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"A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#51

Post by fijal »

colomon wrote: post #43
Udo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I allege that it indeed makes very little difference, except in cases where people indeed manage to eat only one category (most food is a mix, even when people claim to be on a diet). As other people said, the results of this study are not new. We learned that in basic biochemistry when the metabolic pathways were discussed. > So a 2000 calorie-a-day low-carbohydrate diet is equivalent to a 1400 calorie-a-day low-fat…

"A low carbohydrate group (LoCHO = 1800 kcal for men; 1500 kcal for women), a low fat group (LoFat, 1800 and 1500); a third group also consumed a low carbohydrate diet but an additional 300 kcalories were provided (LoCHO+300, 2100 and 1800). The order of average amount of weight lost was LoCHO = 23 lbs, LoCHO+300 = 20 lbs LoFat = 17 lbs." That's not quite the same math I used, but it seems to pretty strongly suggest…

Provided you assume those effects are linear, then yes. There is however no evidence for that.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#52

Post by astrogirl »

ugh wrote: post #28
keeptrying wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you simply cut out carbs you will lose a ton of fat. But yeah if you want to eat carbs and be healthy you have to basically count calories for the rest of your life.

Changing my diet never worked for me. Counting calories does. Also: I do love pasta. Counting calories is not that hard. I can do it in my head by now. Tracking my weight (which, I think, is equally important, especially for motivation) is more or less a reward and not a chore by now.

Good on you, but it's a sad fact that lots of folks just can't keep things in check.

As someone who does not get food cravings and does not have blood sugar regulation issues, it's hard for me to understand, but the only way some folks can manage to eat less is by banning certain foods from their life.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#53

Post by ugh »

teyc wrote: post #34
ugh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing my diet never worked for me. Counting calories does. Also: I do love pasta. Counting calories is not that hard. I can do it in my head by now. Tracking my weight (which, I think, is equally important, especially for motivation) is more or less a reward and not a chore by now.

There is also some research that suggests fasting being beneficial in modulating insulin resistance. I try not to consume food after a certain time at night. It is not too difficult to do, and definitely stops short any thoughts of a late night snack.

I'm very skeptical that fasting is healthy, it probably is not. The only thing I do care about is losing weight and that works.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#54

Post by terio »

keeptrying wrote: post #26
ugh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply counting calories will reduce your weight. I can pretty much confirm that now. Over the last eight months I tried to stay below 1900 calories per day and I have lost 17 kilo. As much as I wanted to, I did not manage to change my diet in any meaningful way, I’m just eating less. I didn’t even manage to keep up a regular sports routine. But my fallback – mercilessly tracking my weight and counting calories – sav…

If you simply cut out carbs you will lose a ton of fat. But yeah if you want to eat carbs and be healthy you have to basically count calories for the rest of your life.

That definitely worked for me. I adopted the paleo lifestyle more than 2 years ago. Although I was never obese, just overweight, now I weight about 20 pounds less than when I started. My blood lipid levels were also corrected.

I used to eat rice, pasta, potatoes, and bread all the time. I only miss the bread, but I make exceptions when I go to a restaurant and they have a really good bread.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#55

Post by terio »

I don't think the difference in conversion efficiency between carbs and fat is relevant in a "normal" diet. The main difference is in how they are metabolized, and the effect they produce in the body.

I can only recommend everybody to stop loading huge amounts of carbs, specially sugar. Go for simple unprocessed foods, like fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, and so on.

The paleo lifestyle works just fine for me. I know it is hard to convince other people to do it. Even when they see me eat like I do, and they have seen the change in other people that adopted that practice, most people simply resist the idea. Check out http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=mummy-say...

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#56

Post by zecg »

I have found the perfect diet (or, rather "weight control algorithm"), have lost about 60 pounds and haven't gained them back for a couple of years now. The algorithm is extremely simple: "If you ate yesterday, don't eat today." It means I fast AT LEAST half days in a year (see: alternate day fasting). On fasting days, I drink water and green tea (with no sugar, of course). It has numerous purported health benefits. I can vouch for weight loss, lower blood pressure, more energy (perhaps paradoxically) and better digestion. It also frees a lot of time, since you don't have to plan, eat, or acquire food half the time and it turns out digestion also "needs" sleep, so I can get by with sleeping less on days I'm empty. The only side effect is that of lower blood pressure - I sometimes get dizzy if rising up fast from crouching. I started doing this after fasting for 60 hours every fortnight for a year, I loved the feeling and wanted more of it. It also makes me appreciate food much more on the days I do eat. As disclaimer (YMMV), I tend to avoid food additives which are known to be bad (coal tar-based paintstuffs, artificial sweeteners, certain emulgators and such) - the lists of those are widely available. And I try to eat whole-grain cereal products. I also keep kombucha as pets (very clean and quite pets, fermented tea is best poo ever) and I bake my own bread with wild yeast that has apparently managed to have aerial sex with my kombucha scoby.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#57

Post by shin_lao »

zecg wrote: post #56

I have found the perfect diet (or, rather "weight control algorithm"), have lost about 60 pounds and haven't gained them back for a couple of years now. The algorithm is extremely simple: "If you ate yesterday, don't eat today." It means I fast AT LEAST half days in a year (see: alternate day fasting). On fasting days, I drink water and green tea (with no sugar, of course). It has numerous purported health benefits.…

Careful with that kind of advice and things like "I have found the perfect diet".

It's much safer and simpler to lose weight and improve overall health by simply not eating crap (which is quite hard to do in a typical western country, I agree) and having regular exercise.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#58

Post by saalweachter »

Geee wrote: post #39
acon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that a tree builds itself out of thin air is one of my favorite tidbits of knowledge. However, this kind of metabolism is only used by plants. Humans, as all animals, gets their building blocks from what they eat and drink. All the oxygen we use from the air we breathe is exhaled as carbon dioxide.

This is actually pretty interesting point of view. In essence, you should try to breath out all the carbon you ingest. Measuring the carbon dioxide output would be a pretty accurate measure of the actual energy consumption in the body.

I wonder if you could proxy your carbon dioxide output off of your breathing, with some calibration? When I run, I breathe harder; am I expelling more or less carbon dioxide per breath than when I am sitting in a chair? Counting breaths seems pretty technically feasible.

Maybe your heartbeat could also work; that's also pretty easy to collect.

It'd be awesome to have a running total of how many calories I'm burning at all time.

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#59

Post by glenra »

ak4life wrote: post #20
cjp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative. You miss the entire point of the article. Why are people consuming 6000 calories? They are always hungry and eat too much food. Why are they always hungry? They eat and drink too many carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates leads to high blood sugar which leads to too much insulin. After the insulin does its job, the blood sugar crashes causing hunger. The cycle repeats, causing problems including insulin res…

Don't consume carbs? This sounds insane. What about a balanced diet of caloric value inline with one's caloric output?

> Don't consume carbs? This sounds insane. What about a balanced diet of caloric value inline with one's caloric output?

What about it? It's not necessary. If you look for it, you can find lots of examples of societies that were quite healthy on diets that weren't "balanced". One popular example is the Inuit, who got 75% of their energy intake from fat (largely seal and whale blubber) because that was what was available to them whereas fruits and grains and vegetables were not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit#Diet

Re: "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics

#60

Post by eru »

ugh wrote: post #53
teyc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also some research that suggests fasting being beneficial in modulating insulin resistance. I try not to consume food after a certain time at night. It is not too difficult to do, and definitely stops short any thoughts of a late night snack.

I'm very skeptical that fasting is healthy, it probably is not. The only thing I do care about is losing weight and that works.

Read up. Fasting can be quite healthy. (The only actual debate is on how good it is for you, not on how bad.) Especially intermittent fasting.
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