First and foremost JohnP thank you x a million! When I started my weight loss journey I searched weight loss on Google and was so overwhelmed by the different "methods" the articles supporting them and the ones against them and it made things that much more confusing and quite honestly I was already giving up before starting.
This post cleared up a lot of questions that I have had and I am now more confident in going to begin calorie counting again and knowing that if I skip a day of exercise I am not going to beat myself up for it. I like to exercise it makes me feel good and I feel it gears me up for the rest of the day, can I exercise everyday? No but now I don't feel so bad about it
The biggest thing you claim to be myth that I find to be fact is that all calories are created equal. Now this statement doesn't apply to everyone, but for myself and most people I know, I can lose weight eating 1200 cals of crap or 1700 cals of healthy stuff. So all cals are not equal in nutrition value, digestive value, how the body processes or stores them.
I'm very interested to understand more specifically what you mean here. It sounds like what you're saying is that you can eat 1,700 calories of "healthy food" and lose weight just as quickly as eating 1,200 calories of crap.
If that is what you are saying than there would have to be a scientific explaination for it. Ironically the ideas you suggest such as digestive and nutrient value would likely have the opposite effect of what you claim. One would think that a healthy food would have greater nutrient and digestive value thus adding more net energy to the intake side of the equation.
I'm not saying that your experience is wrong or invalid. A possibility is that 1,200 calories of "crap" makes you feel lethargic and so NEAT is signifigantly decreased while 1,700 calories of "healthy" food energize you and NEAT is increased signifigantly. Again I don't know exactly what you mean by crap but I'm guessing crap foods have a lot of simple sugars and fats which in an insulin resistant person can certainly have that type of effect.
Another possibility is that "crap" foods are high in sodium resulting in water retention. You're losing fat but the water is masking it. Start to eat "clean" and woosh water is flushed and you draw the faulty conclusion that the "clean" foods did it.
I'm sure there are other possibilities but those are the two I can think of off the top of my head. I'm not saying you're wrong, especially since I don't even know what you mean by "crap" food. However, if you're right, there must be a scientific means to explain it and it wouldn't be the calories themselves.
John
What do you think of HIIT? It seems every time I turn around I see an article or receive email touting it's outstanding "fat loss" benefits.
Yes HIIT has become THE fat shredding exercise. Ever since the Tremblay study came out it is the go to exercise for trainers everywhere.
In my opinion the exercise that works best is the one that you like well enough to keep doing on a regular basis.
If forced to pick an exercise I consider most important for fat loss I would pick weight lifting.
The short version of HIIT vs steady state cardio is HIIT is more demanding on your body and therefore burns more caloires per minute but steady state cardio can be done longer and more often. So how much time do you have?
If that is what you are saying than there would have to be a scientific explaination for it.
Of course there's a scientific explination, that's why all calories are not created equal. Crap was probably the incorrect term for me to use. At the end of my weight loss journey I was eating a pretty healthy diet, eating about 1500 cals and losing barely anything. I switched to eating as cleanly as possible, mostly whole foods and non processed but still having indulgences occassionally, and upped my cals to 1700 and the rest of the weight melted off. I'm not even going to get into the relationship of my weight loss in terms of the fact that I had to increase my cals as my exercise increased to keep losing.
And just because I can't let it go, and forgive me John because I don't mean to attack you I'm just uber moody these last few days but when you say that exercise doesn't increase your metabolism, that's not exactly true either. When people say that, what they mean to say is that muscle burns more cals at rest than fat. Therefore, if you exercise and build muscle you will speed up your metabolism.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert of any kind and I'm not going to debate the topic further, because I'm an not educated enough to do so. My only point is that when you say something is a myth, most people think - oh then that means it's not true and doesn't work. A lot of women on 3FC really look up to you, trust you and are inspired by you, and they should be you generally give great advice and information. But I worry when you claim that things are myths because I can see how it would futher confuse people or discourage them from trying something that might work because they think it's a myth and therefore not true. That was all I was really trying to get across I think.
Ncuneo you don't need to apologize I don't feel you're attacking me at all. I don't even think we disagree on this issue much if at all! You might be more for "clean eating" than I am but probably only by a few degrees, if any.
You're right that you can increase your metabolism by adding muscle. I agree. Just by a magnitude far less than most people think. Every pound of muscle adds about six calories per day to your BMR. So adding 10 lbs of muscle increases is about 60 calories per day.
At the same time, fat is also alive. Losing fat lowers your BMR by 2 calories per pound. So losing 30 lbs lowers your BMR by about 60 calories.
On an interesting somewhat related note - I think everyone should wear a Gowear Fit for a couple months. It is amazing how much small movements over the course of a day really add up to signifigant calories. This is known as NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis.)
I'd far rather read a lively discussion than participate in an echo chamber in which everyone has the same viewpoints. It's a lot more educational to read different takes on a subject, so I'm heartily glad for threads like this one.
I've been following a few threads that are making me take the NEAT stuff into account to a much greater degree. My job necessitates a lot of desk work, but just remaining conscious of how much NEAT matters reminds me to walk to the store for oranges, get up and clean that sink NOW while I'm thinking about it, take ten minutes to hop on my stationary bike rather than spend four hours straight at my desk.
Don't know how much it will affect my weight loss, but it definitely falls into the "can't hurt, might help" category. Considering I gained 60 pounds in a year going from a retail job in which I was constantly on my feet to a completely sedentary desk job, I should be the first person to realize how much incidental activity matters!
I'm very interested to understand more specifically what you mean here. It sounds like what you're saying is that you can eat 1,700 calories of "healthy food" and lose weight just as quickly as eating 1,200 calories of crap.
If that is what you are saying than there would have to be a scientific explaination for it. Ironically the ideas you suggest such as digestive and nutrient value would likely have the opposite effect of what you claim. One would think that a healthy food would have greater nutrient and digestive value thus adding more net energy to the intake side of the equation.
Healthy food contains more fiber which results in less efficient metabolism of the ingested calories, so X calories of healthy food results in fewer calories absorbed than X calories of "crap". This is especially true of uncooked plant foods vs highly processed carbohydrates (e.g. white sugar and flour).
While it does all come down to net energy deficit or surplus, the input side needs to take factors into account beyond the number produced by a bomb calorimeter. For example, studies have shown that intestinal bacteria play a big role in how efficiently people metabolize foods. In dieting, the big question is really, how do we find a sustainable lifestyle that temporarily provides an energy deficit (then, on maintenance an energy balance).
Exercise, grazing, and macro-nutrient control are all techniques which are effective for some people in helping to create an energy deficit. When the rationales behind these techniques are oversimplified and stated as rules that all should obey, they become myths.
We all recognize that exercise expends energy but increases hunger. So, if someone exercises and continues to eat as much as they want, depending on the individual, this may lead to a net energy deficit or surplus -- and probably more often a surplus. But, health benefits aside, exercise may still be a useful adjunct to calorie restriction to aid in creating an energy deficit in many of those cases. First, simply having a higher calorie budget allows some dieters to feel less deprived -- their meals can more closely resemble a "real" meal. Second, it helps some folks to see their bodies start to look toned. This can help motivate their calorie restriction (some folks might get the same boost from a manicure or new hairstyle). The point is that *at least in some cases* exercise can be a helpful technique for living an energy deficit lifestyle.
But if that becomes simplified that into "You have to exercise to lose weight," it's a myth.
Grazing is a technique that many use to help control how much they eat. Grazing does help maintain a more stable blood sugar (as does eating unprocessed foods, btw). Folks who find this technique useful might otherwise sometimes find it irresistible to binge at meals if they go without food for too long. But other folks will find this technique counter-productive, since the mini-meals may make them feel deprived when they see the "real" meals that others are eating. Also, some folks find eating several times a day means that they are constantly thinking about food -- planning their next meal or eating it -- and they may find it easier to eat just two meals a day. In your case, grazing simply doesn't fit with your lifestyle.
Whether all the effects of grazing make it easier or harder for any given person to maintain an energy deficit is highly individual. To say that one must eat several small meals a day to lose weight is a myth.
Macro-nutrient (carb/protein/fat) control is another technique that some folks find helpful in maintaining an energy deficit. Some folks find that increasing the percentage of protein results in faster weight loss (calorie counts do not take into account the energy required to digest food; protein requires significantly more energy to digest than carbs or fats). Other folks find that a diet high in complex carbs satisfies them the most (possibly due to a large amount of natural fiber). And some folks find a diet low in carbohydrates and higher in fat to be the most satisfying (possibly by controlling blood sugar levels).
So, controlling the percentages of different macro-nutrients can be helpful for some people in adhering to an energy deficit lifestyle, because they find a particular mix of macro-nutrients more satisfying. But, even among those people, the ratios which are helpful to them are different. To pick one and advocate it as the secret to weight loss is a myth.
That doesn't mean that these techniques should be dismissed. There are also other techniques which can be useful to some folks that have similarly become mythic. Folks need to understand that dieting is primarily about finding an individual sustainable lifestyle that incorporates an energy deficit. Perhaps the only one-size rule that applies to everyone that isn't a myth is that you have to find what works for you.
I have a similar experience with being able to eat significantly more calories of healthy whole food (low-carb and low-glycemic food) to lose the same amount as when I'm eating high-carb foods, and I've always been stumped regarding the science behind it, but I am getting closer to understanding at least the feasible explanations.
First of all, it's very important to be sure that you're observations are as objective as possible, and that's the hardest part. We have to be scientist and lab rat - and that's not real science. We're doomed to pseudo-science at best, but an educated guss is better than a random guess). For me the HealthMinder journal I bought on amazon.com was a huge help in seeing and analyzing patterns, but it takes months to see true patterns, and it's hard to have the patience to document that diligently. Even for myself, I have to say many of my observations are best guesses based on the data I did collect. I can't be confident that some of my theories aren't as much superstition as fact.
Some of what I've concluded (which may or not be certain even though I'm fairly confident in my conclusions):
I'm most confident in this one, because it's entirely based on hard fact rather than observation. One source of calorie discrepancy can be accounted for by dietary fiber. If you're a cow, fiber has calories. If you're human, it does not (you can't digest fiber, so the calories in fiber leave your body intact). In the USA, a nutrition label may or may not "count" the calories in fiber. It's perfectly legal to count either way, and the label does not have to specify whether fiber was or was not counted. Many calorie-counting resources online do include the fiber calories (which is why you can find such a huge discrepancy in calorie counts between various calorie-counting resources for the same food. Some are counting the fiber calories and some are not).
Many of us use the highest calorie estimate "to be safe" but it probably comes at the cost of accuracy.
For example, if you're eating 30g of fiber per day (the FDA recommendation, which is probably on the low side of optimal), that means you could be overestimating your actual/used calories by as much as 120 calories if you're using a calorie-counting source that counts calories in the fiber.
Fiber is not the only calorie that leaves the body intact. Sugar alcohols also do (though there's been some recent disagreement over how well the body digests/use sugar alcohols. There's even evidence that some people are better able to digest sugar alcohols than others. It's possible this is a genetic trait, or that some other factor attributes to the abililty to fully digest certain foods.
"Resistant starches" are a new discover which may or may not affect calorie absorption from these foods. The theory (and some evidence supporting the theory) is that not all of the calories in a resistant starch are digested.
There are other ways in which it's possible to not digest all of the calories consumed. Human digestive tracts are pretty efficient, but we're not as efficient as a furnace - not everything gets burnt up. Cats have such inefficient digestive systems that their poop contains a lot of unburned food/calories, so much so that it can be hard to teach a dog living with a cat that the litter box isn't a buffet.
It's possible (and even probable) that some foods may be more fully digested than others. Whole foods I suspect (but have no proof) could be more difficult to digest than junk food. To be blunt (and gross), you'd have to burn your crap in a calorimeter to discover whether there's a difference and what the difference might be. It's also possible that whole foods require more calories to burn than junk foods.
There are also so many ways that what you eat can affect your metabolism. For example, I've found that my body temperature is a full degree higher on relatively low-carb than very high-carb. I also have more weird health symptoms on high-carb. It's likely that more calories are being used to "turn up the heat" and perhaps more energy/calories are being invested in my immune system. Calories are fuel - the energy source for our bodies, which means every operation of the body depends on those calories. If any system isn't working properly, it would, or at least has the potential to affect how those calorie resources are used and allocated.
On healthy food, I sleep better and am better rested on less sleep than on high-carb junk food. That can make a tremendous difference not only in basal metabolic rate, but also in how much energy and interest I have in voluntary movement/exercise.
But I didn't even know that I was sleeping less and better (I didn't notice any difference on a conscious level). Without a health journal (initially I was using the HealthMinder journal that I bought on amazon.com, and then patterned my own after it), I would have never noticed the connection. Without recording my waking time, bedtime, how well I'd slept, how many times I woke up during the night, I never would have seen this difference, especially if I hadn't recorded what I was eating on those days as well.
For most of my life I believed that all calories were created equal for all bodies for all purposes. Now I'm surprised that I was that naive.
Still, that doesn't mean that calories can be ignored, especially when dealing with weight loss. You've got to find some way to increase calorie deficit, and you've got to experiment to find which way of increasing that calorie deficit maximizes your physical and mental ability to maintain that deficit.
Ideally without picking up a whole bunch of superstitions about what's going on physically to account for it.
Diet superstitions are so rampant, it's hard to tell fact from assumption, even in our own heads. The first challenge is realizing just how susceptible we all are to superstition, how "seems true in the moment" doesn't say much useful or true at all.
I gave this speech in my club's speech contest and won. So I'll be giving this speech in the area contest next.
It is absolutely amazing to see how impactful this speech is to certain audience members. You can almost see a light going on inside their head as they relate to the utter confusion about what they should be doing to lose weight.
The speech now has a title too. "The simplest most confusing topic known"
Ever since the Tremblay study came out it is the go to exercise for trainers everywhere.
but when you say that exercise doesn't increase your metabolism, that's not exactly true either. When people say that, what they mean to say is that muscle burns more cals at rest than fat. Therefore, if you exercise and build muscle you will speed up your metabolism. 
