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calories in, calories out After a lifetime of fighting with my weight, including surgery to give me a fight change, I have to say that statement is the single

calories in, calories out After a lifetime of fighting with my weight, including surgery to give me a fight change, I have to say that statement is the single most useless statement in a segment filled with misinformation. It is used by people who haven't struggled to (perhaps not intentionally) insult people who do. "Gee, can't you count. It's just a calorie." The problem with that statement is it assumes our bodies are like a gasoline engine, where, yes, a calorie in is a calorie out. Our bodies are not like that. Instead, we take in many different kinds of fuels. Everybody's body is different in how it processes each of those kinds of fuels. More importantly, everybody's brain is different in how it reacts to inputs coming from the gas tank and engine. Until you understand how the various fuels interact with your body, a calorie is a calorie is completely meaningless. Carbs are fuel, if you're an athlete, you have a use for them. Yes, yes, yes. I completely agree with this. The brain needs some carbohydrates to run. The body can, if absolutely necessary, convert other foods into carbs to make that happen. The things paleo and the various low-carb diets do is give a structure around how to reduce those carbs, especially in a culture that worships the ultra-refined, processed-thrice, almost-straight-sugar carbohydrate.

heretohelp 14y ago
>The things paleo and the various low-carb diets do is give a structure around how to reduce those carbs, especially in a culture that worships the ultra-refined, processed-thrice, almost-straight-sugar carbohydrate. So we replace one religion with another? The structure is good, but yeesh.
- wonnage 14y ago
  It's replacing a wholly-incorrect model with a potentially flawed, but partially-validated one. I don't think we have the body of knowledge right now to precisely model how a particular diet works vs. another, but we have observed that low-carb diets improve health and wellness. This isn't to say we should all ditch our bread and pray at the Church of Paleo. But with our current state of knowledge, I think it's more intellectually dishonest to cling to provably false "scientific" models of how different diets affect the body, than to just go with something that works (but we don't really know why). The scientific method dictates that theories must be made to fit observation, not the other way around. Consider this: a theory that the world was round prior to any evidence of such has no more validity than the flat-world hypothesis. Post hoc, you may find out that the Earth is in fact round, but the knowledge was gained from the observation, not the theory. So call it religion if you want, but it's actually more scientific than the alternative.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- natrius 14y ago
  This particular "religion" is backed by studies that say it's the most effective way to eat to lose weight. Granted, the only studies I know about are the ones Taubes cites, but is there evidence to the contrary? It seems to work for a lot of people and the science behind it makes sense to me. I don't see why it should be discouraged.
nasmorn 14y ago
My family has adopted a single rule. Never buy anything with sugar on the ingredients list. I am of course aware that a little fructose would probably not kill me not even long term, but the biggest problem in dieting IMO is keeping track of your inputs. This rule alone rules out enough crap to make us eat reasonably healthy as the correlation of added sugar to crap food is pretty high. So I understand why simple rules are important I just believe they don't have to be, never eat any carbs.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  That's a great rule. I'm going to have to think about and talk with my family about how to implement that in a way that isn't me being a tyrant and them wanting to rebel (yay for the early teens :). Oh, and I agree on the "don't have to be, never eat any carbs". I've posted elsewhere that I'm a literal food addict. I have to put a lot of structure in place or I go off the deep end. For me, I have best control when I say "no carbs, period", but that is my personal diet (err, that I try to stick to, anyway :). I think a more reasonable world might be "try very hard to avoid simple carbs". If you aren't lucky enough to not have to care (whatever combination of genes and lifestyle causes that, I curse thee ;), then finding the combination that works for you is critical. I found it though a lot of experimentation (including a major experiment of re-working my body's plumbing because so many previous experiments had failed).

heretohelp 14y ago

>The things paleo and the various low-carb diets do is give a structure around how to reduce those carbs, especially in a culture that worships the ultra-refined, processed-thrice, almost-straight-sugar carbohydrate. So we replace one religion with another? The structure is good, but yeesh.

wonnage 14y ago
It's replacing a wholly-incorrect model with a potentially flawed, but partially-validated one. I don't think we have the body of knowledge right now to precisely model how a particular diet works vs. another, but we have observed that low-carb diets improve health and wellness. This isn't to say we should all ditch our bread and pray at the Church of Paleo. But with our current state of knowledge, I think it's more intellectually dishonest to cling to provably false "scientific" models of how different diets affect the body, than to just go with something that works (but we don't really know why). The scientific method dictates that theories must be made to fit observation, not the other way around. Consider this: a theory that the world was round prior to any evidence of such has no more validity than the flat-world hypothesis. Post hoc, you may find out that the Earth is in fact round, but the knowledge was gained from the observation, not the theory. So call it religion if you want, but it's actually more scientific than the alternative.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
natrius 14y ago
This particular "religion" is backed by studies that say it's the most effective way to eat to lose weight. Granted, the only studies I know about are the ones Taubes cites, but is there evidence to the contrary? It seems to work for a lot of people and the science behind it makes sense to me. I don't see why it should be discouraged.

nasmorn 14y ago

My family has adopted a single rule. Never buy anything with sugar on the ingredients list. I am of course aware that a little fructose would probably not kill me not even long term, but the biggest problem in dieting IMO is keeping track of your inputs. This rule alone rules out enough crap to make us eat reasonably healthy as the correlation of added sugar to crap food is pretty high. So I understand why simple rules are important I just believe they don't have to be, never eat any carbs.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
That's a great rule. I'm going to have to think about and talk with my family about how to implement that in a way that isn't me being a tyrant and them wanting to rebel (yay for the early teens :). Oh, and I agree on the "don't have to be, never eat any carbs". I've posted elsewhere that I'm a literal food addict. I have to put a lot of structure in place or I go off the deep end. For me, I have best control when I say "no carbs, period", but that is my personal diet (err, that I try to stick to, anyway :). I think a more reasonable world might be "try very hard to avoid simple carbs". If you aren't lucky enough to not have to care (whatever combination of genes and lifestyle causes that, I curse thee ;), then finding the combination that works for you is critical. I found it though a lot of experimentation (including a major experiment of re-working my body's plumbing because so many previous experiments had failed).