Colleen ... all I gotta say here is ... can I be you when I grow up???
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Nope... I think I can say with cetainty that growing up definitely makes one ineligible for being me...

Now that doesn't mean you couldn't regress to my level.

Ok, I've got to fully disclose and admit this is (most frightenly) not the first time I gave the matter of er, complete digestion some thought. When I was 22 and living at home after college, my parents had a little maltese that was eating the kitty's poo. We rigged a covered litterbox situation that prevented the dog from grazing the poo buffet, and at the next vet appointment asked the vet if this might be a sign that there was something wrong with the dog.

The vet said that cats so poorly digest their food, that it's not uncommon for dogs to be tempted by the poo because it still smells like meat. He said that canned food seems to make the poo more tempting so we could try changing the cat's food to dry food (she was already eating only dry food) otherwise we'd just have to put the litterbox out of reach of the dog (like on a table or something) or use a covered litterbox.

Very sadly (and a result of calorie counting since early gradeschool) my warped mind immediately went to how many calories the chubby dog had been getting from the cat poo (my parents had been cutting back on his food, but he hadn't been losing weight, at least not until the cat's litterbox was no longer available to him).

Can I make a couple observations? 1. Ewwwww. 2. My sister had a German shepherd that did the same with the cat's litter box. 3. And I'll come down to your level Colleen. Great observation and one I've thought about - though much less thoroughly - on occasion.

I have to completely disagree with you guys. I hate to break it to you but a calorie is a calorie isa calorie. I can guarantee you that if you only eat 1000 calories a day and it only comes from choclate you will lose more weight than if you eat 1500 calories of fruit. Folks its a simple mathamatically equation burn 3500 calories lose 1lb fat.

And you get to feel like crap doing it.

Well, you did warn us you had a strong opinion on this!

I could lose weight by cutting of a leg too, but that is not what I am after. I am after health, building and maintaining muscle, and choosing foods packed with nutrition, vitamins, healthy fats, and fiber.

The definition of a calorie is the amount of heat necessary to raise a gram of water 1 degree Celsius under controlled conditions. When we talk about calories in foods we are actually talking about kilocalories, but I would be depressed to think how many kilocalories I just ate with my cottage cheese, yogurt, pear, and cereal.

Scientifically a calorie is a calorie. Nutritionally, my body thrives on healthy food choices. I might lose scale weight on a diet of 1000 kcal of chocolate a day, but I would like to preserve my hard-earned muscle mass.

Anti-oxidents, vitamins, omega 3 fatty acids---there are so many important parts of nutrition we get from our food choices and that is what drives my nutrition choices. Not the number on the scale.

There were a lot of thoughtful posts made by a lot of smart people. Your blanket statement that you disagree across the board makes me wonder what kind of answer you were looking for?

But, there's fine print in every guarantee While I freely admit to not being "the norm", I'm quite sure I'm not completely unique either - I, indeed, was able to actually gain weight on both extremely limited (under 1000) calories as well as 1500 calories when 99% of those calories were coming from nutritionally void "foods" (even when I was putting in 30 to 45 minutes of intense treadmill time at full incline) - but am losing (quite nicely thank you ) on 1500 - 1600 calories coming primarily from foods that pack a nutritional punch. The conclusion I have to come to from my own experience is that: a long term diet of "empty" calories will, very likely, eventually ****** your bodies ability to burn them off and give it no choice but to store every last calorie as fat (except those undigested, ewwey ones )

Don't make me break out the thermodynamics book, assuming I haven't sold it. I haven't checked recently.

In terms of food, a Calorie is actually a kilocalorie. Yay midwife for reminding me.

However, while food can provide calories, food and calories are not identical. I would think that how many calories a person can access from any given food at any given time may a) not be known exactly and gets refined from time to time (there is a famous corn example I'm not going to look up or speak more about since it is, well, yucky), and b) may vary a bit from person to person and time to time for reasons of person biochemistry. Given that, I think that the calorie lists for foods are probably pretty good for most people, most of the time. I'm a physicist, Jim, not a biochemist! Beam me up. I'm sure we have a biochemist around here somewhere who could go into gory detail about the chemistry of the digestive process and the Krebs cycle for extracting energy from our food's macronutrient building blocks, but 'tain't me!

However, a food is way way more than calories. There are your physical and psychological reactions to it. There is micronutrient (vitamins, minerals, phytochemical) content to consider. There is the question of how much protein you are using for general body growth and repair vs "burned" for energy. There is the amount of mindfulness and time you put into eating food. All of these play a huge role in just how many calories you need to be satisfied and healthy.

So while sugar containing 1000 usable calories and broccoli containing 1000 usable calories contain, wait for it, the same number of calories, I think it is self-evident that they are not equally valuable for weight loss, maintenance, or a basic healthy diet.

Personally, I do a mix of generous amounts of healthy stuff, with a topping of junk food, (usually) within the calorie goals/limits I set for myself. I find I'm one of the people who do better with the 100 calorie packs (or fudge bars, I so love my 100 calorie fudge bars) once in a while to avoid a serious binge, as long as I avoid a couple trigger foods.

Anne

What are you talking about? A lot of people had that opinion.

Benchmarkman - I go back to my "for what?" question.

For short-term weight loss, a chocolate calorie is the same as a chicken breast calorie.

For almost any of the other goals listed, I don't think it is. Certainly not for long term health. Certainly not to help you build muscle.

Again my assumption is for losing weight nothing else. Of course you are not going to be able to build muscule by eating chocolate all day but that is different from losing weight. Again weight lose is a simple formula: burn more calories than you eat and you will lose weight. That is all I stated in my post. I'm really tired of hearing about these weight lose plans that tell you to stop eating food x and eat food y instead becaues x will make you fat even though it has the same amount of calories as food y. Another one of my pet peeves is the "I hit the plateu" excuse.

Nevermind.

Well of course the *only thing* that makes us fat is consuming more calories then one burns and storing the excess as fat......... But that said, any *good* "diet" plan MUST consist of healthy foods - for a healthy life.

Another huge factor in avoiding certain foods is setting oneself up for success. If eating X brings on cravings and binges, and doesn't leave one satisfied, and leads to overspending our calorie budget, well then who the heck needs um? One would want to avoid those foods, wouldn't they?

Most of us here are not interested in just "being thin". We want not only to lose the weight, and might I add here - permenantly, but have strong bones, teeth and muscles, shiny hair, clear skin, strong nails, good vision, low cholesterol, normal blood pressure, a healthy heart, good sugar levels, lower our risks of certain cancers and so on.

Eating certain foods and avoiding others, will increase the chances of these things happening.

So perhaps for weight loss *alone*, and I only say perhaps, a calorie IS a calorie. But again, most of us here are NOT just looking for weight loss *alone*.

Benchmarkman, though you're tired of " hearing about these weight lose plans that tell you to stop eating food x and eat food y instead becaues x will make you fat even though it has the same amount of calories as food y", I am just as tired about hearing about people who think that they CAN and SHOULD/COULD attempt longterm weight loss WHILE eating food x as their main foods, instead of food y.

Can you see that Benchmarkman?

When I was younger I strongly believed that a calorie is always a calorie, and I lost weight about the same on 1,500 calories of crap than I did on 1,500 calories of nutritionally balanced food. Hypothesis confirmed, in my mind, but...

I may have done quite a bit of damage to my body with this concern with calories over nutrition. Some of my health problems have known dietary components, others the causes are unknown so they could have been hereditary (I was adopted and don't know biofamily medical history) or by my weight, or by the years and years of mostly crash diets.

I do know that some foods are filling and satisfying, and some make me ravenously hungry. If 100 calories of a high fiber or low carb food is filling and 100 calories of a low fiber, high carb increase my hunger to gigantic proportions - which calories do you think are most conducive to weight loss for me.

Even when I count the calories very closely, the calorie is a calorie no longer seems to work for me. Carbs, especially refined carbs not only make me hungrier, even if I am able to stay within my calorie limit (with tooth and nail determination), I lose better on the same calorie count on a lower carb, higher protein diet. This isn't just my experience, but that of other folks as well. My doctor says the explanation is my insulin resistance, that insulin resistant folks lose weight better on carb-controlled diets.

Calorie control for me is very useful, but so is carb control an important part of my personal equations. Not only for weight loss, but control of my fibromyalgia symptoms also, so I use an exchange plan by which I can control both.

In my 20's, I would have argued a calorie is always a calorie, until the cows came home, until I was blue in the face, and until I had exhaused countless other similar analogies but with personal experience I have come to disagree for many reasons. I believe for some people, for weightloss purposes only, a calorie is a calorie. When I was young and healthy, certainly seemed true for me.

But good health is a lot more than just calories. And weight loss is a lot more than food intake, it's also exercise and sleep and other body workings as well, including general health.

All things being equal a calorie might be a calorie, but all things are not equal, especially when the calories are coming from different places. Something very miniscule, like an unbalanced diet affecting sleep, energy levels and stamina can affect a persons personal calorie equations.

I'n my 1800 calories of high carb, and 1800 calories of low carb experiment, I am the first to admit it was more than the food calories that were different. On high carb, I feel more lethargic, and sleep more. My energy level is significantly lower, my pain levels are higher and as a result I'm less motivated to exercise, or even accomplish everyday activities, and when I try to do more, I have less stamina to do so. On lower (but not too low) carb, I have a higher energy level, I'm refreshed on less sleep, I feel more energetic and motivated not just for exercise, but for daily activities. I feel less pain, so I take less pain meds.

You can't boil it down to one simple equation when you're dealing with the human body, because in the body, there isn't one simple equation, but thousands of very complicated ones.

Just to add another monkey wrench into the mix, I was just reading some papers that were required for my DH's Masters in Bio Parasitolgy class (yes, I'm a terminal science geek!). It seems that there is some interesting research that shows that people digest food more or less efficiently depending on their intestinal flora (the bacteria and amoebas, etc., that live in your small and large intestines). In some rodent models, transplanting the flora from thin mice to obese ones helpedt he obese mice lose weight easier. So, these intestinal bugs may be less efficient at helping the human body extract energy from digesting foods. Therefore, fewer calories are absorbed, and more exit the body for the chickens! EWWW!