Do Calories Matter with food and exercise
The diet industry is full of misinformation, logical fallacies, half truths and hypocritical arguments. One of the worst is the concept that calories don’t matter in food but they do matter in the gym.
Almost all treadmills and exercise bikes display 'calories burned'
There are many diet philosophies that try to ignore the basic principle of weight loss being calories in vs calories out. They’ll talk about hormone regulation, specific food items that help change your hormonal make up and ‘mobilize fat’ and other foods that can ‘impair’ your ability to burn fat blah blah. You get the picture. In general they’ll find any excuse besides the total calories.
The hypocritical part comes in when the same people talk about the number of calories a specific exercise can burn. By doing this they are contradicting the original stance taken with specific diet foods saying that calories don’t matter.
So which is it?
Is it specific foods that somehow change you into a ‘fat burning machine’ or is it the total calories burned by a special workout?
This is a case of having your cake and eating it too (literally). Or it’s just ignorance of the way the body functions (I tend to think it’s the latter)
The point is the same marketing/media source will tell you that calories don’t matter when it comes to food, but that they do matter when it comes to exercise.
The real answer is that total calories matter when it comes to food AND exercise.
If you don’t believe me try overeating by 1000 calories every day for a week with all ‘fat burning foods’ or ‘healthy’ foods and I guarantee you will gain weight.
Then try undereating by 1000 calories every day for a week eating only ‘junk food’ and ‘fat storing food’ and I guarantee you will lose weight.
Or you can skip the personal experiment and follow the progress of a university professor from kansas state Mark Haub who started a calorie reduced diet eating twinkies and typical ‘junk food’ in order to prove the point that weight loss is just a matter of calories in vs out.
He reported that after the first week he had already lost 7lbs (I’m sure some of that was water, but the fact remains he is losing weight eating what many would call the wrong food)
His next step is to overeat ‘healthy’ foods to prove you can and will gain weight no matter what kinds of food you eat as long as you’re eating too many of them.
As long as people believe that calories don’t matter they will always be at the whim of the next diet fad promising people they can eat as much food as they want as long as it is healthy. Sadly these will be the same people frustrated that they’ve failed on yet another diet.
JB
7 Responses to “Do Calories Matter with food and exercise”
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October 6th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
This sounds similar to a comedy-documentary called “fathead”. It’s about a guy who thinks Morgan Spurlock from Supersize Me really ate a lot more calories than what he reported in the movie. So to prove that fast food wasn’t unhealthy he ate nothing but Mc Donalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, Kfc etc for 30 days but counted his calories and made sure they were under I think 1200-1400 a day. He also weight trained 3 times a week and walked 5 times a week for half an hour.
His good cholestrol went up, bad went down, blood pressure went down, and lost 12lbs.
October 6th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
“His good cholestrol went up, bad went down, blood pressure went down, and lost 12lbs.”
Really? I’m assuming his prior diet consisted of a much higher percentage “healthier” or less “unhealthy” foods (even if the calories were at or above maintenance). If that’s the case, body fat levels/waistline is a LOT more important than what even many of us here think it is (JB probably already knew this lol). Dang, that’s pretty incredible. I think I’m queueing this up for our next movie night on Netflix.
October 6th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
By the way, John, I’ve been noticing more and more foods in the supermarket that are being advertised as low calories. That’s a good thing IMO, but then when you walk a few feet over, or go online or pick up the latest health magazine, you get bombarded with conflicting info on how there’s more to fat loss than just calories. I don’t know if this is an indication of a growing new trend in the right direction or just more of the same mixed message. Some of the overweight people in my office have been mentioning calories in their food choices, so I’m optimistic.
Also, this Mark Haub guy is great. I’d like to see how everyone responds to the second phase of his “experiment.”
October 7th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Heh– It doesnt matter what he does. A faction of people will still say he ‘cheated’ or has some kind of super-special metabolism.
And then when he gains weight on healthy foods, it will be because he didnt eat all organic non-diary gluten free etc etc etc.
There is also a guy eating nothing but potatoes for a couple of months, as a response to the Akins diet. I am a huge fan of potatoes, but hes going a bit extreme even for me: http://20potatoesaday.com/index.html
October 8th, 2010 at 9:09 am
Thanks for this post John. I work out at a Crossfit gym and they obsessed with the Paleo Diet. I too adopted it, not out of peer pressure, but I find it keeps my calories down. Many at my gym however are under the impression that somehow eating Paleo is a “Magic Formula” for weight loss.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:41 am
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February 13th, 2012 at 9:35 am
It is about much more than just calories. You can eat more healthy foods because it’s difficult to go over the limit when foods are healthy and low calorie to begin with. Its not that calories dont matter ots that they are not all created equal. And I’m talking about raw organic foods and recipes hand prepared with fresh ingredients. None of that packaged so called “low calorie” crap that is most likely processed and high in sugar which is one of the main causes of weight gain actually. When your blood sugar spikes this can cause your body to hold onto fat and when your insulin falls you become groggy and hungry AGAIN. It’s called metabolic typing. Feed your body with foods specific to your body type and I guarantee you will lose weight. I still do monitor my calories And probably eat twice what people “claim” you should an my calorie tracker never is above 1400 calories and many times is 1200-1300 easily. You need to put on muscle, the calories are less important in the gym. The muscle will help your metabolism even more. I hate it when trainers and nutritionists think they know more than doctors and actual studies that have been conducted for years. First and foremost it’s getting past how much calories are in your food and primarily caring about what you’re actually eating. That’s a lifestyle change. Low calorie frozen and packaged food sent to you by a dieting company is a temporary solution and you will absolutely fall off the wagon and gain the weight back. I’m a vegetarian and junk food excluded I eat what I want and how much I want, I am extremely active and I’m still losing weight. And i have gone from 210 pds to 135 pds On my own with proper research and no trainers! I’m very sorry but I completely disagree with all of this.