just done the test……..feaster, like I didn’t know.
food I should be eating, high protein and low gi, like I didn’t know.. 😀

imnotverygood – Member

Errr yes. Isn’t that what I wrote? What makes you fat is the the result of an imbalance between the calories you consume and the calories you use. The reason why you eat too many calories may be the result of a number of physiological/psychological factors.

You actually posted:
But what the article does say is that the reason for weight gain is the amount of calories being eaten. Whether or not this excess intake has hormonal, genetic , psychological or whatever cause doesn’t change the basic energy in/energy out calculation.

However, I now refer you to:
miketually – Member

I took the test and it confirmed what I knew – I’m a feaster. What it doesn’t explain is why I can overeat and not gain weight.

What makes you fat is the the result of an imbalance between the calories you consume and the calories you use.

Not quite. The imbalance between the calories YOUR BODY STORES and the calories it uses up.

Not all the calories you eat get stored.

…apps such as MFP are pretty much calorie focussed (sure they do some breakdowns but it’s all still against a target) and is that a bit simplistic?

Yes it is. And a large number of people still find it “too confusing”!

“Calories Out > Calories In” is obviously an imprecise and simplified model – but it is good enough and works.

Edit:

…having to enter the data for that Mars Bar you shouldn’t have eaten is off-putting, and stops you from buying it in the first place.

This is also very true. If you log it all honestly then it prevents secret or unconscious eating.

I’m ‘not in any diet category’.

Does that mean I win?

That’s why I said ‘Tangential’ 😉 I read bits of the article and that’s what triggered the thought process around calories. I’m sure there is some useful stuff in there, but I wondered if it’s actually very simple for most people. If not always easy.

it is good enough and works.

Does it? So why so many problems with people trying to do it?

Perhaps everyone who is fat is weak willed or ignorant?

Calories in vs calories out can work, depending on where you’re starting from, but it can be very difficult.

The real question isn’t ‘How can I lose weight?’ it’s ‘What techniques will be easy enough to stick with?’

If not always easy.

It would be a lot easier for the public if they weren’t caught between the dieting and processed food industries.

It would be a lot easier for the public if they weren’t caught between the dieting and processed food industries.

+1

Looks a good article to me and I will watch the program.

It isn’t in doubt that too much food = fat, this talks about why we eat too much – emotional/snacker/feaster etc.

If we understand this then we can choose a diet to compliment the behavior. For me, I prefer MFP or similar because it means I can eat any type of food as long as I moderate it. If somebody said to me no bread from now until easter, I would do nothing but feel like a piece of toast.

or they don’t care.

Perhaps everyone who is fat is weak willed or ignorant?

Depends who you ask. If you must, I’d suggest choosing, carefully.
🙂

Edit:
or they don’t care.
See what I mean?

It isn’t in doubt that too much food = fat

I’ve got a load of empty mince pie boxes and a set of bathroom scales that says otherwise.

If we understand this then we can choose a diet to compliment the behavior our genetic predisposition, and or diet degraded, hormone performance.

I took the test and it confirmed what I knew – I’m a feaster. What it doesn’t explain is why I can overeat and not gain weight.

The simplest and most obvious answer would be: you aren’t actually over-eating.

The simplest and most obvious answer would be: you aren’t actually over-eating.

Your spouse is a succubus

Does it? So why so many problems with people trying to do it?
Perhaps everyone who is fat is weak willed or ignorant?

I said the model works and is an easy thing to understand.

I didn’t say it was easy to follow.

And what the article suggests is that some people find it harder to follow than others due to different physiological and psychological responses to food.

What it doesn’t explain is why I can overeat and not gain weight.

Your metabolism is high enough and you exercise regularly enough that a few extra calories have no impact on your weight?

Your metabolism is high enough and you exercise regularly enough that a few extra calories have no impact on your weight?

That doesn’t explain why some sedentary people can eat what they like and not get fat.

Food doesn’t automatically squirt itself out of your gut through little tubes to under your skin. In order for fat to be laid down, a lot of things have to happen. Those things are more effecient in some people than others.

There are natural variations in metabolism, hormone production, and the mechanisms that lay down fat storage?

None of that changes the Calories Out > Calories In thing, it just makes it more critical for some people than others.

Food doesn’t automatically squirt itself out of your gut through little tubes to under your skin. In order for fat to be laid down, a lot of things have to happen. Those things are more effecient in some people than others.

Ok. Where does the article say that?

It doens’t.

But it’s still true.

None of that changes the Calories Out > Calories In thing

Well no but explain what ‘calories out’ means and we might start getting somewhere.

Solo, do you hold any medical qualification or are you just an interested observer?

I fell into the “no category” as well. Hoorah, curry for me tonight!! 😀

To lighten the mood a little, one of the spin instructors at the gym – who exhorting his class to put a bit more effort in – said ‘don’t worry about getting a sweat on, sweat is just Fat Crying’.

Now that’s genius 🙂

Doesn’t fat come out as Co2? Or did I dream that? 😆

explain what ‘calories out’ means and we might start getting somewhere.

In terms of the Calories In vs Calories Out model (as used by MFP etc) Calories Out is a perfect measure of the calories you expend to operate your body for 24 hours including everything from keeping your brain processing, your breathing going, growing bits, walking up stairs, and going out on the bike.

The assumption being that only calories remaining after these vital activities are then available to be laid down as fat storage.

I suspect you’ll say that this is oversimplifying things and that no such perfect measure can exist? To which I’d reply, that’s right. That’s why it is only a model not a complete accurate personal simulation of precisely how your own body responds.

Some of the calories you eat come out of your arse in your poo. And the calories you expend by exercising vary a lot depending on what is going on inside your body, and how you are doing it. And your body will dictate how well you are going to exercise and how much you will enjoy that exercise.

That’s why it is only a model

Yeah and it’s not that good of a model.

Of course it’s good advice for a fat bloater stuffing pies, but it has so many faults that need to be acknowledged if more people are to have more success with weight loss.

It’s been widely touted for decades and yet obesity still seems to be rising. I wonder why that would be …?

I lost 20lbs in a pretty managed way over three months using MFP. It predicted about a pound a week based on the target it gave me, and I did a bit better than that, due to exercising loads and not replacing ‘calories out’ with ‘calories in’.

So it might be a questionable model, but it worked for me. And it’s hard to see why it wouldn’t work for many others, but not everyone.

It’s been widely touted for decades and yet obesity still seems to be rising. I wonder why that would be …?

ONE of the reasons IS that a whole bunch of folk just don’t care enough about the food they eat/love to shit food too much. You only have to look at supermarket trollies to see that.

Also, I agree that it’s very hard for folk being caught between the diet Industry and Food Industry, and too often those things are one, disguised as the other.

It’s been widely touted for decades and yet obesity still seems to be rising. I wonder why that would be …?

You seriously think that obesity is rising because people are following that model and it doesn’t work for them???

I very much doubt that.

cant exercise yourself thin

Evidence all over the place that you can do just that. Perhaps what you meant was can’t do moderate exercise 2-3 times a week thin.

The advice on this forum when it comes to losing fat is laughable.

You can exercise or diet your way to fat loss. Much easier if you do both and using diet is easier than exercise.

“People often think diets are about willpower,” says Jebb. “Forget that, diets are about habits. There has never been a study that says people can will themselves to lose weight, but they can change their habits.”

Viz of course was ahead of the curve in defining what these habits are.

You seriously think that obesity is rising because people are following that model and it doesn’t work for them???

No.

People aren’t following the model, because it seems like too much hard work. Or they’ve tried it, perhaps even for a day or two half heartedly, and realise how difficult it is.

A LOT of people have tried to diet, and failed. This is where you have to ask why.

The TV show Diary of a Secret Eater is very telling and demonstrates exactly what’s going on. A bunch of fat people swear blind they don’t eat that much and blame their weight on every excuse under the sun, metabolism, hormones, medication etc. they’ve heard it all. After a while of secret observation it turns out they’re consuming in excess of 6,000 calories a day typically. And usually 6,000 calories of crap, the odd mid morning Ginsters followed by lunch, the mid afternoon Big Mac, an early dinner, the few pints of beer in the evening washed down with a large Doner and chips. There is the problem. People have no idea how many calories they’re consuming and always underestimate it by a large factor. And it’s all exasperated by the fact most people do jobs where they’re sat on their backsides for 8hrs a day.

I’m afraid whatever way you want to dice it, people just need to eat less and move around more. It’s hard, but it’s the truth.

Maybe if vending machines were connected to a treadmill and instead of paying cash for that Mars Bar you had to run the 300 calories or so before your snack was dispensed. At least that way people would get an understanding of the energy contained in these things.

This thread made me hungry, so I’ve eaten three mince pies, two slices of fruit loaf and a mint Viscount.

GrahamS – Member
It’s been widely touted for decades and yet obesity still seems to be rising. I wonder why that would be …?
You seriously think that obesity is rising because people are following that model and it doesn’t work for them???

I very much doubt that.

Well, if we can put aside your sternly held preconceptions for a while.

That is precisely why. For decades, the medical community identified fat as being the cause of CVD(now proven incorrect) and as containing more calories per unit weight, than carbohydrate or protein.
So, by that flawed logic, it was agreed that cutting out fat from the diet, would reduce caloric intake, and so reduce or even reverse weight gain as well as preventing CVD.
This advice has failed. Furthermore, research from the US, during the early 20th century clearly demonstrated that calorie restriction had adverse effects on the subjects under test and after the experiment, each subject over-shot their start weight by an average of 8lbs, to end up heavier than before the experiment, IIRC.
So, time to go back to the drawing board as counting calories wasn’t the silver bullet it was hoped to be.

Now some clever folk in Oxford are looking into what’s really going on and have gone to our genetics for an answer.
My genes don’t count calories, but they have specific instruction on what to do with a calorie of protein, carbohydrate or fat. The folk in Oxford have found or are still discovering this set of instructions and that these instructions vary between individuals, based on hormonal sensitivity and production.
It’s a distinction calorie counting does not make and so therefore calorie counting, imo, is doomed to produce poor, inconsistent and likely unsustainable results. As an obesity epidemic would suggest.

There is the problem
You haven’t been specific about what is making that individual eat that much food. Easy for you to say “greed”, “gluttony”, but that’s not a detailed explanation, imo. What has happened to their inbuilt “I’m too full to eat any more” mechanism? Please explain this. Something makes all of us stop eating, eventually. What is that “thing”.

People aren’t following the model, because it seems like too much hard work.

Yep and that’s keeping it really simple with just some basic arithmetic.

Imagine if it was a properly complicated accurate model that accounted for insulin release, GI responses, hormonal cycles, basal rates, CO2 levels, seasonal variations, etc etc etc

It would be more accurate but more worthless.

The TV show Diary of a Secret Eater is very telling

Yep. Despite all the dumbed-down prime-time-TV-ness it is an eye-opening show. It’s often a perfect illustration of mindless/unconscious eating that people neglect to think about when they wonder why they can’t shift their weight.

If you are honest with your logging then MFP and similar tools are really good and making you mindful of how many extra calories you consume that way.

Imagine if it was a properly complicated accurate model that accounted for insulin release, GI responses, hormonal cycles, basal rates, CO2 levels, seasonal variations, etc etc etc

It would be more accurate but more worthless.
Nice try, but that isn’t the alternative. The alternative is to reduce the processed foods, reduce the carbohydrate intake to whatever that individual can tolerate without deleterious effect on long term health.

Yep. Despite all the dumbed-down prime-time-TV-ness it is an eye-opening show. It’s often a perfect illustration of mindless/unconscious eating that people neglect to think about when they wonder why they can’t shift their weight.
Or is it a show which fits well with your preconceptions and prejudices?

My genes don’t count calories, but they have specific instruction on what to do with a calorie of protein, carbohydrate or fat…

So, balanced diet and eat less calories?

I should probably point out that MFP and other such tools DO count the percentage of calories from carb, fat and protein (typically sticking with 50/30/20% goal unless you tell it otherwise) so yes you can take it to that level of detail if you want. And yes people will probably get better results if they do, but it adds to the Arse Factor.