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Calories in, calories out

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121–130 of 219 posts

Re: Calories in, calories out

#121
post #47

Gut bacteria are a big confounder among a bunch of other things. Different types can do a lot of things differently, like extract more calories from the same food. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/ci-gbi091012.... They can even mess with your mind to make you crave junk food. http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rule... Transplanting them from a thin human to an obese mice slimmed the…

> There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body "[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets." http://carcinisation.com/2014/08/14/science-journalism-march...

I read somewhere the mass of gut bacteria in a persons body is about a pound.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#122
post #91
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard all of this before and frankly a lot of it seems anecdotal and poorly supported. First, we do know that simple sugars lead to insulin spikes, that's measurable and repeatable. All carbohydrates (save cellulose) are processed into the monosaccharide glucose at some point. And the finite amount of glycogen the liver can store probably also could use some attribution or citation. I haven't heard of that and I…

fructose does not lead to an insulin spike and goes directly to the liver

Fructose spikes insulin, most macronutrients do. Even protein spikes insulin. Fructose has produced less of a spike than other simple sugars.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#123
post #47

Gut bacteria are a big confounder among a bunch of other things. Different types can do a lot of things differently, like extract more calories from the same food. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/ci-gbi091012.... They can even mess with your mind to make you crave junk food. http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/08/116526/do-gut-bacteria-rule... Transplanting them from a thin human to an obese mice slimmed the…

> There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body "[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets." http://carcinisation.com/2014/08/14/science-journalism-march...

The rebuttal is itself technically true but I think misses the point of the original statement: The gut is a complex system which has direct effects on many other systems in the body, including the brain. The resultant feedback loops are not well understood at the current time.

If you treat the gut as a simple "food processor" that does nothing more than take in food, break it down and transfer the resluting proteins & sugars into the bloodstream then you're vastly over simplifying things. Yes, it's perfectly true that gut bacteria do not make up a huge percentage of your body mass, but you could say the same thing about your kidneys & anyone who claimed that the kidney "just takes waste products from the bloodstream and excretes them as urine" would be over simplifying things enormously. That statement is as true as the "gut bacteria are only 1% of your body mass" one, but it also misses out on a lot of complexity - the kidneys are involved in all sorts of hormonal feedback loops & can go wrong in many weird and wonderful ways. The same is true of the gut, and that's the point of the original statement about the vast number of gut bacteria IMO - it's reminding us that the digestive system is in fact very complex and an active participant in hormonal feedback loops that affect the rest of the body, including those that affect how much we want to eat.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#124
post #107
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gut bacteria (specifically e. coli ) have recently been identified as the root cause of both anorexia and bulimia [0]. I submited that paper here with no luck when it came out two weeks ago. —— [0] Bacterial ClpB heat-shock protein, an antigen-mimetic of the anorexigenic peptide α-MSH, at the origin of eating disorders http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html

This is fascinating, thank you. It's surprising to see a causal link between ED and gut flora. Anorexia is, when we adjust for factors, the most fatal mental illness. Has anyone tested people who have a reliable diagnosis of either anorexia or bulimia? That would seem ethically easy enough. Especially since current treatment sometimes involves detention against the patient's ill in hospital, and forced naso-gastric f…

It looks like it is as "mental" as tetanus and botulism...

A friend of mine spent one month in solitary confinement as a "treatment" for her anorexia, when she was 14. That was 15 years ago, in France...

The study linked above found cross-reactive antibodies in anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders patients.

The next step would be to attempt fecal transplant for these patients.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#125
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a great point, and something I've told friends in a "broscience" fashion: There is nearly nothing in nature that combines fats and carbs. It's almost like you need to choose one or the other - balance is how you get into trouble, because then you think everything is legal. Take, for instance, potato chips -- and not the low-fat Baked Lay's or Quest Chips kind. If you're on a "balanced diet", they're l…

> The biggest problem I forgot to mention above, however, is that people will read all sorts of literature, but when it comes to actually weighing their food with a food scale (costs literally $20) and counting their calories and macros, they all fail. There recently was a story in Norwegian media about a person that had gone down some X kgs (basically from overweight to more healthy) -- by eating a strict diet of re…

This is basically how Nutrisystem works. They send you prepackaged meals, and you supplement them with fresh fruits and vegetables. (It's really hard to overeat fresh fruits and vegetables, even with poor measuring.)

Re: Calories in, calories out

#126
You lose weight by eating less in the same way that you achieve success by working hard. One doesn't necessarily follow the other but unless you do it you can't possibly expect anything but more of the same.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#127
The question of "...is what you eat more important than how much?" Went unanswered it appears. Essentially, what if he ate the same calories each day but improved the number of calories he burned per pound of body weight? A hypothesis I've seen scattered around the t00b lands is eating sugar effectively lowers that value (I think it's alpha in his analysis). I wonder how much one can change that and how so.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#128
post #86
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actually, almost ANY diet works. if you are over weight and reduce your calorie intake: you.will.loose.weight.period. What we are saying here is that you reduce your calorie intake within the range where gut bacteria can act, it might not have any effect, or even negative effect. If you reduce your calorie intake below the level gut bacteria activity matters, you will lose weight, but only if you can sustain the di…

The main mistake people do is thinking of it as a diet, instead of changing a lifestyle. If you are dieting for 3 months and then going back to how you were eating before, you're just losing your time. I've never been fat so can't comment for that part but when I'm cutting/bulking I eat the same things but in different quantities. It's not about fighting your body, it's about having discipline.

> The main mistake people do is thinking of it as a diet, instead of changing a lifestyle.

Yes. It really gets to me when people say they're going on a diet. There's no such thing as "going on a diet." There is only "changing your diet." If you change your diet for a while, lose weight, and then go back to your previous diet, you will gain the weight back.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#129
post #107
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gut bacteria (specifically e. coli ) have recently been identified as the root cause of both anorexia and bulimia [0]. I submited that paper here with no luck when it came out two weeks ago. —— [0] Bacterial ClpB heat-shock protein, an antigen-mimetic of the anorexigenic peptide α-MSH, at the origin of eating disorders http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp201498a.html

This is fascinating, thank you. It's surprising to see a causal link between ED and gut flora. Anorexia is, when we adjust for factors, the most fatal mental illness. Has anyone tested people who have a reliable diagnosis of either anorexia or bulimia? That would seem ethically easy enough. Especially since current treatment sometimes involves detention against the patient's ill in hospital, and forced naso-gastric f…

Did you read the paper? They studied women with and without diagnosed eating disorders as part of the research.

From a cursory read, it looks pretty damning to me - I'm not qualified to do a deep dive in the research methodology, but the conclusions look sound.

Re: Calories in, calories out

#130
post #126

You lose weight by eating less in the same way that you achieve success by working hard. One doesn't necessarily follow the other but unless you do it you can't possibly expect anything but more of the same.

Neither of these are true. Plenty of people work hard but don't achieve success, just the same way plenty of people eat less but don't lose weight. The body is a wonderfully efficient and adaptable machine and its own processes can sabotage your efforts to change it. There's also genetic predispositions that are a factor as well.
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