Calorie counting makes no sense.

[Subtle_badger]

Even assuming the CICO (calories in/calories out) model of weight loss is correct, calorie counting makes no sense. If you have a calories excess of just a tiny 30kcal (4 crisps or less than a teaspoon of oil) a day, you will put on 1. 5 kg (3lb) a year. We cannot know with anywhere near that level of precision how many calories we intake or expend

For starters, food nutrition labels only have to be +/-20% of the actual value,

health.usnews.com/health-ne...

and they may be even further out than that,

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/...

Then expenditure is mostly BMR (basal metabolic rate) and exercise & other voluntary movement.

BMR is calculated from a formula, and the most accurate of those is only 35.7% reliable.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

And for energy expended while moving, the best way most of us have is wearable and they can be more than 40% unreliable.

theverge.com/2018/1/24/1692...

So if, for example, you think you are consuming 2000kcal based on labels and expending 2000kcal based on BMR (1400) and your apple watch (600), you may easily be eating 200kcal more, and burning 700kcal less than your apps are estimating. Or vice versa. To maintain, we need to keep the balance at 0kcal, and even a 30kcal excess will lead us to obesity in a decade, yet the actual balance will be somewhere between -900kcal and +900kcal. If we rely on labels and apps we could be eating anywhere between 2/3 of the calories we need to nearly 50% extra.

Image © azquotes.com

[Eryl]

We mustn't forget that the brain is one of the biggest consumer of bodily energy, consuming 20% of the total.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Eryl]

Well yes, but that number is included in the BMR (but maybe why it varies so much 🤔)

[Hidden in reply to Subtle_badger]

Did you include Thermic effect of food ? as different types of food will require more or less energy to digest. (The common one is protein vs. junks trash🤣)

In my opinion, regarding food/drinks, there’s no way people can keep track each item and weigh to the exact oz or measure volume in millimeters accordingly. Who has the time and passion to do that anyways?😅 Everything is estimation to look at as a big picture.

Like anything, it has to be your true nature i.e. lifestyles to be able to maintain weight. Most are on yo yo diet, hormone shifts also so much making them feel even hungrier after a tremendous weight loss, hence all the weights come back mostly🤷‍♀️😂. I’ll say: Adopt a good mindset of eating habits, change your life! 😁👍

[Subtle_badger in reply to Hidden]

It's just another random number that introduces more error. And it's only 100 or 200 kcal, so it would be lost in the noise.

[Blueruth]

I think it is important to look at the bigger picture. There is no other measure that works well. A cal is a number though. Not all calories are equal either. A bowl of veggies has the same calories as a couple spoons of ice cream…both have calories but obviously one is harmful over time, given too much and one is healthy. If you choose ice cream you will be hungry by the end of the day if you stick to your calorie goal. Take that as a lesson to eat something that will actually fill you.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Blueruth]

Well, yes,

But my point is how do you even know they have the same calories? as both labels could legally be 20% out, one could be nearly half the calories than the other.

[Blueruth in reply to Subtle_badger]

get away from processed food. Noom uses a high/low density strategy. Low density are mostly not processed foods. You need a lot more to reach the same amount of calories. If you are loading your meals with low density foods exact calorie count isn’t as imperative. Any processed food is higher density. Some more than others . Olive oil is my favorite high density food. I have no doubt different olive oils have different calorie counts. It really doesn’t matter if I am using a tsp in a bowl of veggies and grains.

[Maxy6 in reply to Blueruth]

Noom sounds interesting

[Blueruth in reply to Maxy6]

I’m actually wishing second nature was available but it just made it to the us. The primary difference is noom is more low fat and second nature is more low carb. Noom is not no fat. Just lower and I constantly struggle with too much healthy fat according to their advice. I ignore it within reason. I paid until end of year so will see if I want to use a program at all by then. The education is good though.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Blueruth]

I personally would never use zoom for diet. I used to use their previous app, before noom was created. It was like strava but with better privacy control, which was their downfall. Sharing is power!

[Blueruth in reply to Subtle_badger]

What do you want shared?

[Subtle_badger in reply to Blueruth]

I didn't express that very well.

About 10 years ago I used an Android app called Cardiotrainer when cycling. It would use the phone's GPS to record my path and I could look at my trip on a map and see my statistics later. There are lots of apps that do that now, but it was rare back then. Eventually the app name changed to Noom, then they withdrew support for it, and removed it from the app store. It re-appeared a little while later as a completely different app, for weightloss.

That's fine, and any company is allowed to change their course. The issue I have is all our data was stored on their website, and they didn't give us tools to download them, they just switched their servers off a few weeks after announcing they would. Almost every user lost all their data. That is extremely unethical behaviour. I would never put my health data with such a company.

Cardiotrainer failed because it emphasised privacy: no one could see your rides unless you sent them a direct link. Strava went the other way, it's intensely social - it can even tell you the name of a rider you passed on your ride - and they dominated the market - 3 billion+ activities recorded.

(I did save my own data by writing a Web crawler to log into my account and do the laborious dozen or so button clicks to download each ride. This is why I know I have ridden 64,000km - about 40,000miles - in the last 13 years.)

[Blueruth in reply to Subtle_badger]

noom has an exercise app. That must be what they did. It is barely compatible with Apple health. They asked my opinion on the UI so I gave them not so high marks on UX. Anyway there is a competitor that could be better. They weren’t available when I was looking.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Blueruth]

I've heard good things about second nature - and personally, I am finally on board with low carb. Well, hopefully you have success with Noom, or can transition to Second Nature when that becomes available.

[Blueruth in reply to Subtle_badger]

It’s available but I paid noom until the eoy. I just take what I need. I have PlateJoy set up for low carb.

[ToriBlue57 in reply to Subtle_badger]

Listen guys, what do you think about Slimming World which allows you untold veg and fruit on a Green Day and Untold Protein on a Red day. I once lost 4 sts on SW. I think they've changed it quite a bit of late. I'm talking about SW of 1995. They also allowed 5 syns (originally called sins but this had negative press hence Syns) a day, 2 slices of bread and enough semi skimmed milk for teas and stuff.

[Cooper27 Administrator]

It's an interesting a nuanced subject.

I recall listening to an interview about caloric availability of food a while ago, which is something the CICO model doesn't account for. We can't extract all calories from food, so what we eat is as important as how much we eat:

newscientist.com/article/mg...

Pure refined sugar has a caloric availability of about 99%, but as an alternative, almonds only have 67% (or thereabouts). If you had a 100 calorie pack of haribo for a morning snack, you'd actually be consuming more calories than if you had 100 calories worth of nuts.

However our bodies are very fickle things, and studies show that the more you reduce calories, the slower your metabolism becomes. Participants on a 1200 calorie per day diet, saw their T3 levels (which drive metabolism, among other things) fall by around 40%. When lowered further to 400 calories per day, T3 dropped by around 66%.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/234...

If you have some time, this is a really fascinating podcast on the CO side of the equation:

drchatterjee.com/the-truth-...

This guy stayed with one of the last hunter gatherer tribes, to assess their BMRs and activity levels. He found that despite having far greater activity levels, those in the tribe didn't actually burn any more calories than their western counterparts (once height and build were accounted for). Supposedly "earning" your food only works short term, before your body adapts to the new activity levels and adjusts accordingly. The better solution is to eat better and increase BMR by building muscle mass.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Cooper27]

Thanks for the response.

It's even more than sugar vs almonds. The amount of available energy varies between whole almonds, blanched almonds, chopped, crushed, ground, flour and butter. Oh, there is even an article about it.

pubs.rsc.org/en/content/art...

(corn is another good example. They burn it to ashes to measure it's calories, but anyone who has ever eaten corn know that it doesn't all get digested 😳)

[Cooper27 Administrator in reply to Subtle_badger]

Yep, that's why it's so impossible.

I also understand what you say below about the automatic response of "well it must be your portion sizes". I've weighed food meticulously for weeks on end, to get an accurate log. I think some people are so attached to the CICO model, they either glaze over and go silent, or they think you must be lying.

[Hidden]

Makes no sense? Well, maybe that’s true - but it still works for many. I wasn’t sure if this post was meant to be on the weight loss forum, since most people who count calories are on a weight loss journey. Calorie counting worked for me, I lost two stone nearly five years ago and I maintain now by keeping an eye on the calories. I think this works for people who already eat a healthy, balanced diet, but maybe their portion sizes are too big and they snack too much, hence the weight gain. I did try LCHF for three months a year ago, and lost a few extra pounds, since regained because I found it too restrictive, cutting out buttered new potatoes, fresh baked sourdough bread, homemade pasta dishes, rice pudding……but counting calories, however inaccurate that might be, does help people moderate what they eat. A large number of those who post on the Maintainers’ thread on the Weight Loss forum are testament to this.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Hidden]

So, I am not talking about LCHF. I am talking about calorie counting on its own. Does it work? I know it didn't for me. I tried doing it seriously for 3 weeks. I was meticulous. I counted everything I put in my mouth, and let my phone record my movement (so underestimating as I don't carry my phone every second). I had an total "deficit" (on paper) of 10,000kcal,so should have lost around 1.5kg. I lost nothing. When I reached out for help with nutritionists I was told things like "water retention" or "hidden calories" but not "those are numbers are so inaccurate that you might as well pull them out of your arse".

Portion control is a different thing. You eat less and lose weight. If you don't, you cut down again. That can work in the short term, but it's not what I am discussing here. It's specifically how calorie counting is so inaccurate it's hardly useful at all.

(I am no longer a member of the weightloss community, so would not post it there)

[Ayelet15]

I don’t count calories anymore but I am aware on roughly how much is it food thanks to a previous diet where I cooked a 600 kcal meal. The diet didn’t work because I lived off only eating a set amount of calories like a religion.

Now I am losing weight I have taken a different approach. I use smaller portions in combination with the hunger scale. I only eat until I am satisfied and never full. Doing this means it adds to a life style change and I am not limited to cooking a set amount of calories at home. If I am out then I eat just enough and I am fine to leave the rest of the dish.

Calories may not be an exact science but it can give you a rough idea about food and portion size.

[Subtle_badger in reply to Ayelet15]

👍