The True Definition of Calories i.e. "Why what you believe is extremist BS" page 27

[Iron Will]

Ummmm....I don't eat a high carb diet or anywhere near it. I move a lot and am lean and active. And I'm not trying to lose weight either, I'm now trying to maintain weight after a healthy gain. My earlier post was really about the impossibility of eating a super large plate full of fatty meat and low fibre veggies and losing weight anyway just because it's primal. This will not happen for me or probably anyone else who is not overweight or new off SAD.

Thanks for the clarification Dexy.

[Sue]

I havent kept up, but I have to say, that it has had me thinking the last few days. Researching even more, thinking about my own journey. My calories are always under but weight loss isnt as I think it should be, so this has made me think about what I am doing - where those calories are actually coming from, when those calories are coming, etc and it has made me think about where maybe I can improve. Thanks all for that

That's good. So definitely not a waste of a thread.

[BestBetter]

Yes, a calorie deficit needs to be achieved in order to lose weight. BUT that doesn't mean eating 1000 calories a day. That's logically just not healthy unless you're a sedentary old midget (or otherwise have a serious medical condition). Pardon the CW-ness. But that's what I believe. I don't see how someone can have a high quality of life eating so little, and scrutinizing every single bite to ensure they fit his/her minimum nutrients into so little calories.

Maybe for you 1,000 isn't an appropriate deficit, but for many petite women it unfortunately is. You can hold whatever opinion you want, it doesn't change that fact.

I spent months tracking my calories to get a handle on what my maintenance ACTUALLY was, instead of what an online calculator estimated it SHOULD BE. And while I know metabolism isn't static, mine has always been very low. At my most active (walking 1+hrs/day plus 3 days of heavy lifting), I could maintain around 1,400. A 20% deficit would have put me around 1,120 calories/day. With less activity, it likely is more like 1,000 or less.

[Kingofturtles]

Has anyone read marks post: Ancient Wisdom Confirmed by Modern Science | Mark's Daily Apple

If i am reading it correctly, it states that your body will maintain a healthy weight for you if your calories are clean. If you eat 2000 "bad" calories you will get fat. If you eat 2000 "good" calories, you body will maintain weight.

[Gilleh]

Yep, you're wrong. Not bitter at all, just bored. In fact I agree with Chaco's OP although he could have stated it in a little less inflammatory way. I just think we go around again on this same argument every so often. It always goes the same wayside . It starts out as a discussion that devolves in to name calling and people being offensive/offended. And then we do it again. Rinse, repeat.

Why do you jump on every post of mine and try to make a personal issue out of it?

As there are alwasy new members in the forum, I think it's important to review ideas and points, even if they were already made.
If a thread has 20 pages of debating and 5 pages of whatever, the thread was useful.

I don't try to make it personal, I just respond to the negative tone that's behind your posts
If you're bored, I recommend that you entertain yourself somehow.

[Paleobird]

As there are alwasy new members in the forum, I think it's important to review ideas and points, even if they were already made. If a thread has 20 pages of debating and 5 pages of whatever, the thread was useful.

I don't try to make it personal, I just respond to the negative tone that's behind your posts
If you're bored, I recommend that you entertain yourself somehow.

Valid point. My comment about stirring the pot was directed to Chaco as he has seen several of these threads too. It was meant as a friendly nudge in the ribs to him, someone I consider to be a friend. Any negative "tone" is your own projection onto the situation. Psychoanalyze thyself.

[Paleobird]

Maybe for you 1,000 isn't an appropriate deficit, but for many petite women it unfortunately is. You can hold whatever opinion you want, it doesn't change that fact.

I spent months tracking my calories to get a handle on what my maintenance ACTUALLY was, instead of what an online calculator estimated it SHOULD BE. And while I know metabolism isn't static, mine has always been very low. At my most active (walking 1+hrs/day plus 3 days of heavy lifting), I could maintain around 1,400. A 20% deficit would have put me around 1,120 calories/day. With less activity, it likely is more like 1,000 or less.

Absolutely true. Even a non-petite woman such as myself with other factors involved such as age, medications, illnesses can need to go this low. There is no one magic number for everyone and making sweeping declarations that "under X# is not healthy" is unfounded.

Has anyone read marks post: Ancient Wisdom Confirmed by Modern Science | Mark's Daily Apple

If i am reading it correctly, it states that your body will maintain a healthy weight for you if your calories are clean. If you eat 2000 "bad" calories you will get fat. If you eat 2000 "good" calories, you body will maintain weight.

Hmmm. I'm not so sure you can take what he's saying to that extreme. Although nobody is debating that eating cleanly is good, I don't think it's the only thing. Putting on weight is something we are designed to do in order to survive the next famine. In modern society the next famine never comes. So it would stand to reason that one could put on weight even while eating totally Grokian pure calories.

Mark did a great post a while back called "17 Reasons Why You Are Not Losing Weight" number eight of which was a concise and to the point, "You're eating too much."

"8. You’re eating too much.

Low-carb isn’t magic. It reins in wild hunger and tames insulin, but calories do still matter – especially once you approach your ideal weight. In fact, those last few pounds often don’t respond to the same stuff that worked so well to get you to this point. Eating nut butter by the spoonful and hunks of cheese without regard for caloric content may have gotten you this far, but you’ve got to tighten things up if things aren’t working. And that’s the real test, isn’t it? There is a metabolic advantage to eating according to the PB, but if the weight isn’t coming off, something’s up – and calories may need to come down."

[Forgotmylastusername]

I'm not trying to direct this reply to you, but I've been reading various threads across the forum, I've been seeing A LOT of posts just like this one. "No I can't eat as much fat as I want because I tried it for a week and it just makes me fatter! No ________ doesn't work for me because I tried it last month and I got fatter!" It's posts like this that makes me skeptical of some people's dedication and patience when it comes to certain weight loss methods. Fluctuations on the scale are not a direct indication of body fat loss or gain, nor is the scale a representation of your body composition.

It's like saying, "I ate grass-fed beef, eggs, veggies, and lots of coconut oil yesterday. The scale went up by 1 pound this morning." .... "I ate ice cream, cheese, and salad yesterday.. and lost one pound this morning." "Therefor meat and dietary fat makes me gain weight. I can't eat these things because obviously they make me fatter. The scale went up ONE POUND and my jeans are a tad tighter than they were yesterday!"

The reliance on the scale is a rather arbitrary method of determining your weight loss progress. The reliance on short-term clothing markers are also rather arbitrary as water retention (especially in women) tends to fluctuate from day to day. I know some days I wake up with puffy fingers due to water retention, and a higher number on the scale, and tighter fitting clothes. But this does not mean my body fat % increased or that I "gained weight". Certainly not. Also, our body fat and water retention fluctuates like a bell curve around our period. Observing that the weight consistently increases two weeks leading up to your period, and concluding that your weight loss method is not working is a wrong conclusion to determine. The weight increase and tighter fitting clothes is not the result of gaining weight due to a flawed diet regime, but rather due to hormones that naturally increase your body weight, body fat, and water retention.. this typically goes away the week or two after your period.

Blaming these natural fluctuations on "well this method obviously does not work because, look, I'm gaining weight!" is inaccurate. Even the smallest change in a diet or lifestyle can take 6-12 weeks to normalize before any consistent results can be observed either visually or quantitatively. And weight gain as well as body fat gain is not uncommon when one makes a small change in his or her lifestyle. Sticking to something for a week or two, then becoming impatient and blaming it on a flawed diet plan because you're not seeing the instant results you've hyped up in your mind is silly. Expecting to see results each week, or even each month (if you're already a somewhat healthy weight) is silly. But as a society, we're been conditioned to believe that we need to see the scale go down, or see our bodies transform miraculously before us within a relatively short time span--within an arbitrary window like a week or a month. When we become discouraged because our emotions are not reinforced with immediate visual progress, we reject a method that probably IS working (and we would realize this if we gave it enough time), and change our lifestyle to adopt a new method that is not as effective or so extreme that it provides an immediately, temporary, visual loss.. ie: not eating for an entire day and seeing the scale drop 5lbs.

Excess fat calories are easily stored as body fat. It takes very little energy, as it has something like a 95% storage efficiency unlike carbs and protein which are a lot harder to store and use up more energy doing so. It's pretty easy for some people to overeat fat. If I eat a keto diet I can easily eat over my TDEE and gain fat, I done it for over 6 months.

This is why caloric deficit doesn't work. One must learn to regulate hormone levels with their food intake to achieve a healthy metabolism and body weight. I'll tell you why calorie deficit doesn't work. Lets use a 45 year old woman who has been eating 2000 calories of what she considers healthy foods. She has average activity but is currently 15 pounds overweight. She decides to lower her calories by 500 calories a week so she'll loose 1 pound a week for 15 weeks.

There are a couple of things that are going to happen here. First off, the most obvious, She's going to feel hungry more often. Secondly, her body will understand that it's in a time of lower nutrition so it's going to slow it's metabolism. The reason is so it doesn't need as many calories to preform life giving tasks. Notice I say life giving tasks, not general running to the store to pick up milk after driving the kids to soccer practice and making sure that husband doesn't burn the house down because it's his turn to cook dinner. The lower metabolism is also going to make her body want to sleep more because when the body is sleeping the amount of energy being used is very low.

That's just part of the story. She can't sleep more because she's still a mother, still a wife and still has a job so she continues to push her body at the same speed as before even on a caloric deficit so now she increases her stress levels which in turn raises the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol causes the body to store body fat in the stomach area. In addition to the increased cortisol, the body is still believing that it's in a time of lower nutrition so on top of down regulating metabolism, it also begins to store fat while lowering muscle mass because it's too caloricly expensive to carry.

Evolutionarily women are more important than men. That's why women's bodies deregulate metabolism and store fat so much quicker than men. To survive and give life to the next generation. I think you're all pretty awesome myself! Even if the weight is lost, once the caloric deficit is restored the body gains more weight back because the metabolism has now been lowered and a new even lower caloric deficit is needed to loose the same 15 pounds that she has gained back. Sound familiar?

Its so important to firstly eat the proper macro ratios that we are evolutionarily meant to eat. High protein and fat with low carbohydrates. Secondly (and this begins with proper nutrition) is to make sure you eat for hormonal regulation. Eat foods that regulate insulin, balance estrogen and testosterone and lower cortisol.

Lastly when one is doing this I'll go back to my original point. Don't expect years of chronic dieting and calorie reduction to be fixed over night. Take time with your body it deserves it. After all, it's been dealing with what you've been doing to it for years.

A calorie deficit doesn't work for fat loss? It's the ONLY thing that will work for fat loss. No matter how you set about achieving a deficit whether it's decreasing your food intake or increasing your energy expenditure at the end of the day if you're not in a calorie deficit your body isn't going to use your fat stores for fuel and you'll remain fat.
Lowered metabolism is just a fact of weight loss you have to deal with. An obese/overweight person is going to burn more calories than a slim person, when you lose weight you require less to maintain. There's also no "proper evolutionary macro ratios", humans have subsisted on wide array of macro ratios all over the world.

[magnolia1973]

If i am reading it correctly, it states that your body will maintain a healthy weight for you if your calories are clean. If you eat 2000 "bad" calories you will get fat. If you eat 2000 "good" calories, you body will maintain weight.

Reading it doesn't make it so. In practice, it's a fail. The funny thing is that fallacy comes up in veganism a lot. (Eat vegan foods, you never need to track a calorie again). Eating whole, clean foods = an awesome idea. Eating as much as you want may lead some people to gain weight especially when you add in calorie dense foods like fatty meats.

You can be very healthy on small amounts of food. I imagine it is somewhat genetically driven.... and truth be told, I have trouble imagining that at any time until the past maybe 100 years that people had access to 2000 or more calories a day consisently. .

[Sue]

Has anyone read marks post: Ancient Wisdom Confirmed by Modern Science | Mark's Daily Apple

If i am reading it correctly, it states that your body will maintain a healthy weight for you if your calories are clean. If you eat 2000 "bad" calories you will get fat. If you eat 2000 "good" calories, you body will maintain weight.

Thats a guest post by Jonathan Bailor. Evelyn did two posts about him.

The Carb-Sane Asylum: The Smarter Science of Slim ~ General Thoughts
The Carb-Sane Asylum: Is it Possible? "Smarter Science" worse than "Good" Science Journalism?