Active Low-Carber Forums
Atkins diet and low carb discussion provided free for information only, not as medical advice.
Home Plans Tips Recipes Tools Stories Studies Products
Active Low-Carber Forums
A sugar-free zone


Welcome to the Active Low-Carber Forums.
Support for Atkins diet, Protein Power, Neanderthin (Paleo Diet), CAD/CALP, Dr. Bernstein Diabetes Solution and any other healthy low-carb diet or plan, all are welcome in our lowcarb community. Forget starvation and fad diets -- join the healthy eating crowd! You may register by clicking here, it's free!

Go Back   Active Low-Carber Forums > Main Low-Carb Diets Forums & Support > Low-Carb Studies & Research / Media Watch > Low-Carb War Zone
User Name
Password
FAQ Members Calendar Mark Forums Read Search Gallery My P.L.A.N. Survey


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 10:23
pitfall21 pitfall21 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 85
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 310/310/185 Male 69"
BF:
Progress: 0%
Default One more question!!

When it comes to the human diet I have so many questions. But the main one that keeps coming back is...

"Why do people lose weight on LC/LF diets that have 4000-5000 calories a day, but I gain weight on a standard eat anything 3000 calories a day plan. Is it calories or not?"
Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
  #2   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 12:55
Seejay's Avatar
Seejay Seejay is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 3,025
 
Plan: Optimal Diet
Stats: 00/00/00 Female 62 inches
BF:
Progress: 8%
Default

uh - no and yes.

No, it is not calories, if you mean, are we all identical calorie machines such that you can count the calories on the label of food, and exercise according to the calories on your treadmill's little display, and it works out right. That rarely lines up. Or that you can eat the same 4000 calories as the other person and expect the same result as the other person.

Yes, it is calories, if you mean, does food have calories. depends on the person and the metabolism. In your example, the person who does not gain weight on 4000 calories may increase their expenditure with NEAT and TEF and metabolic "wasting the calories as heat" . Whereas the person who gains, does not use the calories, but stores them. And it seems to have a genetic component.

I like what Lyle McDonald has to say. The calories-in-calories-out equation is wayyyyyyy more complex.

The Energy Balance Equation by Lyle MacDonald


Quote:
The Energy Balance Equation

...

Today, I’m going to do my best to clear things up about what the energy balance equation does and doesn’t mean and why people, who don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, don’t understand it. Hopefully by the time you’ve gotten to the end of this, you’ll understand it.



What is the Energy Balance Equation?

In its simplest form, the energy balance equation is meant to represent what does (or at least should) happen to the body by looking at the difference between energy intake (from food) and energy output.

In it’s exceedingly simplest form, the energy balance equation is this:

Energy in = Energy out + Change in Body Stores
...

Now, in the case of the human body, changes in energy stores will show up as changes in the amount of different tissues in the body. Excess energy is converted or stored via conversion into body tissue (e.g. body fat, muscle tissue, etc.). Since excess energy is stored in the body as tissues that contain mass, I will (marginally incorrectly) refer to changes in body mass throughout this article.
...

Now, the above is a very simplified version of the energy balance equation and this is part of where folks get into problems.

But we have three basic bits of the equation: Energy In, Energy Out and Change in Body Stores. I want to look at each including some of the places that people make some really flawed arguments and draw some really flawed conclusions based on their misunderstanding of what’s going on.


A More Detailed Look at the Equation: Energy In

Now, energy in is actually the simplest aspect of all of this, this represents the number of calories that you ingest each day from the nutrients protein, carbs, fat, fiber and alcohol.

Of course, even that is not so simple. First and foremost, not all foods are digested with identical efficiency. On average, high quality animal-source proteins are digested with roughly 90-95% efficiency with vegetable source proteins coming in lower than that (80-85%), fats digest with about 97% efficiency and carbs can be as low as 80% depending on fiber content.

There can be some variance between different sources of the same nutrient as well. For example, a recently developed carbohydrate called resistant starch (it resists digestion) is absorbed with poor efficiency, more calories are lost in the stool compared to other carbs; some sugar alcohols share this effect (although they can just as readily cause massive stomach upset and diarrhea because of it). You don’t generally see massive differences in proteins or fats although there can be slight differences.

Put differently, some energy is lost prior to digestion (and shows up in the feces), never to be absorbed by the body. But strictly speaking you can make an adjustment on the energy in side of the equation to take digestibility into account with a correction factor (which would vary depending on the nutrient in question)

But I think you get the idea: the point is that the calorie in value can vary a bit depending on the specific nutrient and source of that nutrient. The amount of calories listed on the side of the food you’re eating may not be exactly the number of calories that make it through digestion and into the body. If anything, the value will be slightly less.
...

A More Detailed Look at the Equation: Energy Out

The energy out part of the equation is more complicated than people understand and I’d recommend my article Metabolic Rate Overview for a detailed look at the different components of the out part of the equation and their determinants.

Summing up, there are 4 primary aspects of the energy out part of the equation which are Resting/Basal Metabolic Rate (RMR/BMR), the Thermic effect of food (TEF), the Thermic Effect of Activity (TEA) and a more recent addition which is Spontaneous Physical Activity/Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (SPA/NEAT). Essentially TEA refers to calories burned through formal exercise/activity, SPA/NEAT is more subconscious and represents daily movement, going from seated to standing, fidgeting and a host of other stuff that isn’t conscious voluntary exercise.

I’m going to come back to this below but something that is VERY important to remember is that none of the above is static: it all changes based on what the person is doing and their diet, activity, environment, etc.


A Mid-Article Review

So I’ve looked at some of the factors that can modify both the energy in and energy out part of the equation. Now we can rewrite the equation a bit more usefully as:

Energy In (corrected for digestion) = (BMR/RMR + TEF + TEA + SPA/NEAT) + Change in Body Stores

Even that’s not complete and there are other things that can go on the energy out side of it, various inefficiencies in biochemical pathways (that basically waste calories through heat) and such things. I’d note that most of these don’t appear to contribute terribly significantly to the energy out side of things but they are worth noting since they modify the overall equation.

I’d also note that people often make comments about the above equation which shows just how utterly clueless they are about it. For example, people will point out that replacing carbs with protein leads to greater weight loss although they have the same calories; ergo the equation is wrong. What they fail to realize is that protein has a higher thermogenic effect and this modifies the TEF value of the equation; the energy OUT side of the equation changes if you replace carbs with protein. But they seem to try to treat the sides of the equation independently in this case; which is wrong.
...

Put differently, it’s commonly stated that if you reduce food intake by 500 calories/day you will lose one pound per week. Yet when people do that very thing, this never happens in the real world. Or if you add 500 calories/day of food, you should gain a pound, and that pretty much never happens either in the real world.

Hence the equation is invalid, right? Wrong.

There are three different reasons why the expectations of most people in terms of changes in the energy balance are incorrect and, again, it’s based on their own simplistic understanding of what’s going on. Those three reasons are

Water balance
Muscle and fat are not identical
The fact that the energy balance equation is not static

Let’s look at each....

Last edited by Seejay : Wed, Dec-30-15 at 13:13.
Reply With Quote
  #3   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 13:58
1DogDay's Avatar
1DogDay 1DogDay is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 630
 
Plan: LCHF <20g
Stats: 206/182/170 Female 5' 4"
BF:
Progress: 67%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by pitfall21
When it comes to the human diet I have so many questions. But the main one that keeps coming back is...

"Why do people lose weight on LC/LF diets that have 4000-5000 calories a day, but I gain weight on a standard eat anything 3000 calories a day plan. Is it calories or not?"


Do you mean LC/HF? I think it would be hard to get that number of calories with LF!
Reply With Quote
  #4   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 18:06
pitfall21 pitfall21 is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 85
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 310/310/185 Male 69"
BF:
Progress: 0%
Default

Nice answer Seejay. Thanks.

1DogDay--yes I am referring to low fat. In the cases I watched on Youtube, it was fruitarians who eat pounds of food a day totalling 5000 plus calories. They look anorexic! I used to think if I just ate whatever I wanted but less I would be okay. As I get older it still seems to be low fat vs low carb.
Reply With Quote
  #5   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 18:12
1DogDay's Avatar
1DogDay 1DogDay is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 630
 
Plan: LCHF <20g
Stats: 206/182/170 Female 5' 4"
BF:
Progress: 67%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by pitfall21
1DogDay--yes I am referring to low fat. In the cases I watched on Youtube, it was fruitarians who eat pounds of food a day totalling 5000 plus calories. They look anorexic! I used to think if I just ate whatever I wanted but less I would be okay. As I get older it still seems to be low fat vs low carb.

That would kill me!
Reply With Quote
  #6   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 19:11
Kristine's Avatar
Kristine Kristine is offline
Forum Moderator
Posts: 25,581
 
Plan: Primal/P:E
Stats: 171/146/150 Female 5'7"
BF:
Progress: 119%
Location: Southern Ontario, Canada
Default

Pitfall, I believe what it comes down to is hormones. Calories matter to an extent, but not in the way we want them to. We want them to be a nice, elementary school level math equation. Something simple. Something like your finances. Income in, expenses out. Cut n' dry.

It doesn't work that way. Hormones trump everything. They tell your body what's going to happen with those calories you eat, if you want to think of your food that way. Hormones also control output - ie having energy vs being exhausted. Being comfortable in terms of temperature vs being freezing cold or burning up.

There are just too many 'white crows' - people who gain weight on what should be a starvation diet, and emaciated people who can't gain - that I can't accept that calories are the issue. All it takes is one white crow to prove that all crows aren't black, and there are an awful lot of white crows hanging around.
Reply With Quote
  #7   ^
Old Wed, Dec-30-15, 20:14
WereBear's Avatar
WereBear WereBear is online now
Senior Member
Posts: 14,606
 
Plan: EpiPaleo/Primal/LowOx
Stats: 220/125/150 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 136%
Location: USA
Default

Fruitarians are extremely protein deficient. They are scrawny looking because their bodies are cannibalizing muscle tissue to stay alive.
Reply With Quote
  #8   ^
Old Thu, Dec-31-15, 09:36
MickiSue MickiSue is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 8,006
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 189/148.6/145 Female 5' 5"
BF:36%/28%/25%
Progress: 92%
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Default

Low carb, low fat will NOT do what you think it will, in terms of losing fat. Eat too little fat, and there's not enough to shut down the insulin that tells the fat cells to hang on to their stores (see? hormones.) Then the liver kicks in and makes sugars out of the excess proteins that you eat. It's called gluconeogenesis.

Eat enough fat, the feedback system in your body is assured that you are not in immanent danger of starvation, and released fat from the fat cells to feed the rest of the body.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 15:39.


Copyright © 2000-2024 Active Low-Carber Forums @ forum.lowcarber.org
Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.