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
no subject
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