A calorie is not always a calorie

Here is a short summary:

1. Anyone who says that calories don't matter is completely untrustworthy. But anyone who claims that calories are all that matter is even more untrustworthy.
2. Balance your metabolism and only then worry about calories if you need to. Hunger, energy and cravings are crucial to understanding your metabolism and working with it rather than against it.
3. The combination of sugar, fat and salt will short-circuit your appetite centers and turn that "cheat meal" into a cheat week or worse.
4. The idea that a calorie surplus will always lead to an increase in body fat and a calorie reduction will always lead to fat loss is not accurate.
5. The standard "eat less, exercise more" approach to dieting results in a loss of about 20 to 50% of lean tissue.
6. The quality of the food you eat can directly affect the future efficiency of your metabolism.

I'm on this health and fitness market analysis thing. There are all kinds of successful authors, medical professionals, health bloggers and other experts in attendance. It's not long before I find myself in a small group discussion about calories and weight loss.

There's the "calories are everything" camp and the "hormones are everything" camp. I think to myself, "This is just like debating which is more important to driving a car, the steering wheel or the gas pedal." It borders on something ridiculous. I watch them silently for a while and then ask a question: "Just out of interest, what would you guys recommend to a client trying to lose weight?"

Suddenly there's a consensus. Everyone agrees that the diet would consist mostly of protein and vegetables, that training with weights would be the dominant form of activity, and that sleep and stress management are crucial. Then I asked, "why the higher protein intake? Why not carbohydrates? Both nutrients provide the same amount of calories. And why choose training with weights over cardio? Cardio would burn more calories. And why do we emphasize sleep and stress management? Neither of those have calories."

And from there, the discussion spirals out of control again, with the calorie counters and the calorie deniers taking their positions. It's a shame. They didn't understand what I was getting at.

Is a calorie the same as a calorie?

Anyone who says that calories don't matter is completely untrustworthy. But anyone who claims that calories are all that matter is even more untrustworthy.

There are two things that are necessary for continuous, sustained fat loss: a calorie deficit and a balanced metabolism. Anyone can lose weight for a while, but if you do it the wrong way, you risk putting all that weight back on, as 95% of dieters do. And you'll probably gain even more fat than you originally had. This happens to 66% of all dieters.

But why? Most people believe that metabolism works like this:

Cut calories → Lose weight → Have a balanced metabolism

But the whole thing works as follows::

Achieve a balanced metabolism → reduce calories naturally → lose weight without effort

Calories are a part of both equations - it's the degree of their importance that differs. To understand how this works, you need to understand what I call the 3 Laws of Metabolism. These are just general guidelines, but I refer to them as laws because of their central importance in understanding metabolism.

The law of metabolic compensation

If you eat less and exercise more, then you will find it easy to generate a calorie deficit, but you will also create an unbalanced metabolism. This is one of the best understood and least controversial aspects of weight loss research. Eat less and you'll get hungry. Exercise more and you get hungry and develop cravings. Do both to an extreme degree and your motivation will dwindle and your energy will plummet.

Something else that will happen is that your metabolic rate will slow down. In the field of weight loss research, this is called adaptive thermogenesis, which varies greatly from person to person. Scientific research suggests that this slowing of the metabolic rate averages around 300 kcal, but can be as high as 500 to 800 kcal for some and very low for others. This is not just the result of a loss of body mass. A person who weighs 90 kilos and is dieting burns on average 300 kcal less than a person of the same weight who is not dieting.

Let's say you come to my clinic and ask me for help with fat loss. I use the calorie-only approach and tell you that you need to reduce your daily calorie intake by 500 kcal through a combination of reduced food intake and more exercise. You follow my instructions and lose weight during the first few weeks.

Then the law of metabolic compensation comes into play. You start to feel hungry all the time. Your energy levels drop and become less predictable. You start to develop nighttime cravings for salty, fatty and sugary foods. But you have an iron will and just live with it. But then adaptive thermogenesis comes into play. And let's say that you're one of those people who is highly adaptive and that your metabolism slows down by about 500 to 800 kcal per day.

Now you not only stop losing weight, but you might even start gaining weight. Not to mention, you're perfectly primed to start a three-month binge as your metabolism makes you crave salty, fatty and sugary foods that are high in calories.

At this point, you have a choice of options. You can redouble your efforts and make things worse. You could just give up and go back to your normal diet, which would cause you to bloat like a yeast dumpling. Or you can try to approach things a little more intelligently by first trying to balance your metabolism.

A balancing of the metabolism through an assessment of the HEC

I hope you've realized why a "calories first approach" can get some people into trouble. It's easy to see why such an approach is appealing. Calories are easy because you can count them. And when you reduce calories, you'll usually see some short-term benefits. The initial results are tempting and keep many dieters on track.

You can think of it like a metabolic credit card. You get some short-term credits, but there is long-term interest that you have to pay later. Hunger, Energy and Cravings (which I also refer to as HEC) is the key to understanding your metabolism and how to work with it instead of against it.

If your HEC is under control, then you can be pretty sure that your metabolic system is balanced. And if it is, then it will be easier for you to achieve a calorie deficit without having to exert yourself. So it's not about cutting calories, it's about balancing your metabolism first and then taking care of the calories if you need to.

Different calories affect the HEC in different ways. The differences between a donut and a chicken breast illustrate this point quite well. Both have 250 kcal, but which of the two foods is more likely to keep the HEC under control? And yes, reliable human intervention studies have shown that replacing equal amounts of carbohydrate calories with protein calories results in greater weight loss, greater fat loss, better maintenance of muscle mass, and less risk of regaining lost weight.

I'm not the guy who's going to bombard you with a huge amount of obscure study references that vaguely support what I'm saying. I'm going to give you a very good reference from a highly respectable journal and one that will quickly bring you up to speed on the law of metabolic compensation. This study validates pretty much everything I just said.

Calorie combinations

Another part of metabolic compensation is the way in which calorie combinations affect HEC. An evolving understanding is the way in which the combination of sugar, fat and salt (the so-called fast food diet) short-circuits your appetite centers. Research conducted with animals shows that these food combinations not only increase food consumption at the current meal, but also cause increased cravings for the same combination of high-calorie foods at future meals.

So a 250 kcal doughnut will not only make you want to eat more doughnuts now, but it will also cause cravings for more doughnuts in the future. There is no reason to suggest that this is not also the case in humans. This could explain the regular observations of my clinical patients who eat cheat meals and then find themselves in the middle of a cheat week during which they are unable to regulate hunger, energy and cravings.

The law of metabolic multitasking

The body is not very good at multitasking. It likes to either burn or build, but not both. There are some exceptions to this rule, but the two big exceptions are beginners and those using anabolic hormones.

Another name for this law is the law of metabolic demand. The body responds to what you expose it to. This is another important insight regarding the calorie argument. The idea that excess calories always lead to an increase in body fat and calorie restriction always leads to fat loss is not accurate. You can reduce your calories and lose weight, but the weight lost does not necessarily have to be mostly body fat.

Scientific research shows us that the standard "eat less, exercise more" approach to dieting results in 20 to 50% of the weight lost being lean body mass (water, glycogen, muscle). This is important because the basal metabolic rate (BMR) is responsible for over two thirds of the calories burned at rest and over half of your basal metabolic rate is determined by your muscle mass.

So you can increase your calorie intake and gain weight, but that weight doesn't necessarily have to be all fat. You could also build lean tissue (water, glycogen, muscle) instead, and if you do this, you'll be doing your metabolism a favor. The demands you place on your body will determine whether excess calories become fat or muscle and whether a reduction in calories will result in a loss of fat or muscle.

This is the reason that all these experts agreed that training with weights should be the dominant form of activity during a fat loss program. It is the only type of exercise that can result in extra calories being used to build muscle rather than fat. However, it is not a form of exercise that results in high calorie expenditure.

There is a study that illustrates this point quite well. It was published in April 1999 in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition and looked at two groups of subjects on identical low-calorie diets. One group performed an aerobic exercise program (walking, cycling, jogging four times a week). The other group performed resistance training three times a week and did not perform any aerobic exercise.

After 12 weeks, both groups had lost weight. The group that performed aerobic exercise lost 37 pounds, of which 27 pounds were fat and 10 pounds were muscle. The group that performed resistance training lost 32 pounds, of which 32 pounds were fat and 0 pounds were muscle. When the resting metabolic rate was examined, the scientists found that the group that performed aerobic exercise burned 210 kcal less per day than when they started the diet, while the group that performed resistance training increased their metabolic rate by 63 kcal per day.

What you do has a direct impact on whether a calorie equals a calorie. You can't separate calories from lifestyle.

The law of metabolic efficiency

There is no such thing as a perfectly efficient machine and the human body is no exception. This is the second law of thermodynamics at work. As an aside, many cite the first law of thermodynamics to prove that "a calorie is a calorie." The truth, however, is that the first law of thermodynamics does not apply to open systems like the human body. The second law of thermodynamics does, however.

Here is a highly simplified example to illustrate this: Diesel vs. regular unleaded gasoline. Both fuels have different efficiencies. Drive a diesel car and you will be able to travel more kilometers per liter of fuel. With diesel, the energy is converted more efficiently into motion and less energy is lost in the form of heat. Regular unleaded gasoline is less efficient because more energy is lost in the form of heat.

Protein is like unleaded gasoline - more of its energy is lost in the form of heat. Carbohydrates are more like diesel - less energy is converted into heat. And fat? Fat is the most efficient of all macronutrients.

Both carbohydrates and protein provide 4 kcal per gram, but your body will be able to use fewer of these calories if you burn protein instead of carbohydrates. And yes, this has been scientifically studied and proven. Replace a certain amount of carbohydrates with the same amount of protein and you will see your body temperature rise and you will lose more weight.

Protein is not only less efficient and more thermogenic, it is also more satiating. And it is more likely to result in maintaining your muscle mass in the context of a calorie deficit. This means that it is one of the best tools we have at our disposal to control all three laws. So is 4kcal in the form of protein the same as 4 kcal in the form of carbohydrates? No!

POPs and gut flora

This discussion would be incomplete without considering two other aspects of metabolism that influence its efficiency: POPs and gut flora. POPs is an acronym forpersistent organic pollutants. These toxins are found in the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink. They accumulate in the body and are stored in fatty tissue.

When we lose weight, these toxins are released from our fat and make our metabolism more efficient at storing nutrients. (Remember, for weight loss you want a less efficient machine that releases a lot more heat). They do this because they short-circuit our metabolic hormones - and in particular our thyroid hormones. These compounds have even been shown to have a stronger correlation with weight regain than the hormone leptin.

This calls into question the wisdom of not paying attention to food quality. The quality of the food you eat can directly influence the future efficiency of your metabolism. These compounds also accumulate in the fat of the animals we eat. A lower fat diet and organic meat could play a role in future fat loss attempts.

And then there is the issue of gut flora. Gut flora is a term we use in the functional medicine world to describe the population of bacteria that lives in our gut (aka probiotics). There are more bacteria living in your gut than your body has cells. Scientific research has shown that certain colonies of bacteria affect the efficiency with which we digest and absorb calories.

You can think of these bacteria as an annoying friend that steals French fries from your plate. These bacteria reduce your calorie intake because they rob you of energy. This is a very exciting area of research. A twelve-week study saw significant weight loss (2 pounds) and a significant reduction in waist circumference (more than an inch) when a probiotic supplement was added to the diet. Not a bad result for not having to do more than swallow a few bacteria every day.

The right questions

So the question "is one calorie equal to one calorie" is not the right question. The right question is how important calories are in the short-term and long-term fat loss equation and what other factors influence how calories are consumed and stored. If we want to work with our metabolism instead of against our metabolism, we need to understand that quantity and quality are inseparable and linked.

References

1. Tackling overweight and obesity: does the public health message match the science? PUBMED 23414295
2. Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer. PUBMED 17469900
3. "A calorie is a calorie" violates the second law of thermodynamics. PUBMED PMC506782
4. A free-choice high-fat high-sugar diet induces changes in arcuate neuropeptide expression that support hyperphagia. PUBMED 20029382
5. January 2007 issue of Sports Medicine (vol. 37 # 1)
6. Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate. PUBMED 10204826
7. Postprandial Thermogenesis Is Increased 100% on a High-Protein, Low-Fat Diet versus a High-Carbohydrate, Low-Fat Diet in Healthy, Young Women. JohnstonThermogenesis2002
8. Dietary protein - its role in satiety, energetics, weight loss and health. PUBMED 23107521
9. Thermogenesis and weight loss in obese individuals: a primary association with organochlorine pollution. PUBMED 15148504
10. Regulation of abdominal adiposity by probiotics (Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055) in adults with obese tendencies in a randomized controlled trial. PUBMED 20216555

By Dr. Jade Teta

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/a-calorie-is-sometimes-not-a-calorie