41–50 of 129 posts
> The subjects were in a residence for old people, and all were in perfect health and over 65.
I'm only skeptical because we just barely changed the "11 servings of bread" pyramid...so, who knows.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…
> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. uh, why not? i'll do it right now for you off the top of my head, which anyone can do after they look them up for a while. 100g of white bread = ~ 250 calories / 2 tbsp of mayo = ~ 200 calories / 4 oz of deli turkey = ~ 100 calories / 1 tbsp mustard = ~ 10 calories / 2 slices (2 oz.) of cheese = ~ 240…
How is that counting? That's my point.
You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. uh, why not? i'll do it right now for you off the top of my head, which anyone can do after they look them up for a while. 100g of white bread = ~ 250 calories / 2 tbsp of mayo = ~ 200 calories / 4 oz of deli turkey = ~ 100 calories / 1 tbsp mustard = ~ 10 calories / 2 slices (2 oz.) of cheese = ~ 240…
You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my point. You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.
This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.
Is calorie counting really necessary though? Unless you cook every meal yourself, your count is always going to be off by a significant amount which seems to defeat the purpose of counting in the first place. Surely it would be better to just eat your fruit and veggies, and avoid excessive cheese burgers and thickshakes.
Consuming consistently similar foods provides a ballpark guide even if it's not perfectly accurate. You don't need perfect accuracy. For example, I know that a piece of cooked chicken breast of a relatively normal size, is going to be within an acceptable margin of error of N calories. I can calculate what a purchased turkey & swiss sandwich represents calorie wise, in a wide enough ballpark to make it completely meaningless as to whether it's a perfect count.
If you buy prepared food like that, the easy way to deal with calorie counting is to use an aggressive margin of error. Allocate more (possibly a lot more, user choice) calories to that meal than you think it probably represents. You won't die from under-consuming 50 or 100 calories because you guessed wrong to the high side. If you go the route of allocating a lot more calories to it, it simultaneously acts as encouragement to prepare your own food instead when possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spend a couple of weeks/months preparing your own food and weighing everything. Use an app like MyFitnessPal to record and count your calories. It doesn't take very long to develop an intuition that's "good enough" about how many calories a deli sandwich contains.
2% extra calories per day ~= gaining 6 pounds a year. I doubt you can get within 2% making this far less useful. Basically, you need a feedback mechanism like your actual weight. Counting calories is not about actual calories it's a way to cut back if your not getting the results you want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my point. You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.
mixing g and oz - that's a novel and interesting excuse to avoid the work of weight loss. usually people just blame their thyroid but this bullshit excuse at least has some kind of passable scientific pedantry behind it. i'll have to file that one for later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
I've had far more success just keeping a simple food diary and going "wow I eat a lot of cakes" and cutting them out.
I have a theory that 'calorie counters' are shockingly inaccurate (one other poster mentioned a 25% margin is 'fine'!) and their success comes from the very act of attempting to quantify what they're eating being a defacto food diary.
> The subjects were in a residence for old people, and all were in perfect health and over 65.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a lot easier if you just flip that rule. Don't eat before 1pm or something like that. Basically, skip breakfast. Seems a lot easier, and the fasting interval should be about the same. Perhaps I'm biased because this is what I naturally do.
The monks appear to use this eating pattern mostly to fit their meditation schedule and not annoy the people giving them food ( http://www.vipassanaforum.net/forum/index.php?topic=1993.0 ), but there seems to be some evidence that skipping dinner is more healthy than breakfast ( https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/skipping-breakfas... ). I don't know if it is enough to balance the social aspects.
I have long believed, due entirely to anecdotal evidence, that restricting calories and eating less is one of the best ways to add years to your life. It seems that eating is inherently stressful for the body. Though obviously necessary, eating is something that we should strive to minimize. Any more than necessary, and the stress induced from digestion, and inflammatory molecules, damages the body and undermines our…