Quote:
Originally Posted by PastriestoPushups
If you are your caloric budget in fruit and veggies or if you ate it in chips and cookies it's still the same amount of calories. You would "feel" better having eaten the fruits and veggies, but calorie wise it doesn't matter what you are eating!
I know I'm arguing a technicality, but I have to point out that this isn't always true. Calorie-wise and amount of weight lost-wise it can make a difference where the calories come from.
"A calorie is a calorie," isn't always true for everyone. While it is true that to lose weight you have to take in fewer calories than you burn, many people find that "all calories are not created equal." The type of calories (at least for some people) can influence the "burn" part of the equation. If you compare metabolism to a furnace, the type of fuel you use can affect the efficiency of the furnace. Not all fuels burn at the same rate.
For most of my life, I would have argued that 1500 calories of anything (junk, low-fat, high-carb, low-carb) would yeild the exact same weight loss. I only learned otherwise by accident - and then proved it with a careful experiment (repeated a few times, because I didn't believe it).
Initially, when I noticed that I lost weight more rapidly and more consistently on low-carb, I assumed that I lost more on low-carb than higher-carb just because I was less hungry and therefore eating fewer calories (and that would have been reason enough to stick with low-carb), but with meticulous food journaling, I discovered that I do not lose equally well on 1500 of low-carb as on 1500 of high-carb (which is what I would have predicted).
Instead I found that there's at least a 300 - 500 calorie discrepancy. To lose equally well on low-carb, I have to cut calories more than I have to on low-cal. 1600 - 1800 calories of low-carb yields about the same weight loss as 1200-1500 calories of low-carb.
That doesn't mean you can't lose weight on any type of food, but it does mean that "a calorie is a calorie" is an oversimplification (at least for some of us). To lose the same amount of weight, you may have to cut calories more drastically on one food plan, than you would on another.
It's worth experimenting though, because if a certain WOE allows you to burn more calories than another, it makes sense to choose the one that gives you an advantage. If 1200 calories of high-carb yields the same wieght loss as 1500-1800 calories of low-carb, why wouldn't you choose the low-carb (especially if it also controls hunger better). For me, it's a no-brainer. Low-carb wins, because I can eat more and lose more.
I don't know that everyone experiences this. It seemed to me that when I was younger, the difference wasn't so pronounced (I assumed that I burned about equally on 1500 calories, no matter where those 1500 came from, and I don't remember receiving any evidence to the contrary), but I never gave low-carb diets much of a chance (always thinking them unhealthy).
If I had wanted to stick to a 1200 calorie high-carb diet, I could have. I still would have lost weight (though I'd be hungrier). So in that way, you can lose weight on any style of eating, even if yo do burn calories better on on some plans. No matter how you want to eat, you can keep cutting calories until you begin losing, but if you lose better on one WOE than another, experimenting to find that WOE is a good thing.