Does one *really* need a calorie deficit to lose weight?

[shipo]

Hey gang, I've been using a Fitbit Surge for about a year now and am just finding about these forums (I sorta knew they existed, but never paid much attention to them), and have seen numerous references to a calorie deficit diet as a requirement for losing weight.  So, as the title of this thread suggests, I'm curious as to whether this is truly a physiological requirement, or just a basic suggestion.

Why do I ask?  Personal experience suggests something contrary to the conventional "calorie deficit" wisdom; consider the following.

I am what may well be termed an "off again/on again" runner (more off than on).  It seems like changing life dynamics, be it job, family, injury, whatever, has always managed to muck things up with my running just when things were going well, and whenever stuff happened, I'd quit running for years at a time.  Case in point, I broke my leg in 2003 and it took until 2009 before I found a formula which allowed me to start running again pain free.  I ran into 2010 and then got involved in a work project which required 80+ hours of work per week, plus a significant commute, and that lasted until April of 2013.  In the 2003-2009 time period I gained about 100 pounds, in 2009 and 2010 I lost maybe half of that weight through running, only to gain it all back by 2013.

I told y'all that to tell you this; I started running again in April of 2013 when I was 250+ (don't know how much on the plus side I was because I was too afraid to get on the scale); at the time I was a month shy of 56, had a 40+ inch waist, and needless to say, that much weight on my 5' 8" frame was, ummm, pretty non-attractive.  I gradually ramped up my running, always on dirt or grass to avoid the typical injuries associated with running/weight/frequency, and by August I was running over 200 miles per month.  The thing is, I was eating everything in sight, literally, like to the tune of 5,000-6,000 calories per day (against what my Fitbit Surge guesstimates, to be a calorie burn in the 4,500-5,000 per day range); and yet, I was losing weight quite rapidly.  By September I was down under the 200 pound threshold for the first time in over a decade, and by November I was down to 190.

So, my question is, with enough physical activity, does it make sense one can lose weight even when he/she is consuming significantly more calories than one is burning?

[shipo]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

All due respect that appears to be good progress but not really impresive enough to convinve me your pet theories have any weight, especially since you're just posting generalities and opinions that really aren't clear and don't match the scientific literature or my own anecdotal experiences.

You do you though man.  If whatever you're doing works for you I'm not going to tell you it doesnt.   Eat and train for your goals your way.  I'll eat and train for mine, my way.

BTW my profile has a link to my progress pics.  Think I'm starving myself? 

Cheers.

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Please understand, I workout so I can run through woods and fields and enjoying the great out of doors and so I can go faster in races, you workout to plump up your muscles.  Personally I don't care how I look as long as I go faster/further.

[SunsetRunner]

"Thermodynamics do NOT apply when considering calories eaten versus work done.  Why?  Because any given body/digestive system does NOT process calories the same as the next body.  That said, thermodynamics does in fact apply if you can determine how many of the calories were processed by the body; a task which I don't believe is possible shy of a REALLY expensive analysis."

Does the law of thermodynamics not apply to two cars with different gas mileages?  Of course it does.  You only need a closed system, which the human body is.

"The proof is in the pudding; and granted I'm only a study of one, but whether you want to believe it or not, it is possible to lose weight while consuming (as in eating) more calories than one burns." 

You've not submitted any proof lol or made a study.  You made some assumptions, some guesses and using those you're arriving to a faulty hypothesis and are now attempting to apply it to the entire population.  You either underestimated your burn, underestimated your calories taken in or a combination of the two. 

"I lost a dramatic amount of weight beween mid may 2013 and 50 weeks later in May of 2014."

Yes, beacuse you ate less calories than you burned.  It's not rocket surgery.  How's the weight loss going in the last two years?  Made more progress?  Because if that's the extent of it in three years, it's hardly remarkable or ground breaking.  Sorry.

I don't want to belabour the point.  You have your beliefs, which are based on assumptions and emotions.  No imperical evidence.  I've come to realise you can't really have a productive discussion vs. feelings so I will tap out of the thread now.

Good luck in your endeavours.

[Ukase]

I'll try to put this simply. 

Yes. Even though you were scarfing down everything in sight - you were at a caloric deficit. Because you hadn't gotten on a scale, fitbit had no idea that you had put on 100 pounds, so your actual caloric burn was much higher than what the dashboard and the fitbit were telling you. 

Consider that the calorie is a fancy word for energy. That's really all it is, a unit of energy. Energy does not go away. It merely changes form. 

You have a certain amount of energy. You eat - you consume more energy. If you don't work that off by exercise or just bodily functions, your body stores the energy. 

You run a zillion miles, your body uses that stored energy. You eat like a teenager, 1000's of calories a day, it doesn't matter. If you're burning it off, you're burning it off. 

This is the only diet rule that is uncontested. Energy in must be less than energy out to lose weight. 

[OCDOC]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

"Thermodynamics do NOT apply when considering calories eaten versus work done.  Why?  Because any given body/digestive system does NOT process calories the same as the next body.  That said, thermodynamics does in fact apply if you can determine how many of the calories were processed by the body; a task which I don't believe is possible shy of a REALLY expensive analysis."

Does the law of thermodynamics not apply to two cars with different gas mileages?  Of course it does.  You only need a closed system, which the human body is.

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Great conversation guys. However, I must point out the error of the comment in italics.

Standard definition of 'closed system':

"In nonrelativistic classical mechanics, a closed system is a physical system that doesn't exchange any matter with its surroundings, and isn't subject to any force whose source is external to the system. A closed system in classical mechanics would be considered an isolated system in thermodynamics."

If any system in the world ISN'T 'closed' thermodynamically it's the human body.

Sorry to nit-pick...my science degrees compelled me 😉  R

[shipo]

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@Ukase wrote:

This is the only diet rule that is uncontested. Energy in must be less than energy out to lose weight. 

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Correction: "Energy processed must be less than energy out to lose weight."

[USAF-Larry]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

"Thermodynamics do NOT apply when considering calories eaten versus work done.  

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Well, as an engineer, with a minor in physics, I'm very disappointed to learn that the Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply!  Very disappointed, indeed...

[OCDOC]

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@USAF-Larry wrote:

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@SunsetRunner wrote:

"Thermodynamics do NOT apply when considering calories eaten versus work done.  

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Well, as an engineer, with a minor in physics, I'm very disappointed to learn that the Laws of Thermodynamics do not apply!  Very disappointed, indeed...

___

Don't despair, Larry...the Laws apply as they always do. The main issue is that the human body is an OPEN system with myriad confounding variables and influxes/effluxes. It is not an engine operating in a sealed container in the vacuum of outer space 🙂  

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks OCDOC! I'm not a scientist, just a body building enthusiast.  Your correction is appreciated 🙂

[OCDOC]

@SunsetRunner

No prob Grind 🙂 My son-in-law is a BB enthusiast as well. He's a cop and doesn't worry about science, but he sure knows how to workout and what to eat! (He's actually giving me pointers for the gym).

Best thing about Fitbit threads (as opposed to random chatrooms) is that EVERYBODY here wants to get healthier..a good thing!

Take care..  Rob K

[shipo]

It seems the key disconnect in this entire discussion is there are folks who:

1. Assume every calorie entering one's mouth is processed into fuel of some sort for the body.
2. Know item #1 cannot possibly be true, and varies dramatically from one person to the next.

I am an engineer as well and I believe both of the following statements to be true:

• The first law of thermodynamics does NOT apply to calories eaten versus calories burned.
• The first law of thermodynamics does apply to calories processed/converted versus calories burned.

[BWright1175]

Like I mentioned on the last page, the only way this debate will go anywhere is if you demonstrate what you claim to be true.

No estimates, no guessing... document everything.

Otherwise, you may as well be arguing the existence of God to a group of athiests... you can believe it all you like, but you're not showing any proof.

[shipo]

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@BWright1175 wrote:

Like I mentioned on the last page, the only way this debate will go anywhere is if you demonstrate what you claim to be true.

No estimates, no guessing... document everything.

Otherwise, you may as well be arguing the existence of God to a group of athiests... you can believe it all you like, but you're not showing any proof.

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I see, so it is okay to believe the fallicy which says a calories eaten verus calories burned is okay, but you're far less willing to believe there is a variance, often a huge variance, between what is eaten and what is processed into fuel for the body.

To flip the coin, do you have proof every body processes the exact amount of calories from an egg, or a glass of milk, chicken thigh, or a stem of asparagus?

[BWright1175]

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@shipo wrote:

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@BWright1175 wrote:

Like I mentioned on the last page, the only way this debate will go anywhere is if you demonstrate what you claim to be true.

No estimates, no guessing... document everything.

Otherwise, you may as well be arguing the existence of God to a group of athiests... you can believe it all you like, but you're not showing any proof.

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I see, so it is okay to believe the fallicy which says a calories eaten verus calories burned is okay, but you're far less willing to believe there is a variance, often a huge variance, between what is eaten and what is processed into fuel for the body.

To flip the coin, do you have proof every body processes the exact amount of calories from an egg, or a glass of milk, chicken thigh, or a stem of asparagus?

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You're ignoring the point.

You are the outlier here, trying to get us to believe something that goes against pretty much everything anyone's ever said about losing weight.

In addition to that, you're using wildly estimated caloric consumptions to justify your belief, with even a couple thousand calories of variance in your estimate.

This is not a difficult thing to do if you truly want to show what you're saying is true.

Keep precise track of your exercise and calorie intake for the next month.  If you can maintain (or even lose) your current weight, while eating a 1500 to 3000 calorie surplus (per your example), then maybe you'll gain some credibility to your argument.

Until then, as I (and others) have said more than once... you're just throwing around estimated numbers and trying to prove something based on precision.

[shipo]

Sorry, not ignoring the point.

The fact is, some here are trying to lay the full burden of proof on me, even though their pet sacred cow is equally unproven (but has been repeated so often it is taken as gospel).  As with any study, a sampling pool of one (me in this case) is irrelevant and is treated is anecdotal; however, if a proper scientific study is performed, complete with control groups, then that's a study worth noting.  Do you have such a study which makes a compelling argument to support every human body processes the same number of calories from a very specific set of foods?  I know of none.

Answer these questions:

• Have you ever known someone who eats and eats and eats in an effort to gain weight and stays completely rail thin?
• Have you ever known someone who eats like a little bird and yet maintains significant weight or even gains weight?

I have known plenty of folks who fit in one or the other of those two categories; I strongly suspect you have too. Caveat, if you admit to knowing even one individual who fits the first scenario and a second individual who fits the second scenario, you've gone a long way to proving my point for me, so you may want to dodge the questions.

[BWright1175]

The burden of proof is on you because you are the one claiming something that goes against science, basically.  Again, it'd be simple to demonstrate whether or not your perceived theory is correct or not, but you continue to completely ignore that suggestion.  Simple, but no.

No, I have never known anyone who continuously ate to try and gain weight but couldn't.  I've seen rail thin girls scarf down a cheeseburger, fries, milkshake, etc... but that doesn't mean they eat that way all the time, it gives no indication of what they eat at other times, nor does it provide any insight into their overall physical activity level.

Yes, I have known people who gain weight and "claim" to not know why, but in those cases they were either completely misunderstanding/underestimating the calories in what they were eating, or they were lying (to others or themselves) about what they were eating.  People who are overweight because they turn to food for comfort have been known to turn to that food in private, to comfort themselves about their problems, while outwardly claiming that they are doing everything they can to not gain weight.  Ever watch the show "My 600lb life?"  Perfect example of that.  You can lie to yourself, you can lie to your friends, you can even lie to the doctor who's trying to help save your life... but you can't lie to the scale.

As for knowing of studies?  There was a recent thread about debunking the 3500 calorie per pound statement, with a link to a video of a guy who created a model for the National Institute of Health which accurately predicted and tracked along with actual data of his participants, as well as accurately predicting and tracking along with the data from studies done over the past century with only a few key data points for input.

Yes people are different, but overall the same rules will generally apply to everyone...and I truly think you'll be hard pressed convincing anyone here that you can consitently eat a 1500-3000 calorie surplus and still maintain/lose weight.

So what it basically boils down to is if you want anyone to take you seriously, you're going to need to provide data to back up your claims.

[shipo]

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@BWright1175 wrote:

So what it basically boils down to is if you want anyone to take you seriously, you're going to need to provide data to back up your claims.

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It really doesn't work that way; a study of one individual does not a study make.

So, lets try it this way...

Do you subscribe to the (oft repeated) notion regarding dieting where it is said an individual, as they reduce their caloric intake further and further will cause their metabolism to slow down and as such, require even further caloric reductions to continue to lose weight?  As I've seen written on this site over and over and over, ad-nauseum, the body's digestive system becomes very efficient at scavenging every possible calorie from available food.

If you believe that, then why can you not accept the opposite notion where a highly active individual can cause their body's digestive system to become, dare I use the term, less efficient, and only process what it needs, allowing the rest to pass through as waste?

One more question previously asked; do you believe every individual can process the exact (or very-very close to the) same number of calories from an egg, glass of milk, slice of toast, unit of vegetables, or steak?

[OCDOC]

Fun thread 🙂

@BWright1175 You are referencing the ongoing studies from Kevin Hall of NIH. He uses double labeled water to accurately measure metabolism. Each gulp costs thousands of dollars. I doubt Shipo wants to spend that money to prove anything.

@shipo I'm not necessarily 'taking your side', but you have a strong point re the value of 'calories' eaten. They estimate calories by sticking a (say) piece of asparagus in a laboratory calorimeter, torch the crap out of it, and measure the energy released. You suggest that every human body is different re what it does with the same piece of asparagus, and also suggest that what any human extracts from the asparagus will differ (often greatly) from the energy extracted by the 'blast furnace' calorimeter. I believe this is true.

I guess that means I agree with Shipo re 'calorie values' attributed to foods being a rough guess at best. Not sure I agree with the extension to skinny eaters and fat pickers; these variations are likely explained by differing BMRs and body weight set points rather than how they digest the same foods.

Anyway, fun....hope I was diplomatic 🙂 BTW @BWright1175 and I had an excellent conversation re William Banting a few weeks ago..mucho respect.  Rob

[BWright1175]

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@OCDOC wrote:

Fun thread 🙂

@BWright1175 You are referencing the ongoing studies from Kevin Hall of NIH. He uses double labeled water to accurately measure metabolism. Each gulp costs thousands of dollars. I doubt Shipo wants to spend that money to prove anything.

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Yeah, but it's much simpler than that.  There's no need for the double labeled water and all that.  Just one guy foregoing the drastic estimates and showing documentation to support his claim.

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@shipo wrote:

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It really doesn't work that way; a study of one individual does not a study make.

So, lets try it this way...

Do you subscribe to the (oft repeated) notion regarding dieting where it is said an individual, as they reduce their caloric intake further and further will cause their metabolism to slow down and as such, require even further caloric reductions to continue to lose weight?  As I've seen written on this site over and over and over, ad-nauseum, the body's digestive system becomes very efficient at scavenging every possible calorie from available food.

If you believe that, then why can you not accept the opposite notion where a highly active individual can cause their body's digestive system to become, dare I use the term, less efficient, and only process what it needs, allowing the rest to pass through as waste?

One more question previously asked; do you believe every individual can process the exact (or very-very close to the) same number of calories from an egg, glass of milk, slice of toast, unit of vegetables, or steak?

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I'm done here.  Me continuing to answer your questions does nothing to support your initial claim here.  If you decide to actually back up your claims with traceable data, let me know... I'll happily follow along.

[OCDOC]

@shipo  I doubt the skinny/fit 'big eaters' poop out a bunch of calories. There may be some dragged along with fiber, but not enough to matter.

Far more plausible is that skinny/fit 'big eaters' absorb then burn off the extra. Agree that the 'calories' on the label of any food is a wild estimate, and agree that every person uses energy differently, but prefer the 'burn off like crazy' theory over the 'poop it out' theory. 

I guess one way to test this is to burn different people's poop samples in a calorimeter and measure residual energy (after eating the same food for 2 days)....not sure this has been done 🙂

[bcalvanese]

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@shipo wrote:

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@bcalvanese wrote:

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Ok. So now you are making me think that you know that you are miscalculating your numbers and just dont want to admit it to yourself or anyone else.

Eating that many calories per day is gluttony, and you should weigh 500+ lbs. by now.

Oh, and your doctor is a quack too.

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You're missing the point entirely (deliberately?); the point I'm trying to make is that calories eaten do not necessarily translate to calories processed/consumed.

As for my doctor being a quack; yikes, use your head man, there is weight loss due to starvation (your mode?) and weight loss due to significant activity, my mode.  The two are very different, like it or don't, believe it or not.

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How do you even know what my mode is?

I lost my weight by power walking every day for a year and riding a bike. I eat more now than i used to (because i burn more), but i still stay within my calories. I just eat smarter and limit the junk food to a here and there treat. I was obese 225+ lbs. and lost 57 lbs. in a year, so thats about 1 lb. per week. Anything more than 1 lb. per week is starting to get into the unhealthy range, and any doctor thats not a quack would not advise otherwise.

Weather you are doing it on purpose or not... you are miscalculating one or the other or both.

There are 2 things a person must do to maintain a healthy body weight.

1. get the exercise recommended by the CDC

2. Eat a healthy well rounded diet, and avoid over eating.

If a person is over weight/obese they should double up on the exercise until they reach a healthy weight, then reduce to the recommended.

Your notion of eating 1,000+ calories per day more than you are burning is just plain wrong.