The whole thing confused me, but the edit helps a bit. There is nothing particularly wrong with “Calories in, calories out” it just fails to illuminate anything at all which is why it’s a bad response to make to any claim about the effects of diet. It also, as a practical matter leads to people thinking about their size as the result of a system where their best control levers are how much they eat and how much they exercise. If trying to eat less and exercise more is a bad way to try to lose weight then attacking the model as simplistic (despite it being a tautology) seems like a reasonable thing to do. That is—aside from being uninformative it also seems like it might have counterproductive effects as far as people interpret it as dieting advice.
I sense there is a great deal of bias surrounding this topic.
The goal is to lose weight, right? And this guy being discussed is an advocate of the Atikins diet, right?
All I meant (and all I said) is that “Atkins works through the drastic reduction of the type of calories that make up 40-60% of American diets: carbs.”
I conceeded that “There are lots of variables in regard to the psychology of dieting, physiological advantages to consuming certain foods and nutrients & genetic predispostion of metabolism”
And concluded that “dieting and body weight is fundamentally about simple caloric arithmetic”.
...
From my wikipedia reserach, Atkins includes a two week “Induction” phase which involves what appears to me as nothing more than carb-eliminating & portion control.
Over the course of two weeks, I posit two things tend to happen to an Atkins dieter: (1) they lose weight through a rather dramatic reduction in calories & (2) they form some habits.
(1) leads to some increased positivity and will to continue & (2) helps them stick to the diet with less will power expenditure. (In many cases I’ve seen, and as a result of their increased will positivity and new habits, people incorporate some other helpful weight loss measures concurrently, such as consistent exercise, which furthers their efforts.)
You seem to be suggesting this is more complicated and magical than I think it need be, and then critiicizing my simpler solution.
OF COURSE dieting is hard because of lots of well established psychological and physiological reasons. I’m not trying to discount that. But pretending Atkins works primarily by some other mechanism other than calorie reduction is, in my current opinion, not true.
If I’m wrong, show me.
You mentioned insulin as a variable I’m ignoring… And then you said cases like those “don’t make up a very significant fraction of people who are obese in the modern, western world”.
...
By the way, I think I’ve made this clear, but I’ll make it clearer because it is a big deal to me: I’m not in the over-simplified (ignorant) crowd who simply says “Fat people eat too much”, as I believe this discounts the significant role that, for one case, individual differences in metabolism make in people’s weight over the course of many years.
There is a “Skinny Elite” class who look down on those who are not skinny and make judgements in regard to their character, discipline, etc. This is the result of ignorance. Two people can have identical energy balances (cals in/out) over the course of a decade and end up 100+ lbs apart in body mass, and that is without figuring in the psychological & emotional toll it obviously takes on a person to “fail” in comparison to people who are much less disciplined in their diet and excerise regiment, and then be judged daily for it.
Over the course of two weeks, I posit two things tend to happen to an Atkins dieter: (1) they lose weight through a rather dramatic reduction in calories & (2) they form some habits.
They also lose a lot of water weight.
But pretending Atkins works primarily by some other mechanism other than calorie reduction is, in my current opinion, not true.
Well I think the hypothesis is that by eliminating refined carbohydrates, you are adjusting your body’s internal “food clock” so that you will naturally end up eating less. So it’s analogous to the Shangri La diet, except that the Shangri La diet purports to adjust your internal “food clock” through a daily shot of flavor-free calories.
“Calories in, calories out” it just fails to illuminate anything at all
That’s wrong. There meaningful disagreement about whether “Calories in, calories out” is true. Deciding whether it’s true matters.
There are three positions:
1) It’s the calories stupid. People should count calories and reduce their intake an then they will lose weight.
2) People can’t just reduce calories easily. They need to take into account all sorts of psychological factors to successfully reduce calorie intake. This means making certain food choices that result in different levels of hunger.
3) Calories in doesn’t matter much, you can eat 4000 kcal a day like Dave Asprey and still be fit and not gain additional weight.
There are plenty of paleo folks who argue 3) in some form but most not as strong as Dave Asprey. It’s imporant to know when someone argues in favor of 2) and when in favor of 3).
There is nothing particularly wrong with “Calories in, calories out” it just fails to illuminate anything at all
It illuminates the goal. There are smart and stupid ways to achieve that goal. I think simple calorie restriction without other concerns is a stupid way to achieve that goal, but I also think scolding anyone who states the goal is damaging to the goal of making people smarter about their diets. Through the power of connotation it’s just going to make you look like a perpetual-motion-machine-quack to anyone not familiar with your arguments.
It also, as a practical matter leads to people thinking about their size as the result of a system where their best control levers are how much they eat and how much they exercise.
It could also make them come up with smarter ways to restrict calories the easiest way possible, which could be limiting carbohydrate intake.
If trying to eat less and exercise more is a bad way to try to lose weight
… but it isn’t. The question is how you do it, and I think you agree.
counterproductive effects as far as people interpret it as dieting advice.
People interpret low carb diets all the time too as a permission to eat for pleasure as much as they want. Hedging against misunderstandings is advisable no matter what we’re talking about.
It illuminates the goal. There are smart and stupid ways to achieve that goal.
Having thought about this some more, I think it’s a good point. The problem with the soccer game analogy is that everyone is completely and acutely aware that you need to score more than the other side in order to win and that that’s the only way to win. With dieting, weight loss, and obesity, a lot of people vaguely believe that calories don’t matter; that there are a lot of thin people who eat lots and lots of food and stay thin; that there are a lot of fat people who eat very little food and stay fat; and so on.
Of course it’s in Taubes’ interest to have some vagueness on this point since he can sell a lot of books by being perceived as giving people permission to pig out.
People interpret low carb diets all the time too as a permission to eat for pleasure as much as they want.
Well is that a misinterpretation?I
I had this exchange with poster “Jack” a few posts back:
Me:
But anyway, you seem to be saying that, according to Taubes, if you simply avoid eating refined carbohydrates, you can eat other foods ad libitum and avoid obesity. Is that pretty much it?
It should be since he admitted that too much energy leads to weight gain. I suspect he meant that people naturally restrict their intake on certain diets, so you don’t have to give them explicit warning about eating too much.
This leads me to believe some people are suffering from a typical appetite bias. Eating to satiety isn’t the same thing as eating for pleasure. I could easily triple or quadruple my energy intake if I didn’t have to worry about getting fat. This is why I try to make my food not too tasty and handle it more business-like.
It should be since he admitted that too much energy leads to weight gain. I suspect he meant that people naturally restrict their intake on certain diets, so you don’t have to give them explicit warning about eating too much.
I assumed he meant that in the absence of carbs, the body will either adjust its metabolism to burn any excess fat consumed or not absorb it in the first place.
That would be an extraordinary claim and I would like to see extraordinary evidence before I assume anything like that. I challenge anyone who believes that to eat 7500 kcal per day and few carbs for a week and see what happens, or say, 5000 kcal a day for two weeks.
It would be very unpleasant to eat 1 kg of fat in a day (5 cups of pure oil or 12 sticks of butter), even before you got to the point of intestinal distress. That is well past the point of satiety for a normal person, and you would essentially be forcing it down in spite of your mind telling you to stop. Adding fiber would probably make this worse, as it is also satiating. Your stomach attempts to slow the amount of fat released into the intestine to enhance fat absorption, but you are well-past the normal limits of absorption, so your stomach gets as full as it can before it begins to release too fast. The majority of the fat and fiber mixture would pass through undigested.
Change the amount then and make it longer than a week. Satiety was not the point of discussion, so yes you might have to force it a bit. Make the composition whatever you want, as long as you don’t add carbohydrates.
What does “past the normal limits of absorption” mean? There are athletes who eat more than 10000 kcal a day, but of course a lot of it isn’t fat, and because it isn’t, the volume they’re eating would be larger. Of course, their GI tract would have adapted to that kind of load.
The whole thing confused me, but the edit helps a bit. There is nothing particularly wrong with “Calories in, calories out” it just fails to illuminate anything at all which is why it’s a bad response to make to any claim about the effects of diet. It also, as a practical matter leads to people thinking about their size as the result of a system where their best control levers are how much they eat and how much they exercise. If trying to eat less and exercise more is a bad way to try to lose weight then attacking the model as simplistic (despite it being a tautology) seems like a reasonable thing to do. That is—aside from being uninformative it also seems like it might have counterproductive effects as far as people interpret it as dieting advice.
I sense there is a great deal of bias surrounding this topic.
The goal is to lose weight, right? And this guy being discussed is an advocate of the Atikins diet, right?
All I meant (and all I said) is that “Atkins works through the drastic reduction of the type of calories that make up 40-60% of American diets: carbs.”
I conceeded that “There are lots of variables in regard to the psychology of dieting, physiological advantages to consuming certain foods and nutrients & genetic predispostion of metabolism”
And concluded that “dieting and body weight is fundamentally about simple caloric arithmetic”.
...
From my wikipedia reserach, Atkins includes a two week “Induction” phase which involves what appears to me as nothing more than carb-eliminating & portion control.
Over the course of two weeks, I posit two things tend to happen to an Atkins dieter: (1) they lose weight through a rather dramatic reduction in calories & (2) they form some habits.
(1) leads to some increased positivity and will to continue & (2) helps them stick to the diet with less will power expenditure. (In many cases I’ve seen, and as a result of their increased will positivity and new habits, people incorporate some other helpful weight loss measures concurrently, such as consistent exercise, which furthers their efforts.)
You seem to be suggesting this is more complicated and magical than I think it need be, and then critiicizing my simpler solution.
OF COURSE dieting is hard because of lots of well established psychological and physiological reasons. I’m not trying to discount that. But pretending Atkins works primarily by some other mechanism other than calorie reduction is, in my current opinion, not true.
If I’m wrong, show me.
You mentioned insulin as a variable I’m ignoring… And then you said cases like those “don’t make up a very significant fraction of people who are obese in the modern, western world”.
...
By the way, I think I’ve made this clear, but I’ll make it clearer because it is a big deal to me: I’m not in the over-simplified (ignorant) crowd who simply says “Fat people eat too much”, as I believe this discounts the significant role that, for one case, individual differences in metabolism make in people’s weight over the course of many years.
There is a “Skinny Elite” class who look down on those who are not skinny and make judgements in regard to their character, discipline, etc. This is the result of ignorance. Two people can have identical energy balances (cals in/out) over the course of a decade and end up 100+ lbs apart in body mass, and that is without figuring in the psychological & emotional toll it obviously takes on a person to “fail” in comparison to people who are much less disciplined in their diet and excerise regiment, and then be judged daily for it.
They also lose a lot of water weight.
Well I think the hypothesis is that by eliminating refined carbohydrates, you are adjusting your body’s internal “food clock” so that you will naturally end up eating less. So it’s analogous to the Shangri La diet, except that the Shangri La diet purports to adjust your internal “food clock” through a daily shot of flavor-free calories.
That’s wrong. There meaningful disagreement about whether “Calories in, calories out” is true. Deciding whether it’s true matters.
There are three positions:
1) It’s the calories stupid. People should count calories and reduce their intake an then they will lose weight.
2) People can’t just reduce calories easily. They need to take into account all sorts of psychological factors to successfully reduce calorie intake. This means making certain food choices that result in different levels of hunger.
3) Calories in doesn’t matter much, you can eat 4000 kcal a day like Dave Asprey and still be fit and not gain additional weight.
There are plenty of paleo folks who argue 3) in some form but most not as strong as Dave Asprey. It’s imporant to know when someone argues in favor of 2) and when in favor of 3).
There is meaningful disagreement between those positions, but none of them dispute conservation of energy.
Thanks for the clarification.
It illuminates the goal. There are smart and stupid ways to achieve that goal. I think simple calorie restriction without other concerns is a stupid way to achieve that goal, but I also think scolding anyone who states the goal is damaging to the goal of making people smarter about their diets. Through the power of connotation it’s just going to make you look like a perpetual-motion-machine-quack to anyone not familiar with your arguments.
It could also make them come up with smarter ways to restrict calories the easiest way possible, which could be limiting carbohydrate intake.
… but it isn’t. The question is how you do it, and I think you agree.
People interpret low carb diets all the time too as a permission to eat for pleasure as much as they want. Hedging against misunderstandings is advisable no matter what we’re talking about.
Having thought about this some more, I think it’s a good point. The problem with the soccer game analogy is that everyone is completely and acutely aware that you need to score more than the other side in order to win and that that’s the only way to win. With dieting, weight loss, and obesity, a lot of people vaguely believe that calories don’t matter; that there are a lot of thin people who eat lots and lots of food and stay thin; that there are a lot of fat people who eat very little food and stay fat; and so on.
Of course it’s in Taubes’ interest to have some vagueness on this point since he can sell a lot of books by being perceived as giving people permission to pig out.
Well is that a misinterpretation?I
I had this exchange with poster “Jack” a few posts back:
Me:
Jack:
It should be since he admitted that too much energy leads to weight gain. I suspect he meant that people naturally restrict their intake on certain diets, so you don’t have to give them explicit warning about eating too much.
This leads me to believe some people are suffering from a typical appetite bias. Eating to satiety isn’t the same thing as eating for pleasure. I could easily triple or quadruple my energy intake if I didn’t have to worry about getting fat. This is why I try to make my food not too tasty and handle it more business-like.
I assumed he meant that in the absence of carbs, the body will either adjust its metabolism to burn any excess fat consumed or not absorb it in the first place.
That would be an extraordinary claim and I would like to see extraordinary evidence before I assume anything like that. I challenge anyone who believes that to eat 7500 kcal per day and few carbs for a week and see what happens, or say, 5000 kcal a day for two weeks.
Edited to be more reasonable.
I predict severe intestinal distress.
That’s only roughly 1kg of fat. Add some fiber and take it throughout the day, I predict minor intestinal distress.
It would be very unpleasant to eat 1 kg of fat in a day (5 cups of pure oil or 12 sticks of butter), even before you got to the point of intestinal distress. That is well past the point of satiety for a normal person, and you would essentially be forcing it down in spite of your mind telling you to stop. Adding fiber would probably make this worse, as it is also satiating. Your stomach attempts to slow the amount of fat released into the intestine to enhance fat absorption, but you are well-past the normal limits of absorption, so your stomach gets as full as it can before it begins to release too fast. The majority of the fat and fiber mixture would pass through undigested.
Change the amount then and make it longer than a week. Satiety was not the point of discussion, so yes you might have to force it a bit. Make the composition whatever you want, as long as you don’t add carbohydrates.
What does “past the normal limits of absorption” mean? There are athletes who eat more than 10000 kcal a day, but of course a lot of it isn’t fat, and because it isn’t, the volume they’re eating would be larger. Of course, their GI tract would have adapted to that kind of load.