Eating less does not result in weight loss

In article ,
Michael Snyder wrote:

lynne whitley wrote:
Eating less does not result in weight loss?
Okay, I think I'll call up a few of the starving,
skeletal children in North Korea and tell them the great news. I'm sure
they will be overjoyed.

Good. While you're at it, call a few of the overweight people
who have tried eating less any number of times, and are still
overweight.


Diets do not fail if followed correctly. Failure to lose weight on a
calorie restrictive diet is always operator error.

In article ,
Michael Snyder wrote:

SuperSpark ® wrote:
In article ,
"Michael Snyder" wrote:


Mxsmanic wrote in message ...

Mr. F. Le Mur writes:


True, but I think the idea is if you don't eat anough fat, then
you still have cravings (for fat) and eat more calories-worth
of stuff with less fat.

It's funny how people elsewhere in the world manage to remain thin
without having to worry about how much fat or carbs they are eating,
isn't it?

Yes it is. As it is also funny that a high-carb/low fat/low protein diet
works for SOME people, while a high-protein/low carb diet works for
SOME people, while eating only pineapple and tree frogs works for
SOME people... yet there is not a single diet or practice that works
for ALL people, including eating less and exercising more.


Eating less and excercising more works 100% of the time, for all people,
if applied correctly. Simple, basic human physiology.

So you say. And yet, the evidence says otherwise. The lesson being,
I think: "if you want weight-loss advice, do not ask a mathematician".



Please provide proof that anyone, living or dead, American or otherwise,
followed a calorie restrictive diet and did not lose weight.

In article ,
Michael Snyder wrote:

SuperSpark ® wrote:
In article ,
"Michael Snyder" wrote:


Mr. F. Le Mur wrote in message ...

On Tue, 07 Oct 2003 09:54:22 +0200, Mxsmanic wrote:

-Michael Snyder writes:
-
- And like most such, it has very little relation to reality.
-
-It is the one and only basis of all weight loss. All successful diets
-work by creating a caloric deficit. All unsuccessful diets have in
-common that they fail to create a caloric deficit. There are no
-exceptions to this rule.

True.

-
- Over-simplifications such as these serve no one --
- least of all people who would like to lose weight.
-
-They serve those people best of all. However, they are unpleasantly
-difficult to deny for people who don't want to face the necessity of
-eating less in order to lose weight.
-
- If you eat less calories on a daily basis, the amount
- of calories you USE will very likely change.
-
-No, it will not. The number of calories you burn is based on your
-weight, sex, body composition, and the amount of exercise you get. None
-of this suddenly changes just because you decide to eat less, which is
-why you lose weight if you significantly reduce your intake of food.

Actually one's metabolism does change when calorie intake changes.
Lower calorie intake - lower metabolism.

I was once told, by a professional physical trainer, that I was eating
too little and that if I wanted to lose weight I would need to eat more.
My body thought it was starving, and therefore was hanging on to
every calory it could get.



Bull**** psuedo science. Caloric deficit always results in weight loss.
Consult an anorexic for more info.

Funny how you guys all want to cite the pathological cases, instead
of looking at what normal people experience in real life.



Irrelevant.
Less caloric intake equals weight loss.

Michael Snyder wrote in message ...
Ralph DuBose wrote:
"Michael Snyder" wrote in message ...

Mxsmanic wrote in message ...

Mr. F. Le Mur writes:


True, but I think the idea is if you don't eat anough fat, then
you still have cravings (for fat) and eat more calories-worth
of stuff with less fat.

It's funny how people elsewhere in the world manage to remain thin
without having to worry about how much fat or carbs they are eating,
isn't it?

Yes it is. As it is also funny that a high-carb/low fat/low protein diet
works for SOME people, while a high-protein/low carb diet works for
SOME people, while eating only pineapple and tree frogs works for
SOME people... yet there is not a single diet or practice that works
for ALL people, including eating less and exercising more.


If you walk 10 miles, what does your body use for the calories
needed to do the work? Is energy pulled into you from another Astral
plane? Seriously.

Energy derived from the food you eat, and the air you breathe.


Oxygen is needed for aerobic metabolic processes but it is not
"energy" per se. My point is not nit picking because you do not seem
to understand anything about this subject.


And if you walk 20 miles, you are going to need at least twice the
fuel.


I said, "at least" twice as much. You skim past my point which was
that if you keep walking you keep burning calories.


False. Your body is not a car, it is a complex organic system.
The assumption that the fuel-to-motion conversion efficiency of
your body is constant is patently ridiculous. Your claim is not
even consistant with those of physiologists or fitness trainers,
who may tell you that you are likely to burn off more fat calories
in the second 10 miles than you did in the first.

If you put food (calories) in your mouth, what else can happen to
it except 1. burned 2. Stored.

Ummm... excreted?


You do not have a clue as to what you are talking about. Do you
really think that the digestive system of any creature would dump
useful energy/calories out its ass? The only time there are
significant amounts of usuable calories in feces is when there is some
serious malabsorbtion disorder. The normal predominant content of
feces is undigestible fiber and coliform bacteria.


There is no other way out.

I think you need to think this thru again.

This country of ours is filled with people who are looking for
some kind of absolution for the mess they have made of their bodies
and the first step is often to deny or obfuscate fundamental
physiology and physics. Energy balance issues are not complex at all,
at least in general terms. Precisely measuring or predicting inputs
and outputs is usually impossible but that fact is hardly relelevant
if your goal is simply to lose some weight. Just keep pushing harder
on exercise and keep restricting caloric intake more and more. At some
point, the fat will begin to disappear. But for a lot of people, that
clear cold truth is basically unwelcomed. They prefer "complexity".
Along these lines:
1. Asking people how much they eat is a waste of time. They lie, even
to themselves. Many studies show this.
2. Asking people how much they exercise is also a waste of time. They
lie, even to themselves.
When the environmental situation really is simple, like in a place
where the amount of food intake is limited (like a prison camp) or
there is a no bull**** approach to working out and food quality (like
marine boot camp) NOBODY STAYS FAT!!.

"Ralph DuBose" wrote in message
om...
"Michael Snyder" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote in message ...
Mr. F. Le Mur writes:

True, but I think the idea is if you don't eat anough fat, then
you still have cravings (for fat) and eat more calories-worth
of stuff with less fat.

It's funny how people elsewhere in the world manage to remain thin
without having to worry about how much fat or carbs they are eating,
isn't it?

Yes it is. As it is also funny that a high-carb/low fat/low protein diet
works for SOME people, while a high-protein/low carb diet works for
SOME people, while eating only pineapple and tree frogs works for
SOME people... yet there is not a single diet or practice that works
for ALL people, including eating less and exercising more.

If you walk 10 miles, what does your body use for the calories
needed to do the work? Is energy pulled into you from another Astral
plane? Seriously.
And if you walk 20 miles, you are going to need at least twice the
fuel.
If you put food (calories) in your mouth, what else can happen to
it except 1. burned 2. Stored. There is no other way out.
So of course more activity and less food will work for everyone, no
exception. Russian POWs put into German labor camps did not display
that much variability in how they lost fat content. None of them
remained unchanged.
Another key fact is that what determines whether muscle is laid
down or used as fuel is mostly the activity level of specific muscles.
If an athlete is confined to bed rest, they burn muscles for fuel
regardless of diet. Work out and you make ( or preserve) muscle.
The USMC has been taking flabby young men and producing fitter,
leaner, stronger young men for some years now. And it works every
time.

110%

-- Steve
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Courageous writes:

Oh, this is totally true. This is because during the first 10
miles, you are burning glucose and glycogen. But this is neither
here nor there.

The total fat lost over time remains the same.

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Michael Snyder writes:

I *explicitly* did not claim that. To apply the laws of thermodynamics,
you have to consider ALL of the inputs and outputs. Food in and
energy-expended out is not even remotely a full accounting.

Actually, it _is_ a full accounting, for all practical purposes. What
is remarkable is how simple and reliable the rules actually are. Count
your calories, and you can readily lose weight (and if you don't lose
weight, the calorie counts will make it pretty clear why you are not
losing).

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Michael Snyder writes:

But food eaten does not equate to energy consumed.
Some of the food comes out again.

Essentially all of it is absorbed.

Besides, even in cases of pathological malaborption, these disease
states keep people _thin_; they do not keep them _fat_. There isn't any
disease or disorder that can cause you to gain fat if you are eating no
more calories than you burn. You _must_ overeat to become obese, and
you _must_ overeat to stay that way.

The "motor" runs at varying degrees of efficiency.

There is virtually no variation from one individual to another.

The human body, like everything else in the universe, obeys the laws of
thermodynamics and conservation of energy. You cannot become fat
without overeating, and you cannot lose weight without eating fewer
calories than you burn.

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"Mxsmanic" :
RLW writes:

I was responding to the contention that all calories are the same (ie.
have
the same ability to make us fat).

They are.

And I have cited a one reputable journal article which shows that they
aren't. The difference between them probably isn't that large, but they
aren't the same.

I did not make any statement about the laws of thermodynamics
as they apply to the human body.

That is implicit in your statement above.

The laws of thermodynamics apply to closed systems. The human body isn't a
closed system. It's leaking energy all the time. It isn't inconceivable
that different types of calories, when eaten, follow different metabolic
pathways before they become converted into fat, and that in some of those
pathways, more energy is lost to outside the system than in others.
Hypothetically speaking, depositing dietary fat into fat stores would result
in very little energy being lost because you don't actually change the
structure of the fat. But carbohydrates or protein, on the other hand, do
need to undergo chemical reactions to be converted into fat, and energy will
be lost during those reactions (ie. not all of the energy within the carb
or protein molecule will end up within the fat molecule).

Your simple-minded understanding of high school chemistry does not apply
perfectly to a complex system such as the human body. I'm not arguing with
your main point that people need to eat less to lose weight. That's
completely obvious. It's not the whole story, however.

What was biased about the journal article I quoted?

I don't know that it was biased, but neither do I have any reason to
believe that it was useful or meaningful. Just because a study is
published in a journal doesn't mean that it is accurate or that it's
conclusions or implications are correct. There are so many studies with
so many conflicting conclusions and implications that only a general
survey of results from all studies over long periods is really worth
considering, and even that can be subject to fad and fashion to a
certain extent.

So you just dismiss out of hand anything that doesn't agree with you?
That's hardly a scientific or open minded attitude.

Rowena.

RLW writes:

And I have cited a one reputable journal article which shows that they
aren't.

So? There are millions of "reputable journal articles" in the world.

The laws of thermodynamics apply to closed systems. The
human body isn't a closed system.

Yes, it is, to the same extent that a gasoline engine is a closed
system. And the same rules apply.

Your simple-minded understanding of high school chemistry
does not apply perfectly to a complex system such as the
human body.

My "simple-minded" understanding works remarkably well for producing
weight loss. The "complex understandings" advocated by others don't
seem to produce any weight loss at all.

I'm not arguing with your main point that people need to
eat less to lose weight. That's completely obvious. It's
not the whole story, however.

So you just dismiss out of hand anything that doesn't
agree with you?

No, I simply go with the consensus of informed scientific opinion. A
single pointer to a single Web site isn't very significant against all
that. See, I don't just Google for a URL when I want evidence to
support my position; I actually read books (if anyone remembers those).

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