• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Are calories all that matter?

Pup

Philosopher
Pup
Joined
Dec 21, 2004
Messages
6,679
If this has already been hashed out in another thread, please point me to it, because I must not be using the right search words.

My question: Does anything matter beyond total calories in a diet, when it comes solely to gaining or losing weight?

In other words, I know that a diet with balanced nutrition is necessary to preserve health, and different proportions of fiber, carbs, etc. may make you feel less hungry or more hungry. But ignoring that for a minute...

Is it theoretically possible to construct a diet with carefully chosen ingredients, where the average adult who needs 2000 calories, can eat 1,000 calories a day and not lose weight over time? Or can eat 3,000 calories a day and not gain weight?

The reason I ask, is that I've always thought various weight loss plans are designed to preserve health on fewer calories, or make you feel less hungry so you're encouraged to eat less, etc., but in the end, the weight loss is solely due to the reduction in calories. Other people have argued it's the change in ingredients itself that causes the weight loss, and the calories are secondary.
 
If you take in more calories than you use (or "burn"), you will gain weight. If you use more than you take in, you will lose weight.

People who burn lots of calories (training for a marathon for example), can easily eat 3,000 calories a day and not gain weight. Someone with an extremely sedentary lifestyle can eat relatively few calories and still gain weight.

Gaining and losing weight is certainly not the whole story when it comes to health. From a thermodynamics perspective, a calorie is a calorie, but from a nutrition perspective, there are certainly more or less healthy ways of getting the same number of calories.
 
More than just calories

I have personally experienced that changing your diet in food content and not calorie content can cause weight loss. While I do not claim to be an expert in nutrition, I do know that calorie content is not the whole story when it comes to weight loss.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
People who burn lots of calories (training for a marathon for example), can easily eat 3,000 calories a day and not gain weight. Someone with an extremely sedentary lifestyle can eat relatively few calories and still gain weight.
Click to expand...

Agreed. To clarify, I'm not talking about any change in exercise or drug-induced metabolism changes, just the question of whether a person can take in more calories than they burn, or vice versa, without gaining or losing weight, if those calories come from different foods.

Gaining and losing weight is certainly not the whole story when it comes to health. From a thermodynamics perspective, a calorie is a calorie, but from a nutrition perspective, there are certainly more or less healthy ways of getting the same number of calories.
Click to expand...

Also agreed. That's why my question is only in theory, since in practice, the content of a diet is at least as important to health as the calories it contains.

By the way, I'm at a good weight for my height, so I'm not actually trying to gain or lose, just curious about the question.

Dumbledore, what change made the difference? Any theory about why the body would react differently?
 
Pup said:
If this has already been hashed out in another thread, please point me to it, because I must not be using the right search words.

My question: Does anything matter beyond total calories in a diet, when it comes solely to gaining or losing weight?

In other words, I know that a diet with balanced nutrition is necessary to preserve health, and different proportions of fiber, carbs, etc. may make you feel less hungry or more hungry. But ignoring that for a minute...

Is it theoretically possible to construct a diet with carefully chosen ingredients, where the average adult who needs 2000 calories, can eat 1,000 calories a day and not lose weight over time? Or can eat 3,000 calories a day and not gain weight?

The reason I ask, is that I've always thought various weight loss plans are designed to preserve health on fewer calories, or make you feel less hungry so you're encouraged to eat less, etc., but in the end, the weight loss is solely due to the reduction in calories. Other people have argued it's the change in ingredients itself that causes the weight loss, and the calories are secondary.
Click to expand...

This question is really for a nutritionist or physiology undergrad *but* I'm going to give my underqualified impression, based on seeing clients lose - or not lose - weight during 21 years of personal fitness training and swim coaching.

I believe you have the right idea: the physiology of weight loss is merely a question of calories in minus calories out.

Calorie counting has two complications:

1. Your BMR can change over time due to age, weight, and body composition, and your total calories burned in a day has a high variability due to your activity level. Calorie-counting has big error-bars on the "calories out" part of the equation. This means the participant has to be very attentive to whether or not their intake is appropriate.

2. Adherence to a calorie-reducing diet is very dependent on personal response to the side effects of calorie deficit. This is both physiological and psychological in nature.


Back to point #1... the only way to be sure what your calorie output is is to see if your calories in is working. Estimates from internet calculators, Tanitas, and so on, are just that... estimates. As a rule, I find that short people vastly overestimate their daily calorie requirement.

I had a client who thought that because she was 'average', she should be eating 2,000Cal/day. She was 4'10. Over time, we concluded that she's comfortable at between 800-900Cal/day. More, if she's doing a workout. She was 150lbs when we started, which sounds 'light', but she was 36% fat.

So, my #1 thing right now is about serving sizes. Shorter people should be eating servings as small as half the size of their tall companions. And this is the 'psychology' that underlies the 'physiology' of calorie-deficit.
 
Dumbledore said:
I have personally experienced that changing your diet in food content and not calorie content can cause weight loss. While I do not claim to be an expert in nutrition, I do know that calorie content is not the whole story when it comes to weight loss.
Click to expand...

And you are mistaken.

It's calories, pure and simple...with the exception of minor fluctuations due to water retention or water loss (high sodium diets, for example).

A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Your body uses X amount of calories a day, depending on your activity level, the temperature, and a bunch of other factors. Anything the body has over X gets stored, anything it needs to get to X gets pulled from stores (muscle or fat).

Now, what you eat can affect the type of weight you gain or lose...eating no protiens means you won't gain much muscle mass, for example. However, the type of food is inconsequential. If you experienced a weight change after chainging the type of food, then you DID also change the calorie content, either in your intake or your output.
 
I have a BodyBugg. It measures calorie burn by motion, heat and sweat. I have lost weight using it, although not as fast as when I was on Weight Watchers. I'm hoping that since I'm losing it slower it will stay off this time. Or at least, since I know better how many calories I'm burning, I can keep it off better this time.
 
The only way I can see that happening is if there is a mechanism to keep the calories from being absorbed, so the food just passes through, like xenocal blocks fat.
 
Southbeach diet

I am currently using a modified form of the southbeach diet, this diet reduces carb and sugar intake, while also reducing fat intake. It seems to me that sugar and carb intake does have quite an effect on the body, and that this intake is just as important as fat intake. As far as weight loss is concerned simply looking at calorie content and intake does not work, from my experience and many other people that I know. Modern American society, seems unwilling to correctly address weight loss issues, see the BS confused episode on weight loss. I am not sure why sugar and carb intake is important I do not claim to be a nutritionist, but I know that the current nutritional and weight loss information in American society is incomplete and often misleading. The best advise is to shop around and find what makes sense and works for you, be aware that there is a lot of misleading information out their even from official and supposedly expert sources. In short don't believe anything unless it works for you or you have some definite proof, you know, what we are use to!
 
Aren't calories used to digest foods and/or the extent to which foods effect our metabolic rate also a (small) factor in this? Drinking caffeinated drinks slightly increasing the rate at which we burn calories, for example.
 
Pup said:
Agreed. To clarify, I'm not talking about any change in exercise or drug-induced metabolism changes, just the question of whether a person can take in more calories than they burn, or vice versa, without gaining or losing weight, if those calories come from different foods.



Also agreed. That's why my question is only in theory, since in practice, the content of a diet is at least as important to health as the calories it contains.

By the way, I'm at a good weight for my height, so I'm not actually trying to gain or lose, just curious about the question.

Dumbledore, what change made the difference? Any theory about why the body would react differently?
Click to expand...
Actually, two things to remember: calories in and calories burned are not necessarily the same - as some food leaves the body un- or partially processed so the exact concern is calories in that are processed - all of those are "burned. In addition though, and related, different people process foods at different rates and to different degrees due to physical condition, chemical output, catalyst presence, absence or malfunction etc. I may take in 1500 calories and burn them off in 10 hours, someone else may store some of them much longer (gain more weight) and others may burn them off in much less time (not gain weight) depending on those factors. In other words, it is unique to the individual what will add or lower weight except in the most general terms. That's why we have nutritionists (at least those who do not play games with fads and such!!!)!!
 
Last edited:
There's a new study showing that high glycemic vs low glycemic diets get the same results. It was well controlled by providing all the food that patients ate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=17413101&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum

While arguments can be made on a hypothetical basis for various diet ideas, the bottom line is that any differences due to factors other than total calorie intake are so small that they can be disregarded. All diets are just ways to trick yourself into eating fewer calories.

Some people think that exercise is essential to weight reduction, but this is a myth. You can either use up more calories by exercising or take in fewer calories by eating less; the only thing that matters is the calories in/calories out equation.
 
Dumbledore: Welcome to the forum

Are calories all that matter? Calories are just the way we measure energy. How much intake versus usage is what will determine whether or not someone loses weight, so in that sense, calories are all that matter.

However, as others have pointed out already, intake is NOT all that matters, so in that sense, counting calories alone will not necessarily result in weight loss.

In addition to the factors already mentioned, the basic metabolic rate of your body makes a big difference. It seems quite possible to me that eating different foods might trigger a change in the basic metabolic rate which could result in losing weight while maintaining the same caloric intake level. I don't know if this does happen, it simply seems a plausible explanation for experiences such as Dumbledore related.
 
Yes, some people have much more trouble losing weight than others, and some people can eat far more calories than others without gaining weight. Still, for any given individual, with a given metabolism, the calories in/calories out rule still applies. Elementary physics tells us that if a body takes in fewer calories than it uses up, it will lose weight. Intake IS all that matters (if output is unchanged). Decreasing calorie intake sufficiently WILL necessarily result in weight loss. It's very simple. It just isn't easy, because hunger pangs interfere with self-discipline.

There is no scientific evidence that eating different foods can trigger a change in the basic metabolic rate; and there is no scientific rationale to suggest it should. There is also no scientific evidence to support the idea that different diets cause weight loss without equal calorie reduction. Dumbledore's experience is common; he changed the kinds of foods he ate, and thought he was eating the same number of calories, but in reality he was eating fewer calories. We are not very good judges of our own calorie intake. When scientific studies are done of claims like Dumbledore's, calorie intake is always shown to be lower. That said, any diet that limits food choices in a way that tends to decrease total calorie intake is likely to work.
 
jon said:
Aren't calories used to digest foods and/or the extent to which foods effect our metabolic rate also a (small) factor in this? Drinking caffeinated drinks slightly increasing the rate at which we burn calories, for example.
Click to expand...

The thermic effect of food is only approximately 10% of your total caloric usage for a day. Caffeinated beverages don't add a significant amount to that 10%.
 
Dumbledore said:
I am currently using a modified form of the southbeach diet, this diet reduces carb and sugar intake, while also reducing fat intake. It seems to me that sugar and carb intake does have quite an effect on the body, and that this intake is just as important as fat intake. As far as weight loss is concerned simply looking at calorie content and intake does not work, from my experience and many other people that I know. Modern American society, seems unwilling to correctly address weight loss issues, see the BS confused episode on weight loss. I am not sure why sugar and carb intake is important I do not claim to be a nutritionist, but I know that the current nutritional and weight loss information in American society is incomplete and often misleading. The best advise is to shop around and find what makes sense and works for you, be aware that there is a lot of misleading information out their even from official and supposedly expert sources. In short don't believe anything unless it works for you or you have some definite proof, you know, what we are use to!
Click to expand...

I took beginning nutrition last semester and my instruction (25+ years as a registered dietician) basically said, "calories are calories are calories". Except she said it over the course of 16 weeks.

South Beach Diet averages 1,340 calories per day. I should hope you could lose weight on that. Consumer Reports rated diets this month:

Books - (best to worst)
The Best Life Diet
Eat Drink and Weigh Less
You on a Diet
The Abs Diet
South Beach
Sonoma Diet
Ultra-Metabolism

Plans -
Volumetrics
Weight Watchers
Jenny Craig
Slim Fast
eDiets
Zone
Ornish
Atkins

These diets were analyzed by diet doctors and nutritionists. One comment in the CR article I found interesting: "Successful losers in the National Weight Control Registry overwhelmingly report that they consume plenty of carbs while restricting fat and portions."
 
I happen to be getting decent weight loss results on this diet:

Eat less
Eat healthier
Exercise more

It is based on the principle of eating less calories than I burn. Seems to do alright.

(More importantly I don't set unrealistic goals like losing 10 pounds in 2 weeks. Ultimately I aim to lose 4-5 pounds a month, nothing drastic, nothing that will make me feel that I've destroyed my diet if I have a couple of cookies every now and then, just slow & steady weightloss.)
 
All those things may affect your metabolism, but not very much. In a practical sense, the effect of the number of meals and the temperature of your water are negligible. It makes little difference how the calories are distributed through the day. Some find it easier to eat regular meals, some prefer multiple small snacks instead of meals, some prefer skipping meals or intermittent fasting. Some people think drinking more water helps fool their stomach into feeling full; otherwise, the recommended 8-10 glasses a day is a myth. Exercise helps burn calories, but it is perfectly possible to lose weight with no exercise at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom