^^That, plus the Mayo Clinic link was broken.

It is correct that basal metabolic rate isn't a large issue in normal people, you aren't talking about normal people here. You are talking about fat people.

Once your body adjusts to a certain weight, your metabolism and various chemical levels adjusts to that as well. When you try to go back down in weight, your body doesn't care one bit. You lose weight and your body thinks it is starving. When the body thinks it is starving, it stores extra energy as fat.

This isn't new science. This has been considered fact for 15+ years.

The problem with a lot of these weight loss programs, especially calorie in / calorie out or ketotic diets, is the assumption that everyone needs to make massive sacrifices to be thin or stay thin, plus "oh, look, I lost 45lbs in 3 months!" This is dangerous advice and it's proven to not work for 60 years.

Food for thought: do you know weight loss centers don't make money when you to lose weight? They earn their money from fees when you gain weight, and if you notice, they aren't going out of business. This is where the lion's share of our "nutritional science" has come from. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but that's the just the reality.

Sorry, but thin people aren't teetotaling skim milk drinkers who never eat fast food.

I'm sure you guys can provide numerous peer reviewed citations if what you're discussing (that energy balance is not the primary determinant of body weight) is actually settled science (note: Fat Studies doesn't count, and neither does that atrocious HuffPo article on "everything we know about obesity being wrong!").

If you're just trying to neckbeard your way to "a diet made up of predominantly higher satiety non- or lightly processed foods has a higher frequency of success than trying to cut on 3 Happy Meals a day, for reasons related to hunger/compliance", then fair enough, and I agree. Anything past that is going to require more than the hormones version of shialaboeufmagic.gif.

DaveT appears happy to just play broscience buzzword bingo and speak authoritatively on a topic about which, based on his posts, he actually displays negative practical knowledge, so I'll just extend the offer to OP that he can feel free to mosey on over to H&F and we'll help you out.

I find it funny that this thread has devolved into the same tired old useless debates about nutrition and nobody is responding to the most troubling part of the OP. He is going to deny himself the basic need of intimate human contact because his body is less than perfect in his own eyes.

That's the ****ed up part. Man, I'm 50 pounds over my ideal weight. Used to be 70, but I'm working on it. I still get laid. I'm not sleeping with 10's or anything, but everyone is deserving of being loved by someone. Or, at the very least, to have someone but their mouths on our genitals every once in a while.

Replace the *****s with w e i g h t-l o s s (leaving out the spaces, 2+2 thinks it's spam).

what about calories in vs calories out?

cant it all just simplify to that? what am I missing?

like that one professor who was on the twinkie diet and lost ewight

Yeah I'm going to need a cite to a study where they gain/lose weight without changing calorie intake or expenditure.

I've tried calories in/out by itself, and the same amount of calories in/out using IF. Lost weight more easily with the latter, FWIW. Both doing HIIT and weight training as well.

Also had decent success with this diet; it's not quite keto, but it does limit your simple carbs: https://darebee.com/mealplans/focus-abs.html

what does that mean : o

I basically agree, but "thermodynamics" is kinda the smug answer and scientifically analyzing weight gain/loss this way ends up being imperfect (because there's energy in poop) and a "food calorie" is either somewhat arbitrary (the system actually used to calculate it based on ingredient types and averages) or tautological (the amount of usable energy contained in food, which could very well differ from person to person).

Intermittent fasting. Only eating in a set time period everyday. say 8 am- 2 pm then fasting the other 18 hours.

grunch

I just look at it as Daddies Gone Wild.

Lift up those shirts boys!

Let me give you just a couple simple examples of reasons why caloric intake does not ever truly equal to "calories in" and why the composition of the diet matters. You can very easily verify these facts and research them further.

The biggest component of the solid mass of human feces consists of the carcasses of short-lived gut bacteria, which live on some of the calories you eat. The composition of and quantity of your gut bacteria affects your energy absorption from food. At any given time there are roughly as many bacteria in your gut as there are human cells in your entire body. Your "calories in" are affected by this live-in partner and what he likes to eat.

Second, we count carbohydrates as having 4 calories per gram, but this is only true in a laboratory calorimeter, not in a human gut. Many components of plant food (100% of your carbs come from plants) need various kinds of gut bacteria for you to digest them, and it varies. And some parts are consumed by the bacteria themselves, and not by you. So your energy available from carbs depends on both the makeup of your gut biome, and the type of carbs you eat. And guess what, you get the full 4 calories from simple refined sugars, but not from most other carbs.

Then there's the well-known insulin spike phenomenon that affects how much of your calorie intake gets stored as fat. Suffice it to say that for most people, 3000 calories a day of twinkies will cause more weight gain than 3000 calories a day of vegetables and meat, if continued long term. This does not contradict the twinkie diet professor who lost weight. He very carefully maintained an 800 calorie a day deficit in his diet, and ate some of it in wholesome food, not just twinkies. If he had eaten his previous equilibrium calorie level all in twinkies, he would have gained weight because of the effect on various hormones.

Once you learn to love the body you have, you'll have the body you love

And adding to my post two posts up, this:


https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...are-all-wrong/

We're not talking about a guy with 6% body fat trying to get contest shredded. A 5' 9" dude @ 250 lbs needs to eat less food. Doesn't matter if it's nothing but jelly donuts.

How much more weight-gain long term? Say, a calorie surplus of 500 daily for a year. Math says the vegetable guy will gain 52 pounds. How much weight will he gain if it was just Twinkies in that year? 55? 70? 110?

Correctamundo Mat, great post.

This thread is terrible so I am almost guilt-free on this question.

BUT THE CAVEATS ARE IMPORTANT

everyone is different, our brains play a huge role, our bodies change to require more or less calories as we change our lifestyles ....

I've lost weight before, the only times though were when I changed my life also ...

with every caveat you can imagine in play, at the end of the day, is it REALLY calories in/calories out? I accept that such a simplistic formula is more or less difficult depending on the person. But is that really an equation that impacts everyone? I know it is difficult for some people, but is the underlying key to weight loss really as simple as "consume less calories than you burn?" Or is it possible that formula does not work for some bodies?

feel like I just asked if 1+1 really equals 2, and now I need to duck



ETA: most diets revolve around changing calories in/out ... my advice to anyone is to find other ways to change your life. If you develop a new interest that requires less fat on your body, that interest, hobby, exercise, whatever, can subsume other ideas (like, "eating is fun!" and "let's go out every day!").

Losing weight is hard. Changing your life is hard. .... But if you change your life, a lot of times weight loss can come as a side-benefit.

Failed paradigms and this one weird tricks itt

No argument from me. The sidetracks were responding to other points that were brought up. People who still believe today that "a calorie is a calorie" need to be informed otherwise.

Sure there are small differences among people, I believe mostly in metabolism but likely also in energy uptake (if that's the right word). But the research shows differences among people are so small as to be safely ignored, except for when there is a medical issue.

The strawman the CICO deniers have built for themselves is quite impressive.

No kidding. 'A calorie is just a made up thing by scientists so something something laboratory chow meow ERGO YOU CAN'T JUST COUNT CALORIES IN VERSUS OUT!' is pretty spicy.

The guy who mentioned how minuscule the BMR change is depending on fat vs muscle composition gets it.

Diet is important but 95% sounds ridiculously high.

I start every day with 4 slices of cinnamon raisin toast with jelly, my second breakfast usually includes a (gluten-free) muffin and my third breakfast often has a pretty high amount of sugar, too. I also almost always eat dinner less than two hours before going to bed and have ice cream and/or candy after.

This morning, I had my regular first breakfast followed by my Sunday longrun and biscuits & gravy with 2 beers and right now I am waiting for my third breakfast, German pancakes to get out of the oven.

That’s not a super healthy diet and most people would probably be pretty fat if they ate 3-3.5k calories a day on average. I walk >20 miles/week, run 4-5 times, cycle 4-5 times and swim 3 times. I am pretty sure that being active over 20 hours/week has a pretty big impact on my weight..