4 ms·

No, it isn’t… keep reading to the bit about thermodynamics. The calorie represents the potential heat energy present in a sample of a material if that material

No, it isn’t… keep reading to the bit about thermodynamics. The calorie represents the potential heat energy present in a sample of a material if that material were fully oxidized (ie burned) in a bomb calorimeter… it has never represented (much less accurately represented) the amount of energy that can actually be released via digestion into a human body (which is very extremely not analogous to a bomb calorimeter). We are not ovens. We really are not extremely precise ovens burning samples in the presence of stoichiometrically optimal quantities of pure oxygen.

sn9 1y ago
But at the level of precision needed to manipulate our weight, we basically are. Like there are entire communities of practice that know how to do this effectively at will. This is a learnable teachable skill.
- yawpitch 1y ago
  I have lived alternating violently between bulimia and anorexia my entire life precisely because someone emphatically, and also utterly and destructively incorrectly, believed that to be true. I am absolutely certain that I know more about what calories actually are, and how badly fitted they are to actually managing our body mass — the best way to manipulate your weight is to change gravity wells — than you do. I can manipulate my body mass at will, effectively, and to a degree you would, I’m sure, find impossible to accomplish. I learned how to take that “skill” to an extreme any community you’ve survived to be member of has not yet approached. Anyone who teaches that “skill” is immoral. We are not bomb calorimeters. We do not consume calories, nor do we engage, in even the most ludicrously “basic” sense, in anything resembling the simple combustion of our food supply. There are calories in coal and, for that matter, plutonium… try to metabolize either. The heat potential of what we consume is not relevant to the safe (much less effective) regulation of our metabolic machinery; the nutrient density and distributions in what we consume is, but is very hard to summarize in marketing copy to idiot monkeys that want a simple eat / no eat light.
  - sn9 1y ago
    > I have lived alternating violently between bulimia and anorexia my entire life precisely because someone emphatically, and also utterly and destructively incorrectly, believed that to be true. Having a mental disorder does not change how physiology works and does not depend on how it works, but it does explain a lot of what you're writing and why. > I am absolutely certain that I know more about what calories actually are, and how badly fitted they are to actually managing our body mass — the best way to manipulate your weight is to change gravity wells — than you do. I have a degree in biology and have been reading and researching enough about fitness and health for well over a decade to know how to take someone from the couch to at least 80% of their genetic potential in terms of strength and size while being as shredded as they'd like in a deterministic process. > We are not bomb calorimeters. We do not consume calories, nor do we engage, in even the most ludicrously “basic” sense, in anything resembling the simple combustion of our food supply. There are calories in coal and, for that matter, plutonium… try to metabolize either. Yes but if you'd ever opened a biochemistry textbook, you'd see what we actually do and you'd understand why what works in bodybuilding works at all, and how it's all downstream of that. I hope you get help but you are simply not an authority on this topic. I'll go with all the people with proven track records teaching people how to successfully manipulate their body composition with methods rooted in understanding basic physiology over a random person on the internet.
    - yawpitch 1y ago
      Ahh, so you’re one of the immoral. I feel so much sorrow for those you are actively harming. May they survive your naïveté and arrogance.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
        This is a bit hyperbolic. Always remember the Prof who lost 27lbs on the convenience food diet: https://www.acsh.org/news/2010/11/09/food-for-thought-twinkie-diet-helps-nutrition-professor-lose-weight https://www.acsh.org/news/2010/11/09/food-for-thought-twinki... Also remember that before the days of tracking apps and watches and services like Zoe, many of us were losing weight, keeping it off and improving athletic performance without any of that stuff.

sn9 1y ago

But at the level of precision needed to manipulate our weight, we basically are. Like there are entire communities of practice that know how to do this effectively at will. This is a learnable teachable skill.

yawpitch 1y ago
I have lived alternating violently between bulimia and anorexia my entire life precisely because someone emphatically, and also utterly and destructively incorrectly, believed that to be true. I am absolutely certain that I know more about what calories actually are, and how badly fitted they are to actually managing our body mass — the best way to manipulate your weight is to change gravity wells — than you do. I can manipulate my body mass at will, effectively, and to a degree you would, I’m sure, find impossible to accomplish. I learned how to take that “skill” to an extreme any community you’ve survived to be member of has not yet approached. Anyone who teaches that “skill” is immoral. We are not bomb calorimeters. We do not consume calories, nor do we engage, in even the most ludicrously “basic” sense, in anything resembling the simple combustion of our food supply. There are calories in coal and, for that matter, plutonium… try to metabolize either. The heat potential of what we consume is not relevant to the safe (much less effective) regulation of our metabolic machinery; the nutrient density and distributions in what we consume is, but is very hard to summarize in marketing copy to idiot monkeys that want a simple eat / no eat light.
- sn9 1y ago
  > I have lived alternating violently between bulimia and anorexia my entire life precisely because someone emphatically, and also utterly and destructively incorrectly, believed that to be true. Having a mental disorder does not change how physiology works and does not depend on how it works, but it does explain a lot of what you're writing and why. > I am absolutely certain that I know more about what calories actually are, and how badly fitted they are to actually managing our body mass — the best way to manipulate your weight is to change gravity wells — than you do. I have a degree in biology and have been reading and researching enough about fitness and health for well over a decade to know how to take someone from the couch to at least 80% of their genetic potential in terms of strength and size while being as shredded as they'd like in a deterministic process. > We are not bomb calorimeters. We do not consume calories, nor do we engage, in even the most ludicrously “basic” sense, in anything resembling the simple combustion of our food supply. There are calories in coal and, for that matter, plutonium… try to metabolize either. Yes but if you'd ever opened a biochemistry textbook, you'd see what we actually do and you'd understand why what works in bodybuilding works at all, and how it's all downstream of that. I hope you get help but you are simply not an authority on this topic. I'll go with all the people with proven track records teaching people how to successfully manipulate their body composition with methods rooted in understanding basic physiology over a random person on the internet.
  - yawpitch 1y ago
    Ahh, so you’re one of the immoral. I feel so much sorrow for those you are actively harming. May they survive your naïveté and arrogance.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
      This is a bit hyperbolic. Always remember the Prof who lost 27lbs on the convenience food diet: https://www.acsh.org/news/2010/11/09/food-for-thought-twinkie-diet-helps-nutrition-professor-lose-weight https://www.acsh.org/news/2010/11/09/food-for-thought-twinki... Also remember that before the days of tracking apps and watches and services like Zoe, many of us were losing weight, keeping it off and improving athletic performance without any of that stuff.