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Calories In Calories Out

Discussion in 'Health and Fitness' started by Anon220806, Aug 8, 2020.

  1. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    I was skinny as a lad. I moved all the time until my mid 20s when I stared driving. Used to walk everywhere. Ate loads. My metabolism was working for me in a very efficient way. As time went by I didn’t really eat any less, possibly more. My work has gone from semi sedentary to sedentary. But my diet changed. Stopped eating eggs, butter, cheese, full fat milk, butter, fatty meat, nuts because I was told it was unhealthy. Ate loads of fruit as it was healthy. And encouraged to eat carbs albeit brown carbs. Eventually changing my diet was my undoing as my pancreas was working overtime dealing with the amount of glucose it was processing. Symptoms were weight gain, hypertension, raised blood sugar and all that goes with it. It’s an outcome that a huge slice of the nation is experiencing. Many think they are eating a healthy diet. I did. But it isn’t the case.

    I am happy with the laws of thermodynamics but they do not apply to how our body responds to different foods or food products. The laws of thermodynamics have an overarching role but do not apply to what happens when we eat a stick of celery, a bowl of prunes, a doughnut, a pint of beer, a chicken leg or an avocado. The food we eat provides us with more than just energy and whatever it provides it does so in a variety of ways. If one pushes the laws of thermodynamics aside and concentrates on the type of food rather than the energy that is in it then the doors open wide to reversal of chronic progressive conditions. As people are finding out and many Health Care Professionals are now promoting. You may be lucky and find your GP in your area promotes reducing carbs and not calories. Could lead to a lively debate in the 10 allotted minutes.
    There’s a Dr chap from South Africa who swore by CICO. He was a distance runner. Packed his diet with carbs. Fantastic athlete but the carbs led to T2 diabetes. He now has reversed his entire thinking. Tim Noakes.
  2. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Watch this if you have a spare hour.

    A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Or is it.



    This guy is a scientist....
  3. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    I will watch it later, but put simply a calorie is 4.184 joules and the large calorie (dietary) is 4,184 joules.
  4. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Undoubtedly true. But if you eat 2500 kcals of doughnuts each day what will happen to you. It isn’t about the calories. It is about what the calories are comprised of and not the amount of energy they produce. You are equating fat with energy.

    The calories info on our foods is useless. Calories counting is useless. If it was useful we would all be slim like in the 50s and 60s. People, large numbers of people are losing weight by forgetting calories and reducing carbs. And I am talking 2, 3, 4 stones etc etc, not a few pounds. Those that cling to CICO struggle and have to resort to going hungry to lose weight and the fail because they are hungry. Surgeries are full of overweight people that cannot lose weight because they are being told the old mantra of move more eat less which doesn’t work because a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie.


    Robert Lustig is the scientist. He explains it succinctly. The science is out there. There are quite a few others that put it across in the same way. But not everyone can grasp it or adapt to new developments. CICO is a part of nutritional history now. A failed experiment. Boris has created the campaign on obesity. However Matt Hancock succeeded on a low carb diet. Tom Watson the same. I suppose we can argue the toss about this all day. I know the success rate isn’t 100% but it can often be because those that fail can not grasp the approach. But many are very surprised at first as it goes against everything they knew. But realise that it works as they shed several stones, improve blood pressure and hypertension and clear up associated medical conditions. It’s all about changing what we eat.

    Neither you or I are Stephenson’s Rocket. If only it was that simple.
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
  5. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    We are heat engines and the laws of thermodynamics apply absolutely to everything on the planet and everywhere else in the Universe.

    We use food to make Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), be it sugar fat protein we turn it all into ATP eventually, the ATP powers our cells.

    We do not have a way of ignoring what we have actually put in our stomachs, once food is in there it will go through all the standard processes to turn it into ATP for catabolic purposes and into cell structure and fat stores using anabolic mechanisms.

    The energy value of the food is defined, fat is the same today as it will be tomorrow, carbs have the same energy value today as they will have tomorrow and once they are in your stomach they are part of the thermodynamic equation because that energy has to go somewhere, it will either be used up in catabolism or built up in anabolism or if we don't use the energy anabolic processes will convert it to triglycerides and store it.

    The energy requirements of your body have to be met, that is thermodynamics, walking lifting, running maintaining a temperature of 36.9 degrees centigrade and a full 20% of your energy budget is used to power your brain alone.

    At 1:26:15 onwards for about a minute a member of the audience explains the whole thing perfectly talking about milk and they agree with him and I agree with them and the audience member.

    As the scientist in that video at 44:15 says, limiting fructose intake reduces liver fat dramatically and alters insulin resistance, in the kids he talks about it made their liver fat reduce it did not change their weight but reduced insulin resistance, a calorie is not a calorie is being used here not in terms of of the total organism but in terms of specific metabolic aspects of that organism.

    All they are saying is that leaning towards a fatty diet will reduce your overall appetite and through that improve your liver function.

    A side effect is that a lot of people will lower their weight as well, and if they increased their exercise as well they would reduce their weight even more because the body would have to make more ATP than it could get from the immediately available food in your digestive system, starting with the triglycerides of which it has abundant stores.

    It is impossible to meet the physical and thermal energy requirements of a human being or any living organism over any fixed period of time without supplying sufficient fuel, if you do not provide enough fuel the human being will waste away and die, look at Auschwitz or Japanese prisoners of war.

    It is also impossible to to increase your caloric intake beyond the requirements you have over any fixed period of time without getting heavier. you cant make 9 * 4,184 joules in a gram of fat magically disappear your body will already have converted it to ATP and be using it or it will have stored it, ultimately we breathe all of this out as CO2 and excrete the waste as water, other waste is material we can't metabolise, but unless you are ill you are not going to find a lot of fat or carbohydrates in your stools we can't get rid of it that way.

    I am not arguing that a high carb diet is a good thing, I am not disagreeing that a fat based diet works and helps diabetes.

    A fat calorie has the same energy value as a carb calorie or a protein calorie it is a thermal measurement of energy, 2500 calories of carbs will power you the same as 2500 calories of fat or 2500 calories of protein (small differences in the chemical cost in each metabolic pathway) but 2500 calories of carbs will be a **** diet because it will screw up your insulin and your liver.
  6. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Did you clock the bit around 37 minutes? Through to about 40 minutes. Notice what he says about what he learned at college and then at medical school. There was a slide or two devoted to it there. Notice the Coca Cola statement on it. Listen carefully to what he says about CICO. Do you disagree with him?

    That last bit is not true. Fat calories and carb calories are not the same. They are metabolised differently. He points that out too.
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
  7. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    These three I n the thread are all scientists. All specialise in nutrition.

    Here’s another : Kettle Calories and the Energy Balance. This is at the Royal College of General Practitioners. She states what she thinks of CICO. She explains why.

    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
  8. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    I don't disagree with him.

    The last bit is true and I had a note in there already " (small differences in the chemical cost in each metabolic pathway) ".

    Metabolising fat to ATP will have a different chemical cost from metabolising sugar to ATP or the very expensive protein to ATP, but where will the cost go, it will turn into heat you can't make the energy vanish, every chemical reaction has inputs and output and the chemical energy stored in the electro-chemical molecular bonds has to balance during any transformation, and any transformation will result in

    Input = (Output + thermal noise)

    (thermal noise is photons)

    All of chemistry is about electrons absolutely all of it and those electron bonds in a molecule represent stored energy, when a material is hot one molecule will bounce away from another because the electrons shells are repelling each other and the force carrying particle that mediates the vibration is the photon, photons are constantly being exchanged between electrons mediating the electromagnetic force.

    (sorry out of time have errands tonight will edit further when I get home)
  9. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Here is some further thought on the topic:
    https://www.dietdoctor.com/first-law-thermodynamics-utterly-irrelevant


    “There are many adherents to the Calories In/ Calories Out (CICO) theory that constantly bleat about “It all comes down to the First Law of Thermodynamics”. The First Law of Thermodynamics refers to a law of physics where energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system and is ALWAYS true.

    However, in the complex world of human physiology, it is true but completely irrelevant. What the CICO people think it means is that if you reduce calories in, you will lose weight. Of course, it means nothing of the sort.“

    Although with a cheeky intro,they go into this quite fully. I don’t want to simply copy and paste it. But it is all there.

    From Dr Zoe Harcombe’s slides in her video earlier she says the below. Referring to the laws of thermodynamics. Would she be wrong? She gives CICO a real hammering.

    0DA81FBF-5A53-4DAE-8D32-E1D10FDBF4C7.jpeg
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
  10. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Why do people die when you feed them almost nothing and why do they lose vast amounts of weight before they die.

    None of these people claiming thermodynamics does not apply actually understand what energy actually is or what a closed system is.

    And further I am not talking about being able to eat any kind of calorie as long as it adds up to a magic number, I am NOT talking about CICO, I am talking about the notion that we can magically eat as much of whatever we want and magically destroy energy.


    See this below from your link, yes this is exactly correct, this is thermodynamics in action, you need 2000 calories to keep you warm and to provide the ATP to power your muscles or to fuel anabolism to build new cells, you eat a 1000 you have to balance the ledger from your fat stores 1000 Cal of fat gets converted and used.
    upload_2020-8-12_19-53-51.png

    I am simply talking about the physics, a cell, or a person is a closed system it is an autonomous organism with an energy usage requirement which varies based on what it is doing and the need to stay at the right temperature for the chemical reactions of life to proceed, all energy is the same thing all of it there aren't different types of energy there is no blue energy or red energy there is just energy, all matter is energy it's just in a concentrated form E=mc squared and the amounts in and out of a system have to balance along with a change in the degree of order of the system, the increase in disorder of the system is represented by the physical movement of the organism and the thermal noise it creates from its fuel.

    They can bleat on all they like saying thermodynamics does not apply but it does, I have ZERO argument with their descriptions of the action of insulin but any creature that loses weight has only done so because its energy out budget was greater then its energy in budget, you are energy if your mass goes down the rate of energy input dropped otherwise the fat store balance would never change.

    In the diagram above if the 1000 calories in was carbs the diagram would balance by the 2000 calories out dropping to 1000 calories out therefore they would not lose mass and they would not access their fat store, in other words their activity would drop. A crude example because the basal metabolic rate could not tolerate that much of a change there are limits.
  11. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    She's fine I agree with almost all of what she is saying, apart from the way she pronounces sucrose :D

    Oh and the misunderstanding at the end, she is right it is all about fat-stored and fat-un stored but that once again misses the way the energy scales work.

    And on the cost of manufacture of ATP from various sources be it fat, sugars or protein yes protein is the most chemically expensive to convert to ATP and where do you think the energy required to convert protein to ATP goes? It goes into your base thermal requirement it's waste heat and it keeps us warm along with all the other waste heat from other aspects of body chemistry it's part of your BMR.
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
  12. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    At a constant mass all three of these are impossible.

    upload_2020-8-12_22-43-29.png

    upload_2020-8-12_22-44-32.png

    upload_2020-8-12_22-44-59.png


    The first one simply cannot happen or you have a perpetual motion machine, it could only happen with additional catalytic conversion of body mass protein to ATP and that resource like fat is finite.

    The second is only impossible if mass remains constant, anabolic processes could manufacture cellular material which would reduce the mass lost by consuming the fat.

    Being technically correct the third one would work if you catabolically converted some of your own protein to ATP.

    At constant mass all three are impossible because they violate conservation of energy.

    Normal human beings who don't get obese are constantly changing mass very slightly up and down through the mechanisms that all the people you quote are espousing, the mechanism they describe is correct, many of the statements they make about Thermodynamics are not.
  13. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Actually I need to correct what I am saying because all examples are trying to show the consumption of 1000 calories of fat so all of them would result in loss of mass with the reservations I state above.

    Case one can only occur until you run out of fat stores or convertible protein.

    Case two can only occur through anabolism.

    Case three can only occur until you run out of fat stores or convertible protein.

    All three would result in loss of mass at different rates assuming the suggested additional processes were in fact occurring and would presumably only happen in a low insulin environment.

    One and three would eventually kill you and all three would eventually run out of materials to convert at which point the food consumption of 1000 calories would not be sufficient to support your basal metabolic rate so basically all of these would eventually kill you.
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2020
  14. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Well yes. But you top up on fat. Run on fat. Doesn’t sound very pleasant but there is a lot of enjoyable fatty foods including cheese, full fat milk, nuts, avocados, salmon, full fat yoghourt, double cream. Some people, well a lot of people run on a keto type diet and therefore run on fat alone. And keep their weight down. They aren’t dead. Just a normal healthy weight. Just like we all used to be in the era before the big explosion in junk foods etc etc and the changeover to the modern low fat high carb diet.

    What actually happens is that those running as fat burners reach an equilibrium. They don’t kill themselves.
  15. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Okay. So we effectively agree that CICO and weight is a load of bollocks as Dr Zoe Harcombe herself put it?
  16. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    “And further I am not talking about being able to eat any kind of calorie as long as it adds up to a magic number, I am NOT talking about CICO, I am talking about the notion that we can magically eat as much of whatever we want and magically destroy energy.“

    The notion that we can eat as much as we want. Of course not. The idea is to eat to satiety. Till we feel full.

    My chief aim was to get across the message that for many people the CICO principle to losing weight is futile. Hopefully you will recognise that now, listening to Dr Zoe Harcombe, Dr Jason Fung and Dr Robert Lustig.

    The proof of the pudding however is in the eating. The below geezer is a real person who was morbidly obese at 23 stone etc etc. He turned that all around in just a few months as he explains:



    Jason Fung again The Calorie Deception:



    Here again another Scientist Nina Teicholz:

    https://www.beaconjournal.com/akron/editorial/nina-teicholz-calories-no-watch-your-carbs

    “The most promising area of obesity research focuses on the effects of eating carbohydrates. Some 70 clinical trials now show that restricting carbohydrates is a highly effective way of fighting obesity. Low-carbohydrate diets are either equally or more effective than low-calorie diets, according to an analysis in JAMA.

    She eventually states:

    “One of the reasons low-carb diets work is precisely that they don’t require counting calories. People are allowed to eat as much as they like, so long as they keep carbohydrates low. In part because foods with protein are satiating, people on this diet don’t get hungry. Their metabolism doesn’t slow down, and they aren’t required to sustain a state of semi-starvation.
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2020
  17. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Why Calories Don’t Count. The Science of Weight Loss

    This man from the University of Cambridge explains in great detail, why calories of food are not all the same and why calories have no place when trying to lose weight.
    He points out the current traffic light system is based on limited research carried out 120 years ago and highlights where the errors are.

    Okay, it’s not what we think we know, but in 2021 we know better now.

    There are now a great number of books and videos on the topic. This one comes in from a slightly different angle.

    Last edited: Aug 26, 2021
  18. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

    Alcohol...
    • Agree Agree x 1
  19. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Beers and mixers. And the munchies.
  20. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

    I never drank, but I see people around me and know its not healthy :like:

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