3500kC less =1 pound weight loss myth now debunked

[baardmk]

I really liked this video. I feel I have a much better understanding about the dynamics of energy expenditure and calories in vs out. Very interesting if you're into science, math, stats, numbers, nutrition of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi1LQHBWBk

The video is a presentation by a NIH researcher, Kevin Hall, coming from the mathematics field who has developed a model of calories and weight. It's the same team that a short while ago presented the conclusion that cutting fat calories are more effective in producing weight loss: http://www.endocrinologyadvisor.com/low ... le/402264/

The reason the 3500 calorie rule of losing weight is false is that your metabolic rate goes down with weight loss and a lower calorie intake. A pound of fat mass still stores 3500kcal of energy of course, and I don't think there's anything wrong in assuming you still need the 3500 kcal deficit to lose a pound of fat.

He also discusses in detail some of the "The biggest loser"-results.

Toward the end he proposes a simple hypothesis for the obesity epidemic and talks about food waste. Pretty shocking and abysmal stats and numbers.

[dteresa]

thanks for posting this excellent video. A wonderful speaker. For me will require listening to maybe a couple of times more to understand everything he said.

He mentioned food waste in landfills. He didn't mention the fact that canners and markets will not buy less than perfect fruits and vegies and so much is plowed under because the shopping public probably will not buy it anyway. But there could be stores that sell this produce at much reduced prices, especially in areas of food deserts. I like the idea that some cities have of allowing permits for street vending, which are usually limited, to those who sell produce in certain neighborhoods that do not have markets which sell nourishing food.

When you say you still need the 3500 calorie deficit to lose a pound of fat can I assume you mean reducing amount of food and upping exercise to make up for the decrease in metabolic rate because it seems he is saying that reducing calories by five hundred per day will NOT result in the predicted weight loss after a certain amount of time.

didi

[Jumpstart]

The number of calories required to lose a pound of weight varies based on the macro. If ALL calories were used as energy and nothing else you could be very accurate with a computation. But that isn't the case. Protein calories aren't generally burned as fuel. The majority of them (unless you're a high protein nut) are used to rebuild/replace tissue and organs as well as building new muscle if your exercise. Some percentage of fat is used for various functions and is never used as energy. On the other hand every calorie from carbs are used as energy and aside for the percentage used for conversion they all count.

By the way, after listening to the vid did the researcher get it wrong? The loss would be 52 pounds a year or 104 pounds in two years of the original 220 pound man. So wouldn't that mean he'd lose half himself, not disappear? Or, did it hear it wrong?

[roundcoconut]

The title seems overstated! Would Jeff Novick agree with that statement?

It sounds like it fits into the category of "Breaking News!" (meaning, overstated hype that gets so much play in the media)

Edited to add:
I tried to watch at least some of the video, but it won't load, and I realize that's a little rude of me to make a comment without first watching (apologies!) Except!:

I really want to say, loud and clear, that food quantity and calorie density really *do* control your weight. I sometimes see people come here and think that what Dr. McDougall is saying is that you can now eat all you want, of unprocessed starches and other whole foods, and attain excellent health, and of course, nothing could be a greater misstatement.

A sensible way of eating, with the right combination of starches, legumes, vegetables and fruit, is the only thing that will ever drive weight change. Just so we're clear!

(Sorry for jumping into the post. Just wanted to get that off my chest, because it sounds so good-news-about-bad-habits-y with the post titled like that, even though most folks who've been around these boards awhile would know enough not to take it that way!)

[healthyvegan]

wow this guys is amazing! Did you see that metabolic equation / model he worked out?? I would really like to understand that! he says its in some journal? do you have the link?

[dteresa]

did I miss something? It didn't sound to me like good news for bad habits. He is saying that it is incorrect to say that if you continue to cut five hundred calories per day that you will continue to lose a pound every week and explains why. I have even seen dr. McD predict a year's weight loss based on what people at the program for just a few days lose. And I know you can't make those predictions even if a person is totally one hundred percent compliant to this woe.

Every commercial weight loss program out there will ALWAYS draw in customers by advertising that on their program you can lose thirteen or fourteen pounds in two weeks. They never tell you what most on their diet actually do lose in six months or a year or two years.

didi

[healthyvegan]

wow again, just finished watching this! this guy totally needs to be invited to an ASW. How did you find this presentation? almost no views on youtube!

[baardmk]

roundcoconut, this was exactly the opposite of good news for those who want to lose weight ... :-) I carefully worded the title of the post, but I see that it could be misunderstood. Maybe I should have gone with a less tabloid title.
Their model didn't predict a steady weight loss (which many just posits without facts) by just cutting your food intake by a certain amount, say 500kcal a day. Your metabolic rate also lowers substantially in effect. Also exercise becomes easier the more you do it and less weight you have. You have to take body composition, exercise, change in metabolic rate and some other obvious things into account before you know how much you have to cut calories to achieve x weight in y days. But 3500kcal is still the amount of energy in a pound of fat; that bar hasn't lowered.

healthyvegan, I found this in the twitter stream of Kevin Klatt, a nutrition PhD student: https://twitter.com/nutrevolve
I would also love to understand more about what went into this, but I don't think I'd be able to get very much out of looking at the formulas. I think I need to understand more biochemistry to get a good overview. I would probably understand the calculus, but even though I know quite a good deal about that, there could be hurdles there as well. Downloading some of the java software their team has published could get you some interesting intuition about it I think. You'll surely find his work by searching "Hall K[author]" on pubmed, I think.

Also, as good as the model is, and it seems to be very realistic, there has to be aspects of reality it won't capture. A finding from experimenting with fasting/meal frequency expressed in the Fontana paper Drew posted recently, which the model can't capture, I think:

Interestingly, both in overweight/obese and lean women with polycystic ovary syndrome, subjects randomized to earlier meal timing (980 kcal breakfast, 640 kcal lunch, and 190 kcal dinner) lost more weight, displayed higher insulin sensitivity, lower serum testosterone concentration, and increased ovulation rate than controls eating isocaloric diets with a later meal pattern(190kcalbreakfast,640kcallunch and 980 kcal dinner)(Jakubowicz et al., 2013).

[Katydid]

I have been experimenting since January with my diet to lose the 15 pounds I gained when I sprained my ankle the previous year. Using the CRONometer to track calories, and a Fitbit to track exercise, I found that I needed a caloric deficit of 700 calories a day in order to lose 1 pound a week. That's 4900 calories, not 3500. At leat for this middle aged, post menopausal woman who was just 15 pounds overweight. When I was 300 pounds, I could eat twice as much as I do now (I was after all twice the person) and work up a sweat walking around the block. It's all relative to where you are in your journey and what your personal BMR is.

Kate

[Dougalling]

Body weight simulator .. can be used for weight loss or weight gain .. whichever you need. Might not work in google but does work in firefox. It uses your own biometrics as a starting point.

http://www.niddk.nih.gov/research-fundi ... lator.aspx

[healthyvegan]

definitely Kate, what is amazing about this NIH team is that they were able to reduce it to a mathmatical model. It is one hell of a model, an entire page long of equations. I think it would be awesome to plug McDougall variables into it and see how well it predicts weight loss on our diet. It is imperative that he does a AWS! I wouldn't miss it for anything! We've been screaming that fat / protein & carb all are treated differently by the body & this team figured out a really accurate model proving it.

[JeffN]

The work on this topic is excellent and, for those interested, a well deserved read.

Here are a few related articles (some of which are in my BMI thread) by Kevin Hall..

Energy balance and its components: implications for body weight regulation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3302369/

Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880593/

Short and long-term energy intake patterns and their implications for human body weight regulation
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 8414001140

This is the article in the Lancet that challenged the old equation.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lance ... X/abstract

This is a WSJ article on the above published article. Not sure if it is public or you need a log in.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142 ... 10584.html

This is the new weight loss simulator from the NIH that is supposed to be more accurate

http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/

For the record, the lancet article came out with a new formula and calculator which is still a "rule of thumb" and only trying to better account for and calculate some of the things discussed.

Tis is an interview in the NY Times a few years back with a colleague of Kevin Hall, Carson Chow...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/scien ... ref=health

As pointed out, the actual title of this thread, is not the main point of the article.

He argues a calorie is a calorie but that many equations have not taken into account adaptions the body makes during the process of weight loss, one being as simple as that there is less of us, so our metabolic rate goes down and we burn less calories.

There are some variables that impact the equation that we know & can account for. However, there some we either don't know or that we can’t measure very well and therefore, cannot account for them.

This is the point I make, though in much simpler terms, in these articles...

How To Successfully Count Calories
http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Articles/E ... ories.html

Do You Know How Many Calories Are In The Food You Eat
http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Articles/E ... u_Eat.html

And this recent discussion on losing weight and is food really unlimited
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=27333&p=272969#p272671

He even concludes "You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life."

And that the problem is simply a matter of excess calories.

"The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day. Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight."

So, a calorie is still a calorie, and the 3500 calorie "rule of thumb" (which I will address below) still works, but the equations trying to explain calorie math, were wrong.

The following is from a personal conversation with Kevin Hall...

"In the Consensus Statement paper where it says it takes 3 years to achieve 95% weight loss, that is specifically for when 500 calories is lobbed off starting-weight-energy-needs and never adjusted any further. If you maintain a 500-calorie deficit however (which requires ratcheting your EI down along with weight loss), weight loss follows the 1st law of thermodynamics as expected."

In regard to the rule of thumb, "you have to burn 3500 calories to lose 1 lb"....

There are many rules of thumb that are used in medicine, nutrition and fitness that, while they may just be rules of thumbs and not perfect, they do not invalidate the science (or laws) they are based on. It is the same with all the markers, risk factors and screening tools we use from BMI, cholesterol, waist circumference, etc.

For instance, we say, walking or running a mile burns the same calories, which is about 100 calories. Some nutritionists use body weight x 10 for an estimate of RMR. Both of these 2 examples have been used for a very long time. However, none of them are accurate if you actually measure them. It does not invalidate the principles they are based on. There are just a simplified way of estimating these issues.

The numbers we use for the caloric value of protein, carb and fat, The Atwater Values, of 4/4/9 (calories per gram), are also rules of thumb. This does not invalidate the science and principle they are based on.

In addition, there are about 4 different ways the FDA allows the industry to calculate them so even similar products can have different values on their labels. Knowing this helps to understand why the "rule of thumb" of 4/4/9 does not always work out perfectly and why some differences exist.

Accuracy In Nutrition: How Accurate Are The Atwater Values
http://www.jeffnovick.com/RD/Q_%26_As/E ... alues.html

The 3500 was also a rule of thumb and there are very good reasons why it does not work 100% when applied to real people, but that in no way invalidates the science and the physics behind it.

Where did the rule come from?

They say 1 gram of fat is 9 calories. However, as I showed in my linked article on where these numbers come from, this is also just a “rule of thumb” and not very accurate so we have an issue right there. It may range from 7-10. Second, a pound is 454 grams which, x 9 is 4086 calories, not 3500. So where did 3500 come from?

If you reverse the math, 3500/454, you get 7.7 calories per gram. So, where did they get the 7.7 or the 3500?

The difference is the fact that fat tissue is not 100% pure fat. It also has varying amounts of protein and water, which also varies depending on the type of fat and where it may be located.

So, based on the 3500 calories being the number commonly used for a pound of fat tissue and based on 9 calories per gram, we can say fat tissue is about 85% fat. (as a rule of thumb)

(It is actually less and some of the remaining tissue is protein which yields a few calories too. So it is more like 75-80% fat and a few percentages of protein and a few of water). But for simplicity sake, lets use 85%.

However, as we all know, people are different and some lose weight quickly and seemingly effortlessly and others experience very slow and laborious weight loss.

And we are learning more and more as time goes on, some of which we can measure and add to the equation. For instance, one factor in regard to energies out that has come to light is NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) which was never accounted for in the old energy balance equation and can have an impact of 300-400 calories day.

We also all know that there are confounding factors including actual intake vs. assumed intake plus body composition factors and activity level, etc. etc. etc.

Let’s say muscle tissue is about 30% protein and fat tissue is about 85% fat (see above).

There is an assumption that 100% fat is being lost from every pound of weight lost but as we all know, it’s not true.

So, lets just look at two extremes.

If the weight lost was 100% fat tissue, that would provide the 3500 calories (454 gm x .85 (85% fat) = 385.9 x 9 (calories per gram) = 3473 (which is rounded up to 3500.) Now we see where the 3500 came from.

However, if the weight loss was 100% muscle tissue, that would provide about 600 calories. (454 gm x .3 (30% protein) = 136.2 x 4 (calories per gram) = 544 calories, and lets round up to 550.

Knowing this, we can easily see how two people could lose different amounts of weight on the same calorie deficit depending on what percent fat or muscle the loss came from.

If you had an energy deficit of 3500 calories and it came 100% from fat tissue, it would be 1 lb of weight lost. However, if the 3500 calories came from 100% muscle tissue, it would be 6.36 lbs of wt lost. And, if the 3500 calories came from 50% fat and 50% muscle, the weight loss would be 3.68 lbs.

So the varying amounts of weight loss, from 1 to 6.36 pounds, do not in any way invalidate the formula or the science.

And, it turns out that the amount of fat and/or muscle you lose during weight loss (or gain) is influenced by your starting body composition.

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=8079&p=58408#p58408

The new equation is fascinating as is the work it is based on. That is how science works. However, I doubt it will have any impact on the obesity epidemic or individuals efforts to lose weight. It is still a "rule of thumb," not 100% accurate and only trying to better account for and calculate some of the issues discussed above.

This is where calorie density shines.

The principles of calorie density are so much easier for anyone to understand, to apply and to adjust as needed to manage their weight.

In Health
Jeff

[dteresa]

I lose three, four or five pounds every time I visit my brother for two or three weeks. Every time. He eats wfpb no fat but far far fewer starches than I do. After a couple of weeks back home I gain back those three or four pounds. Oddly, when I am there, he gains three or four pounds because I like to cook more variety for him like vegan paella and AJ's lentil loaf and bean casserole and so forth. He enjoys it so much that I only have a little and leave the rest for him. Then he complains and says he is gaining and I am not to cook like that anymore. I tell him that I did not order him to eat the entire lentil loaf in one day or to polish off the entire paella casserole in the blink of an eye. And a few days later asks me to make something again. Great wfp recipes hard to resist.

didi
PS Is there anyone at all out there outside of a metabolic ward who consistently eats exactly X number of calories every day of food whose calorie count can be accurately predicted so that he or she can consistently cut exactly five hundred of those calories off their daily meals every single day? Neat trick. Boring diet.

And another thing. Waist circumference is usually measured at the naval but some people (I am not naming names here) have lost a whole lot of weight and the darn naval has migrated south so that waist measurement comes awful close to hip measurement. So I propose making the standard measurement at the smallest part of the torso. It's only fair.

[Skip]

It's more complicated than some formulaic weight gain equation or model. It seems that when you eat is just as important as what you eat.

The following is taken from : http://www.salk.edu/news/pressrelease_d ... ess_id=560

Panda's team fed two sets of mice, which shared the same genes, gender and age, a diet comprising 60 percent of its calories from fat (like eating potato chips and ice-cream for all your meals). One group of mice could eat whenever they wanted, consuming half their food at night (mice are primarily nocturnal) and nibbling throughout the rest of the day. The other group was restricted to eating for only eight hours every night; in essence, fasting for about 16 hours a day.

After 100 days, the mice who ate fatty food frequently throughout the day gained weight and developed high cholesterol, high blood glucose, liver damage and diminished motor control, while the mice in the time-restricted feeding group weighed 28 percent less and showed no adverse health effects despite consuming the same amount of calories from the same fatty food. Further, the time-restricted mice outperformed the ad lib eaters and those on a normal diet when given an exercise test.