Apparently the rules have changed
 

Newest info out there (sorry I don't have a link to back up my info) is that all calories are not created equal. So for instance you're better off eating 200 calories of "clean" food over 100 calories of processed food. I'm not talking the obvious like McDonald's, they're saying pretty much anything with a label that's loaded with artifical ingredients. It seems like a no-brainer but all this time at 3FC I was under the impression that a calorie is a calorie, so in my mind a 100 calorie lean cuisine was better than 2 bananas. Guess not. Remember JohnP's convos about the Twinkie diet for arguments sake? I agreed with him. Now they're saying your body doesn't know how to break down artificial (chemical) ingredients so your body auto stores it as fat. Well...what do I know but that DOES make sense with the rise in obesity since the increase of processed food. Thoughts?

This has been acknowledged many times here on 3FCs. Many people here have discovered for themselves that a calorie is indeed NOT a calorie.

ETA: I myself found that I could eat 1000 calories of processed junk and gain weight. Or 1400 calories of good stuff and lose weight.

I agree with the above. That is why it came out that it is better to eat butter instead of margarine years ago. Even though it has more calories and fat, our bodies know what to do with it. Of course everything in moderation

I have know this for about a year. I eat way too many calories but good foods. It doesn't necessarily help me lose weight but I don't gain either.

To lose, I just eat less of the good stuff.

I posted this article from the NY Times over in the "Weight Loss News" forum a couple weeks ago.

My understanding is that the calories in processed foods are more available to your body. Many whole foods, on the other hand, are more difficult for your body to process and therefore your body does not extract all the calories. For example, an ounce of nuts may have 180 calories as measured in a laboratory, but your body can only extract and use 120 calories (I guess you, ahem, excrete the other 60 calories).

The above article comes with a fun little quiz to demonstrate some foods that have fewer available calories.

For many years, people have been describing this phenomenon on 3FC. I know when I am eating clean (rare these days!), I lose way faster than math would predict, possibly because everything I eat is just a bit lower in calories than I think!

I'll admit I seriously thought a calorie is a calorie up until I read an article recently & then it all made sense. If I eat clean (which is hard) I really don't need to calorie count at all.

I've always sort of subscribed to both schools of thought... Like yeah, don't get all your calories from processed food and if you're going to gorge do it on the good stuff, but if you want that 300 calorie processed snack once in awhile, treat it like 300 calories of your allowance if you count and move on to your healthier thing next time you're hungry.

Even with processed foods and thats all you ate, I'd bet you can lose weight as long as you are eating small enough portions. It would be unhealthy for a dozen other reasons, but for strict weight loss without worry of health, you could do it. I've seen people with candy diets on TV that can't gain weight, but are super unhealthy.

Good thing most of us here though are pursuing healthy lifestyles though and not just slimmer bodies :) Thanks for the update and reminder Novangel!

Personally I believe a calorie pretty much is a calorie in terms of pure weight loss. That said, the calories from some foods are more available to the body than others. In general, though, I think it is false to think that if you are eating unprocessed foods that you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight. The calories still matter.

Having said all that, I have been very deliberating removing very highly processed foods from my diet and limiting other processed foods. I do this for 2 reasons.

First, I think the foods that are less processed are generally healthier foods for us. Second, I think that the food industry designs highly processed foods to be very attractive to us. The more we eat of them the more we want. That is not very conducive to weight loss or good health.

Everyone pretty much stated points I agree with. I wish I'd known this in my 20s when I'd do 1200 calories a day. McDonalds yogurt parfait 2 lean cuisines, and some popcorn. I'm sure all of that was awesome for my metabolism. I probably get to eat four times as much food now (1800 calories) since veggies take space. :P.

Someone posted an article in the weight loss news section, here is the thread: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/weig...ml#post5160274

Basically, it isn't that a calorie is not a calorie but digestibility plays into how calories are consumed by our bodies. The differences appear to be fairly small except in nuts, which are not as calorie dense as previously thought although they are still calorically dense. The calorie difference may be enough, especially nuts are a major part of your diet, to cause a stall when you are near your goal weight. For many other people, the caloric difference probably wouldn't be that great (100-200 calories/day, maybe 300 if you incorporate lots of nuts).

So even if you are eating unprocessed foods, you still need to count calories or keep track. Trust me, I know. I eat very few processed foods but I have to keep on myself to make sure I don't overeat.

Here's a couple more I've read recently:
Science Reveals While Calorie Counts Are All Wrong
Why Most Food Labels Are Wrong About Calories

The second one is short and I think explains the point very concisely. My favorite part is recognizing that learning to cook food was so important to our ancestors because it meant they were able to good more calories out of their food - hugely important when you don't know where you next food will come from!

It also makes me wonder if I am doing myself a disservice turning my fruits and veggies into smoothies. I imagine that makes them more easily digestible which in turn means I'm absorbing more calories. On the other hand, there's a difference in the amount of calories you absorb from cooked potatoes if they are hot versus cold! Crazy stuff man. Definitely a lot of thoughts about this and I'm so intrigued by the science!

The rules haven't changed, we just know a few more of them and now more non-scientists understand them. A calorie has never been an available calorie, and many of the reasons have been known for 50 years or more.

Calories are units of energy, essentially the "burnability" of an organic substance.

Cellulose fiber calories, for example, are inaccessible to humans. Wood therefore has a considerable calorie content, but humans cannot access them. An apple has more available calories for a cow than for a human.

Even though we've known this for decades, fiber calories still are not routinely subtracted from calorie counts on food labels or in calorie counting resources. They can be, but it is not required in the USA and rarely will US food labels state whether or not fiber calories were subtracted, so to know, you have to redo the math yourself (assuming you know how).


There are many other factors that affect the amount of calories your body will be able to extract from a specific food, or from all of your food in general. While some of these are new discoveries, many have been known for nearly as long as calories have been measured.

At best, calorie counting for weight loss, using available calorie-listing resources, gives you a "worst case" (for weight gain, it would be "best case") estimate.

Unfortunately those resources can leave the impression that 1500 calories of Oreos and Doritos will have the same effect on weight loss as 1500 calories of tilapia and broccoli.

Even in the 1970's (which is about as far back as I personally remember) you could easily find information from reputable sources that refuted this assumption, but it wasn't always communicated in popular resources. Even doctors and other medical and weight loss professionals would often intentionally mislead patients (and would admit it when confronted) because they thought the accurate information would only confuse the average patient (We weren't deemed smart or responsible enough to handle the truth).

The science has never claimed that all calories are equivalent in the body (that a calorie is a calorie), it's only the diet industry and individuals in dieting culture who have made that claim.

I'm going to avoid the science talk because I don't know enough about it to contribute. However, putting the technical function of calories aside it is easy to witness the effect of food on your body! When I started intuitive eating I was like a blind person wading through food in a hole new manner. I knew somewhat that different foods made my body feel different things but I chose foods based on prescribed dietary guidelines rather than on what I wanted instead. Once I took off those training wheels and started to eat based on what my body asked for I was surprised by how obvious the differences were in how food affected my body. That info was always there, I was just never looking at it directly.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that because each food plays a role in how it affects out body that means that the calories in that food affect us differently too. Who here hasn't realized that a 300cal breakfast of a bagel vs a 300cal breakfast of yogurt with nuts and fruit have vastly different effects on how our bodies function throughout the morning? That includes energy, satiety, mood and digestion!

You guys don't have a commercial grade $30,000 calorimeter in your kitchen so you can experiment on this kind of stuff yourself? Jeez, maybe it's time to take weight loss more seriously. :P

Also "clean" calories will get you lean thin over fluffy thin. I'm definitely fluffy thin because I suck with discipline. I agree everything in moderation, even clean cals, but I will definitely be hanging around the fresh produce aisle more often than not. I mean obviously we all know what foods are better for you but now I know that lean cuisine calories are not a better option (weightloss wise) over clean food that might be 100 calories more...

why would you think calories would get you lean? Muscle gets you lean. You could eat fewer processed foods and lose weight but if you don't want to be fluffy, start lifting weights :)

...and eating lean protein.

I agree with a number of the points made in this thread, especially lifting weights if you want to be lean.

And, yea, the less processed a food is the better it is for health and satiety (the latter of which helps with weight loss).

But, IMO, a calorie is a calorie when it comes to weight management.

Great information Kaplods, yeah I will eat 800 calories worth of pizza and wonder why it makes me gain vs. 800 calories worth of fruits, veggies, high fiber bread, etc. I assumed it was because the pizza raises blood sugar and the carbs are stored as fat? Or perhaps that the fiber moves it along out of my body before it can be fully absorbed vs. simple carbs with little to no fiber that are easily broken down for energy, and the excess is stored as fat.

I know that. :) I'm saying people with very lean bodies lift and don't eat any processed food...people like Madonna. I'm not saying I'm trying to get to 1% body fat because I don't have that kind of discipline but you get my point.

I really don't eat a lot of processed food to begin with, I just eat too much and don't lift enough. I guess my whole point to this thread was to figure out if all cals are created equal and I think the end result is yes and no. Depends.. but like the previous poster said 800 cals of pizza will more likely result in a gain vs. 800 cals of veggies, but not necessarily. :dizzy:

Actually, I saw an overview of various athletes and what they ate recently. One guy basically only ate chicken mcnuggets (very lean and muscular), another guy who only ate mcdonalds (lean and muscular), michael phelps - swimmer (who eats insane amount of calories and all of it is processed). So there are definitely people in the world who eat processed foods, are very lean and muscular. I'd say in general from what I've seen, athletes often have crappy diets. Madonna is an anecdote, of someone who expends a lot of energy doing yoga (bodyweight work) and dancing and also she keeps her caloric intake low enough to have a low body fat given her caloric expenditures.

and 800 calories of pizza generally results in a gain due to all the salt. Again, if you read the article that was posted, the actual caloric intake difference from processed foods vs non-processed foods isn't that large, not large enough that you still don't have to count calories if you are prone to weight gain. For some people who only have 10-15 lbs to lose, maybe switching from processed foods to non-processed, may get them to their goal weight but for the rest of us, there is no short cut.

By the way am I the only person that went running for the fruit after reading this thread ;)? lol I ate 2 apples yesterday, while I love fruit that isn't like me.

Personally, I am becoming more and more convinced that insulin primes the fat pump. So sugar plus food, especially fatty foods, equals fat gain. Cut the processed sugars and it becomes an equation of muscle gain or fat loss depending on how much you eat and for the former lean protein really helps with lifting.

I don't think it's "new". I think it's the result of bad information promulgated by the government and big pharma/food/agriculture with economic and political agendas. And the fact that obesity rose as the reliance on high-fructose corn syrup and the proliferation of processed "foods" rose is most definitely NOT a coincidence.

Now, it's not really that "simple". It's still complicated. And I agree, too, that with eating as clean as possible (and, yes, it IS hard) it makes obsessing over calories easier. I mean, to constantly count calories just makes me nuts and doesn't work for me anyway and it's much healthier overall to not eat loads of processed food and just allows for a much easier time to not overeat at all by keeping a much more even keel blood sugar.

And, yes, we have to lift and exercise, not to lose weight but for the health benefits. I think the true question of whether a "calorie is a calorie" will always be debated.

Well its not that insulin necessarily primes the fat pump but insulin helps move things into the cells. Actually for weight lifting, eating carbs and protein is recommended after workouts because glucose will replenish the glycogen but the insulin helps amino acids into the cells. That is why you will see many weight lifters guzzle down a sugary protein concoction after a workout. You can achieve the same thing with whole foods such as fruits and sweet potatoes as well though.

And obviously if you are eating extra calories, and your body can't burn off the glucose in your body, it is going to turn it into fatty acids and store excess fat.

And cutting processed sugars is generally good advice for weight loss and maintenance but it depends on your metabolic rate, how well your body deals with spikes in blood sugar and some other things on how sugar might affect you personally.

We just all need to go find Grandma's cook books from the 50's and live off of it. Almost nobody was obese back in those days...and if you're over a certain age you know most of our meals were prepared and eaten at home. Going to restaurants was a very occasional thing.

Well we also forget that up until 30 years ago, people moved a lot more than they do. The digital revolution has widened our booties more than anything. Even if you worked in an office, you often walked to talk to people instead of emailing. I think there are a lot of factors that go into todays obesity and you can't point to one thing. I've even seen some things that point to air conditioning as a potential factor. That is interesting because I grew up in a house without AC (and I'm in my late 30s)

I don't buy GMOs causing weight gain though because I haven't seen any evidence, most of it is just conjecture.

I guess I am a little confused, but why did the Twinkie diet work if it wasn't just calories in and calories out?

I always gain when I eat more processed food of the same calories but I always figured it was because of the high salt and carbs which hold onto water. I always thought this was true, but literally my friends at the gym literally just convinced me of calories in vs calories out and I feel like I just wrapped my head around that, but apparently it isn't true anymore?

I guess I'm just feeling out of it because I started cooking on my own recently and I eat fairly clean but my weight has been going up and it's a little depressing! I felt like my lean cuisine and diet soda worked a lot better but I know it isn't the ideal situation at all, blah.

How did the Twinkie diet work. It is a "forever" way of eating? There is more to life than just losing weight. There is more to our bodies and our health than fitting into skinny jeans.

It still very much is, and always will be calories in and calories out, we're just learning that it isn't always easy (or often even possible) to precisely measure those calories.

The Twinkie diet worked because the guy ate less than he burned, but he probably would have lost MORE, and felt fuller and physically healthier if he had made healthier choices for the same calorie count (using current calorie counting resources which overestimate the calorie content in many healthy foods).

The new research only suggests that our current math is not entirely accurate, not that math itself is useless.

You don't have to calorie count correctly or at all to lose weight. The scale will tell you if you're cutting calories enough to lose.

The real takeaway here is that choosing the healthiest, most wholesome, whole, natural foods for your calorie dollar will generally result in the best weight loss.

And, as an added bonus, you'll get a higher volume of more filling, more nutritious food (even if you use the current, unadjusted calorie counts).

Oh I see! Thank you for explaining that! I misunderstood what it meant when I read about the twinkie diet.

I think I can easily eat a lot of volume even of the healthy stuff which is why counting is so important to me (it also eases my mind knowing that I'm calculating everything)

Every time I think I found something long term, I reach a bump in the road, but I agree that incorporating healthy foods is something I need to be better at! My fear is that I eat healthier, but weight loss doesn't follow if that makes sense?

The Twinkie diet worked because he ate fewer calories than he burned. In a person with no confounding health issues, fewer calories in than out will pretty much always work, no matter whether the calories are healthy or not, processed or not.

The question is whether the standard measure of a calorie in a laboratory is an accurate representation of how the body can use those calories. For example, an ounce of nuts may have 180 calories in the laboratory, but your body can only access 120. Other foods, such as meat and high-protein dairy and foods high in fiber, are the same -- the scientific calorie count is more than your body can extract.

If your diet is heavy in these types of foods, your body cannot access all the calories you are consuming. Based on labels, you may have calculated 1500 calories in your day, but if your body can only access 1250, or 1300, or 1350 of them, you are in a greater deficit than you think!

Nope. That's not it.

A calorie is not a calorie.

There are foods which you can blow the calories with and you will not gain an ounce. You may not lose either. But you won't gain fat.

I call it a ratchet effect.

Try getting fat off of salad and lean protein with low processed carbs. Eat as much as you like. You can't do it. At best you will maintain.

To lose, cut calories.

To avoid getting fat(ter), change what you eat.

FWIW, I'm not sure that people 30 or 40 years ago moved all that much more than we do now. I was a child in the 1960s and remember the food/movement environment quite well.

Yes, we didn't have computers and we did play outside after school. I do think that was a bit more movement.

Adults? No, I don't think they did move more. It is common now for adults to purposefully exercise. We run or we walk or lift weights or go to a Zumba class or do an exercise video. I don't know any adults who did those things back in the 1906s. My parents occasionally (not often) went water skiing. That was about it. Exercise was not something that most adults did. It is true my parents didn't have a dishwasher, but I don't think washing dishes (most of which I did) burned all that many calories.

The real difference between then and now was the food environment. Fast food was just starting to appear. Servings were small. My parents allowed me to have a Coke on most days -- usually a 6 1/2 oz. Coke, occasionally a 10 oz. King size. We didn't eat a lot of junk food and there wasn't much processed foods in the stores (well, there were canned vegetables). You didn't have the very sophisticated advertising that you now see from the food industry. If you went to a restaurant (rare in my family) you ordered a drink and you didn't get free refills. And, it was in a small glass.

What has changed in the wide array of highly processed foods, the huge serving sizes in restaurants and fast food, and the advertising of food in a much more sophisticated manner.

Koshka, there has been a lot of talk about NEAT in the past decade and it is just general movement that plays a part in the calories that we burn by doing every day things. NEAT has gone down a lot. And as far as exercise, even those that recognize they have a low amount of daily movement struggle to exercise. Sure you can say more people purposefully exercise these days but are those people that purposefully exercise regularly the ones most likely struggling with obesity?

My grandparents built their house in the 1950s and my grandmas washroom has a scrub board. She used to wash a lot more clothes by hand. Also, I know my mom talks about how they used to not have a car and would have to walk or take the bus everywhere (but you still have to walk to the bus stop). And again, I know there has been a lot of talk about how office work has even changed so that people are more apt to stay at their desk. Beyond that, as someone who was born in the mid 70s, I do remember a lot more daily activity but also partly because up until the mid 90s, we didn't have a clothes dryer so we hung all our clothes outside and although my parents got a dishwasher in the mid 90s, they never used it (my parents moved to a house with a dryer and dishwasher). A lot of daily movements like that do effect overall calorie burn.

I do agree that serving sizes also play a factor because people not only eat large portions when they eat out but then serve the same size portions at home. And sure there are a lot of calorie dense foods that are readily available which doesn't help either :)

I think that although food is the major factor of obesity, lifestyle does play a role. Those small calories that you burn doing household chores add up big time. They used to have to get up to change the channel in past years. Lawn mowers were of the push kind, not the sit kind. Cloth diapers had to be hand washed. These are very small things but they do add up.

We did get outside a lot more as kids but my grandparents generation were hardly exercising like we're trying to do today to stay thin. I wish I could lose from housework, I'd be 120p by now. Sure house work and such helps but they all stayed thin and I think it's because 99% of meals were eaten at home. Also, being Italians their meals were VERY carb heavy with wine as well. They were poor too, but nowadays poor usually means buying cheap processed or fast food. I run like a maniac for months and stay at maintenance. Granted I admit I eat too much at times which is counter-productive but there's things in the food that wasn't there 40 years ago.. I'm not talking about GMO's but the antibiotics, additives, hormones, flavor enhancers..etc. It's hard to avoid and organic is expensive.

This reminds me of an episode from Mad Men, season 1 or 2 I think. The Draper's new neighbor was a single divorced mom and all the women in the neighborhood would gossip about her presumably because it was unusual to see a divorced single mom in their social circle. One of the things they were gossiping about was that this woman would walk around the neighborhood, going nowhere in particular (i.e. exercising).

I actually think I end up eating less volume if I eat something which fills me up quickly and keeps me feeling sated longer by not pinging my blood sugar. And the calculating thing is exactly why the answer of calories in, calories out will always be debated. For you, it's soothing. For others, like me, it's soul killing and plays with my head. So I really have no idea calorie wise what I usually eat.

I believe, but have no empirical proof, that eating healthier will translate to the body finding an equilibrium of a healthy weight. Now, it may not be the weight we WANT; but most of us are usually guilty of wanting a too-slim shape anyway. I am still trying to prove this, though, as I still have a bit too much actual fat. I keep saying I need to tone -- and one of these days I will -- which is probably what will eventually do it for me as I have stopped losing and can't seem to jumpstart it again quite yet.