Quote:
Originally Posted by patns
kaplods, just a question about the"īt's only about the calories" line of study.
I actually don't post much anymore because whatever I post seems to generate this response.
But I am genuinely curious about how this line of research regards carbs.
I like many people who found IP worked am insulin resistant with PCOS. I can go ( and have gone) very low calorie, exercise and not lose. For me it is vital what is in the food that makes up the calories. It has to be lower in carbs or it just won't work.
I know this is off topic for this thread but I find your insights rational and really like some insight into how science has proved that the only way to lose weight is to take in fewer calories than you expend.
In my next life I plan to come back as a tall male, but in this life I have to live with my short round insulin resistant body and calories in/calories out just doesn't work as mathematics says it should.
|
The problem isn't with the math, we just do the math wrong. Calories in/out isn't the problem. The problem is thinking that the calories out portion of the equation is a constant, or at least something easily and accurately calcuable or that it is unaffected by the food you eat (or the sleep you get, or the stress you're under, or the state of your immune system....).
I also find that it isn't only "calories in" that matters. If I eat low-carb, I can eat about 300 calories more than high-carb to lose similar amounts of weight. I'm also hungrier on high-carb so low-carb is the way to go - less hunger, more food and more weight loss - bonus!
But the laws of physics still apply, you cannot gain weight if you do not eat. Zero calorie foods cannot materialize fat onto your body from nowhere.
I never said it is just calories, or that all calories are equal, but there are inescableable laws of physics. As I said, the only way aspartame could cause gains or stalls is if it reduced metabolism (shifting the out part of the equation).
However, this has been specifically studied and the results do not support the hypothesis. If it did, aspartame could be used to prevent starvation in famine-ravaged communities.
Proof of the calorie component is that no one on a zero calorie diet maintains their weight. Stop all food intake, and you will lose weight, at least for as long as you survive.
However, determining how many calories you are burning at any given minute, hour or day, isn't as easy as the all-calories-are-equal believers would have us believe.
...but that doesn't mean calories are completely irrelevant. You can't eat 10,000 calories and be "safe" from weight gain, just because the calories are coming from protein and/or fat. You also can't gain on a zero (or probably even 500) calorie intake.
How low can your metabolism go, how few calories can you burn in a day, and what effects those numbers.... that's not so easy to determine.
You do have to consume fewer calories than you burn, but you can't precisely control how much you burn, and the burn rate can be affected by the foods you choose and a mess of other variables we probably haven't even discovered yet. We only recently learned that sleep deprivation and chronic stress lower metabolism (the calories burned).
We've also learned that not all foods are burned completely. Some or all of their calories are inaccessible to humans. Fiber, sugar alcohols, and resistant starches are just some of the foods for which calorie/carb content and calorie/carb impact are two very different things.
The problem isn't the math, it's that there are variables in the equation we can't control or know, and it definitely doesn't mean that all calories are equal for either nutrition or weight loss.