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>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 mo

>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.

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.