{"id":961,"date":"2010-11-20T11:15:53","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T19:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leanmeanvirilemachine.com\/?p=961"},"modified":"2010-11-20T11:15:53","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T19:15:53","slug":"the-dark-secrets-behind-calories-in-calories-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/20\/the-dark-secrets-behind-calories-in-calories-out\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Secrets Behind &#8220;Calories In &#8211; Calories Out&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/a_serious_man.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-980\" title=\"a_serious_man\" src=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/a_serious_man-300x163.jpg\" alt=\"calories in calories out\" width=\"300\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/a_serious_man-300x163.jpg 300w, http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/a_serious_man.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Eat less, exercise more.<\/p>\n<p>It couldn&#8217;t be any simpler on paper, yet why is our quest to lose fat and gain muscle so damned <em>difficult<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>As we&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/05\/debunking-the-thrifty-gene\/\">already seen<\/a>, the theory that we have an innate drive to accumulate as much energy as possible doesn&#8217;t hold any water.<\/p>\n<p>Could it be that the conventional wisdom surrounding weight loss is fundamentally flawed?<\/p>\n<p><strong>What About the Calories?<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Okay, time to talk to the elephant in the room. I know what you&#8217;re all thinking&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This stuff sounds interesting. But how can you say that eating less and exercising more doesn&#8217;t work? The law of conservation of energy <em>proves<\/em> this! Therefore, to lose weight you <em>must<\/em> cut the calories!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, the law is rock solid. I&#8217;m not going to dispute that. For those of you who slept through class that day, here&#8217;s a quick refresher:<\/p>\n<p>E(in) &#8211; E(out) = \u0394E<\/p>\n<p>Where:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>E(in) = energy added to a closed system<\/li>\n<li>E(out) = energy removed from a closed system<\/li>\n<li>\u0394E = the change in energy of the system<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>But the\u00a0conclusion that you must <em>consciously cut calories<\/em> if you want to lose weight makes several deletions, distortions, and generalizations of the law that effectively hide the fact that it <em>doesn&#8217;t work in practice the way it theoretically should<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at these &#8220;dark secrets&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dark Secret #1: Calorie Counting Inaccuracies<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I pay no attention to calorie counts, either from nutrition data or  from the readouts on cardio machines, and I suggest you don&#8217;t, either.  Why?<\/p>\n<p>Because they are both comically inaccurate!<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adajournal.org\/article\/S0002-8223%2809%2901679-4\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\">recent article<\/a> 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% <em>more<\/em> calories than claimed, respectively!<\/p>\n<p>And the readout on the cardio machine? There are too many variables,  including form and fitness level, that make these &#8220;one size fits all&#8221;  calculations unreliable, but <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.cnn.com\/1999-09-07\/health\/9909_07_cardiomachine.accuracy_1_calories-body-composition-rpm?_s=PM:HEALTH\" target=\"_blank\">they are probably displaying 10% to 15% more calories<\/a> than you are actually burning.<\/p>\n<p>Yikes.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;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&#8217;t promising if you want to reach your goals.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dark Secret #2: The Chicken \/ Egg Conundrum<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Another common mistake people make with\u00a0the energy balance equation is assuming that E(in) and E(out) are the <em>causes<\/em> and \u0394E is the <em>effect<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There is no such arrow of causality in the law of conservation of energy. In fact, energy accumulation can be both a cause <em>and<\/em> an effect.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dark Secret #3: The\u00a0Hidden Variables<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 \u0394E is the resulting change of energy stored in fat or  muscle.<\/p>\n<p>In actuality, <em>there are more variables affecting these values than you\u00a0probably realize<\/em>!<\/p>\n<p>Above, I mentioned gene expression, hormones, and enzymes, which directly effect energy accumulation.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at some more of them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Digestion &#8211; The amount of energy actually <em>absorbed<\/em> from the food is less than that which you eat.<\/li>\n<li>Thermic affect of food &#8211; Your body burns calories by digesting food.<\/li>\n<li><em>Metabolism<\/em> &#8211; 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&#8217;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 <a href=\"..\/2010\/10\/25\/why-eat-less-exercise-more-doesnt-work\/\">Minnesota Starvation Experiment<\/a>, don&#8217;t you?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But that ain&#8217;t all, people.<\/p>\n<p>What nearly everyone forgets to take into account are the  difficult-to-measure variables that also impact E(in), E(out), and \u0394E,  such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Appetite &#8211; People who feel hungry tend to eat more than those who  feel satiated. And cutting calories tends to increase appetite. Facepalm&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Energy Levels &#8211; People who feel lethargic tend to exercise less than  those who feel energetic. And cutting calories tends to drop energy levels.  Double facepalm&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Some Final Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;full story&#8221; of what goes on in the body in regards to composition is in fact an awful\u00a0mess of many interrelated variables,\u00a0often difficult to measure, and\u00a0frequently out of conscious control.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been constantly told it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Most people &#8220;zoom in&#8221; 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 <em>many<\/em> ways of losing weight&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8230;and probably the most\u00a0inefficient one!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And since we&#8217;re all about time management and effectiveness here at LMVM, I&#8217;m giving you a valiant thumbs up to ditch the conscious calorie restriction forever.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of &#8220;eat less, exercise more,&#8221; I&#8217;d like to put forth the bold ideas of &#8220;eat better, move smarter, and relax harder,&#8221; which I&#8217;ll elaborate on in later posts.<\/p>\n<p>In the next installment of this series on willpower and fitness, we&#8217;ll take a look at the two &#8220;components&#8221; of the human mind, and why focusing on the <em>opposite<\/em> one than most people are suggesting will skyrocket your progress.<\/p>\n<span id=\"pty_trigger\"><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eat less, exercise more. It couldn&#8217;t be any simpler on paper, yet why is our quest to lose fat and gain muscle so damned difficult? As we&#8217;ve already seen, the theory that we have an innate drive to accumulate as much energy as possible doesn&#8217;t hold any water. Could it be that the conventional wisdom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[14,141],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-willpower","tag-confusion","tag-law-of-conservation-of-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theguycancook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}