It works for me too, in principle. However I discovered this truth “late” in life; in my late 30’s and I haven’t been able to fully get rid of the weight I picked up from 30 years of eating processed foods. Today I eat fresh meat, fresh fruit and veg, unsweetened drinks like herbal tea and plain water, nuts and 70% chocolate, and my weight still creeps up about 5 lb/year. Once you hit 50, your metabolism seems to slow to make weight maintenance even more difficult. I stick to this “diet” though, because I just know it’s healthier. (And also because I see that when I eat junk food, the weight comes on MUCH faster. I’ve noticed that the difference between having the same weight two weeks in a row and gaining one pound the second week is whether I ate one serving of a full-sugar dessert that week. Or in other words, before I changed to this diet, I was gaining 15lb/year.)
Okay, help me change my thinking. Where do the extra 200 calories come from?
Actually it is more like physics, specifically the first law of thermodynamics. You seem to be claiming that if I take in 800 calories of sugar and burn off 1000, somehow I will store calories as fat. If that’s true, forget about diets - we have discovered perpetual motion.
Regards,
Shodan
Walk us through each step; how did you get to the point of an extra number of calories, and where do you think they are?
I take in 800 calories, all from sugar. I burn off 1000 calories. 800 - 1000 = -200. Somehow you seem to be alleging that 800 - 1000 is a positive integer, and that somehow there are enough calories coming from somewhere to make up for the negative 200. That’s my question - where are those extra calories coming from?
Regards,
Shodan
Guilt?
Nooooooooooooooo!
It doesn’t help if you think of calories in sugar as like other calories, because they’re not - at lest not in terms of what matters here which is regulating weight.
You still measure your overall daily intake of calories as always, but then split into regular and sugar calories (or a measure of weight like grams or ounces - this is how it’s seen on labelling). You have to measure each.
Within your regular 2000/2500 daily intake, that part of it which is sugar calories has it’s own limit after which it all turns to shit/fat regardless of where you are in your 2000/25000 - it’s some insulin reaction, as best I undersand. That level varies within individuals at (depending who you read) around 30-50g per day.
I believe that translates into 5-8% of your overall daily intake of calories.
Hence all calories are not equal - like 6 snickers bars don’t equal a balanced diet. This tells you one snickers bar is your daily limit of sugar cals and, regardless of what else you eat that day, the second snickers bar becomes fat.
So say your “sugar caloric limit” is 1000 calories. And you burn 2000 calories just sitting around.
So you eat 1500 calories of sugar, and nothing else.
So, you are saying the 500 extra calories of sugar turns into fat, even though you’ve burnt 2000 calories just sitting around? Where does the extra 500 calories that you’ve burned just sitting around come from?
This makes no sense.
Fat loss really is simple.
Fat doesn’t make you fat. Like cholesterol doesn’t give you high cholesterol.
Insulin must be present to store fat. Insulin is commonly produced from sugar, but also from fats and protein - but mainly sugar.
That’s why, if you eat a high protein, high fat meal without any carbs… it’s unlikely your body will release enough insulin to store these calories as fat.
Now if you eat more calories per day than your body needs - you will start converting excess sugar and protein calories into fat, and these will be stored.
So the simplest solution to fat loss is to make sure your incoming calories do not exceed your outgoing calories.
Lets look at this example; say you have twin A and twin B - identical in every possible way. twin A eats 500 calories less then he needs, but eats junk food high in sugar. Now twin B eats 500 calories more than he needs, but gets these calories from organic, non-processed, healthy foods.
If this experiment runs for 3 months, and calorie intake is adjusted daily depending on how many calories they really require. So metabolic fluctuations are taken into account.
Who gets fat?
Twin B does… it’s just physics.
All calories are the same by definition. A calorie - actually it is a kilocalorie (kcal) - is a measure of the heat energy of food. 100 kcal of sugar = 100 kcal of anything else.
You seem to be falling victim to the “which weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers” joke. 1 kcal = 1 kcal.
No, insulin has no effect on the conservation of mass-energy.
Again, this simply isn’t true. If you ate two Snickers bars, and nothing else, and burned off the kcal contained in the two Snickers bars, you would lose weight.
Regards,
Shodan
If you can’t get past this no one can help you with this subject. You have to think differently.
For those who have the mental agilityto work through the issue, I saw this published today by a London cardiologist:
p.s. fascinating photo:
:smack:
You are now literally redefining the English language.
And on the other hand, there’s this guy, who lost 27lbs in two months on a sugary-snacks diet to make the point that all that matters is caloric restriction.
Yeah, that image looks really inaccurate…
I’ve skipped a million posts here, so maybe this is just a repeat, but I would take your discovery with a grain of salt (or, er, sugar). Calories aren’t some hazy concept that changes dependent on what makes up that calorie. They’re all the same. Snicker calories are the same as celery calories.
However, if the concept of limiting sugar intake is something you can wrap your head around and will pursue in the future, I can’t see that being a bad thing.
Sugar consumption is the easiest (and yummiest) way to gain weight and if you limit your sugar consumption, you’re well on your way to sustainable weight loss.
Maybe. How about this?
Yep, I think so. It’s also pretty helpful to be aware of the whole sugar deal though.
The cure for my obesity was intermittent fasting w/ high fat intake. The easiest diet for me is black coffee and steak.
It takes a certain amount of self-deception to believe that caloric intake is relatively unimportant if you just eat the right kind of calories and avoid the bad calories.
Individual metabolism does differ, meaning that the same amount of caloric restriction and exercise will be variably effective among different people. And some people’s brains may be wired differently, making it harder for them to cut back on calorie-rich foods that pile on weight.
Despite what that cardiologist was saying in a previously cited article, you can’t expect a healthier outcome from grafting a high-fat diet onto one that is high in calories (for instance, cooking in coconut oil while otherwise eating too much). Nor will cutting back on fat (or for that matter, sugar) while maintaining the same caloric intake achieve the new skinny and heart-healthy you.