(no subject)

[telophase]

Man loses 27 pounds on Twinkies and snack cakes (and vegetables and vitamins, as well). He's a professor of nutrition, running a bit of an experiment to prove to his students that weight loss is, at its core, down to calories in vs. calories out.

Comments

[nijibug]

"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."

I applaud his integrity for saying that, but just watch this thing get twisted and blown out of proportion by greedy ppl. :/

[telophase]

I'm reading the comments on the Reddit post where I found this, and it's already being hit by the people with bizarre diet ideas arguing ... what, I ahve no idea in quite a lot of cases. (I just replied to a guy who claims that humans evolved eating most of their calories from meat and just a few from plants and nuts. Sorry, bub, that was nowhere in *my* reading!)

[ginny_t]

I haven't read the article, but I've read some fat acceptance stuff, and the calories-in calories-out thing is not universal. It boils down to that for him, but there're plenty of other people who have other reasons for weight gain (or who can't exercise--hello, ablism, fancy meeting you here), and this bit of anecdata (where is the science, people?!) could do some harm.

*ahem* Sorry 'bout that.

[telophase]

It *is* calories in vs calories out. That's the first law of thermodynamics at work: a system does not create energy.

Where the differences between people come in is appetite and metabolism: you may burn (totally made-up numbers) 100 calories/hour just to stand up and walk around, but it takes my body 70 calories/hour to do the same thing. Therefore my calories-in would have to account for the 30 cal/hour discrepancy. But if I ate fewer calories than I burned, I would still lose that weight (fat and lean tissue; I'm not counting water retention).

And appetite is such tricky thing, too, because so much of it is not under conscious control. If you up your activity level a little bit and don't carefully watch your eating, you'll increase your eating to account for the extra calories burned. That's why to be successful at long-term weight loss you tend to have to develop habits that counter that sort of thing: counting calories, watching portion size, etc.

[tehkittykat]

I hate the often trotted out calories-in-calories-out. People often forget that a calorie (more properly, a kilocalorie or kcal since it's the kcal that are used to describe food) is a unit of energy measuring how much heat something puts out when it's burned. Not metabolized.

Burned. As in lit on fire. They actually still light things on fire to figure out how many calories they contain.

I would believe kcal-in-kcal-out if we were robots and/or powered by some kind of food-burning furnace mechanism. But we're not. We're animals. We metabolize some foods (which is not the same as burning-- we process sugars and some fats and proteins into ATP in our mitochondria with no fire involved) and we use others to build important stuff. Like bones. Or muscles. Or, especially in the case of fats and cholesterols, important hormones we need in order to function properly.

And if our metabolic systems are not getting enough kcal in to keep up vital bodily functions, whatever "enough kcal in" happens to be programmed into us via our genetics, then the whole system goes into HOSHIT mode and you can't lose weight. That's why permanent weight loss from a reduced calorie diet pretty much never happens-- I think the best estimate taken from data from Weight Watchers puts the number of people who can even manage a significant weight loss in the first place at around 2% of the population. Diet companies don't exactly put out much actual data on the efficacy of their product, or no one would buy it. That's also why you never see a weight loss study last longer than a couple of years.

I mean, I'm not shocked that this guy managed to do it. You can shift a percentage of your weight on a reduced-calorie diet-- I even lost 25 lbs once! (And the diet gave me gallstones! I'm down the weight of my gallbladder too!) But I bet you anything if you check in on this guy a few years from now, he'll have regained every one of those 27 lbs AND more to boot, since re-gain is your body's way of telling you not to do that crap anymore. I also wouldn't be surprised if he never wanted to eat another snack cake again in his life. XD

[telophase]

In small increments, the amount of calories in food items and in what you metabolize is wildly variable. In larger amounts, the laws of averages work: this apple has only 35 calories, this other apple has 85, but if they're both consumed, it's just like eating 2 60-calorie apples. And yes, if something is processed the calories are easier for your body to utilize: one apple that would normally give you about 60 calories of energy, when made into applesauce is going to provide more than 60 calories worth because your body isn't going to have to work as hard to extract those nutrients. Made into juice, that same apple is even more, because there's almost no work your body has to do to release the nutrients.

I lost 50 pounds back in 2007. I gained a large chunk of it back, and it's not due to genetics, or recovering from starvation-level calories*, or anything other than me starting to drink Coke and Dr. Pepper instead of Diet Dr. Pepper, and in me eating more - until I was full, rather than until I was no longer hungry (and "full" was defined as "stuffed") - but primarily, it was the sodas. I cut those out, and it's damn easy for me to maintain ... I've done that for the past 5 months, and now I'm going back to slowly losing. (And I have physical, joint-related reasons for doing this: not problems that can be cured or managed by strengthening exercise alone, but which are directly affected by load-bearing and how much of a load they're asked to bear.)

There's some fascinating reading in looking at eating behaviors and how our modern society caters to them. Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. We judge our food intake a lot by portion numbers, instead of portion size, for one.

* I track my calories. If they went below 1500/day for more than a week, I stopped losing. I added more back, I started losing again. I lost weight at 1700-2000/day (before accounting for exercise). That's nowhere near the starvation-level 1200/day that most diets think women should be on.

[tehkittykat]

Hey, you may be in that lucky 2% who can get a whole lot off and keep it off-- even if you aren't most people's weight setpoint is a range, not an exact figure, and many people can manage to get in and stay in the low end of their setpoint by doing the things you've been doing. Good luck on that-- it sounds like you'd be more comfortable in your low range. I'm also not saying that food security, access to proper foods, and getting regular movement to stop being considered a chore wouldn't be a good idea for everyone-- regular exercise and veggie intake are good things that should be spread around. I'm just saying that metabolism, metabolic issues, and weight loss/gain aren't as simplistic as a lot of people seem to think, and it's not helped by the fact that science in general REALLY hasn't put a whole lot into figuring out how it all works aside from setting food on fire and seeing what happens.

I will pass on that you might want to try and cut back the aspartame-containing beverages. I made the switch to diet soda several years ago for reasons similar to yours.. and I managed to develop a sensitivity to it that makes me nauseated whenever I have anything with the stuff in there. A little checking around told me that it's a pretty common sensitivity to develop. (I haven't heard anything terrible about sucralose sensitivity, though I know some people develop problems with other sugar alcohols. Haven't heard about stevia derivatives yet, but they're new on the market.)

[m00nface.livejournal.com]

I read Mindless Eating today, borrowed from our city library at your recommendation. : ) It's excellent, exactly the kind of writing I find most accessible (anecdotes! numbered lists! occasional self-deprecating humour!) and I think I've picked up some valuable ways to change my eating environment for the positive.

This morning, while reading the book and already inspired, I served half the cereal I normally eat for breakfast and ate it with a teaspoon, something I did for years and stopped for goodness knows why. I felt as full afterwards as I would have on a full bowl, and got hungry for lunch at about the same time as always.

Later I tested the eating at the desk thing, eating one (homemade) biscuit and putting the remaining two in a drawer five feet away. It wasn't long before I forgot about them, then when I remembered them I realised I'd rather have them later anyway. I also rounded off the afternoon by buying and eating chocolate I didn't really want, but I still consider it a pretty successful day, despite those 300-odd calories - lunch was half a can of ravioli, around 150 calories, which a) is lower than I'd expected, and b) filled me up all the same.

His rallying call to focus on three simple changes, forgive yourself transgressions and remember that even keeping to one of those is still 100 calories you otherwise would have consumed is very motivating, and I'm planning to pick up some smaller tubs and cutlery for my office lunches over the weekend.

In conclusion: thank you for the recommendation, it was right on the money and I may well end up buying this book to dip back into when I feel discouraged!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I need to give it a re-read.

I cleaned out the pantry and discovered a year-old bag of Oreo cookies, half-full. Just putting it in there made me forget them: used to be, I'd eat the entire bag within a day or two. I need to just put things away more often instead of leaving them out.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I know my eating isn't totally under control--sometimes I eat too much and sometimes I go for several more hours without than I should as a willpower thing--but I know I'm at least doing something right in that my appetite is higher when I'm going out and exercising more and lower when I'm housebound.