Actually as an absolute statement that is not the best advice. Again a bit more complicated application of the rules of physics in which one does not only consider calories in but the secondary effects of intake on calories out. Some people reach a point in diet in which they have been calorie reduced for quite a while and are no longer losing weight as metabolism adapts to to chronic low calorie state and their brain decreases the amount they move when not exercising while ramping up hunger signals (non-exercise activity thermogenesis - NEAT). Even stricter calorie reduction triggers further adaptations with greater hunger and further compensations in metabolism and NEAT while easing up slightly for a period of time helps reverse them and can, in some cases, help one break through a plateau. Yes, to the inevitable concentration camp example, enough calorie reduction, ignoring the ramped up hunger cues and going lower and lower yet on the intake, will get intake below the adaptation decrease in output, but it is a poor way to do it.
Right. Low calorie diets do not work over the long haul.
My own system was to eat whatever I wanted, but only when I was hungry, and walk every day. Simple to say, hard to do. I learned to eat by internal clues, and not external ones (it’s time for lunch, it smells so good, I want ice cream but fruit is healthier).
(No idea why that nut one was here again …)
I do want to clarify a few things.
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Accurate calorie counting does work for some people. There are people who long-term measure out food precisely with scales and count fastidiously. Nothing wrong with that. It is of course more reasonable to get by on a low calorie diet when eating foods that satisfy more (high satiety), that do not trigger drives to over-eat them (not hyperpalatability), and that help prevent the decreased calorie out metabolic and behavioral adaptations that often accompany weight loss and low calorie states.
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Some people will more easily achieve fewer calories in while maintaining more calories out not by counting calories but by focusing on the quality and types of the foods taken in. And (like Annie-Xmas) by learning to focus more on satiety than on palatability signals.
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Often lost in these discussion is the bigger picture of why “weight loss” is desired, or even if “weight loss” is the actual goal or only the proxy for the goal. Usually weight loss is actually at most a convenient but imperfect proxy. Most are actually more concerned about either long term health risks or losing fat mass while preserving or even gaining fat-free mass for either cosmetic reasons or day to day functional ones. If those are the actual goals then the form of the calories in matters even more.
A very persistent nut indeed.
I recall reading that the founder of Subway sandwich shops used to be fat and claimed to have lost all his weight by eating his subway concoctions. Anyone else remember that?
Are you thinking of Jared? Not the founder of Subway, just a customer.
Broadly speaking, it is true. If you’re not an athlete or doing something that burns a LOT of calories, eating 3200 calories of junk food or 3200 calories of kale, baked chicken, quinoa and raw fruit will make you just as fat.
Similarly, eating less calories either way will make you thinner.
The catch is that typically “healthy” foods are as or more nutrient dense and less calorie dense than junk food. To use the raw carrots/sugar analogy, the 100 calories of sugar is just that- 100 calories of sucrose, roughly 2 tablespoons/25 grams worth. That 100 calories of carrots is about 4 medium carrots(244 g) and is overwhelmingly from carbohydrates as well- about half of that is from sugars. The 100 calories worth of carrots gives you quite a bit of fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc… in addition. Plus, it’s just a lot more food in terms of volume.
Because “organic” is the current shorthand for “healthy”, and a whole lot of people believe it.
I am not, by any means, an expert, but I have lost 117 pounds over the last 5 years, 100 of them in the first 2 years.
Oh – and I only exercised once. No kidding. As a senior citizen, I just did not have the time – or I should say I did not make the time.
How does everyone define the word, diet? When I started dieting, everyone who brought it up said, “Oh! Don’t say ‘diet’!” Well, why not? I was on a diet in order to lose the weight. Why try to hide that from myself? And while dieting, I did avoid most unhealthy foods and I added healthier foods.
As I mentioned, I am not an expert; all I know is that what I did worked. I added breakfast to my diet and also added fruit. I dropped sugared drinks and some other unhealthy “foods” while adding grazing on raw vegies on my hungriest days.
My bottom line: What “they” say means nothing to me; what works for me means everything. I read what the “they” say, considering it, then accept or reject it based upon what I call common sense and/or personal knowledge.
Bottom line: I lost 117 pounds and I weigh 120. It worked.
Very true - the calories are the same, organic or not.
Another one is “locally sourced” food. It’s not necessarily any better than stuff from the big, bad, chain grocery store, but buying it may support some local farmer. It’s economic more than healthy. People “think” it’s better and thereby buying organic or locally sourced provides a very satisfying smuggy for certain types.
So you’re saying that eating healthy (nutritious foods with the same calories) doesn’t cause people to lose weight any faster?
Thing is that would be 100 cups of raw kale.
What part of this is not being understood? As a general principle a diet full of “healthy” foods is going to end up with fewer calories in and a wide variety of other good stuff along with those calories, while a diet of junky food will result in more calories eaten.There are other impacts as well (on calories out for example) but that alone is the gist. It is possible to eat 100 cups of kale, for example, but one would need to work at it.
No. I was suggesting in my agreeing response to GrumpyBunny that if you go to the grocery store, buy an organic apple, and a regular apple, roughly the same size, they will both contain about the same number of calories. Organic does not equal less calories.
The only difference being that the regular apple was grown in an evil orchard by an evil grower who used evil pesticides and sold the apple to an evil chain grocery store. I am laying the sarcasm on thick here - just want to point that out.
Which cooks down to like a cup and a half. 
There are environmental and social reasons to buy organic. You might not agree, but you don’t need to be sarcastic about it.
Your confusion is beginning to, well, confuse me, but let’s try to make a few things clear.
“Organic” and “healthy” don’t mean the same thing. They aren’t even connected, to be honest. Food that is organic is not necessarily healthy, and food that is healthy is not necessarily organic.
“Organic” is a term of art with slightly different means depending on the context but what it generally means is food that is made without the use of artificial herbicides, pesticides, genetic modification or, in the case of meat, the injection of growth hormones. While some people greatly value these things it does not make the food substantially healthier, to be quite honest, and you can get very fat eating organic food.
John, if you need to lose weight, really, don’t worry about “organic” food. Your problem, if you are overweight, is that you eat too many calories. You should concentrate on reducing your calories; adding “let’s go organic” to the mix is just an unnecessary complication. Forget it, okay?
HEALTHY food is a more nebulous concept but it generally should be taken to mean food that has some nutritional value that is proportionate to its caloric content. A chocolate bar, which has about 200-300 calories, has basically no nutritional value at all. The same amount of calories in a plate of chicken and carrots has quite a lot of nutritional value. Irrespective of how many calories you eat, your body requires a minimum amount of basic nutrients to function, so the more useless calories you eat in the form of chocolate bars and potato chips, the more food, inevitably, you will have to eat.
Be that as it may, there are not caloric reasons to buy organic, which is where this poster seemed to be confused.
No doubt I am.
I said “So you’re saying that eating healthy (nutritious foods with the same calories) doesn’t cause people to lose weight any faster?”
I mean that let’s assume that the “healthy” foods have the same calories… e.g. a lot of the person’s diet might include macadamia nuts (76% fat) and honey (82% sugar) and coconut butter/oil (pure fat) while the person that isn’t eating healthy foods might have a lot of artificially sweetened foods and drinks that are the same or lower in calories…
A lot of diet-type books/ebooks I’ve read lately insist that people should eat organic foods (and grass-fed beef, etc) if they want to lose fat most effectively. Perhaps organic foods would have less “toxins” and be more nutritious… though what I’m concerned about is the actual fat loss not how healthy the person would be. Those books say something like that organic foods allow the body to break down body fat more effectively (less “toxins” reaching the liver, etc, allowing the liver more of a chance to break down body fat). Also if the body gets the nutrition it craves it might not feel like it needs to hold on to its body fat (a “starvation” response). I’m just wondering why those books think organic foods are so important. Maybe it just makes intellectual sense to the authors.