To summarize some of the major points:<p>1. Calorie counts on labels undercount by up to 18%<p>2. Other factors to weight than pure calories, including genetics<p>3. Certain foods have low calorie counts but are worse than others with higher counts<p>4. Eating whole foods is better than non-whole foods and helped the subject of this article lose weight better than calorie counting & exercise<p>Worshipping whole foods is not the answer, you need balance. Plus who wants to live life like a Buddhist monk? Having a burger or pizza every once in a while is fun, it's just about moderation.<p>I'm calorie counting right now via a food journal, trying to stay under 2K a day (I also exercise 5-6 days a week, often 2x a day), and I'm oddly enjoying the experience.<p>One, I can't cheat myself. Before I'd get frustrated trying to lose weight and failing, feeling like I tried really hard and "deserved" it. But with the calorie count you know if you did or didn't. It's very easy to forget or not realize how much you're eating exactly, that's why you write it down.<p>Also, I feel rewarded if I eat salads every day, like I'm getting points in a game or something. Not everyone's brain works that way but for me calorie counting makes dieting more scientific, at least somewhat.<p>Articles like these are somewhat unhelpful because yes it's great to eat whole foods but so is 1) watching what you eat 2) relying on moderation and 3) exercising.<p>P.S. Didn't like how the article implicitly denigrates running as a weight loss tool just because this one person didn't succeed doing it -- not exactly a rigorous analysis.
In this case perfect is the enemy of good. The calorie is not perfect but I don't think there is a perfect measure. Is it good enough for a diet? Yep.<p>Make a diet plan. Eat for two weeks. Record result. If you are losing 2 lb a week good. If not adjust percentages. You will be hungry. The end.
Quite a headline, I was hoping for some revolutionary new model or adjustment to physics and the known laws of thermodynamics but instead I found the same tired arguments of denialism and ignorance about dietary guidelines and why people are fat to begin with (hint: fat is stored excess energy, that excess energy enters the body through the mouth).<p>> Most government guidelines indicated that, as a man, he needed 2,500 calories a day to maintain his weight (the target for women is 2,000)<p>Those guidelines alone are a recipe for rampant morbid obesity, and most people eat far more than that as evidenced by the rapidly expanding obesity rate. The majority of people are simply far too sedentary to recommend anywhere near that level of caloric intake, given the levels of obesity they could easily cut those guidelines by a third if not in half. Or even less if they wanted to promote cures to obesity related disease like type-2 diabetes.<p>By the way, eating about 800 calories a day will cause weight loss (not surprising, laws of physics still apply) and reverse type-2 diabetes.<p><a href="https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-diabetes-can-be-reversed-with-a-low-calorie-diet" rel="nofollow">https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000552/type-2-...</a><p>Oh well, let the science denial continue. Whether it is weight and obesity, evolution, climate, pollution, biological sex, evolution, flat earth, creationism, in the modern era facts no longer matter.
Bullshit. Yeah, calorie counts on packaging is imprecise. Yes it's difficult to know for sure. Yes there are a lot of small factors that go into it.<p>You know what you do with fuzzy measurements and personal bias? You over-count calories and round up deliberately to off-set it. You know what you say when someone tells you that your micronutrient balance isn't just right? "Probably. But obesity will kill me before that will."<p>Source: one drunk guy who has lost >100 pounds and kept it off for 3 years.
Here's a fact which blew my mind when looking for a healthy cereal: most <i>ice creams</i> have fewer calories per weight than even the low-calorie cereals. Right now comparing Weetbix (97% wheat, considered basically health food by lots of people) to a pack of RJ's licorice (37% sugar, definitely tip of the nutrition pyramid), the Weetbix is listed as containing <i>more</i> energy by weight. That at least intuitively seems completely broken.
The advantage of calorie-counting is that it's quite easy - especially when you use something like My Fitness Pal. That doesn't mean it's correct, of course.<p>What alternative is this article advocating?
It sounds like the person described in the article consumed a <i>lot</i> of calories from sugary drinks (gatorade and fruit juice are both mentioned).<p>Considering that sugary drinks tend to have very low effects on satiety, it's not surprising he was hungry all the time.<p>Many of the effective non-calorie-counting diets have turned out to just be good ways to reduce calorie intake.
> Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University in Boston, has found that labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an average of 18%. American government regulations allow such labels to understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure that consumers are not short-changed in terms of how much nutrition they receive). The information on some processed frozen foods misstates their calorific content by as much as 70%.<p>I've found the problem is that they'll also vastly underestimate the size of a serving or a product. Things will be much larger than the nutritional information would suggest. A food scale is a must.
I recently watched the documentary "Cooked" on Netflix. In it, Michael Pollan makes some interesting observations about "real food" vs "industrial food", and the benefits of long cooking times, sourdough bread vs. yeast bread and so on. It echoes many of the same observations as this article.<p>That's not to say that he's 100% right about everything, but I think there is a very good point to be made that we ought to eat more home-cooked food, instead of fast food and processed food products optimized for production costs and shelf life.
Long article, but main points that I got:<p>- That fat creation is influenced more by how fast sugar enters the system (and the insulin response that follows) than caloric content.<p>- Simple carbs (white bread, pasta) are quickly broken down into sugar<p>- The rate at which sugar enters system (glycemic index) triggers a proportional insulin spike<p>- Excess of insulin hormone is what triggers storage of fat<p>- Counting calories without also considering more influential factors like glycemic index of foods plays a major role in failing of weight-loss initiatives.<p>- Exercise is healthy, but diet plays a larger factor in body weight: ~75% for most people.
The first paragraph of the article mentions that Camacho was traumatized by a kidnapping that involved torture and a mock execution. That made him a victim of PTSD that made him put on weight. It's not clear how relevant this is to the rest of the story, but to an amateur like me it seems obvious that treating the PTSD directly would be a better approach than solving the problem by counting calories. Of course it's still trivially true that calorie balance completely determines weight stability, so it would be stupid to dismiss calorie counting if you have trouble with keeping your weight stable, whether it's too high or too low.
A key is to eat fruit/vegetables, with no limit, with their fibers and flesh. They act like a sponge in the digestive system, releasing nutrients very slowly and uniformly<p>Also, get used to fasting (18 hours and more), that's actually very regenerative for the body
Behold, The Hacker's Diet:<p><a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/</a><p>Written sometime back in the 1990's, the author (creator of Autocad) determined that weight gain and loss is simply a feedback and control problem. Most of us eat open loop. By counting calories in and calculating your weight trend[1], and adjusting calorie intake accordingly you can deliberately control your weight. Simple, right? :-)<p>Iv'e tried it. It actually does work. Mostly. The cool thing about it is you don't even have to count every calorie you eat. Just eat normal and start the weight trend measurements. After a while you'll see what your trend is and his online tools will calculate how many calories of intake you should reduce (or increase) to give you your desired rate of weight loss (or gain). Finding a way to cut 200 calories a day, for example, is easier than counting every calorie.<p>The downside is, I think, what this article gets at. Twice I've focused hard on using The Hacker's Diet and lost a good amount of weight, but as I dropped I started to get really hungry and fatigued all the time. It was weird. At first it felt <i>really</i> good to weigh less, but it became very hard to maintain. My best guess, and this article seems to support this, is that the composition of my calorie intake wasn't optimal (or even close to it). Both times I lost my will and gained the weight back.<p>It's interesting to note that he mentions in the book that he's "weird" in that he eats all his calories for the day in one big meal in the middle of the day. "You don't have to do this," he assures. And now, 30 years later, there is a loud group of people who do exactly that in order to lose weight (see: Intermittent Fasting). This article also mentions eating 3 meals with no snacking in between is better than grazing all day.<p>Anyway, just thought I'd share that in case anyone is interested. I have no easy answers. I'm not hugely overweight, the gains and losses I'm talking about here are on the order of 20 to 30 lbs over the course of a few years each time. Take all this as is.<p>1. weigh yourself everyday, calculate an exponentially smoothed moving average
Related video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE2lna5Wxuo</a>
I just cannot take seriously anything that claims exercise and calorie restriction are ever ineffective. It's literally always user error. The law of thermodynamics dictates this, any other opinion is pseudoscience. It might be difficult or impossible for the individual to stick to the plan, but if you start off your article by claiming they did everything right and it still didn't work, then I know the writer has no interest in facts.