Why are calorie counting approaches so dominant in weight loss discussions?

[Lemonthyme]

An honest question. Why is everyone SO obsessed with counting every calorie on here?

I ask because there is a lot of evidence that it isn't an accurate thing. I work in the food industry so some of this comes from knowledge you might not have got wind of.

• Calories can be up to 20% out (either way) and be legal. Even if calories are more than 20% out, the product will not be recalled by anyone. Even if there's a howler on packaging, it normally takes a BIG issue to be recalled and, say 25%-30% more calories than it says? Nah, I could talk any retailer into letting that stay on the market.
• And if you think processed foods are hard to count, natural ones are too with seasonal variability, ripeness, storage, if something has been frozen or deep chilled all makes a difference. And those apps which work it out from photos? They can be wildly wrong.
• Takeaway calories where given are known to be even worse. They won't even be testing their products but relying on calculation models. Which are often crazily wrong.
• There is some fairly recent research that calories are not all absorbed depending on how it's consumed. The way calories are calculated is pretty blunt. It treats the body as though it's a furnace, it's not. Google this yourself but if you eat whole nuts vs. ground nuts, the pack calories will say the same thing. But in reality, you will not absorb all of the calories from whole nuts. Your body isn't good enough at breaking it down. Same goes for starches. Amylose particularly when cooked and cooled will convert in part to resistant starch which your body will treat like fibre but cooked potatoes eaten hot and cold will have the same calories on them but the body won't treat them that way.
• Our body adapts "calories out" when calories in are reduced. Sad but true. One of the reasons exercise is so important.
• Different macronutrients take more energy to process. Protein is particularly high. Carbs low.
• The foods you eat have impacts on your gut microbiome which impact the foods you crave, your mood and your appetite.
• And that's before you get into how differently our hormones react to x number of calories from sugary foods vs something with a higher satiety index.

I get that people want a number but calories seems like such a blunt tool. For those who use it, have you ever tried focusing on nutrition and more mindful eating or does that just not work for you? I'm not saying it doesn't work, because I did follow a calorie controlled diet in my 20s which did work, but I've also followed more intuitive approaches as I am now. I've just never encountered so many people evangelical about how calories must be counted. Every thread about 2-3 people will be stating with HUGE certainty that you MUST calculate your TDEE and be in a deficit of x amount.

Every time I shrug and think "well I'm not and I'm not prepared to do anything now to lose weight that I won't be doing in a year's time to maintain because otherwise I'll gain it all back."

@Lemonthyme you seem to be very frustrated that people are not just agreeing with you without any critical thought. This is a discussion forum, not a platform to put across your views unchallenged. I would recommend starting a blog, or a social media channel or similar to post your views on food and nutrition, for the benefit of society, instead of getting frustrated with people posting here.

People need tools to help them. That atlas PDF is not a helpful tool to the average woman looking to understand why she's not losing weight! It's looking at the issue from a societal point of view, not that of the individual.

Also, again, you are arguing against something that people have not said. Everyone agrees that the reasons that people become obese are complex and varied, and that calories in/calories out is a simplification and an approximation. But that doesn't make it an inappropriate tool, or somehow misleading and dangerous. Knowing your (approximate) TDEE is helpful. Posters often describe how your TDEE will change as you lose or gain weight. No one has said otherwise. It's useful to understand the relationship between weight and daily calorie need, and how exercise relates to that. That's what people describe when they mention TDEE and calorie counting. Many times on these forums you can see people who have made some errors in their estimation or intuition about how much energy from food they are consuming, and it's useful to point that out to them.

"We" haven't oversimplified weight loss for decades, the core message is that if you want to lose weight you need to use more energy than your body has access to using, on average each week. What has been unsuccessful for decades is setting up society to make that easy for people, the default behaviour. Instead we have done the reverse and created an obesogenic environment, unfortunately.

No one’s disputing the complex mix of factors that lead to weight gain or loss. You seem hell bent that CI/Co doesn’t work when in fact it’s the crux of weight change. You can address the energy in vs energy out by addressing the various factors on that map eg psychology. That doesn’t change the mechanism of weight loss.

Also, sorry to post again @Lemonthyme , but you keep using this term "intuitive eating" to describe what is a very deliberate and non-intuitive set of actions that you have taken that you believe will help people to lose weight, as it works for you. Maybe you might get more buy-in for your ideas with a bit of re-branding?

Although, I don't think you've actually been obese and used these methods to lose weight and to maintain that weight loss long term?

I don’t think OP is AI, but it is evident OP went down a rabbit hole of sycophant AI and youtube and now wants to spread THE TRUTH to us, benighted masses.

@OP You keep posting articles about energy balance and the effects of X,Y, and Z on energy balance to prove your point that CICO doesn't work, but you don't seem to understand that energy balance literally is CICO. It is the balance of energy (aka a calorie) consumed vs energy expended.

The only way to lose weight is to consume less energy than you expend. How you do this (fasting/calorie counting/low carb, etc.) is up to you, but they all rely on CICO. It's basic physics.

Intuitive eating won't work for most people because our body intuitively wants highly digestible, calorie-dense foods (aka fat and sugar), particularly when calories are scarce or energy expenditure is high. It is how we evolved.

If I ate intuitively on training days, I would be 80% Gregg's sausage roll, 10% black coffee, 5% Maynards Fizzy Fish, and 5% vodka. I would not intuitively want a handful of nuts because my body just wants fat and sugar; it doesn't care where it comes from, but my brain knows that Gregg's sausage rolls taste good and almonds don't.

Are you serious OP? It’s been scientifically proven that reducing calories results in weight loss. Thermodynamics is not a theory it’s a validated fact. The nuances of applying it are more complicated due to all the other factors but the underlying principal is calories in, calories out

energy balance is CICO 😂