5 ms·

While admittedly I haven't taken the time to read your entire blog post, I'm throwing this link out there for your perusal: http://thatpaleoguy.com/2012/12/19/

While admittedly I haven't taken the time to read your entire blog post, I'm throwing this link out there for your perusal: http://thatpaleoguy.com/2012/12/19/calorie-rants-and-ketosis-part-1/ http://thatpaleoguy.com/2012/12/19/calorie-rants-and-ketosis... Quite simply, you have to consider how a calorie takes the path to becoming a calorie in our system, imo.

jacques_chester 14y ago
My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.
- eof 14y ago
  Your logic is flawed. The only limiting factor is calories in. It is impossible to gain weight for calories you have not eaten. None of your analysis in anyway shows, or even hints at the 'fact' that Eating more will necessarily make you weigh more. It is totally possible that someone can eat 3k calories a day, but no carbs, and this could have all types of effects; like a slight increase in body temperature due to a different rate of caloric burning, or maybe not everything is getting digested and he is shitting out 1.5k calories a day for some dietary reason you don't understand. In the same way you cannot say "well logically, I put 5 gallons of gas in a car and went 25 miles, therefore there must be 1 gallon of gas left" without knowing specifics about an engine; you cannot do the same with humans, which you essentially are. Further, our bodies/engines are dynamic; and some of our internal systems are more or less effecient depending on a number of factors that you don't understand (for example, it is possible that eating certain types of calories have chemicals/enzymes related to them that cause other systems in the body to change effeciency). You have one side right: If you want to lose weight you can be absolutely sure that by cutting down calories, below a certain threshold, you will lose weight. But, then you go too far and say this is the only thing at play. In fact, you don't have any logical reason to make the second statement; it admittedly seems to make sense at face value, but ketosis is absolutely real, and people are shedding weight and still eating a ton of calories, regardless of whatever graphs/analysis you are making.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    > None of your analysis in anyway shows, or even hints The words "net calorie balance" are carefully chosen to encompass your objection (I have it filed under "Diet Debate Gotcha #3,947: Thermogenic Effect of Food"). > But, then you go too far and say this is the only thing at play. I do and I don't. What I say is that it's all you really need to know in order to control your weight. It's also, in the strictest narrowly-drawn causality, the completely explanatory mechanism of weight control. I'm not arguing that folk on ketogenic diets lose weight. I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as ketogenesis. I'm just saying that in the long run, the direct, immediate cause (such as it is) is one of net calorie balance modulo noisy oddities like water retention.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  I'd content that is absolutely awful advise for people. It gives them free reign to drink soda, eat pizza and sugar without knowing what it is doing to their body so long as "they are within the calorie limit". This is bad. See my other comment on hormones. They play a HUGE role and not understanding them leads to statements like "it's all about the calories" or "I'm only eating 1000 calories" etc etc.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    > This is bad. It can be, sure. Tooth decay, vitamin deficiency, muscle and bone wasting, all that jazz. But are we still talking about weight control or not? Because people love to make it super ultra complex when the basic control mechanism is fairly straightforward. My hyper-elaborate advice for the more general "health control" case (as opposed to "weight control") is: 1. Eat more to gain weight, less to lose weight, and about the same to stay about the same. 2. Make sure you get plenty of protein. It's good for you. 3. Eat a variety of foods. 4. Lift weights. 5. Do something that makes your heart pump really hard for a while. I mean for myself I have zillions of tweaks. But it's easy to go off the deep end chasing that 1-2% optimisation when all most people want is the 20% of information that gives 80% of the result.
- lookACamel 14y ago
  "Eat more --> weight more" HOW much more? (HOW much less.) Lizzie Velasquez trivially demonstrates the inadequacy of your observations.
  - TeMPOraL 14y ago
    > HOW much more? (HOW much less.) Doesn't matter. Just keep loosing / gaining until you reach the desired weight and then adjust to stabilize. It will take different time for different people and/or food combination, but in principle, you can just adjust the amounts and you'll get there.
    - lookACamel 14y ago
      What I mean is, there are certainly better ways and worse ways for individuals to reach the desired weight and maintain it. The idea that all you have to care about is the net deficit is pretty useless. If the deficit is all that we care about, why not just eat nothing then? Drink water and take vitamins but don't consume any calories. Because psychologically speaking, it's damn near impossible. And even if you did succeed, it'd be hard to maintain since you'd have to start eating again which would be a big change in what you were doing.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    If I had a reliable method for producing accurate and precise numerical forecasts of the future behaviour of complex systems with a large number of unobservable variables, then I would be a multi-quintillionaire. This doesn't mean that weather forecasting, economics, agile software methodologies -- to pick just a few famous examples of subjects dealing with complex systems -- are totally broken tools that must henceforth be discarded. It just means that we have to pick our battles. Controlling systems by incremental adjustments works perfectly well. In fact it works for highly predictable simple systems too -- you can take variables like shell mass, powder load, wind velocity, humidity and predict with enormous accuracy where an anti-aircraft shell will go when fired. Or you can use tracer bullets. (Yes, this is the elegant little example from The Pragmatic Programmer).
- mipapage 14y ago
  I have to say that has not been my experience. I've been keto a few times and have been now for maybe 6 weeks. By far my longest run at it. I dropped 7kgs and at the moment your rules as above do not apply. I can eat more total calories (as fat) than when not keto-eating (i.e. more calories from carbs) and have no weight gain. When I up the carbs (>50g/day) I get the water gain, and presumably if I increased the carbs I would return to my previous state, roughly 17%bf and 75kgs. Perhaps its context... I don't see things, where I am, as simple as you write them above.
  - thorofasgaard 14y ago
    Keep, and then post, a log of everything you eat (quantities as well as contents) - dollars to bacon-laden donuts, you're eating at a deficit.
    - mipapage 14y ago
      Interesting proposal, but I'm not sure I have the time for that. I have to think though, that the two avocados and 750 calorie bag of macadamia nuts alone have me at 1100. Perhaps I'll fire up my daily burn account again and get to it. Part of the fun of this was that I have been able to eat when I felt I needed it and not worry about counting...
TeMPOraL 14y ago
However it does, simple feedback loop with adjustments proportional to minus weight difference (aka. are you gaining on weight? eat less.) should still work regardless of what you eat and what "types" of calories there are. It's not just calories-in / calories-out, it's a feedback loop between your weight and amount of calories you eat, and that - as Jacques wrote - tends to disregard internal state and processes by the very definition of how it works. The trick is, what I so far found out, to establish a set of meals that you can actually stick to for a longer time without feeling nauseous, while still maintaining calorie deficit. There are also issues like insulin reaction; so far I believe in this one, as hunger doesn't seem to feel as bad and doesn't disable my thinking since around the time I cut out sugars completely (I used to drink a lot of them). But accounting for all those things only helps you to stick with your diet. So bottomline, I think that most of the other mechanisms people bring up are important not for weight loss per se, but for the ability to stick with a given diet for longer, while calorie deficit does it work. FYI: I'm on keto for just over two months (with lot of cheating unfortunately - there were so many parties recently...) and have lost 10kg in that time.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  Are you me (apart from the keto)? Because this is pretty much what I am trying to convey.
  - TeMPOraL 14y ago
    I don't think I'm you, but I do agree with what you wrote :). I also found the basic understanding of control theoery... enlightening, in many areas of life, not only dieting. I hate when people argue over whether A causes B or B causes A, and fail to notice a feedback loop in work.
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      Learning about feedback loops has definitely been enlightening. Somewhere I have the bones of a super ginormo followup post to my original "fat and simple" one where I discuss causality itself in more depth (for example, I came up with 4 axes for categorising kinds of causality; I can only imagine that some long-dead philosopher has beaten me to it). Lots of these debates actually resolve around definitions. Anyhow, the other stuff I've written under the Systems heading may be of interest to you[1]. [1] http://chester.id.au/category/systems/ http://chester.id.au/category/systems/

jacques_chester 14y ago

My overarching theme in my blog post is that the underlying complexity (which absolutely exists) is utterly optional for actually controlling weight. You just don't need to know it or understand it. Eat less --> weigh less and Eat more --> weigh more Are sufficiently good that you can form a working control system with them. No other variables need be observed or cared about.

eof 14y ago
Your logic is flawed. The only limiting factor is calories in. It is impossible to gain weight for calories you have not eaten. None of your analysis in anyway shows, or even hints at the 'fact' that Eating more will necessarily make you weigh more. It is totally possible that someone can eat 3k calories a day, but no carbs, and this could have all types of effects; like a slight increase in body temperature due to a different rate of caloric burning, or maybe not everything is getting digested and he is shitting out 1.5k calories a day for some dietary reason you don't understand. In the same way you cannot say "well logically, I put 5 gallons of gas in a car and went 25 miles, therefore there must be 1 gallon of gas left" without knowing specifics about an engine; you cannot do the same with humans, which you essentially are. Further, our bodies/engines are dynamic; and some of our internal systems are more or less effecient depending on a number of factors that you don't understand (for example, it is possible that eating certain types of calories have chemicals/enzymes related to them that cause other systems in the body to change effeciency). You have one side right: If you want to lose weight you can be absolutely sure that by cutting down calories, below a certain threshold, you will lose weight. But, then you go too far and say this is the only thing at play. In fact, you don't have any logical reason to make the second statement; it admittedly seems to make sense at face value, but ketosis is absolutely real, and people are shedding weight and still eating a ton of calories, regardless of whatever graphs/analysis you are making.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  > None of your analysis in anyway shows, or even hints The words "net calorie balance" are carefully chosen to encompass your objection (I have it filed under "Diet Debate Gotcha #3,947: Thermogenic Effect of Food"). > But, then you go too far and say this is the only thing at play. I do and I don't. What I say is that it's all you really need to know in order to control your weight. It's also, in the strictest narrowly-drawn causality, the completely explanatory mechanism of weight control. I'm not arguing that folk on ketogenic diets lose weight. I'm not arguing that there's no such thing as ketogenesis. I'm just saying that in the long run, the direct, immediate cause (such as it is) is one of net calorie balance modulo noisy oddities like water retention.
fingerprinter 14y ago
I'd content that is absolutely awful advise for people. It gives them free reign to drink soda, eat pizza and sugar without knowing what it is doing to their body so long as "they are within the calorie limit". This is bad. See my other comment on hormones. They play a HUGE role and not understanding them leads to statements like "it's all about the calories" or "I'm only eating 1000 calories" etc etc.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  > This is bad. It can be, sure. Tooth decay, vitamin deficiency, muscle and bone wasting, all that jazz. But are we still talking about weight control or not? Because people love to make it super ultra complex when the basic control mechanism is fairly straightforward. My hyper-elaborate advice for the more general "health control" case (as opposed to "weight control") is: 1. Eat more to gain weight, less to lose weight, and about the same to stay about the same. 2. Make sure you get plenty of protein. It's good for you. 3. Eat a variety of foods. 4. Lift weights. 5. Do something that makes your heart pump really hard for a while. I mean for myself I have zillions of tweaks. But it's easy to go off the deep end chasing that 1-2% optimisation when all most people want is the 20% of information that gives 80% of the result.
lookACamel 14y ago
"Eat more --> weight more" HOW much more? (HOW much less.) Lizzie Velasquez trivially demonstrates the inadequacy of your observations.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  > HOW much more? (HOW much less.) Doesn't matter. Just keep loosing / gaining until you reach the desired weight and then adjust to stabilize. It will take different time for different people and/or food combination, but in principle, you can just adjust the amounts and you'll get there.
  - lookACamel 14y ago
    What I mean is, there are certainly better ways and worse ways for individuals to reach the desired weight and maintain it. The idea that all you have to care about is the net deficit is pretty useless. If the deficit is all that we care about, why not just eat nothing then? Drink water and take vitamins but don't consume any calories. Because psychologically speaking, it's damn near impossible. And even if you did succeed, it'd be hard to maintain since you'd have to start eating again which would be a big change in what you were doing.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  If I had a reliable method for producing accurate and precise numerical forecasts of the future behaviour of complex systems with a large number of unobservable variables, then I would be a multi-quintillionaire. This doesn't mean that weather forecasting, economics, agile software methodologies -- to pick just a few famous examples of subjects dealing with complex systems -- are totally broken tools that must henceforth be discarded. It just means that we have to pick our battles. Controlling systems by incremental adjustments works perfectly well. In fact it works for highly predictable simple systems too -- you can take variables like shell mass, powder load, wind velocity, humidity and predict with enormous accuracy where an anti-aircraft shell will go when fired. Or you can use tracer bullets. (Yes, this is the elegant little example from The Pragmatic Programmer).
mipapage 14y ago
I have to say that has not been my experience. I've been keto a few times and have been now for maybe 6 weeks. By far my longest run at it. I dropped 7kgs and at the moment your rules as above do not apply. I can eat more total calories (as fat) than when not keto-eating (i.e. more calories from carbs) and have no weight gain. When I up the carbs (>50g/day) I get the water gain, and presumably if I increased the carbs I would return to my previous state, roughly 17%bf and 75kgs. Perhaps its context... I don't see things, where I am, as simple as you write them above.
- thorofasgaard 14y ago
  Keep, and then post, a log of everything you eat (quantities as well as contents) - dollars to bacon-laden donuts, you're eating at a deficit.
  - mipapage 14y ago
    Interesting proposal, but I'm not sure I have the time for that. I have to think though, that the two avocados and 750 calorie bag of macadamia nuts alone have me at 1100. Perhaps I'll fire up my daily burn account again and get to it. Part of the fun of this was that I have been able to eat when I felt I needed it and not worry about counting...

TeMPOraL 14y ago

However it does, simple feedback loop with adjustments proportional to minus weight difference (aka. are you gaining on weight? eat less.) should still work regardless of what you eat and what "types" of calories there are. It's not just calories-in / calories-out, it's a feedback loop between your weight and amount of calories you eat, and that - as Jacques wrote - tends to disregard internal state and processes by the very definition of how it works. The trick is, what I so far found out, to establish a set of meals that you can actually stick to for a longer time without feeling nauseous, while still maintaining calorie deficit. There are also issues like insulin reaction; so far I believe in this one, as hunger doesn't seem to feel as bad and doesn't disable my thinking since around the time I cut out sugars completely (I used to drink a lot of them). But accounting for all those things only helps you to stick with your diet. So bottomline, I think that most of the other mechanisms people bring up are important not for weight loss per se, but for the ability to stick with a given diet for longer, while calorie deficit does it work. FYI: I'm on keto for just over two months (with lot of cheating unfortunately - there were so many parties recently...) and have lost 10kg in that time.

jacques_chester 14y ago
Are you me (apart from the keto)? Because this is pretty much what I am trying to convey.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago
  I don't think I'm you, but I do agree with what you wrote :). I also found the basic understanding of control theoery... enlightening, in many areas of life, not only dieting. I hate when people argue over whether A causes B or B causes A, and fail to notice a feedback loop in work.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    Learning about feedback loops has definitely been enlightening. Somewhere I have the bones of a super ginormo followup post to my original "fat and simple" one where I discuss causality itself in more depth (for example, I came up with 4 axes for categorising kinds of causality; I can only imagine that some long-dead philosopher has beaten me to it). Lots of these debates actually resolve around definitions. Anyhow, the other stuff I've written under the Systems heading may be of interest to you[1]. [1] http://chester.id.au/category/systems/ http://chester.id.au/category/systems/