Trying to understand what a diet can do that calorie counting can't?

[emkana]

As in a way calorie counting just seems easier and more straightforward? Or am I missing something?

I don't understand - calorie counting is dieting!

Do you mean Atkins or Dukan or whatever?

I know but I mean following dukan, Atkins, ww, sw... With all those rules about whatvyou can and can't eat, as opposed to eating what you want and counting the calories.

There are many different ways that you can choose to try and lose weight. You can count calories, which means you can eat/drink anything - as long as you count the calories.

You can opt for a low fat diet - like Rosemary Conley

You can opt for a low carbohydrate diet - like Atkins, The Idiot Proof Diet, The South Beach Diet, etc

You can choose very low calorie diets (VSCD) like the Cambridge Diet, Lighter Life

Essentially it makes little difference which one you choose - they will all have rules of some sort.

Whatever diet you choose, if you stick to it then it will work - the key thing is being able to stick to it, and then - once you've lost the weight - staying at that weight.

You are missing something.

The concept of a calorie is based on the energy produced when the food is burned in a furnace... of course tummies don't use calories in the same way as a furnace. Calorie counting assumes all calories are equal and they are not.

In Tim Feriss's 4 hour body he describes an experiment whereby 3 woman of similar weight/built etc ate for a month 1000 calories a day:

-one ate only table sugar
-one ate only white chicken
-one ate only mayonaise

Even though the calorie intake was identical the outcomes were very different - see if you can guess who lost and who GAINED weight.

FWIW I did calorie counting for first 2 stone and then reached plateau.... changed to high protein, low carb, low fat (based on dukan - but same no of calories as before) and weight came off quickly again.

You mean he found someone who was prepared to eat an extra 1000 calories of mayonnaise a day?

But for the study to have any validity, he'd have had at the very least to have repeated it with the same women so that each ate the other things for a month too to see if it was to do with the foodstuff or the women.

And for it have real validity, he'd had to have carried the study out on about 1000 women.

He didn't do the experiment he commented on it.

They only ate 1000 calories a day, it wasn't in addition to their normal food.

I agree though would need to be repeated on larger scale but I think its an accepted fact that protein calorie is not equal to a carboydrate calorie in terms of energy for the body etc.

So someone just ate 1000 calories of mayonnaise a day for a month? And sugar? Surely they'd have been badly malnourished. What vitamins and minerals are there in sugar? Who were these women and what were they paid to put their bodies through this?

So ... who DID lose or gain weight?

I think that finding something you can stick to longterm is best, something that once you've reached your goal weight you can then tweak to maintain and be happy to stick to for the rest of your life.

If anyone finds that, could they let me know please?

And no carb (although I have stuck to Dukan/South Beach and IPD) like glue doesn't work for me. I feel very ill and don't lose any weight.
Low carb and lots of veg, lean protein works just fine.

the person just eating carbs gained weight, the other 2 lost, the one eating the mayo lost the most.

Thanks forever - although I would have thought the chicken eater would lose more than the mayo eater as mayo is fat isn't it?

Yes, I was surprised by that - mayo was 90% fat, chicken was 90% protein.

But nobody's told me about how these people coped on these extraordinarily limited diets. Just sugar for a month? Just mayonnaise for a month? And did the same women then eat each of the other things for a month too, to prove that it was the food and not just their metabolism that was different?

Three women on bizarre and frankly unbelievable diets do not any evidence at all make.

Its been proven though that a protein calorie is not equal to (say) a carbohydrate one as the body uses 30% of the protein calorie as part of the digestion process. Further a protein calorie does not affect blood sugar and insulin in the way that a carbohydrate one.

I agree that 3 women on a bizarrre experiment doesn't prove anything