Cool, so this is a blog post that circulates around "homework" as we pound down the home stretch in the CFSA Winter Nutrition Program. The prompt is below, and I'm sure this is invariably snore-worthy to some people, but whatever. It's important. And I'm long winded and sarcastic, so take that in to account.
Prompt: Many of you are consuming a huge volume
of food due on this program. Inevitably, one of your friends will
bring up how it’s not possible
to eat so much and be healthy. Perhaps the most common variation on
this theme is the idea of “calories – in vs. calories – out” – that if
you don’t burn more calories than you ingest you will put on weight. Post a blog article
(and link it on Facebook)
answering why the idea of energy – in == energy – out is false.
I've made the point several times that never, in my life, including no less than 14 years of struggling with my weight, have I eaten so much food, and so much FAT, and yet lost so much weight (40 pounds, since mid-October, thanks for asking). In fact, the results of weight watchers PLUS Alli (don't take Alli, ever) would only net me maybe 2 pounds a week, and I was always tired, hungry, and pounding diet cokes.
I was talking to a coworker a few weeks ago about how I had hit a plateau with my weight loss (which I've since broken through) and one of the things she suggested doing was counting calories. The fact that I'd probably rip my hair out if I had to go back to counting calories again aside, I've spent too long not counting calories and seeing good results to believe that it's as strict as calories in vs. calories out.
So, the first thing you have to consider is that not all food has the same caloric density. Yes, I am eating a lot of food, but if I was doing this 100% perfectly, 1/2+ of every plate would be vegetables. My cup of raw kale, or even cooked spinach with olive oil, is not the same as my roommate's cup of pasta is not the same as your cup of cupcake. No matter how many vegetables I eat, assuming they are clean "naked" veggies and not the kind I used to buy in "1 Weight Watchers Point" freezer packs that were smothered in cheese sauce, I will never eat my myself in to obesity, and neither will you.
But, I mean, you have the flip side. I've been to Fogo de Chao three times in the last 60 or so days because my life is awesome and filled with people who enjoy meat. My concern at an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse is not keeping my vegetables in proper proportion to my meat and fat intake, it is in thoroughly enjoying as much of a $50+ meal as possible. But I can still only eat so much -- because meat satiates you. Their meat also has a tendency to be fatty cuts, and fat satiates you as well. How much meat and fat, no matter how delicious, can you chew through? ...how many donuts could you eat in an entire sitting?
Ironically, I couldn't eat as much the second time (about halfway in to the program) I went as the first (when I had just come back from 4 days of gorging myself on Christmas Cookies in Pennsylvania and two weeks of less-strict eating); and I couldn't eat as much the third (two weeks ago and even further in to the program) as I did the second. I'd like to purport that this is the result of increased sensitivity to leptin -- is it actually? I have no idea. I better go eat there again next week as another metric...
On his website, where I took the easy route and did the majority of my research, Gary Taubes also talks about the cause of obesity -- how experts say "well, people take more calories in than they put out". Well no shit, right? The question is why do they do that? You don't look around and see a lot of fat wild animals - they seem to know better, almost naturally. But you do see obese animals in domestic situations.
"I obviously believe in calories as a measure of energy, whatever that
means to believe in such a thing. (It’s like believing in miles as a
measure of distance.) So that’s probably not what my friend meant. What I
don’t believe in is that discussions of caloric consumption and
expenditure tell us anything meaningful about why we get fat or why we
lose fat, and I believe that the mantra that ‘a calorie is a calorie is a
calorie” serves only to direct attention away from the meaningful
characteristics of the macronutrients in our diets. " -source
So, calories aside, I can't believe that 1200 calories from cupcakes are the same as 1200 calories from kale. Points being that I'm not even sure you could consume in one day 1200 calories from kale, but also that it's loaded with fiber and nutrients, and cupcakes are loaded with... sugar. And if you are using your 1200 calories a day for cupcakes, unless you are in a controlled environment (the likes of which do not exist), you are not getting the nutrients you need -- which is going to drive you to overconsume on top of your cupcakes.
Let's talk about zoning for a second. On a zone diet, you lock in specific ratios of macronutrients. Yeah, some people zone things like beer, but chances are if you are even thinking about your macronutrient intake you are better off than the person plowing through pasta and cupcakes. You are more likely to be satiated, to be able to control your hunger, to feel good, and yes, even to lose weight. It may be calorie-restrictive by nature, but that's not where the focus is -- the focus is on specific amounts of macronutrients on your plate in a balanced fashion.
What I got from Taubes is, the discussion isn't as simple as "calories in vs. calories out". I mean, maybe it could be if you took a metabollically perfect person (who has not, unlike millions of Americans, jacked up her diet with years of yo-yo dieting and weird exercise patterns and prescriptions and other drugs and bottles of wine and...) who also doesn't care about overall health. And also doesn't care about their health for the rest of their life. Maybe you could get that person to lose weight on a simple in vs. out diet.
But is that a healthy way to live, or a healthy and realistic way to treat a country where one out of every 3 adults (and 17% of children) are obese? Are we expecting people, who probably have jacked with their bodies and digestive systems knowingly or unknowingly, to simply eat less and exercise more? Do these people even have access to the "right" kind of food? I'm a downright spoiled brat compared to some Americans, even on a non-profit employee's budget, eating my locally-delivered vegetables and swinging by Trader Joe's or Whole Foods several days during my lunch.
This is what I got out of this assignment: it's not calories in vs. calories out. Like Whole9 would say, "context matters". It's about health, about getting the energy you need today, but also ensuring your health 30 years down the road.
I don't know. It's a complex issue with even more complex public opinion - and it's a small pocket of people fighting experts and the entire general population. It's me eating chicken and an avocado with a spoon while mentally plotting my 200# back squat, and my friend who thinks cardio and calorie restriction are the answer. There will never be a large-scale experiment run on the American population that says, "hey eat this way not that way!", just like there will never be (as I've seen people suggest) government-distributed food - like, you get what you get and that's what everybody gets because the government has decided it is best for everybody (shudder) (go read "Matched" by Allie Condie if you want a vision of this) - but at least then we'd have a baseline.
This is more of a thought experiment than Taubes article, which wasn't the point. Maybe I am missing the point after all.
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