He actually lampshades that. @ 4:55:
Now that little arrow there is kind of oversimplifying something called “biochemistry,” that’s three years at university, and my apologies to the biochemists. I don’t mean to oversimplify, but I’m trying to get to the crunch.
But, yes, he’s glossing over all sorts of processes going on in the body that interpret “eat less, move more” as “be sure to eat lots more at the next opportunity to replenish the lost resources.”
My wife used the app “fat secret” and lost half her body weight over two years. It does a good job of calorie counting and gradual reduction. She is meticulous and enters her food at every meal. She also has a pushy friend at work who got her into running.
I am not as meticulous and I emotionally eat. So I haven’t lost anything. But seeing her I know it works.
I didn’t get the feeling that he was saying that eat less move more was the only part of it, but just that he wanted to explain what the end product of fat breakdown was and what that tells us about what needs to happen to get it there. Obviously the bit about the hormones that is in the equation but not really accounted for adds a big ??? into the equation because as us ladies who are entering menopause know, hormones get kind of wacky as you get old.
I actually thought we pooped it out.
I knew the answer, but it’s largely because I think of the human body as a literal machine, with fat and sugar literally getting burned to power it. As such, fuel+oxygen+energy = C02+H20+more energy makes intuitive sense to me, because that’s what fire is.
I’m glad the app helped your wife, but “calorie counting” with any accuracy is not possible with a phone app and a set of scales.
The average medium apple is 80-100 calories. But then one’s digestive efficiency has to be taken into account. Someone who has poor digestion might only get 75 calories, while someone else will get 90 calories from the same apple.
Some spices, while adding zero calories, make me retain water. So my weight’s going to go up for a few days, even though for all the app can tell I’m eating less.
Then there’s the up to five pounds of water gained with PMS, and on.
So yeah, if an app makes you a more mindful eater and that’s what it takes to lose weight, great, but you’re not counting what it says you’re counting.
Hormones are wacky all the way through life, I’m beginning to believe. They’re not given near enough credit, especially the stress-related ones.
I almost turned it off at:
“Many in this room think that you can turn atoms into energy; well, it’s one of the founding principles of modern chemistry: you cannot turn an atom into pure energy. It’s called the conservation of mass: before the reaction and after the reaction, you have the same number of atoms.”
As it pertains to weight loss, sure-ish. But, as a general rule? That’s more bad science he’s teaching, while berating science teachers for teaching bad science.
Hormones play a role. Sleep plays a role. Genes play a role… Turns out it’s a whole lot more complicated than just “eat less, exercise more”.
Such a shock.
Last words in the presentation (I went back to it): “If you want to lose weight, all you have to do is eat less, move more, and keep breathing.”
So that’s exactly what he’s saying.
To me the part that was interesting was the biochemical breakdown and what happens with fat. I did not know.
I think it helps her be mindful and get her into the proper range. Most of the calories are pulled from the brands so it is whatever they say they are. I use a kitchen scale. Like any other diet, whatever works, I just know this worked for her.
Yeah. I’ve gained a lot of weight due to chronic illness.
“Eat less” makes me dizzy.
“Exercise more” makes me get awful migraines hours or days later.
“Well, then, exercise until you begin to feel bad” makes me keep going and get migraines hours or days later, for days.
“Well, then, pace better” is easier said than done. A low-end handheld heart-rate monitor might work.
“Eat healthier” doesn’t help, since most “healthy” food makes me sicker.
“Eat these universally healthy foods as part of an elimination diet until you can identify other safe foods” doesn’t help since I’m allergic or otherwise intolerant to most of the “universally healthy foods” on that list.
This is very true, and I’m not disagreeing. But we can’t change our genes and have little control over our hormones. Eating, sleeping, and exercising are things that are within our power to change.
Disclaimer: my eating, sleeping, and exercise habits are awful. Not enough exercise means I don’t sleep as well as I could and I’m not hungry enough to eat better; lack of sleep and food means I don’t have the energy to exercise more which brings it full circle. It’s much easier said than done to balance those things, but they are things that we have at least some control over.
Yes and no. Eating happens in a whole social context, with other people both policing and pushing food. Then there’s the scarcity/availability thing, where it doesn’t matter how much you want fresh vegetables when the only choices are chips and chocolate bars.
Sleeping also depends on environmental factors, and once damage is done to sleep patterns it can’t just be fixed by sleeping in later on. Prolonged sleep damage causes brain damage, full stop. It can be helped by writing in better sleep habits and a better sleep environment, but it can’t be erased.
Exercise also happens in a societal context unless you have the personal space for it not to. I’ve written here before about the verbal abuse I get for cycling while fat, and there’s a whole sub-genre of articles about going to gyms while fat.
There are plenty of fat people who eat well and are fit by any measure except they are also fat. The human body is very adaptable, but not infinitely so, and it’s naive to just chalk it all up to personal choices.
One of my sister’s friends is exactly this. She can run up a mountain wearing a full pack faster than 20 year-old guys training to be wildfire firefighters. Go to roller derby and you will see people in all shapes and sizes – and if they are playing in league, they are in good condition.
We’ve seized on “fat” as our visible marker of “unhealthy” and that isn’t always the case. And it’s one of the last things that seems acceptable to victim blame over: if you’re fat it must be your fault.
Which is – to a larger degree than people think – bullshit. Most people who lose weight put it back on. It makes no sense that most people would fail, unless there was some other factors at work. We don’t understand the human body nearly as well as we think we do. But one thing it is not, is simple.
My aunt was like this. She was quite large, exercised more than most people, barely ate. She is pretty well set, so she got weight loss surgery and then had extensive plastic surgery once she lost the weight. It has changed her life. She went off all the drugs she was on for diabetes management and she can do even more exercise. I think she did expect a different reaction from men and I’m not sure that really happened. In that way I think it was tough to adjust to the weight loss. Health wise, it was a great move. She can’t each much food though. It’s a little weird to eat with her because she hardly eats anything.
Did she have one of the stomach-stapling surgeries? There really isn’t much room left in the stomach, so they can’t eat much, by design.
And can get nutritional deficiencies.
yes - some kind of band or staple situation.