I have several problems with calorie counting as a method of weight loss. Even if this weren’t a growing trend, it simply doesn’t make any sense. There are some simple logical reasons why it just doesn’t add up.
1) A calorie is a measurement of energy, not mass.
While Einstein may have equated the two, that equation does not apply here. Simply, calories are how well does an object burn, but your body isn’t a simple furnace, and can only use certain components as energy. At best we might consider the calories of only applicable substances, but we don’t track that.
Current wisdom says that a 3500 calories equals a pound of body fat. If that’s the case, a huge thanksgiving feast eaten over the course of a day that totaled 14 thousand calories would mean you gained exactly 4 pounds by the time you finished digesting. This means that you have to run 4 marathons to lose those 4 pounds (at an average of 3500 calories burned per marathon). Weigh yourself a day or two later (after eating and eliminating normally) and you’ll see you’re back to your normal weight. You do not gain a weight proportionately to the calories you eat.
As an example, a log that has 1000 calories of energy cannot be digested, where 1000 calories of sugar can. If one might argue “a log is all fiber”, consider that 1000 calories of coal, with no fiber, is indigestible too, but has the same amount of energy.
Further, 3500 calories of jet fuel is not a pound of mass. If it were possible to consume this as a food, there is no way your body could gain a pound from it. The mass is just not there!
2) Your body cares about the components of your food, not calories.
What you eat is more important than the calorie count of the food. Your body gains fat only by consuming certain molecules that get shuttled into your fat cells. Those molecules are triglycerides which the body makes from sugars. These triglycerides are shuttled there by insulin, which in turn may shuttle the triglycerides to muscle cells for energy if the right hormones are in place.
Your body does not use fat to make fat however. There are many types of fats, but your body only wants certain fats in its cells. Most consumed fats get used in cell building or hormone like functions in the body. Consumed fat is precious and the body doesn’t waste it for storing energy, as is popularly believed.
This means that if you eat 3500 calories of fat, you won’t gain a single pound; studies show you’ll actually lose weight eating nothing but fat. This also applies with eating protein; your body can make sugars out of protein but it’s very expensive so it avoids this unless necessary. The only thing your body can use to gain fat are carbs.
3) People have different metabolisms
Have you ever noticed how some people can eat pizza after pizza without gaining a pound, but others can look at cake and gain a size? This is simple different people’s bodies use their consumed food in different ways depending on health, fitness and age. If calories were truly a good measure of anything, we could predict weight loss regardless of metabolisms.
So there you have it. Three common sense reasons based on common science, physics, chemistry, and biology respectively, that thinking about calories is an absolute waste of time.
Eating too much of anything, especially fat, will build up in excess in the body and turn to fat. When you excercise first you burn carbs, then fat. So no matter what a calorie is a calorie no matter what. I good diet needs to be a balance of carbs, fat and protein along with exercise
Stacy,
I agree that a body needs a balance to survive optimally. In fact, not all carbs are the same either, and having the right carbs with correct timing improves weight loss for those seeking to lose it.
That being said, I’m not satisfied with your reply; it doesn’t follow. I’m talking about the body’s mechanisms here. Without them, there is no grounds for any conclusion since it’s the body we’re talking about. Could you describe the physical mechanisms by which “eating too much of anything, especially fat” makes us gain weight? I need more than what you’ve given me.
Saying that because you burn one fuel, then another, does not make the calorie argument relevant. Yeah, both are fuel sources, but where does the body take into account the calories used? Do we measure ATP, triglycerides, glucose, glycogen, ketones or any of the body’s energy sources via calories?
I’ve never seen any argument that thoroughly supports the calorie arguments. At best they’re tangential to the issue of consumption, at worst, irrelevant.
Miguel, just out of curiousity what do you feel is the best method of losing weight?
Get healthy and reduce or eliminate carbs in your diet.
We eat too much because we are sick, not sick because we eat too much. When the body is ill (in certain cases like adrenal fatigue, over-stress, undernourishment), it will shuttle food to fat as a stress response, requiring you to eat more food to maintain. This stress response is the body’s way of staying alive under adverse conditions, but we in the first world won’t undergo those conditions, probably ever. One of the illnesses that does this is insulin resistance, where you need more and more insulin to shuttle glucose into your muscles for energy, which comes about after eating too much sugar/bad carbs/ junk food.
Carbs stimulate insulin, and insulin shuttles glucose into fat cells and makes them grow. Also, spikes in insulin blunt your insulin response creating insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome. Exersice doesn’t directly influence weight, but can help with insulin resistance and will help you lose wieght when combined with the proper diet. By carbs I mean starchy/sugary fruits, veggies, grains, and processed foods. Stick to meats, beans, greens and fibrous vegetables.