XP: how many calories do we need to eat to lose weight???? - not an easy answer

People come over and over asking: how many calories do I need?
IMO - it is not the calories, but what food we eat, how much at one setting, etc.  My info is based on some studies that come over and over... and also personal experience...  As long as I do not eat starchy crabs and not too many carbs overall -  I do not gain, and even start losing, even if I eat a lot. But - it has to be good, whole food - and mostly home cooked - with not many additives.  
To all that say: but it is only 100 cal pack of cookies - my body will think that I gave it 500... and will store fat that is equivalent to 500 cal.   


from: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/07/1 1/what-are-the-best-and-worst-foods-for-healthy-weight.aspx

It's Not about the Amount of Calories, but the Type of Calories...

Conventional wisdom tells you that if you consume more calories than your burn, you will gain weight. But as you can see, the issue is more complex than that. It's really important to understand that the type of calories you consume is far more important than the number of calories.

If you eat a lot of fructose (and there's a good chance you are, considering it's the number one source of calories in the United States), it could be "programming" your body to become fat.

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. Here are a few important facts about fructose:

• After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. With glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent. The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes.
• Fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn free fatty acids (FFAs) into triglycerides that get stored as fat. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this. When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose, however, results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat! 
• The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.
• Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating. For further confirmation on this, check out this 2008 study published in the Journal of Nutrition. The researchers concluded that fructose turned into body fat much quicker than glucose, and that having fructose for breakfast changed how the body handled fats at lunch.

Ironically, the food products that most people rely on to lose weight—low-fat diet foods—often contain the most fructose! So beware, and always read the content labels.

Quality is More Important than Quantity

Another recent study illustrating the connection between your weight and the type or quality of the calories you consume (as opposed to just counting calories) was published last month, in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

As reported in Time Magazine:

"It matters, of course, how many total calories you take in each day, but the authors say the age-old advice simply to 'eat less and exercise more' may be naïve. To control weight over the long term... the study suggests that people benefit more by focusing on eating right, rather than less."

Thank you so much for posting this Hala. I have seen, and tried to respond to many of the posts that you reference, but they seem to have become a never ending stream. I wish we could sticky this to the top of the board.

There is no magic number. No magic calorie/fat/carb number, no magic scale number, no magic clothing size number. And we need to work HARD on stopping that nonsense or we will be stuck in diet mentality for ever. It's all trial and error, it's all what works for your body. And by working for you body I mean keeping you healthy, and a size (for you) that allows physical activity and the joys of an energetic life. Who cares what that size/weight is? If it's working for YOU than you are as good as gold.

Early out we yearn for specific direction, but in the end I think the wisest surgeons are the ones like mine who give general guidelines and then FORCE US to work up our own individualized eating plan. They are there for questions of course and to make sure we don't get too off track, but by putting the onus on the patient to develop their own success story, they thus give us an true opportunity to design our own eating plan for life.

Hard number targets will always = dieting to me. I don't do that anymore. And my life has gotten SO much better. It's a freedom that is almost indescribable.

Thanks again for your insight. I hope it is read my EVERY preop and most postops on the boards.

Happy Monday!


edited for spelling:  aarrrgghhh!

 Thanks for posting this good info Hala.

We need a like button....I agree with everything Hala and Amy have said.

A great source for more information on this is Gary Taube's book "Why We Get Fat". READ IT!

Thank you - Hala & Amy.  Both posts are really informative.

I don't believe that the calorie deficit rule applies equally either. 

You know, I thank you for posting this.

Sometimes I worry about my long term future. I can (and often do) eat a lot more than fellow post ops. I try to only eat when I am genuinely hungry (which also seems to happen more often than it used to) but I always wonder about my consumption.

But here's the bottom line: I eat good food. I eat fresh vegetables (and mostly local ones too). I eat lean meats, my dairy is lean, I don't consume sucrose and I rarely drink soda or consume empty calories. I do treat myself every now and again but the overwhelming majority of my daily intake is good, solid choices.

This may be why, despite the fact that I can and do eat, AND that I had the dreaded "bounce," my size hasn't changed all that drastically.

At any rate, I endeavor to give my body good stuff. You can't make a gem out of junk, my grandma always said.

Thanks Hala.  I like reading Dr. Mercola.

I need to evaluate my fresh fruit consumption.  I try to eat mostly berries.

I guess this is one place where my "I'm just not that into fruit" sensibilities help me?

I'm honestly not. My NUT gave me a per day fruit/veggie allowance. I use most of that allowance on veggies.