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Comment by lrm242 | Hacker News Reader

Calories are the only determinant as to whether you gain or lose weight. It's thermodynamics. 3500 calories deficit or surplus is approximately equal to 1 lb of body weight lost or gained.

Your body burns X calories per day to feed itself. If you eat less than this number, you will lose weight. Period. If you eat more than this number, you will gain weight. Period. Your TDEE or Total Daily Energy Expenditure can be easily estimated if your are so inclined, but it isn't necessary. Want to lose weight? Start at 2,000 calories per day. Monitor your weight across 4 weeks. If you aren't losing at a rate you're happy with, drop it to 1,800 calories per day. Repeat.

If you want to lose 5 lbs, you need a net deficit over time of 3500 * 5 = 17,500 calories.

Good/bad foods play a different role in your overall health, for example by impacting your level of water retention or satiety.

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The major catch there is that, if some common hypotheses hold, then where a calorie comes from has a direct affect on how your body burns it. The example commonly used is to say you need and consume 3500 calories to support your current level of activity. If you consume 600 that your body will only store, then your body will behave as though you still need an additional 600 to maintain your energy level. Likely leading to you being lethargic until you get additional food. (Which, as stipulated, you don't actually want/need to consume.)

I wish there were some way other than the impolite downvote to register just how miserable believing this broken logic made me for a decade.

Can you expand on that? Calories in/out has lost me a net 30 lbs.

Agreed -- the method I explained was just calories in/out. The problem I had was that I didn't have enough data. The app and calorie counts on menus give me the data.

I lost 44 lbs on a disassociated diet, which is now over and my weight is stable by abstaining from sugar, as otherwise I only try to eat healthy, but I do not count calories or whatever.

Congratulations on your 30 lbs loss. Unfortunately not many people can abstain from eating. For some people it's a source of depression.

What works for you doesn't necessarily work for somebody else - and have you noticed how some people can eat whatever they want without getting fat? Freaking bastards.

>I lost 44 lbs on a disassociated diet, which is now over and my weight is stable by abstaining from sugar, as otherwise I only try to eat healthy, but I do not count calories or whatever.

It doesn't matter if you count it or not if you lost weight you were taking in less energy than you were expending.

>What works for you doesn't necessarily work for somebody else - and have you noticed how some people can eat whatever they want without getting fat? Freaking bastards.

Those people are a myth and it's been proven, they just consider "eating a lot" to be less than the amount needed to get them to gain weight. I mean I could eat 2000 calories of chocolate everyday and aside from the massive problems related to not getting enough vitamins/macros I'd still be losing weight.

Anyway congrats on the weight lost, we're all gunna make it bro.

Really? Then couldn't one subsist by just eating one or two bars of chocolate per day and some vitamin pills? Or maybe a liter of coke per day would work just as well? It would be a very cost efficient way of eating as both candy and vitamins are cheap around here (well, not vitamins but a bottle of pills last a long time).

I've always assumed that that wouldn't work which is why I'm skeptical to your "it's all about the calories" argument.

Well chocolate doesn't actually have that much to it (a regular chocolate bar is only like 250 calories) so it'd have to be more than two bars a day.

The main problem (as I'm told) with eating nothing but pure calorie sources supplemented with...uh, supplements is that the cost of the supplements is very high. Remember you need protein, carbs(I guess these wouldn't be in short supply on the candy bar diet) and fats plus micronutrients too or your body will start to break and those supplements aren't cheap.

I do know people that subsist mostly on protein shakes, rice and various supplement pills when they are doing hard cuts for body building competitions and while it's stressful on your body you aren't going to die from it.

Sure. Here's the classic example: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...

Thanks! It's nice to be proven wrong sometimes.

The human body is not a bomb calorimeter. Simply cutting calories in (and running to try to increase calories out) reduced my energy and crushed my mood. My body compensated for lower input with lower output.

Cutting out sugar and grains, on the other hand, improved all of those things, and dropped 50 pounds off me despite actually cutting out the running as well. I never had to count anything; without the broken satiety mechanism, I'm not going to accidentally eat 20 oz of steak like you might accidentally eat a half a pound of spaghetti.

This is the point where you say "ok but that's just a trick to reduce your calories in," but that's entirely the point: calories in and out is descriptive, not prescriptive. Thermodynamics says that if I am losing weight I am consuming less energy than I am expending; it does not say that if I consume less energy that my expenditures will remain constant and fat will disappear.

Then why do type 1 diabetics only count carbs? A diabetic can eat as much protein, fat and fiber as they want, but have to match insulin levels to their carbohydrate consumption (except fiber).

I'm highly simplifying, but carbohydrates are converted to blood sugar which insulin converts to energy at a cellular level. Insulin is needed so your cells can feed off the blood sugar. The blood sugar that isn't used is stored as fat. Carbs are quickly and easily converted to fat. Other forms of food can eventually get converted to blood sugar, but not as easily and quickly as carbs. You absorb protein, minerals, vitamins, fibers, etc. very differently than pure Carbs. So a Carb rich diet will make you fat. Diabetics are only concerned with Carbs because they have the highest impact on their blood sugar level.

Further, America has proved this. Few cultures consume as much carbohydrate rich food as America, and as a result, they have the biggest issue with diabetes, obesity, etc. Carbohydrates are the cheapest food to buy (fast food and junk food are very heavy in carbohydrates), so a disproportionate number of low income people have obesity problems

Dude, its the carbs.

Diabetics have to manage insulin levels. They manage their carb intake because of this. It has nothing to do with managing their weight.

With respect to obesity you might consider what you just said: carbs are abundant and cheap. Therefore, people tend to eat a lot of them. Significantly more than they should. Carbs also do not tend to induce a level of lasting satiety that protein or fat does (note, 1g carb = 4kcal, 1g protein = 4kcal, 1g fat = 9kcal). So not only do people tend to eat a lot of carbs but they also tend to eat them more often because they don't feel full for very long.

Simple carbs will be converted to sugar quicker than complex carbs, and quicker than protein or fat.

But if you eat calories - in any form - that you don't need then you're going to store those calories.

And you're incorrect when you say that diabetics are only concerned with carbs. Diabetics cannot eat as much fat as they like, and are warned to eat a "healthy diet".

Not really. Obviously, preservation of energy must hold, but body weight isn't just a function of calorie intake because metabolism is regulated by hormones, which affect the rate of calorie burn and fat tissue formation. Human metabolism is far from being completely understood.

http://xkcd.com/793/

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