http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19197174&postcount=42
The post I started the coffee/caffeine thread with
didn’t just contain links to “entertainment or woo-woo websites”.
DrFidelius seems to be saying that some good advice is:
just try “Cut everything you eat by half for three weeks.”
Ok say I went to a party tonight and would have normally had 2 drinks of diet coke and 4 pieces of pizza. I guess using your advice I should have 1 drink of diet coke and 2 pieces of pizza.
Then the next day I might have a glass of orange juice and some cereal. That means that I should have half a glass of orange juice and half a bowl of cereal?
What if I felt really hungry? Well let’s look at your advice again:
just try “Cut everything you eat by half for three weeks.”
It says “just” as if that is the entire plan.
It also says “try”. So say after 2 weeks I felt so hungry that I ate my normal serving rather than half? Then what? You didn’t say what to do if I tried and failed.
Then if I did do it for 3 weeks, then what?
If I went back to my original diet I would gain all of the weight lost back. And according to some sources people can gain even more than their original weight.
Also, in regards to the original thread (Is coffee/caffeine good or bad for belly fat loss?), DrFidelius’s verdict is that “Coffee is neutral”.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19198230&postcount=48
Even though every link in the OP disagreed with this.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19198230
Sugar is 16 calories per teaspoon, coffee powder is 4 calories per teaspoon. (let’s just assume this is the exact figure)
Let’s say one group of people have a cup of sugar per day and a healthy diet. Another group of people have 1/4 cup of coffee powder, 3/4 a cup of water or something neutral and otherwise the same diet as the first group (except for the cup of sugar).
Do you think that if everything else was the same, after a week both groups would weigh about the same and have similar amounts of water weight, fat, muscle, etc? Note that my purpose for a diet is not just weight loss but muscle maintenance, etc.
Here is a relevant blog:
Yes it is a blog but if someone demands a scientific paper then they should also provide me with scientific papers backing up their claims.
My side of the debate is that I am not going to try DrFidelius’s 3 week suggestion and I think a diet should be more sophisticated than just changing your portion size.