing weight, the requirement is caloric restriction, irrespective of whether the food intake is healthy or not. Healthy food, however, facilitates the process, because fiber and protein, and lower insulin responses from sugar restriction, improves satiety and cravings. Coming from a standard westernized diet high in processed foods, you'll probably lose some weight just by changing makeup of diet, but if you're overweight you won't lose all of the excess without sustained caloric restriction.

majkinetor 4y ago

That is definitelly NOT the truth. The "advice" is so non actionable that one doesn't know where to start - what is "good" food? you never take pills? Move around more in general? How much more? All day or every minute counts?... The comments like this are just noise from the folks that probably never had an issue with those stuff.

ravenstine 4y ago
Exactly. And what most people tend to think is "healthy" is not based on sound science of any kind. These questions you ask are important because one can't take something like diet and exercise and treat them in a reductive sense. One can lose weight by eating nothing but plant leaves. Is that "good" food or a "good" diet? Such a diet would be unsustainable in the long run simply because said food is neither dense enough in energy nor dense enough in nutrients. That doesn't sound particularly good to me. But many people equate salad to being "healthy", such that they will add lettuce to the things they actually want to eat because of a mystical believe that plant material is inherently good.
- majkinetor 4y ago
  Of course. People like to reduce it to 2 binary things as usual, but there is nothing simple or easy or cheap about maintaining your health. Its extremely hard. You need to measure things yourself all the time, know a lot of theory, and experiment a lot, because due to bio-individuality you can extrapolate from other people findings in a limited manner.

ravenstine 4y ago

> you really just have to eat healthier foods I'll give the article credit for mentioning processed foods, but otherwise, many people and even experts disagree on what makes a food healthy. Telling people to just not "eat crap" and to cut out processed and fried foods is barely specific enough to be useful. The utility of eating a specific diet is that it actually identifies what foods should be avoided and why. If uneducated individuals just "eat healthy", they are likely to do things that either won't work or will backfire in the long run. > A lot of people think a diet is this magical thing that makes it easy for you Yes, because that's what an appropriate diet tends to do. When you eat a diet that doesn't overly engage the Randle cycle or raise insulin, losing body fat usually follows whether one counts their calories or not. If someone is overweight and they eat a low insulinogenic diet, and their food is satiating, both their eating frequency and their biology is likely to shift to not hold on to so much body fat anymore. The only thing that's not easy about such a diet is not being tempted by all the common foods that interfere with the metabolism. > you really just have to eat healthier foods That means very little. What does that mean? Eating Raisin Bran? Eating lots of leaves? Cutting out red meat? Eating lots of fruit? > move around in general Moving around can certainly help, but for weight loss and maintenance, it's far more efficient to eat an appropriate fuel substrate and to not eat excessively. You could burn 235 calories climbing the Empire State building for 30 minutes, or you could simply not eat those 235 calories and do something more interesting or productive with that time. This isn't to say that there aren't possible cardiovascular benefits from exercise, but it's not as efficient for fat burning as people think. For most of that 30 minutes the human body will be burning primarily glucose, so unless one is fasted they won't be shredding fat from the second they start climbing those stairs. > the truth is that it ultimately comes down to choosing foods that are good for you Again, any individual is unlikely to actually know what that means or come to a consensus with the next person on what that means. "eat healthy" means nothing. > rather than taking diet pills Yeah, they probably shouldn't do that. > or doing some extreme diet like keto or carnivore Neither of those are particularly "extreme" except that they eliminate many of the things that cause the human body to keep holding on to fat. As it turns out, they're both low-insulin diets, and the latter diet is the one that is most species-appropriate out of just about any other diet. No one has to eat keto or carnivore, but to suggest people shouldn't eat either form of diet is based on... what, exactly? > And that can be _hard_, because eating good food and being lazy are very easy to do and can be quite enjoyable. I agree. Eating good food is easy and enjoyable once one breaks past the standard advice of "eat healthy."