Nutrition 101 - Rediscovered
Nutrition and Dieting 101 - Lesson #1 - Counting calories alone is a waste of time. This may not be news to most of you and I had certainly heard it over and over, but I had never seen concrete proof.
But why? A calorie is a unit of energy. Doesn't it make sense that if I take in 2000 calories and burn 2000 calories that I will maintain, that if I take in 2000 calories and burn 1000 calories that I will lose weight, and that the opposite is true if I take in more than I burn? Not True. And I just saw the proof in the sugar-free pudding.
I am on my 6 month pre-cert supervised diet before WLS and to do this I purchased FitDay software (it is great, by the way). It tracks every morsel of food I eat down to the exact amount of creamer I put in my coffee as well as every movement I make, and it takes my basic body stats then tells gives me reports.
For the first week I did not follow my nutritionist's advice, rather I decided to eat anything I wanted as long as I stayed under 1800 calories and see what the charts said about it. According to the software calculactions my average daily calorie burn is about 2400 if I do nothing but sit around all day. Well, I ended up eating absolutely anything and everything I wanted including 2 days running around with my 13 year-old nephew and we ate nothing but fast food and junk. Bottom line, I never went over 1700 calories in any one day. My average is 1500 calories. And I realized that is how I always eat and have eaten that way for my whole adult life. I tend to ignore food all day until late afternoon or dinner when I get really hungry then I pig. In the past week, I ate as often as my nephew and it was junk, junk, junk.
So why then, if I eat 1500 calories and supposedly burn 2400 calories a day do I not lose weight? I was really frustrated and discouraged. The answer is probably in the breakdown of my daily calories. When I looked at that chart about 50% of my my calories have been carbs. (and most are processed food not good fiber carbs). About 35% is fat and only about 15% is protein. I am guessing that is the key.
Those who advocate just low cal. diets would be hard pressed to understand what is happening to me. I think the advice to eat more protein, more fiber and higher qualities of both is best. Poached or grilled salmon for example is generally a better choice than a spoonful of peanut butter. I always knew this, but the key to weight loss is not necessarily how much we eat, but what we eat. Also, I have never been able to "graze." The grazing concept also has merit (unless it is after WLS because most surgeons will tell you not to graze). It sounds reasonable that you eat something healthy every few hours it keeps your metabolism going and digestion does burn more calories than just sitting around.
Out of all of the diets I have tried in my life (and there have been dozens) the Atkins diet is by far the most successful for me. BUT it was hard to maintain for a long time. I think if you follow the concept of counting carbs instead of calories and paying attention to eating more healthful foods then AND if you can keep it up for life it will absolutely work. Unfortunately for me, I can't so I have serious weight cycling issues and I am now looking at WLS as my last hope.
Hi, I am 20 days pre op and would like to respond to your post...altho I am not an experienced bandster yet, I believe I am an experienced fat person and I can tell you that you do not burn 2400 calories sitting around all day...nor can you only consume fast food and junk and stay under 1800cals. I deluded myself for years with that sort of self talk and it just got me up to 335 pounds...
Just my little 2 cents worth....
Good luck on your journey.....
Kellie, First, I must say ... Wow! You have achieved so much. What an inspiration you are. Next, thank you for your post -- very interesting and helpful info. I am starting to learn much of what you learned. Metabolism is extremely complex. While there are some basic things that explain most of it, there are still some unknowns, I don't think anyone knows exactly what makes metabolisms differ. Doctors, dietitians and exercise physiologists are all getting closer, but it is not yet an exact science ready for plugging in a few numbers into software and coming up with magic guidelines guaranteed to work.
I went back into FitDay (which does a pretty complex calculation to determine Baseline Metabolic Rate (BMR)]and changed 1/2 my day to sleeping and the rest of it to total inactivity (i.e. sitting doing nothing). I try to type in everything I do, down to how many minutes I do the dishes, laundry etc. I am not always good about putting in small activity, but I thought I would err on the side of inactivity since that is most likely. That moved my baseline BMR to 1900 cal. per day, I think that is still high, but unless I log my whole day as sleeping, it won't go lower. The bottom line is that tracking calories in and calories out isn't an exact science, but it is a solid starting point. FitDay really helps me see where I need to adjust (I sound like a company rep, but it really is helpful to me). And there are simple things to do to make those adjustments, e.g. move around more, better food choices and a further reduction in calories if the current plan isn't working. That is kind of what we all have been told by everyone, their brother and even complete strangers as the scale spiraled upward. What those people don't know and the software doesn't calculate are certain genetic and psychological factors which all of us on here have not been able to overcome. For us, surgery is a panacea. I am really glad I found the software and that I have the advice of those who went under the knife before me because all of this knowledge will help us to succeed after surgery. Thanks again for your post and for inspiring us with your experience great results!
uwe0306 · 2 replies · 137 views
