+32 A calorie is not a calorie. amirite?

by Jerry43 4 months ago

Biologically speaking a calorie is a calorie, but we all have different metabolism, nutrients deficiencies, etc. The thing is, what worked for you won't work for everyone. So calling a calorie a calorie is baseline correct across the board.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

A false statement isn't an opinion

by Anonymous 4 months ago

If I consume 1g of uranium, that's 20billion calories, how much weight am I expected to gain bud?

by Educational_Step 4 months ago

If you consume 1g of uranium I believe you'd be dead, bud.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

Dead from the weight gained from those 20 billion calories, no doubt.

by Educational_Step 4 months ago

Lmao

by Anonymous 4 months ago

Maybe you should check Wikipedia for how a calorie is defined. Once you've done that you can tell me why eating 1g of uranium wouldn't cause me to gain 66493506kg

by Educational_Step 4 months ago

If you read the "closed system" bit you might realize your argument does not make sense

by Straight-Minimum 4 months ago

Wait, so is a calorie a calorie? And how many calories are there in 1g of uranium

by Educational_Step 4 months ago

Are you trying to imply I'm disputing the definition of a calorie? When you are talking about nutrition, grams of uranium are irrelevant because they aren't contained in a closed system or digestible by the human body. If the human body was capable of converting the energy from uranium into a usable form, youd probably get pretty huge if you ate some. Not sure what your point is.

by Straight-Minimum 4 months ago

My point is that "a calorie is a calorie" is obviously incorrect, but it's a very good approximation that works well enough for almost all human-digestive related scenarios. You'd need 10.000+ stipulations for it actually be accurate. "if we could digest uranium then a uranium calorie is also a calorie". Thousands of things affect your ability to digest food. But your gluten tolerance doesn't matter enough for a large-scale revamp of dietary advice: If you eat fewer calories than you burn (even if the calorie estimate is inaccurate), you will lose weight.

by Educational_Step 4 months ago

1 gram

by Responsible_Key 4 months ago

Unless you're color blind...

by Anonymous 4 months ago

You might not be burning as many calories than you think

by Terrible_Buy_8382 4 months ago

You didn't track right

by SpecialistHoliday286 4 months ago

The government needs to study you for breaking the laws of physics and destroying energy. Could be vital for deep space travel. 🙄

by Straight-Minimum 4 months ago

Checkmate, atheists.

by Ashamed_Table 4 months ago

You incorrectly counting calories doesn't mean it's wrong, it means you are bad at counting calories. You were clearly overeating junk and not properly counting it

by FineTrash 4 months ago

Your right, different types of foods are metabolized differently.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

That's why different types of food have different amounts of calories. That's like saying the foot in a yard and the foot in a mile are different because you can walk one faster than the other.

by ChampionshipSad6014 4 months ago

I mean, a calorie is a calorie. It's just that 200 calories of veg is almost 3 times the physical weight/size of 200 calories of Cheetos, and that's important for feeling satisfied when your stomach is a finite space. You used the wrong formula but got the right answer that's all.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

Protein and fat will keep you fuller than carbs, so the steak is going to be healthier than the gluten free granola bars

by Anonymous 4 months ago

"My feelings don't care about your facts!"

by kyrahettinger 4 months ago

You're bad at counting. That's the whole story. Nothing else to it. The vast vast majority of people are bad at counting cals. That's why they are fat. Under 1% have some sort of genetic issue

by Anonymous 4 months ago

Someone started burning more calories.

by Ashamed_Table 4 months ago

That's not right. A cheeto bag probably holds way more calories than a plate of veggies. You can eat way more veggies & be satisfied whereas cheetos will have tons of calories but you'll probably be super hungry again in no time after eating. That's why people recommend eating plant based, whole foods rather than unhealthy & processed foods.. That's why it's easier to lose weight through that. Whole foods are satiating & nutrient dense. However, if you're in a real calorie deficit, even with unhealthy food, you'll loose weight. You just won't be healthy per se. Your energy levels, muscle mass, etc.. will be affected.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

Nope. It's calories in, calories out. If you're not getting the results you'd expect, it has to be one of a few issues: - You aren't counting calories accurately. You're not measuring things precisely enough and either over or underestimating how many calories are in the things you eat. - Your initial estimation of your maintenance calories was wrong. Using an online calculator based on weight just gives you a rough approximation, but there is individual variance. So you have to actually test it. Start with whatever maintenance calories the calculator tells you, eat that number of calories each day for like a week, weigh yourself at the beginning and end of that week, and if there's a change in weight (which there shouldn't be), you adjust accordingly until there's no weight change. Then that is your true maintenance calories. And you also have to add in how many calories you burn from extra physical activity each day. - You're not readjusting your maintenance calories as you gain or lose weight. If you lose weight, your maintenance calories goes down, so you have to eat even less to continue losing weight. And vice versa.

by Nayeli62 4 months ago

Losing weight can be such a kick in the nuts, cause when your fat its pretty easy to lose 10 pounds in a few weeks, then it slows and slows and slows to the point of just feeling defeated.

by Silas72 4 months ago

A calorie is a unit of energy. You're saying "an inch isn't an inch." If you are in a caloric deficit, you will lose weight as your body must burn mass to make up the difference. It's a math problem that must always be made whole. The type of calories you consume and your activity will determine your body composition. Don't eat any protein and don't get any physical activity, you'll become "skinny fat" and over a long enough time, just kind of soft and frail looking. Also keep in mind 1g of carbs can hold up to 4g of water (leading to fluctuations in water weight). I'm a 37YO 190lb male in great shape in spite of eating quadruple cheeseburgers, fast food 5+ times a week, cereal and chips, and lots of gummy candy because I also make sure to get 100g+ of protein each day and go to the gym 4-5 times a week doing 1 hr workouts with heavy weight. If you think you're in a caloric deficit and you're still gaining weight, you're just incorrect. Get more activity or measure more accurately.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

How many calories do I poop eating unhealthy food vs healthy food? Serious question! Has this been studied?

by Anonymous 4 months ago

This is the real question.

by Jerry43 4 months ago

Lemme guess. Vaccines also don't work? The Earth is flat? Fact is, if you are in a calorie deficit, you lose weight. If you didn't lose weight. You didn't do the math correctly.

by Individual_Mark 4 months ago

The Earth is flat? Of course not, we all know the Earth has mountains

by Anonymous 4 months ago

this is simply a false statement. if you are in a deficit eating the same calories of junk food vs healthy food, you will lose the same amount of weight. healthy food is usually more filling though which is why it is easier to maintain lower calories eating it. your "living proof" does not change science and you likely were not tracking correctly.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

A calorie is a calorie. You can expel unused calories if they are digested differently, but you can't get more calories than you consume. If you did, congratulations, you broke physics.

by Anonymous 4 months ago

That's just not true

by Anonymous 4 months ago

Yo what veggies go good with humous? Im thinkin cauliflower of broccoli but i dont really like either of those.

by Silas72 4 months ago

A calorie is still a calorie but the levels of hunger, metabolisms, digestion, TDEE, BMR, etc. etc. etc. etc. are different for every single person. Two people can be the same height, weight, and carry weight in the same way and still have different maintenance calories and loss/gain baselines. A calorie is a calorie but how much food satiates/metabolizes is extremely variable. Thats why there's no rock-solid method of counting intake or output. Some people got the shorter sticks and their tdee/bmrs could be practically impossible to sustain so they end up gaining even when they are starving themselves (due to meds, pcos, metabolic issues, etc. etc.). But a calorie is still a calorie

by MainMonk 4 months ago

I guess this is why I struggle with gaining weight? Due to sickness I can only eat stuff like rice and chicken. FFS. I'm fighting hard to get at least 1900 calories a day in and even that's a struggle. But yeah, that's not really an opinion. And I assume many don't realize how many calories are sleeping in fats.

by Loud-Ice 4 months ago

Calories are calculated by burning foods to literally heat water (calorimeter), there are so many more factors to determine when it comes to actual metabolism, like non-flammable compounds or other metabolites It's just our best/easiest approximation

by CarefulAd4234 4 months ago

OP is correct. It's still a matter of calories in and calories out, but calories unabsorbed are not calories in. So in a calorimeter a portion of food may have 100 cal, but that doesn't mean YOUR body will absorb all 100 of those particular calories in digestion

by wilhelmjacobs 4 months ago

Plus calorie counts are determined in a bomb calorimeter and not in living bodies with microbiomes.

by Jerry43 4 months ago

They don't even use bomb calorimeters anymore. They just count the carbs, fat, and protein, then plug the numbers into a formula. Everything other than those three macronutrients is not considered in the calorie count.

by Anonymous 4 months ago