Calories In, Calories Out (CICO)—Is it The Whole Story?
Once again, not much time for blogging. Pounded the keyboard until 1am last night, until good and tired. But, then found I was so jacked that the last time I glanced at the clock before drifting off was 3:30. Up at 8:30 with 5-hrs uninterrupted, and back at it with clear and purposed enthusiasm. Just now, at about 12:30, I had breakfast at the desk. You simply must try my Filipino-inspired garlic fried rice.
Garlic Fried Rice with Chicken in Lo-Fi (plus a few familiar items, especially if you “vape”)
…In yesterday’s link-up post, I got a good comment from Rs711 that’s worth sharing, along with my response.
“there’s no escaping the fact that eating less than your body requires to maintain weight over time looses weight and eating more gains you weight.”
It HAS to be true given enough time for the energy conversion processes to occur. However, we also know that you can’t gain / maintain weight drinking 2,000kcals of only water—all foods lie on a spectrum affecting how we convert their energy into mass (fat, muscle or other).
Again, ‘calories in calories out’ must hold true but it still doesn’t tell us anything about how or why different foods ‘behave’ the way they do.
What it does do is play down the obvious differences between real foods and (supposedly) edible-items (after all, if everything is just energy…)
My response:
“Again, ‘calories in calories out’ must hold true but it still doesn’t tell us anything about how or why different foods ‘behave’ the way they do.”
Well, this is kinda Taubes’ line. Fine, but I also think Paleos in general understand a lot about this, having tried different mixes of foods by now. And I think what it comes down to is that because protein cannot long term be more than about 30%, then it’s a teeter-totter between carbs and fat and what seems clear to me is: high carb? Fine, then low fat; and if high fat, fine, then low carb. What seems to be clearly ill-advised is high fat AND high carb….which is an apt description of a lot of processed food and even home cooked “comfort food” (think mashed potatoes loaded with butter and cream/H&H/Milk, with a fat-based roux and milk or cream based gravy on top; think chicken fried steak with the same gravy—plus the mashed potatoes with still the same gravy; think fried chicken, with, you guessed it: same taters & gravy…and don’t forget the bread & butter, 500-1000kcal fat-dressed salad, or dessert) I’d wager that in the long history of human home cooking, “comfort food” with copious carbage and fatage is responsible for more obesity and ill health than the brief history of processed and fast food.
The fallacy, as Fed Hahn found out, is the simplistic notion that carbs make you fat per se. Simply not true, and done right, from natural foods, I see no compelling evidence to suggest it’s unhealthy, either. Too many rice, legume, potato as staple eating populations to just dismiss.
All that said, the question I’m most interested in is: why do we eat to excess no matter what the macro composition? Insulin? Leptin? Other hormones? Or, more fundamentally, is it the 100 trillion bacteria in our gut whose chemical secretions influence such hormone release and signal resolution. It’s the latter where I’m placing my bet.
I’ll add to that last thought that, given the positive anecdotal results for so many from so many realms—from blood glucose control to satiation to sleep to vivid dreams to feelings of well being to bathroom habits to body temperature to body composition, and on and on for those supplementing resistant starch—that: it’s that latter that represents the most likely complete picture. Just fucking think about it. There’s 100 trillion of them to your 10 trillion human cells, in up to 1,000 different strains, with 3 million non-human genes that dwarf our 30,000. There’s 900 times more of them in a single human than the total number of individuals who have ever lived.
The idea that some single—or even a few in cocktail—synthesized drug-conglomerate product—given a government monopoly to score billions—making it worth it to spend hundreds of millions on advertising fit for Saturday morning cartoon time—is as fucking implausibly laughable to me as those stupid commercials designed for these kind of people:
Voters, Healthcare and Drug Consumers in Training
The Occam’s Razor, more plausible answer is that we can’t possibly begin to understand what everything it is those gut bugs are all about … how they interact … communicate …do… individually and collectively—and all depending upon the strains present and their relative proportions, one to another. Hopefully, one day we’ll understand a lot more but it’s probably a long way off, since we don’t even seem to understand—much less agree on—what causes obesity (overeating does, but then why, really, do some people overeat and others never do—no matter how much palatable, rewarding food you put in front of them?)
I’d say that the ‘drugs and more drugs’ approach is hubris on the part of medical science; but for that to be true, ignorance can’t justly apply—unless they have hubris over their own ignorance, but faith-based religious people have the space locked. Ignorance in the scientific realm is a valuable thing, of course, so that’s always changing, always ushering new realms of ignorance, and so on. So, that’s really my prime mission now. That’ll still take a while, so hubris is probably a long way off, yet. Profits demand it.
Alright, discussion is hereby open. Keep yourselves occupied while I work on that ignorance deal.
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I wish we could uninvent the word “calorie”, it’s the worst possible measurement of food.
anthonycolpo.com/the-inescapable-reality-of-calories-in-calories-out/
Energy In (corrected for digestion) = (BMR/RMR + TEF + TEA + SPA/NEAT) + Change in Body Stores
Thanks Los. Yep, reading Colpo’s The Fat Loss Bible is what finally did it for me and stopped me from being stupid. He meticulously reviewed every single metabolic ward study available in English ever done in history. Low carb, high carb, low fat, etc. Didn’t matter. Sure, there were slight differences at the margin, between individual. This is the “complexity” CICO deniers and metabolic advantagists always tout, but it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in everyday life long term. There is simply no point in futzing over the difference where under the same parameters, subject A loses 1 lb per week and subject B, .95 lb.
“Colpo became irrelevant a long time ago.” (Jimmy Moore)
Hence the basic problem with the LC industry: Most of the people involved don’t WANT to fundamentally change how they do things – e.g., eat less or smaller portions. So they find elaborate hacks that allow them to remain gluttons – or provide convenient rationales when they fail (“My metabolism is deranged!”).
You can’t just look at the scale as it doesn’t tell the whole story. I’ve been doing the potato hack diet recently (a caloric deficit diet), and it does similar things to my body as doing a low-fat diet. Much of the lost weight is muscle size in addition to fat loss. Perhaps much of it is lost glycogen and/or water. Dunno yet. All the equations and detailed blogs still do not explain that (calories) are just a piss poor means for quantifying how the energy in food gets metabolized in the body… it is not enough to say “corrected for digestion” as we currently know about digestion. Is there a flaw in Dr. Attia’s logic here? If so, I’m not seeing it…
“Is it relevant to our bodies that olive oil has about the same energy density (i.e., calories) as biodiesel (also known as fatty-acid methyl-ester)? Or, is it more relevant to us that consuming olive oil has a very different effect on our bodies than consuming biodiesel beyond anything to do with the calories contained within them? Obviously consuming equal caloric amounts of olive oil versus biodiesel will have a very different impact on our body. Why then is it so hard to appreciate or accept that equal caloric values of olive oil and rice could also have very different impacts on our body?”
eatingacademy.com/nutrition/do-calories-matter
correction… “it does similar things to my body as doing a low-carb** diet”
Sorry, I know this subject has been beaten to hell and back for years. But heck, it’s complicated and multifactorial. Can we just agree that yes CICO matters as does macro % and individual food choices?
liquidcalories.com/30day.html
The 30-day diet is over, but the project rolls on.
Here are the official results of my 30-day fest eating
nothing but McDonald’s from March 26th through April
24th, 2004!
During this period, I ate 60 servings of fries, 61
sandwiches, 66 McNuggets, 12 hashbrowns, and 27
desserts. I supersized a total of 18 times and
consumed 24 LARGE fries (you know, the trans fat
special!)
I ate lots of ice cream…had tons of fries…and loads of
burgers! I ate those fried McNuggets and McChicken
patties! I consumed many sausage patties! I chomped
down on 2 DOUBLE QUARTER POUNDERS and never got the McSweats, McTummy aches, or the McHeadaches!
My daily average of fat was 124 grams, 35 grams sat
fats (tons of trans fats), 3,000 mg of sodium, almost
300 grams of carbs, 18 grams of fiber, and 69 grams of
protein. My daily caloric intake averaged 2,500. My
highest was 3,670 and my lowest intake was 2,010.
I never drank any WATER during this time…only diet
soda! I never ate one salad or any yogurt parfaits!
So, after eating this horrible diet…a diet you
wouldn’t even recommend to your worst enemy, this is
what the diet did to my body!
I lost 8.4 pounds…(160.6 —> 152.2)
I lost 2″ around the waist…(33″ —> 31″)
I lost over 3% body fat… (14% —> 11%)
That’s the outside…but what about the inside…let’s run
those numbers!
My cholesterol dropped 33 pts…(204 —> 171)
My Triglyceride count dropped 24 pts…(89 —> 65)
My HDL lowered 8 pts…(57 —> 49)
My LDL dropped 20 pts… (129 —> 109)
My Glucose dropped 5 pts… (85 —> 80)
My Chol/HDL ratio dropped…(3.6 —> 3.5)
My kidney, Thyroid, and Liver results came back all within
range! No damage to report!
These labs were conducted using a USAF medical
laboratory! So you can bet they are accurate with no
foul play!
Interesting, Charles. Well, Tom Naughton showed largely the same thing. By limiting kcal to 2k average, keeping carb to 100g average, passing on fries and sugar water, he lost 12 pounds as I recall and all his internals improves as well.
I’m not much of a fast food slammer. I think it’s as good as most home cooking in a lot of respects, and better in others, such as sanitation practices. I mean, look at the billions they serve and a contamination event is a rare deal. I’m perfectly happy with McD moving into pro countries. Decent nutrition, good sanitation.
OK, now everyone can shoot me.
Incidentally, I said much the same thing a couple of years back in my first visit on Latest in Paleo podcast, when that guy who had just dated his 27,000th Big Mac, that he eats 2-3 or more of per day, for years, was in the news (yea, he’s perfectly lean and healthy looking. But, he also never gets the fries.
I did a big write-up on the nutritiony stuff of the McDonald’s McDouble a while back for anyone that keen:
highsteaks.com/mcdonalds-mcdouble-greatest-most-bountiful-source-of-nutrition-or-death-on-a-bun/
Ash:
All your Exotics are Belong to Me.
I don’t think you can call McDonalds “good nutrition”, but to understand it you first need to check through the perspective of newer diets – like Wahls protocol or Perfect Health Diet. Eg. where are the 9 cups of colorful vegetables per day as dr Teri Wahls advices? Is wheat in their buns a safe starch?
Then you need to check how does McDonalds diet look in practice – not in a cherry-picking way, eg. that they have one or two good products, and someone knowlegable can eat them, but how they advice you to eat – you are supposed to eat their sets, and these include a soda and fries – with the tendency to sell you enlarged versions of those, not of the meat.
One of the interesting points about Don Gorske (the bigmac record breaker) is that he doesn’t have any bad epigenetic legacy – he’s the first generation eating junk food, his ancestors were traditional eaters. Since the worst stuff happens in 3-4 generation and forward we have to wait and see.
Flapping the wings back to Australia tomorrow, been an amazing journey around NZ for most of a month, but gotta say thing I missed most apart from “doing nothing” with all the travelling was getting around in a sports car.
Did probably 5,000km of driving over here – in the gf’s parent’s second Corolla from 1986.
God I miss my Lotus.
I want to see Charles’ actual blood work reports. And remember, lower cholesterol is NOT necessarily better.
But I won’t buy this story till I see copies of the actual reports.
@charles – Seth Roberts showed that you can decrease your weight just by the change of diets itself – eg. diet variability. So if you ate non-junkfood previously and then changed you diet then the change in and of itself is a factor.
What is the most risky on long-term junk food diet is lack of micronutritiens. What’s your source and amount of vitamin C on McDonalds diet, where do you get sulphur from, magnesium etc.? You may just still have large stores of fat-soluble vitamins and some minerals from your previous diet, so in 30 days the deficiencies won’t show up.
Try such experiment for few years – it’d be valuable then.
Low cholesterol is a pretty good predictor of malnourishment.
perfecthealthdiet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/O-Primitivo-Cholesterol.jpg
liquidcalories.com/nutrition.htm
Day 1-30
liquidcalories.com/nutrition1.htm
Day 61-90
liquidcalories.com/nutrition2.htm
MY DAILY CALORIC INTAKE AND FOOD SELECTIONS BEYOND THE 90 DAYS
liquidcalories.com/Chol.html
liquidcalories.com/whatamieating.htm
That McDonald’s diet stuff is pretty funny – I wonder if Tom Naughton (Fat Head) heard of this guy, never heard it mentioned before.
“…the question I’m most interested in is: why do we eat to excess no matter what the macro composition? Insulin? Leptin? Other hormones? Or, more fundamentally, is it the 100 trillion bacteria in our gut whose chemical secretions influence such hormone release and signal resolution. It’s the latter where I’m placing my bet.”
I’ve been thinking along these same lines for several years now. The mineral profile and concentration in food crops varies tremendously from one plot of ground to the next. For example, cattle grazing on highly mineralized grass consume less food. Excerpt: “It has also been observed that when given high Brix grass, cows eat only half of the amount of grass they would eat when fed low Brix grass. The pasture, which had a high Brix, consisted of various grasses including fescue and timothy. In this case, the cost of forage fed to the cows was immediately reduced by half.”
For gut microbes to reproduce efficiently they need an adequate supply of fuel, amino acids, and minerals. Efficient gut microbe action produces lots of heat which disperses into the body and is an important temperature regulating component. In addition, the calories expended through fermentation are not available to meet the energy needs of the body. I’ve written and commented about this extensively in the past. For example:
bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/unabsorbed-calories-important-consideration
sparkofreason.blogspot.com/2008/06/energy-regulation-1-do-calories-count.html
Profound thinking about the entire micro biome. I wonder which will be first, full understanding of the working of the brain or of the working of the micro biome?
A second thought, will we reach a point when a randomized controlled trial won’t be considered fully randomized or controlled unless the gut biome of participants is considered in the randomizing or controlled for?
“randomized controlled trial won’t be considered fully randomized or controlled unless the gut biome of participants is considered in the randomizing or controlled for?”
Monkey wrencher! :)
FWIW, longtime intermittent lurker, I’m half way through my own resistant starch attempt. I’m not able to track biomarkers, but I’m hoping to see if I can get my wife (she has colitis) to give this a shot. Low carb Paleo of various strictness hasn’t helped enough to ditch her $3,000/year meds, but did help mildly. Going to moderate carbs also didn’t make a difference for her. Our bottle of SBO probiotics arrived today which I’m eager to get to testing.
I’ll be sure to report if this makes a difference in her gut health, I’m sure you won’t mind another anecdotal N=2…
Bing it on Eridk, be as careful as possible with confounders like meds.
Rikard, I do agreee that the trillions of microbes in the gut play a key role in regulating energy homeostasis. The “calories in, calories out”/”a calorie is not a calorie” debate usually has to do with the different macronutrients and how they impact hormones, satiety, and the thermic effect of food, BUT while these things certainly have a role in all this it’s clear that our second/microbial genome is the key to understanding the low-level chronic inflammation that drives weight gain and obesity.
I don’t know if you saw the VERY interesting hypothesis in The Journal of Bacteriology which basically suggests that bacteria in the gut control the appetite/food preferences of the human host ) This makes a lot of sense to me, and could be very important in terms of understanding eating behaviour. I also wrote about the link between the gut biome and host appetite on my blog a while back:
organicfitness.com/does-the-human-microbiome-influence-food-cravings-and-dietary-habits/
organicfitness.com/emerging-evidence-shows-that-gut-bacteria-control-your-appetite/
Most of the talk about fructose vs. glucose, thermic effect of food etc. seems to be a small fish in the sea compared to 90% of the cells in our body, the microbiome.
The problem with the CICO model is that the calorie is a terrible control parameter for managing your weight (and health). Its underlying model is the heat engine, which is completely inappropriate for the human body. The problem is that if you say to anyone that the body is a Complex Adaptive System (CAS), at best they give you a strangle look and at worse they think you’re bullshitting them. If we want to get closer to the truth we need to treat the body as a biological system that is an intricate network of interacting biological processes. Ask a biochemical engineer to create you a simple model of the body and they will use multiple interconnected bioreactors — tell them that you’re going to put whatever materials you feel like into the model and that you’re only going to control for calories going in and they will rightly feel insulted and probably tell you to piss off! The only way to properly control a CAS is to use an empirical process control model, which uses frequent inspection and adaptation; this is the idea behind the N=1 approach of Paleo, start with an approximation of what we think we are most likely adapted to consume, see how you respond to this and adapt, the feedback signals we use are things such as appetite, skin condition, mood, sleep, weight, etc (not frigging calories!).
@edster. Hands clapping.
@edster
I don’t think anyone disputes it’s a very complex system or at the margins there will not be variations. For instance, put 2 people of the exact same mass in a met ward so they also have the exact same _physical_ energy expenditure feed them precisely the same foods and quantities at the same times, same amount of water, etc. there will be measurable differences in weight gain or loss. But not by a lot, presuming both are normal healthy.
Calories is merely a convenient measure, just like miles per hour or any other kind of measure.
It’s very fucking simple. Want to lose weight?
1. Eat smaller portions or fewer meals or both until you begin losing about a pound per week.
2. There is no number 2.
“But not by a lot, presuming both are normal healthy.” Now there’s the rub, what would such an experiment actually tells us? Nothing really, other than to (poorly) confirm the physics of thermodynamics. That’s the problem with the CICO model, it has little to no utility when it comes to managing your weight. What I’m much more interested in is how to hack the body to control weight and optimise health, as you’ve been showing so well with the use of resistant starch. A biochemical model does demonstrate utility as it can suggest far more hypotheses and experiments that will lead to deeper explanations and hence value. The CICO model really should be retired, it’s overly simplistic, limits exploration of viable options and distorts people’s thinking.
There is no CICO model. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Normal people get abnormally fat because they eat too fucking much.
End of fucking story. Not interested on anyone’s bullshit over it. Been hearing it too long, amongst tons and tons of people who can’t lose weight no matter how low their carbs. It borders on fucking evil.
LC is fine, but it’s not about carbs it’s about eating too much. Eat less meat and fat, you’ll begin to lose weight.
The only, only reason to consider anything but raw calories is hunger regulation. All the insulin shit is total bullshit.
2 ways to lose weight. Brute force ignore hunger, or find the mix that works so you don’t feel it as much , not at all, or can easily manage it. The latter is where gut and RS might play a role, in my speculative opinion.
LC has been somewhat effective for a lot of people because of satiation in the midst of eating less energy than needed.
Anybody who thinks it’s magic low carb is a fucking moron and I’m just going to keep saying that over and over and I give a shit who knows.
Fuck the low carb movement. They’re fucking dishonest and I’ve had enough.
“find the mix that works so you don’t feel it as much, not at all, or can easily manage it.” I think I’m in ‘furious agreement’ with you! I’ve just taken the long way around to get to your point. I’ll shut up now.
@edster
Check out this post of mine from 2009.
freetheanimal.com/2009/01/hunger.html
Richard, a new TED talk has recently been posted about why diets don’t work. I think you may enjoy it, seems congruent with your theories.
on.ted.com/DietsDontWork
Oh, I started watching that yesterday and clicked it off. Perhaps I wasn’t paying a lot of attention but my impression was that eating is very very complicated, and that is certainly not my idea.
These are the salient points I got from the talk:
* Your brain also has its own sense of what you should weigh, no matter what you consciously believe. This is called your set point, but that’s a misleading term, because it’s actually a range of about 10 or 15 pounds.
* … people who have lost 10 percent of their body weight burn 250 to 400 calories less because their metabolism is suppressed… This means that a successful dieter must eat this much less forever than someone of the same weight who has always been thin.
* Set points can go up, but they rarely go down… Successful dieting doesn’t lower your set point… Sadly, a temporary weight gain can become permanent. If you stay at a high weight for too long, probably a matter of years for most of us, your brain may decide that that’s the new normal.
* … learning to understand your body’s signals so that you eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full, because a lot of weight gain boils down to eating when you’re not hungry… Give yourself permission to eat as much as you want, and then work on figuring out what makes your body feel good.
* In the U.S., we have 80 percent of 10-year-old girls say they’ve been on a diet. Our daughters have learned to measure their worth by the wrong scale… What if we told all those dieting girls that it’s okay to eat when they’re hungry? What if we taught them to work with their appetite instead of fearing it?
@edster, this isn’t completely wrong but is overly simplified and missing some important points. That your body composition, hormonal outputs, and the composition of your diet all have effects on your caloric requirements and calories in/out. Eg., it’s been shown in studies that eating high-fat/low-carb diet versus low-fat raises daily calorie expenditure by upwards of 200 calories per day, even with caloric equivalent diets and amount of physical activity.
Also, the amount of muscle mass (and related insulin sensitivity) has an effect on adding or burning calories and body fat. Ie, more calories going to support the muscle and/or filling muscle glycogen stores.
You can’t just look at the scale. Looking in the mirror is a better gauge. Lose fat but add muscle mass and your lower weight “set point” is more likely to stick.
@BrazilBrad, if our set point range is fixed in the way she relays then it doesn’t bode well for folks in general; however, if it is possible to shift the range in the right direction, as you say through the right sort of diet and exercise, then there is hope for everyone. As a general principle, helping people to avoid ever becoming obese looks to be significant: the impression the media pushes of liposuction, gastric band surgery, extreme dieting, etc is very dangerous as it encourages people to believe that putting on weight is no big deal as you can easily get rid of it through radical intervention later (and probably appear on reality TV too!). It is indeed a lot more complex and nuanced than many would have us believe, especially the CICO crowd, what we need though are better models and guidelines (e.g. high-fat/low-carb diet, greater strength, etc as you say) to help us move in the right direction.
I was thinking of cooking up a big batch of potatoes once per week and storing them in the fridge and eating them cold during the week… Hopefully getting some more resistant starch and even possibly using the potato hack. Seems convenient for work too. How long is it safe to keep cold precooked potatoes in the fridge before they go bad or are unedible/unsafe to eat?
Probably a week if fridge is at correct temp. But if you are concerned and wanna be extra safe, freeze half and thaw mid week
The overall problem of applicability of this hypothesis is that measuring calories out is highly impractical. For example outside of laboratory conditions nobody weights his poop and analyzes its contents, which is a necessary component for proper measuring of one’s particular calories out. Even thermal output is difficult to measure – if you go outside it depends both on weather and the clothes you wear. Even estimations are too cumbersome for applying in everyday life. Not to mention cases of having parasites that suck energy. I also haven’t seen any estimations of energy expenditure for intellectual tasks, similar to what is available for excercise – we know from MRI or SPECT scans that brain can be activated or not, but how does this convert to energy used?
@GTR, yeah I’ve often wondered about this. Everyone talks about the 90%? (if I remember correctly) efficiency of digestion… as if it’s iron clad and the same for everyone? Some smart blogger dudes seem to think it is. But is it? Regardless of the person, their gut flora, effects of meal size and different mixtures of macro ratios, fiber, fat, etc. I find it really hard to believe given the variances between various people (VO2 max, muscle mass, strength, and on and on) that everyone’s digestive system works exactly the same with the same efficiency at digesting all substances.
Logic would seem to dictate that in order for everyone to digest the same with 90% efficiency AND for those nutrients to be metabolized (used) at the same rate/quantity that would require everyone to have the same makeup and levels of at least… gut flora, hormones, and digestive enzymes.
I can’t see how that could be possible. So the CICO and calorie model is based on some average, right? That ain’t a very good model for an individual, even if you assume that model is relatively error free. For one thing, if the model includes the effects of gut flora, when was this data collected, for what group of people, and how has their average diet (and flora) changed since they collected this data?
It’s always about the individual. Energy maintenance for 150 pound individuals is always going to be different, based on activity level, hormones, health, probably gut health, climate, level of clothing worn, how much bedding they use and what they set their thermostat at.
But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if any normal individual eats more than maintenance on average and for a consistent and long time, they will put on weight and if they do the same thing eating less, they will lose it.
@BrazilBrad – there is a guy named Jonathan Bailor, a naturally thin man, who made an experiment with eating 6000 kcal per day, and each of his feasts ended up in a toilet.
(around 25 minutes)
There are also slimming herbal teas utilizing the same rule – eg. those that contain senna or other natural laxatives. Eg. you eat a lot during a party, then drink those herbal teas, and the excess calorie problem just goes away.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senna_(plant)
@Richard – what you are telling here are multiple variables that cannot be measured – per person: what the calorie maintenance level is for a given time, what the calorie output is, and even what the calorie input is – the last one can only be estimated, but not measured in non-laboratory settings, as even food with calories stated on the label gives them with +/- 10% accuracy. This makes it impossible to use CICO as a way to control one’s fat level.
But estimations are useful anyway, just for different purposes. First would be trying new foods. Assuming you know your food, and know that this amount of your current (baseline) food is appropriate you try to find a first attempt at the amount of new food is going to be appropriate?
The easiest way of course is to count calories of your current food, and use this as the first try on the amount of new food you should consume. But it may turn out that the new food has different properties that the old one you were used to – eg. different effect on hormones, so the amount would need to be adjusted up or down for it to be appropriate for you. But without the calorie estimation you’d be initially blind to what the starting amount of you new food should be, with long trial and error necessary, rather than just a quick adjustment.
So for just estimations, rather than relaying on it as a control mechanism of gaining/loosing weith calories are extremaly useful.
What they don’t answer though is the question why – and this question is crucial when it comes to weight loss or muscle gain or whatever. Even if they were possible to measure they would be like asking someone a question “Why are you rich” and getting an aswer “Because my income is high”. When we ask such questions we usually mean more primary causes, rather than almost-final steps to the end result.
Think more. Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky in his “Human Behavioral Biology” says that chess players can use as many calories as people doing hard physical labor. Bobby Fisher used swimming for aerobic fitness, seemed to work for him.
Maybe people who gain on low calorie diets are not thinking much.
“Robert Sapolsky”
Always nice when not too much time passes before he gets mentioned in comments. Captivating, engaging speaker. A true teacher in the best traditions.
Here are two old articles that I throw at people who think that matching calories in vs calories out is a good idea, or even possible.
Nonequilibrium thermodynamics and energy efficiency in weight loss diets
“A calorie is a calorie” violates the second law of thermodynamics
@PeLu
I have no idea why people insist on being so obtuse and stubborn on this issue.
Eat more than enough, on average, you will gain weight. Eat less than enough, on average, you will lose weight.
All this metabolic advantage (high protein is the only such thing due TEF, but you have to get near 50% of energy for it to make a dime’s worth of difference), thermodynamics stuff is just utter bullshit. Everybody should read Colpo’s The Fat Loss Bible so they can STFU and stop sounding stupid.
There is no need to count calories, however. Simply eat smaller portions, fewer meals, or both, and/or fast 24-30 hours once per week until you are consistently losing 1lb per week ON AVERAGE, then keep doing that. Every time you drop 5 pounds, reduce intake a bit more, because your requirements drop as you weigh less.
That last point is 100% of the why when people “stall” in weight loss. They reach equilibrium after weight loss. If you weigh 230 but want/should weight 160, then eating for a weight of 180 will certainly get you weight loss–all the way down to 180 where you “stall” and can’t figure it out. “Oh, I have to cut my carbs even more, because the only reason I lost 50 pounds was LC.” This is fucking MORON talk and I read it all the fucking time.
@RN : I’m happy my comment was food for thought (LC ? High-carb ? Zone ? Ornish? – look at me, making a joke:D ) …back to business.
It’s Taubes’ line to the extent that he popularized the distinction between ‘Physics’ & ‘Biology’ when discussing «health» which I think is an important step forward in the discussion.
Yes, Paleos have real-life N=1(‘s?) experiment(s) attesting to the fact that not all foods are interchangeable bags of energy…I wouldn’t go much further than that however: the WHY’s and HOW’s following that observation aren’t things you figure about via loads of N=1’s…Otherwise, chances are it would’ve already been incontrovertibly figured out.
Yes – of the 3 macronutrients, dietary protein intake must remain within narrower bounds than the 2 others (fat and carbohydrate). Logically, the latter 2 are the most ‘variable variables’.
« What seems to be clearly ill-advised is high fat AND high carb »
IMHO, too vague a statement to be correct. What carbs ? What do they come with ? What is your metabolic context ? Are you pregnant ? Are you lactose tolerant/intolerant ? As you can see it’d be very easy to find multiple exceptions to that statement…
« which is an apt description of a lot of processed food and even home cooked “comfort food” »
Yes – generally. But again, not necessarily…too many exceptions to the claim : I just had (organic) sweet potatoes and turnips swimming in coconut oil and grass-fed raw-butter as part of my lunch today. (Not that I think you are, but -) Your statement would SEEM to suggest that this aspect of my meal fits the « clearly ill-advised » part – somehow, I strongly doubt that.
Most of the examples you go on to give are nearly certainly not health promoting and we are thus in obvious agreement there.
« simplistic notion that carbs make you fa per se »
this is where it gets fun – probably not per se, but in the context of modern life they are certainly a powerful varibale in that respect. Nutrition is not binary (usually) : carbs in diet = fattening diet ; carbs outta diet = slimming… – – – i think we can all agree this isn’t the whole story (not even close).
The trend I’ve been seeing is : the more processed the diet is, the more carbs seem to promote adipose tissue accumulation compared to fat and protein..&…the more natural/organic/what-have-you the diet becomes, then carbs SEEM to play much less of a central role in instigating adipose tissue accumulation. In fact, carbs also SEEM to play an entirely different rôle when the context changes; like when they APPARENTLY help individuals past a weight loss plateau for instance. Here, we come back to the known but often forgotten concept : carbohydrate is 1 of our very ‘variable variables’. Thus it shouldn’t surprise us that ‘changes’ to how much we consume, when and in what form can have OPPOSITE effects (whatever they may be).
We know insulin has divergent functions in the body than it does within the brain (being dependent on feedback loops and what-not)…which leads me to ask : should we really be surprised that different physiological/metabolic/or-other contexts change the way our body handle carbohydrates ? I think not.
« why do we eat to excess no matter what the macro composition? Insulin? Leptin? Other hormones? Or, more fundamentally, is it the 100 trillion bacteria in our gut whose chemical secretions influence such hormone release and signal resolution. »
I have those same questions and I would also wager on the 100 trillion bacteria having a word to say in the matter (understatement of the year). But I’d do something more akin to spread-betting…
because rarely has a complete picture scientific picture stemmed from a centralized, 1-stop-explanation approach.
Glucose is a component of RS and skittles. Glucose is in fibers, used in ropes and by our gut bacteria….the same molecule or biochemical organization pattern of that molecule is a massive factor in how it acts upon a system, even before we consider which system it may be interacting with !
My point being : in no Bible is it written that a LC diet is automatically low in fibre (whether RS, insoluble or soluble etc..) – so if RS is in fact technically more like a fiber than a carbohydrate, what’s with the (apparent) implication of LC diets & RS-inclusive diets (for lack of a better expression) being on opposing ends of the diet spectrum ?
[I’m happy to eat the assumption in my question if it’s deemed unfair:) ]
PS : So far, the most well researched, objective and rigorous approach to explaining satiation, satiety, hunger etc., that I’ve seen is HANDS-DOWN J. Stanton’s (gnolls.org/index/#WAWHIndex)
Food for thought:
gnolls.org/3586/carbohydrates-matter-at-least-at-the-low-end-there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-calorie-to-…
I do not think the idea that certain macro combinations are better than others for promoting fat loss is bullshit. I do think it matters how you formulate your diet.
But, even on a perfectly formulated nutritional paleo/ancestral/oog-og/Jesus Christ diet if you eat too much food you won’t lose fat. But remember that every LC experts agrees with this.
But if you are going to eat less, what should we eat loss of?
Fred, yes, I agree. Most of the LC guys do seem to acknowledge the simple reality that eating too much gains weight and too little loses it. Just wish they would focus on the satiation aspects of LC as what’s really going on. More quality protein and fat, less, hunger, eat less food, lose weight. And yet, virtually all I see out there from LC dieters is that carbs make you fat and cutting carbs is the fundamental cause of weight loss in an LC enviro.
Just eat less of everything. I like Paul Jaminet’s PHD for the simple reason that his macro ratios are based on the macro ratios of breast milk, which is a forehead slapping duh to me. 30/50/20 c/f/p I believe. So, do the same macro ratios, just reduce all of it to keep it in same proportions.
I think the breast milk ratio sounds compelling but I don’t see it as a slam-dunk. Presumably it was adapted to optimize the immunity and growth of a baby. I don’t see that as proving it’s optimal for a no longer growing adult, though it may be.
Keep in mind it’s principally the insulin promoting hormones that promote the growth, assuming adequate CALORIES or ENERGY or However you care to term it. This doesn’t apply to PHD where your protein is principally meat, fish, fowl, your fats are natural and your carbs are starchy.
@Richard N. –
Do you eat fermented foods with any regularity (Sauerkraut, Kimchi)? I’m having such excellent results with 2tbsps. of potato starch, I’m becoming interested in further improvement through fermented foods.
Haven’t had any kraut since I ran out of the last batch I did myself. I do kefir regularly. Used to make that myself as well, but since I went PS, I figure I don’t need much of it, so I just buy a bottle of Lifeway ever week or so. I also drink kombucha now I then and in fact, last time I mixed PS in it (as I do with kefir). Trying to find a local Korean market with a kimchee bar.
Eirik, what on earth then influences people during the dark winter to go off their low carb diet and not be able to resist the baked goods in the supermarket? This is what gets me by about early March.
I’m hoping that the RPS will change the gut biome enough to make the Philipine style high calorie sweet lovely yeast raised cakes filled with godknowswhat deliciousness from diverting me from my usual route through the supermarket.
Agreed! This is just a hypothesis at this point, and I don’t think anyone’s saying that the gut microbiota is the only factor influencing our appetite… But just considering that microbes could be involved could have a significant impact on how we view diet, appetite and food preferences.
And I agree that those sugar cravings never go away, but it seems that most people who adopt a LCD experience the worst cravings during the first days and weeks.
Eirik, the only time of year I get a horrifying zombie-like wanderlust over to the baked goods section is about in March. Other than that, I don’t have sugar cravings. I’ve been low carb for at least 6 years.
Every winter it’s something different. Two/three years ago it was Paratha roti (not sweet but a caloric monstrosity. Who can eat only one when there’s a package of 6? Crash burn. I’ve considered eating one and throwing the rest out into the ravine for the raccoons. At one supermarket a person has to run the gauntlet of millions of roti and pita type things before getting to the vegetables and dairy. At least in the Chinese supermarket the baked goods are in a sort of alcove near the fish department. Easier to avoid.
Maybe short daylength has an influence on gut bugs too. Artifical light is just not the same as sunlight. Maybe there’s a feedback between the brain has influence on the gut and the gutbugs, not just the gutbugs on the brain. The pineal gland at work.
“I’ve considered eating one and throwing the rest out into the ravine for the raccoons.”
Ha, smoker at heart. Any ideas how many packs I’ve smoked a single ciggie from, tossed the rest?
Funny that! I tend to do the opposite:
– winter time: high protein and fat, lower carbs
– summer: high carbs, lower fat, moderate proteins
And I DO NOT do this consciously, mind you!!!! :D
“Who’s fat is it anyway?”, asks Petro in his 5 years old (!) post:
… Obviously gut bacteria are both careless and careful. That is, they don’t care about you or me. Their priority is to maintain an environment which is convivial to their own chances of repeated division. Keeping us alive helps….
high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.no/2007/12/fiaf-whos-fat-is-it-anyway.html
Here’s an example of a microbiome that cause extreme fat and lean loss.
directorsblog.nih.gov/2013/02/05/who-knew-gut-bacteria-contribute-to-malnutrition/
If only everything were simple.
@Mr. Hahn: the “if you are going to eat less…” statement implies that we choose to employ calorie restriction as a strategy for fat loss – presumably, because other solutions might have failed before, like; macro-micronutrient changes, changes to metabolism, exercise protocols, psychological/neurological/even social-lifestyle changes etc., …..and thus we are left with “well, you could always try to eat less’ default position.
[Caveat: Your experience training people is far beyond mine and I have no doubt that I would also be left with the feeling that restricting calories is the only way forward in certain hard cases…]
HOWEVER, I think that this is simply a reflection of how little we are able to explain and that the CICO model is a soft cushion of sorts we like to fall back on every once in a when we’ve seemingly exhausted all other avenues. The fact that we TRIED and FAILED does not necessarily mean that these solutions “don’t work” (although they might not), it could also mean we just applied them poorly, incompletely or didn’t have the knowledge to fine tune things further. Or that there are other approaches yet to be discovered etc.,
Also, if a person is a hard-case that has “tried everything”, what are the chances that calorie restriction will be the solution (irrespective of what they’re eating)? If they’re so ‘broken’ metabolically or how-ever-else, the oldest trick in the book “eat less, exercise more” is probably not going to work and will most certainly not be a sustainable approach even if it does work.
“[…]what should we eat less of?” is a great question that reminds me of the concept of opportunity cost. Looking at it from that angle, it seems difficult to justify a significant inclusion of foods that are not energy dense and micronutrient dense…
It may not always be the case the energy and micronutrient density as such is the key to satiation, BG control, etc. In my experience, cravings and hunger signal disruption can be about a single nutrient or nutrient group, and adding (or subtracting for that matter) one particular food or food group can resolve that.
@Gemma: I’m an avid reader of his blog and hadn’t fallen upon this article, fascinating!
I love the idea Petro put forward: bacteria live within us —> they can’t store energy —> what they can do is call on our fat stores when hungry (which may be built up by the bacteria…or the host…or both?)
Also, germ-free mice can’t gain weight (pretty much)! Assuming this translates to humans, it’d make a lot of sense to be built this way, where the obligate bacteria we carry around help us put on weight (whether fat &/or muscle)…because NOT being able to would be a severe survival disadvantage in world with food shortages (spoiler alert: ours!).
@RN: PeLu posted Richard D. Feinman & Eugene J. Fine’s Review ” ‘A calorie is a calorie’ violates the second law of thermodynamics” which is a quality scientific review.
Either a calorie is just a calorie or it isn’t…logically, one can’t have it both ways. A nuanced view we can have is one where we say “OK, all food-calories aren’t equal but how much do they differ, & how? Is it meaningful? Is it significant? Does it matter in practice?”
We already know a calorie isn’t precisely a calorie. TEF of protein falsifies that. Thing is, you’ll never notice until you consistently eat 50% or more protein for a good while! and even then! it’s only going to be slight. BTW, this is according to Marin Berkhan, a guy who truly knows his shit.
So, yes, just like Newton is technically wrong, his gravitational physics are good enough for most applications of human space flight. When we get near the speed of light, Einstein will have to prevail.
Using calories is plenty good enough to gain or lose weight.
In the past month, I went on a 90% fat, 5% carb, 5% protein diet. The bulk of my fats came from organic whipped cream. For the first 2 weeks I was glugging 3 cups a day. I cut back to 2 cups a day for the next week. Now I am very cautious about having any whipped cream. In 20 days of LCHF I gained 20 pounds!!! So, BULLSHIT to anyone that says “a calorie isn’t a calorie”. Turns out, 3 cups of whipped cream is 3000 calories, and I’m a sedentary individual, sitting all day in front of the computer.
Now, the Hacker Diet is coming to the rescue. The founder of AutuDesk released a tool to track your ACTUAL weight loss. The reason the weight scale doesn’t help much is this: your body takes in and gets rid of up to 13 pounds of “stuff” every day. 1/2 a pound of fat loss gets lost in the noise. The Hacker Diet tool does a special moving average over a period of 20 days and gives you an ACCURATE picture of how much fat you are gaining or losing, without that 13 pounds of variant “noise”. In fact, the Hacker Diet tool is even better than that: it will tell you exactly how much of a calorie surplus (or deficit) you are in.
Can’t measure the calories you burn in a day? The Hacker Diet tool actually DOES it… and all you have to do is weigh yourself every morning and put that measurement into the tool.
Here is the link to the (free) tool:
fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/HackDiet/
And his book where he explains how it all works, also completely free:
fourmilab.ch/nav/topics/diet.html
The author, who founded AutoDesk/AutoCAD many years ago, is hip to the Paleo scene. His “Hacker Diet” book is worth reading, I’m surprised more people here don’t seem to have.
Also, because “soylent” isn’t on the market yet, I’m supplementing LCHF with a product called “Alpha DMX”, so I don’t miss any of my vitamins or nutrients. It is a meal replacement powder used for diabetics. DMX has no carbs or fat, so I take 2 tablespoons, then I can fiddle with carb/fat ratios without worrying that I’m missing out on any essential vitamins, minerals, or proteins.
This is the product, I’m not endorsing it, it is just available and seems to work.
See for yourself; my exploding pant buttons weren’t lying:
Thanks for posting that, Mycroft. Got your email, among 200 others yesterday at least. Can’t recall if I replied or not.
Consider trying the potato hack.
Thank you Richard, I got your reply in the email. Once LCHF stalls out, I’ll switch to potato hack. For now, I’m in ketosis, and enjoying it. I find even though I limit my calories to 500 under maintenance, I’m not really feeling hungry.
You might consider popping 5-10 Uni-Liver per day. Grassfed Argentinian beef liver in pill form. Very high nutrition.
I had some bulk Argentinian liver powder. I notice that it almost tasted like chocolate. Perhaps the bodies way of saying “you need this stuff, it is good for you”. Because normally I detest liver. Lately I’ve also found I can eat raw grass-fed liver. It has a mild flavor, almost like buttery grass. It is like eating sushi. There are a lot of grass-fed livers available locally, due to some unique taxation laws that encourage owners of small holdings to graze cattle.
“There are a lot of grass-fed livers available locally, due to some unique taxation laws that encourage owners of small holdings to graze cattle.”
It always amuses me when people say stuff like this, not to say you don’t get it. How does taking money from people by force “encourage” rational productivity? Rather, what it really is is government recognizing that the overhead of theft makes certain products desirable by voters infeasible. So, they come up with a reverse vote buying scheme whereby they favor a certain enterprise (i.e., they steal enough less so the enterprise can turn a profit). And it works wonders.
Everybody believes theft encourages good things!
Taxation is theft and there is absolutely no way around that judgment. And I mean all of it, every penny, and I give a runny shit for the million rationalizations.
Stop taxation and especially of all businesses (it’s ultimately paid for by customers anyway) and then see what cleverness and innovation pop up.
Taxation may be theft, but the gubmint has more guns than I do.
I read Proudhon’s analysis of tax rates with tax income, from Roman times to present, and it was compelling. An advantage to being Secretary of the Treasury for the former Holy Roman Empire; you got access to data like that.
Mycroft
First, suggest you take a look at this:
The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America by Burton W. Folsom
Link:
Proudhon was a left Anarchist, or, Anarcho-Sydicalist.
“La propriété, c’est le vol”
Property is theft.
Hopefully I don’t need to explain how that’s self contradictory with Anarchism. In my experience, left anarchists are not anti-state at all, just another group of statists (like Libertarians, incidentally) who want government limited to do only what they want, such as enforce nobody holding property, but that’s exactly what it would require.
1000 cals per cup sounds high for cream given a cup of butter has 1600. You sure about that number and that it was pure, there was nothing added to the cream?
The government is kludge upon kludge. All this taxation stuff is them trying to compensate for one thing: they don’t have a coherent (and equitable) philosophy of property. They don’t know what property is, nor how to set boundaries around it. They keep redefining “property” every so often. We have centuries and millenia of conflicting visions of “property” all mashed together. When things are in confusion, the robber barons smash and steal. People won’t defend what they don’t know is theirs.
For those readers who don’t know Proudhon, he was an anarchist who somehow became the Secretary of the Treasury for France, and he saw that as tax rates went UP, tax income went DOWN, and vice versa. And he had the records from Roman times, almost 2000 years worth, and he documented this cycle happening over and over again. Government will actually benefit with more revenue when it decreases tax rates.
@MycroftJones – when it comes to the taxation a government could be smarter. There are corporations that have enormous margins (eg. designer clothes) over products, and there are also those that live on 5% or so. Unfortunately those that have high margins are able to clevery hide them from taxation. So if a government somehow found a way to reverse-engeneer the real profits that a company made on a product and tax it – they could increase their tax base without actually affecting those low-mariging producers, that are usually most affected if there is a single tax rate and it increases.
Not just the obese that have elevated levels of LPS in blood, but seems to correlate with BMI ( ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23349936/) A calorie is not a calorie in that sense because increased intake of fermentable substrates, e.g. RS, tightens up the junctions and reduce translocation of LPS, which lowers inflammation and improves insulin sensitivity among other things. Impacts bodyweight.. guess you RS-people already knew that, but not many studies have looked at endotoxemia in overweight ( mostly obesity)
Alan Aragon tackles ketogenic diets here:
Great video.
Eirik
Yes, anyone can point to disease causing both wasting and obesity disconnected from both caloric intake or macros. See cancer. When I was a kid, my aunt was a nurse and one cancer patient was drinking 5-10k kcal per day in milkshakes. Still wasted away. At the other extreme, look at the kids Lustig deals with with brain injuries who get morbidly obese on 800 kcal.
None of this has fuck all to do with carbohydrates and I’m fucking tired of the whole fucking thing. Tired of being polite about it, too. I’m talking about normal generally healthy people. For those, the vast majority, it’s all about how much you eat of drink, on average.
The obesity epidemic is entirely explained by people eating too much, and most likely because calories are fucking cheap, calories are cleverly engineered to approximate heroine, and industrial economies of scale permit advertising of cheap calories in the billions.
I’ll say it: my opinion is that carbohydrate as a principle cause of obesity in society is fucking moronic.
People eat too much and it’s as very simple as that. If LC works, it’s because it helps them eat less, and that’s the ultimate cause which means, macros don’t matter, principally.
Oh, here’s an example of a fucked up gut biome that causes wasting away.
directorsblog.nih.gov/2013/02/05/who-knew-gut-bacteria-contribute-to-malnutrition/
Not sure where I mentioned carbohydrate, and off course completely agree that carbs from real food really isn’t a problem for most people… Just added my two cents on gut bugs, inflammation, and weight loss
I used the Hacker diet very successfully in ’04 – ’05 then lost my way a little and used it again 06-07 to drop and maintain. I never did the weigh food, log food that he suggests in the ebook though. I simply ate as I usually did for a week or so and logged the weight, and looked at the trend. If I wanted to lose weight, I ate less of the same foods, rinsed and repeated.
The problem is that it does take some effort, and it can be difficult to stop eating when you don’t feel sated.
In 2010 I ‘discovered’ paleo and now I’m paleo-ish. I’m taking PS, after seeing another comment around here, and thinking it makes sense, I weigh it which I find easier. 30grams 1 or 2 times a day. I see the benefits most here speak of.
Great reminder of the hackers diet, I followed the link and it still remembered my username & password, and all of previous data is still there – last entry Apr 2011. I’m lower than I was then.
I plan on adding this back into my arsenal to help with losing that “last bit of stubborn belly fat” – hate that term, but that’s kinda what it is.
I think that with my paleo/real food guidelines, experience of IF and the help of RS a fuelled microbiome, along with the fast feedback of the spreadsheet I should be onto a winner. I’ve also been working on some good bodyweight workouts over the last year or so.
Thanks Richard, Tim & Grace for the work you’ve done on this and for staking your reputations on bringing it to light. I have a really good feeling about this.
Oh, and what is the drink in the picture? It looks tasty.
Phreebie
The drink is plain Tea Java, on ice. My fav.
As to your previous comment, you are more than welcome. I got an email last night of an amazing results, forwarded to my wife with the question “how could I ever quit?”
“You can’t.”
Seeing as how you have completely left the “paleo” diet behind, I’m curious as to your thoughts on Seth Roberts’ results on honey’s effect on sleep, the brain, and therefore the body. It is completely opposite to the low carb idea but seems to work. His evidence seems to suggest sugar in small amounts is essential to brain health. Would you look at his stuff and tell me what you think about it please?
Thanks
Ripken
I’ve not left paleo behind and furthermore, honey is perfectly paleo. In fact, it it the most cherished food of the Hadza, ahead of meat.
I’ve left LC behind, concluding it dumb and unnatural, apart from therapeutic uses such as obesity, diabetes, cancer and neuro issues.
There’s a few studies on alcohol vs the liver and SFA vs PUFA here:
CICO fails totally with ethyl alcohol. Calorie bomb, 7 kcals per gram. In humans, close to zero.
As a “professional” drinker :), I’ve noticed that my alcohol consumption doesn’t seem to count, or at least much, in my weight loss efforts.
I recently read a research piece where the took some alcoholics and put them in a met ward. The reward was free beer! I don’t remember the details, but the outcome was memorable. In very scientific jargon they were essentially saying, “WTF???” The alcohol calories didn’t seem to count. And that was with beer, pretty adulterated stuff compared to vodka.
BTW, there are a lot of mouse or rat experiments out there that show saturated fats prevent and even repair liver damage from heavy drinking. I’m 67, been a heavy drinker for years, and my liver function tests are right where they should be. Oh, in one experiment tallow was better than lard. So, the lipid profile makes a difference.
Pzo
Not sure that’s not individual. I know that if I abstain for a couple of weeks, I always drop 5-10 pounds.
At any rate, check this out in terms of liver. I believe it was Eades where I first heard that sat fat was protective of liver damage for us drinkers.
freetheanimal.com/2011/01/yikes-look-what-all-that-starch-did-to-my-triglycerides-and-alcohol-to-my-…
Richard, do you think you eat less food when you don’t drink?
I drink but not to the extent that I get drunk. All liver function tests are way normal. But I do find that if whatever I make for supper tastes really good and there’s more of it than I should eat, I tend to eat seconds.
Hard to say. Often I will eat very little at dinner if I’ve have more than 2 drinks prior. OTOH, drinking will definitely be behind almost every big burger & fries indulgence, pizza, sub sandwich, etc.
I remember that one. A simple search of “saturated fat” and cirrhosis turns up a lot of research. PUFA and alcohol kill your liver, SFA’s prevent and even heal a damaged liver.
I didn’t mean that alcohol has zero calories, but it is something way under to calorie bomb claim.
pzo, I think the problem with alcohol is it can stimulate the appetite and reduce inhibition thereby resulting in overconsumption of food. I figure there’s a huge environmental influence on this. As in, if you are in a social situation and there’s lots of appetizing food plus booze plus good company, then chances are more food calories would be consumed than the usual.
If a person can maintain control over food intake while being a little ‘relaxed’, then all good.
There appear to be two kinds of heavy duty drinkers: the big bellied fat ones and the almost cachectic ones.
In a met ward study where patients were drinking beer, was food available in a free for all manner? Or was it restricted in any way?
For me, drinking often replaces meals. I hardly ever drink away from home. Safe, cheap, and beautiful sundowns on the bayou here. In fact, getting together for drinks is a Sundowner.
Because I don’t eat wheat, I am not of the big bellied clan. Before Primal I did have a belly. Now, what belly fat I have is just lose subcutaneous. Nor am I that emaciated type. Even though I want to lose another 30 pounds, when I ride my bike to the beach and watch people, I’m amazed at how many, male and female, half my age, are decrepit relative to me.
Also, as a macronutrient, alcohol has 7 calories per gram (carbs and protein are generally 4, fat generally 9), all with basically no nutrient density.
Again this is where calories as a measurement falters – alcohol has a pretty high TEF, so your 7 magical “calories” become more like 4-5 of actual available energy.
And the fat conversion ratio of alcohol is somewhere around 3%, which means in order to turn alcohol into a pound of fat you’d need to drink like 3 gazillion bottles of vodka.
I can pretty much guarantee you’ll die of causes other than excess adipose if you live by the calorie rule and get them from alcohol.
Bullshit, Ash.
The problem with heavy alcohol consumption, other than the obvious toxic health risks, is not the energy of the alcohol, but the energy, amount, and kinds of foods eaten when drunk.
I just laf at how diehard LCers squirm, and that’s what you’re doing. Obvious. Look, I was there. But I refused to continue to look so fucking stupid publicly, anymore. So I emailed Colpo on a whim. I’m eating more carbs than ever (rice, beans, taters, prob about 30-40%) and easily avoiding indulgence because I feel satisfied, and I have zero cold hands and feet. And for the first time in a long time, recomp has become easy and natural again. Taking slowly
Low carb, for most, is the biggest fucking fool’s journey I’ve ever seen. And it’s amusing to me that most of the people finally realizing that are mid-40s to above. I’ll be 53 in 2 weeks.
In an normal, everyday context, calorie counting works perfectly. It’s indisputable.
OTOH, if one limits to real whole foods, counting is likely not necessary for most. I certainly don’t.
Bottom line: what we have is a bunch of LC advocates who haven’t really thought this through for themselves, are too young for much of anything to make a difference (I could eat fucking whatever until about 35), or combinations. Doesn’t matter. LC is simply not a “healthy low carb lifestyle.”
It’s fucking stoopid, is what it is (unless specifically therapeutic, like a drug).
And note. You’re coming in here to shout wait! Calories don’t matter because distilled fermented beverages don’t behave like real whole food!
Thanks for exposing your poverty.
Bullshit what? Everything I said there is full legit bro.
Stop being a dumbass Richard – I’m not even talking about “low carb” or “paleo” or “keto” or any other retarded regime. I don’t even know why you keep bringing this crap up.
I’m talking about how the “calories” in alcohol are metabolised.
If you really think the “calories” from vodka are the same as the “calories” from resistant starch or the “calories” from a steak or the “calories” from a tofurky or the “calories” from a Snickers are the same in the human body – you’re either fucking delusional, mislead, or lying.
FWIW I’m sitting here drinking some Crystal Head duty-free vodka on ice, and just ate some smoked Tasmanian salmon. Very much recommend.
Well, Ash, it seems I never see you except when I take a shit on low carb.
Come around more often on other topics, and I might just ascribe honest intentions.
Shoes and fits, man. Don’t ever BS me, I’ll treat you with the same respect, and hopefully one day we can compare Lamorghinis. (mine will be cooler).
Ash:
2nd, calm down and have another on my. Paypal an invoice.
Conciliatory. I wrote it with the last exchange somewhat in mind.
1989. With my ‘ole mate Keith Bradick from the UK, in front of my 1986 Chevrolet model, Vicarious Big Dick. I’d met Keith coupla months earlier on the other side of Earth, and we tromped around Pattaya, Puket, and Koh Samet Thailand for a solid month prior to my coming to Monterey, CA, and DLI (the Defense Language Institute) to go through a 6 month gauntlet of immersion French, presided over by 5 native speakers and one American, who spoke French better than the 5, and they admitted it. Keith changed his world tour plans and he and another English Gentleman (I use the term loosely) took a bus up from Ventura, CA for a coupla days. That pic is at the Monterey bus stop.
What makes the whole deal particularly cool, though, is that 4 months later, Keith, I, and Mark (a Monterey neighbor, Navy O like me, former Yokosuka USS REEVES shipmate and neighbor in Japan, studying Japanese at DLI) all met up in Thailand for another fucking month of debauchery! The funniest? We decided to snorkel around the entire Koh Samet. Mid afternoon. we were maybe 1/2 – 2/3. We got out and footed it across the island to the bungalows. Gravel roads. We were tender foots (now, I’d walk it like carpet, having walked barefoot for 5 years). I still have the image in my mind of the three of us walking the road in flippers, like incongruent aliens; which means: ‘no way they could have figured intergalactic space travel,’ Laf.
About a year or so later, I met up with Keith yet again in Pattaya, for a month, traveling over from my station in Toulon, Frtance; but this time we, along with a few others, rented a complete house outside of town with cable TV and everything else boring. We supplied the Thai Stick.
We did yet another trip to the fun Koh Samet with fav Thai grils in tow, where the generators shut down at 10pm. That was a kinda drinking excursions, as I recall.
I remember a bamboo dinner table and chairs in the sand, getting drunk enough to push yourself over backwards and just let yourself fall in the sand.
Then, everybody got naked and jumped in the surf and ocean.
facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151951823331137&set=a.437429361136.202489.724036136&type=1
So – how fucking stupid is Jimmy Moore for staying in ketosis FULL TIME? How much damage is he doing to himself and his followers?
“What seems to be clearly ill-advised is high fat AND high carb….which is an apt description of a lot of processed food and even home cooked “comfort food” (think mashed potatoes loaded with butter and cream/H&H/Milk, with a fat-based roux and milk or cream based gravy on top; think chicken fried steak with the same gravy—plus the mashed potatoes with still the same gravy; think fried chicken, with, you guessed it: same taters & gravy…and don’t forget the bread & butter, 500-1000kcal fat-dressed salad, or dessert)”
Exactly. This is why a so-called “High Everything Diet” that one guru promotes ends up putting 50+ pounds on everyone that tries it. Also, it explains why both paleos and low-fat “plant-based” folks have had success shedding weight and improving their health. Both camps think it’s impossible to follow each others’ diet with success. But maybe Mark Sisson and Joel Fuhrman can be right, at least mostly right. One thing the plant-based and paleos have in common is what they don’t eat (or severely restrict, at least): chips, sodas, high-sugar/high fat desserts, pretty much all fast and processed food.
Yep, JP and that goes for “Starch Mcdougall” as well, who may perhaps be the most right, only with the addition of small amounts of animal (meat, fish, fowl, eggs) protein and fat–which is pretty much what Asians (rice) and S Americans (legumes and corn) have been doing for like forever.
Richard, I don’t know if you ever read this article by J. Stanton, but it’s a gem when it comes to caloric density.- gnolls.org/2472/when-satiation-fails-calorie-density-oral-processing-time-and-rice-cakes-vs-prime-ri…. Here’s the punchline at the bottom- even putting nutrient density and satiety aside (which are no doubt super important), consuming 100 grams of either eggs and potatoes(cooked in butter) or extra fatty prime rib will give you fewer calories than the same amount of Puffed Kashi.
Repeating a quote I really like from Dr. Attia…Is there a flaw in this logic?…
“Is it relevant to our bodies that olive oil has about the same energy density (i.e., calories) as biodiesel (also known as fatty-acid methyl-ester)? Or, is it more relevant to us that consuming olive oil has a very different effect on our bodies than consuming biodiesel beyond anything to do with the calories contained within them? Obviously consuming equal caloric amounts of olive oil versus biodiesel will have a very different impact on our body. Why then is it so hard to appreciate or accept that equal caloric values of olive oil and rice could also have very different impacts on our body?”
eatingacademy.com/nutrition/do-calories-matter
@BrazilBrad
Love Peter Attia (in a bro sort of way) but that’s kind of a false analogy. He might as well have used gasoline instead of biodiesel, and that would have made it more clear how bad the analogy was.
@Charles, It would be helpful for you to explain why Attia’s analogy is bad rather than just claim that it is so. No, it’s not enough to say that gasoline/biodiesel is non-digestible and toxic to humans. That just supports his argument that calories are metabolised (or not) in different ways depending upon the substance.
@BrazilBrad, No one can intelligently dispute the reality that calories are metabolized in a different way. That describes the mechanism. But it’s not just the substance, it’s the state of the body in which the substance is metabolized. What’s more important, IMHO, is why we eat more than we burn.
“All that said, the question I’m most interested in is: why do we eat to excess no matter what the macro composition? Insulin? Leptin? Other hormones? Or, more fundamentally, is it the 100 trillion bacteria in our gut whose chemical secretions influence such hormone release and signal resolution. It’s the latter where I’m placing my bet.”
That insight may be the most important one that comes out of this RS/PS experiment. To me, much of the benefit of LC or Paleo or Ketosis may come from the changed or improved signaling function. It’s not so much what we eat that we have to fix, but why we eat, where does the motivation/drive/compulsion come from. Those approaches, for a while at least, deal with hunger. And that’s the force behind obesity, seems to me. And if we ignore the gut biome, and its imperatives (or fuckedupedness) we may be ignoring the foundation of a lot of compulsions. Will power fades away quickly in the face of real hunger, and you eat that second sandwich, have that third beer, or eat the piece of pie without even thinking about it.
Get the gut biome right, and the sense of satisfaction spreads beyond the gut. At least that’s my experience.
Addendum: What I mean by LC/Paleo/Ketosis dealing with hunger “for a while” is that they deal with it by shutting some signals off, not by fixing the signals. But at this point I’d say that strict LC is not sustainable, in the sense that it’s going to cause problems somewhere else. (Paleo means so many different things it’s not worth generalizing about, except to say it’s a good guideline.)
We’re on the same page, Charles.
@Charles, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that in the past humans had to expend quite a bit of energy to acquire food and there were plenty of times when one had to do without (times of fasting). So over-eating was balanced out with under-eating, combined with lots of exercise/calories-out. This is no longer true with modern man. Hence things like purposeful intermittent fasting and exercise have a big impact on health and body composition. In short, satiety and “eating to excess” is a modern problem because food is abundant and cheap and people no longer need to move to survive.
“without even thinking about it”… that’s a big part of the problem. You have to think, not just let your hormones and/or microbiota do the thinking for you. Their job is to make sure you have enough energy stored away for the famine that never comes.
@BrazilBrad, “Thinking” is vastly over-rated as an approach to health and weight loss. Hormones and other body signal-sources are much more powerful over the long run. Trying to hyper-consciously control all of your food inputs and energy outputs, measure everything, calculate macro-nutrient values is an unhappy way to live, and for most people, it just won’t work. Sure, if you’re coaching high-level athletes, it’s a good approach. But as a way of life, for a lifetime, you need to get your signaling generators and receivers in order. I don’t think you’re smarter than your gut bacteria…
@charles, on the other hand purposeful IF and CKD (eg. The Anabolic Diet) works very well and is not difficult at all IMO and others’. So “thinking” and applying an eating model that more closely approximates our ancestors over/under fed state seems to work very well, at least for a not-insignificant portion of the population.
@BrazilBrad, I’d tend to agree with that, if applied at the 30,000 foot level. But I still think the signaling functions are going to be the best governor over the long run, assuming they can be optimized.
And speaking of signal/noise, it seems to me that knowing (or suspecting) what we now know (or suspect) we need to go back and look at all the healthy paleo/HG/traditional cultures and look at what they did to ensure enough RS in their diets. That’s assuming we believe that RS is a necessary component of the diet to ensure healthy gut biomes. And at this point, that’s a reasonable hypothesis. So how did the Inuits assure that? Probably the fermented fish they would eat kept giving them more good bacteria. So is the hypothesis that you either need constant inputs of bacteria, or you need good bacteria consistently fed by foods that support the good bacteria? Can we find a healthy culture that doesn’t have one or the other? Certainly the SAD does neither, and look what we get out of that.