The Dark Secrets Behind “Calories In – Calories Out”

Eat less, exercise more.

It couldn’t be any simpler on paper, yet why is our quest to lose fat and gain muscle so damned difficult?

As we’ve already seen, the theory that we have an innate drive to accumulate as much energy as possible doesn’t hold any water.

Could it be that the conventional wisdom surrounding weight loss is fundamentally flawed?

What About the Calories?

Okay, time to talk to the elephant in the room. I know what you’re all thinking…

“This stuff sounds interesting. But how can you say that eating less and exercising more doesn’t work? The law of conservation of energy proves this! Therefore, to lose weight you must cut the calories!”

Well, the law is rock solid. I’m not going to dispute that. For those of you who slept through class that day, here’s a quick refresher:

E(in) – E(out) = ΔE

Where:

• E(in) = energy added to a closed system
• E(out) = energy removed from a closed system
• ΔE = the change in energy of the system

In plain English: in a closed system, the amount of calories absorbed minus the amount of calories expended must correlate with a change of energy stored in the system.

But the conclusion that you must consciously cut calories if you want to lose weight makes several deletions, distortions, and generalizations of the law that effectively hide the fact that it doesn’t work in practice the way it theoretically should.

Let’s take a look at these “dark secrets”…

Dark Secret #1: Calorie Counting Inaccuracies

I pay no attention to calorie counts, either from nutrition data or from the readouts on cardio machines, and I suggest you don’t, either. Why?

Because they are both comically inaccurate!

A recent article in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that low-calorie foods from the supermarket and from restaurants contained an average of 8% and 18% more calories than claimed, respectively!

And the readout on the cardio machine? There are too many variables, including form and fitness level, that make these “one size fits all” calculations unreliable, but they are probably displaying 10% to 15% more calories than you are actually burning.

Yikes.

You’re not going to get anywhere strictly counting calories when they are that inaccurate. And since it takes a surplus of less than 100 kcal/day to gain 10 pounds per year, these margins of error aren’t promising if you want to reach your goals.

Dark Secret #2: The Chicken / Egg Conundrum

Another common mistake people make with the energy balance equation is assuming that E(in) and E(out) are the causes and ΔE is the effect.

There is no such arrow of causality in the law of conservation of energy. In fact, energy accumulation can be both a cause and an effect.

Think of a child. For the first couple of decades of his life, he is gaining mass, but few people are foolish enough to believe that it is because he is eating too much and not exercising enough.

In reality, the child is gaining weight because his hormones, enzymes, and genes are causing him to, which requires him to acquire a caloric surplus over many years.

In adults as well, hormones such as insulin, leptin, and cortisol are hard at work behind the scenes working to keep your body at a certain composition regardless of how much you try to eat less and exercise more.

Dark Secret #3: The Hidden Variables

Conventional wisdom states that E(in) is equal to the calorie content of the food you eat, E(out) is the calories burned during physical activity, and ΔE is the resulting change of energy stored in fat or muscle.

In actuality, there are more variables affecting these values than you probably realize!

Above, I mentioned gene expression, hormones, and enzymes, which directly effect energy accumulation.

Let’s take a look at some more of them:

• Digestion – The amount of energy actually absorbed from the food is less than that which you eat.
• Thermic affect of food – Your body burns calories by digesting food.
• Metabolism – This is the big one, folks. The majority of the calories you burn come not from physical activity, but the energy your body uses to keep itself running. And here’s the key takeaway: Your body will adapt to cutting calories by lowering your metabolism as well! (And you remember how that worked for the participants in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, don’t you?)

But that ain’t all, people.

What nearly everyone forgets to take into account are the difficult-to-measure variables that also impact E(in), E(out), and ΔE, such as:

• Appetite – People who feel hungry tend to eat more than those who feel satiated. And cutting calories tends to increase appetite. Facepalm…
• Energy Levels – People who feel lethargic tend to exercise less than those who feel energetic. And cutting calories tends to drop energy levels. Double facepalm…

Some Final Thoughts

The “full story” of what goes on in the body in regards to composition is in fact an awful mess of many interrelated variables, often difficult to measure, and frequently out of conscious control.

We’ve been constantly told it’s as simple a model as a bank account, with deposits and withdrawals, when it really looks more like the picture at the top of this post.

Most people “zoom in” on the food consumption and activity parts and claim that consciously cutting calories is all that matters, when, in fact, this is only one of many ways of losing weight…

…and probably the most inefficient one!

And since we’re all about time management and effectiveness here at LMVM, I’m giving you a valiant thumbs up to ditch the conscious calorie restriction forever.

Instead of “eat less, exercise more,” I’d like to put forth the bold ideas of “eat better, move smarter, and relax harder,” which I’ll elaborate on in later posts.

In the next installment of this series on willpower and fitness, we’ll take a look at the two “components” of the human mind, and why focusing on the opposite one than most people are suggesting will skyrocket your progress.

Tagged as: confusion, law of conservation of energy