let's figure out this "is a calorie a calorie?" business

G

Gordon Gekko

this is something that highly interests me. i don't want to debate which diets are the healthiest, what low carb ketchup is coming out soon, etc.

i'm talking about calories and protein/carb/fat ratios and the impacts of changing them.

i am going to say FLAT OUT and claim it as ABSOLUTE TRUTH, you could lose fat eating nothing but cake and ice cream. this is NOT what i recommend AT ALL--i'm just making a point.

i am going to say a few things from my own experience.

when you first want to lose fat and you have a lot to lose, just a reduction of calories through diet and/or exercise WILL make you lose weight.

HOWEVER, THIS IS WHAT INTERESTS ME GREATLY:

as you start getting down to really low body fat levels, something weird happens which i cannot explain. by really low body fat %, i'm talking under 5%. imo, it's easy to lose fat to where your top 4 abs show. there are really 8, not 6, and getting the bottom 2 or 4 to show takes much more effort than going from 40lb overweight to 20lb overweight.

anyway, when i first wanted to get ripped, i ate about 30% protein and made a weekly calorie defecit of 7000 calories. 2lb of fat is supposed to be 7000 calories. this works great at first. as my results started to become weaker (i track my weight, lean body weight, and body fat %), i upped my protein to about 40% protein and still had a calorie defecit of 7000 calories per week. keep in my mind, i update my calorie calculation weekly, so it did account for changes.

HERE IS THE POINT OF MY THREAD: once you get to where your top 4 abs show great, even if you have a calorie defecit of 7000 calories per week, my weight (and lean body mass) stayed the same for weeks. eventually i had to up my protein to around 50% and keep the defecit around 7000 calories per week.

keep in mind this is for making CHANGES. not a diet to live on every day. i'm not at all claiming to eat 50% protein every day.

i am also not claiming that fat could not be lost eventually without upping protein, but i sure do think it would take a long time.
 
without all the rambling, this is why i started the thread:

as your body fat gets really low (~5%), a calorie defecit of 7000 per week will not give you the results you expect. with a defecit of 7000 calories, my weight, LBM, and body fat % stayed the same for weeks. in order to get my bottom abs to show, i had to up my protein to 40% and then again to 50%.

remember, i'm claiming strictly a calorie defecit alone will make a person with a lot of fat lose fat, but why as you get down to around 5% body fat it all changes?!?!
 
i'm not claiming everything this guy says is true, but just read this if interested:

http://www.bufftitude.com/lesson3_print.html

1) Calorie counting is hogwash (Taken from OPTIMUM SPORTS NUTRITION by Dr.Michael Colgan, same book reviewed in my Book section).

Few people realize that the calorie counts on food labels and calorie charts have little to do with the caloric value of foods to any particular human being. Calorie counts for foods are obtained by burning the food in a bomb calorimeter and measuring the heat produced. The values of four calories per gram of carbohydrates and proteins, and nine calories per gram of fats, are rough approximation made up almost a hundred years ago. They have become entrenched and prevailing myth of the diet industry.

The caloric values of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats vary not only with the particular foods that contain them and your dietary composition. They vary also with each person’s biochemical individuality which affects the digestibility and efficiency of the use of food by the body. Just an example of dietary composition should be enough to convince you of the nonsense of calorie charts. Table sugar mixed with water, for example, provides more energy and puts on more body fat than table sugar eaten by the spoonful.28 One good reason to avoid sugared sodas.

We did one study at the Colgan Institute with four men and two women aged 23-40 whose weight and body fat were stable, that is, did not vary week to week by more than 2%. For six weeks, they reduced their usual lunch by 250-400 calories every day, and kept all other meals strictly at their usual levels. According to the American diet industry, that’s a sure fire prescription for losing weight.

Over the six weeks, subjects reduced their so-called “caloric intake” by a total of 8,400-18,900 calories. According to the calories in - calories out myth that dominates American dieting, they should have lost substantial weight. At approximately 3,600 calories per pound, they should have lost between 2,25 and 5.25 pounds. In fact, only one man lost and one woman lost any weight, the man 1.5 lb., and the woman .75 lb. The other four lost nothing at all.29 Counting calories just doesn’t add up.

28 Pi-Sunyer FX. Effect of the composition of the diet on energy intake. Nutr Rev 1990;48:94-105
29 Colgan M.Your Personal Vitamin Profile. New York:Morrow, 1982.
More...
 
further reasons to doubt how much we really know. yeah, we can send people to the moon, but there is SO MUCH we don't know and so much FALSE OPINIONS/INFO OUT THERE.....

i think this article makes some good points. the bottom line is, don't ignore calories OR protein/carb/fat ratios. even if you have your protein/carb/fat ratio right, if you eat 1000 calories more than you should have, it's still gonna screw you up. that's what some of you atkins people wanna do in the atkins diet thread. GET A CALORIE ESTIMATION AND KNOW YOUR PROTEIN/CARB/FAT RATIOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.geocities.com/kascalia/calorie.html
Energy from food is called calories. One calorie is actually defined as the amount of energy required to raise one gram of water one degree Celsiius. To measure the amount of heat loss of different foods scientists break the food chemical bonds completely underwater and then measure the change in the temperature of the water from the heat generated from these chemical reaction.
Scientists have measured the calories in protein, fats and carbohydrates and have determined that both protein and carbohydrates have four calories per gram and fat has nine calories per gram. This is where all the confusion began. Because the clorie measurments took place in a test tube where no other factors came in play scientists wrongly concluded that fat is twice as fattening as protein and carbohydrates. But this is no TRUE!
To your body a hundred calorie snack does not necessarily contain a hundred calories worth of avaiable energy. The hundred calories reflect only the amount possible energy that could be utilized by your body, depending on what kind of food the snack is. If the snack is composed of carbohydrates your body has to use the hundred calories for immediate energy or store that energy as fat. But if the snack is made up of protein and fats your body can use these foods first for building materials (cells, enzymes, hormones, and so on.) leabing fewer calories to be used as energy or stored as fat.
For example in a lab you can take 7 ounces of chicken (protein and fat) and broke it down into its basic elements you would find that it contained 380 calories. But when you eat the same piece of chicken your body does not break the chicken down into its basic elements. the protein and fat in the chicken are only partially broken down in to amino acids and fatty acids which are then used to build new proteins (muscle, hair, skin) and fats (myelin sheaths, cell membranes, and hormones).
Since chicken was never broken down to its basic elements but instead was reconfigured into new protein and fats all of the bonds were never actually brokes. Therefore all of the potential energy was never released as it is in a lab setting. Beacuse protein and fats are not broken down into energy and are used instead as building material little or none of the proteins and fats goes to fat storage.
Carbohydrates however are not used as building materials but instead provide energy that is then used to drive chemical reactions. If the energy derived from carbohydrates is not needed at the moment carbohydrates are stored as energy either in ready energy form as glycogen or in a long-term form as body fat.
 
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