new research shows not all calories are created equal

I have long had this fight discussion with my brother; Calories out, Calories in....does it work?

He is a medical student, who spends countless hours (and now) years of his life listening to other medical professionals tell him, losing weight is all simple math.

Well I tested it, I ate 1 meal a day for several weeks. It was a simple meal of taco soup. I made it at home and it had (roughly) 600 calories for the size of bowl I ate daily. With little exception, I ate this meal everyday far a little over 2 weeks (I had one day I had a salad at my in laws house for Sunday dinner). I didn't eat anything else. It was a pretty easy lifestyle - 1 bowl at dinner.

At the beginning of the 2.3 weeks I weighed 178, at the end of the 2 weeks I weighed 176.5.

Did I lose weight, you betcha...but not a lot.

I got mad, really mad. So I put myself on a strict, count your calories, weigh your food diet (Live The Life)  I started at 178lbs (yup I gained it back after only 4 days off dieting...and no I didn't run out and binge, I ate like a normal person...3 normal meals a day...gained the weight back in 4 days.)

On Live the Life
First week - I ate 1422 calories a day, same meals all 7 days. lost 6 pounds.
(Hmm, ate more calories and lost more weight, but didn't change my lifestyle/routine to burn more calories...wonder if it would work again?)

Second week - ate 1438 cal/day - lost 4 pounds
Third week - 1461 cal/day - lost 3 pounds....

So I went from consuming 600 cal/day and losing roughly a pound a week to averaging 1420 ish cal/day and losing roughly 4 pounds a week. Why is that? Because not all calories are alike. Look at the chart here, do we really think our bodies react/store/burn all 3 of these foods exactly the same way...simply because they are the same calories? Of course not, just like we are learning not all fats are the same or all carbs...neither are all calories.

yeah I could go on and on...what's the point?
Easy, Calories in and Calories out is simplifying an equation that requires many more variables to solve.

When you eat matters.
How often you eat matters.

But more than all that.... WHAT YOU EAT MATTERS MOST!!!!!

There is a reason millions of Americans are struggling and frustrated with the tools they have to lose weight. For once, we need to stop counting calories and really understand what happens to food once it enters our bodies. Not all Calories are alike. Of course I love to simplify, that diet above worked for me. Total I lost 20 pounds in 7 weeks, but it came back as soon as I had had enough with weighing and measuring every little thing that went into my mouth. Stop dieting, focus on adding the good, the bad will go away. 51% raw, Water, Eat Regularly...these will naturally bring you away from obesity and into health....but I digress, this article is all about sugar...yup. I know I've talked about it before, but the reactions we have to sugar are body altering!! My favorite passage is this:

There is an alternative theory, one that has also been around for decades but that the establishment has largely ignored. This theory implicates specific foods—refined sugars and grains—because of their effect on the hormone insulin, which regulates fat accumulation. If this hormonal-defect hypothesis is true, not all calories are created equal, as the conventional wisdom holds. And if it is true, the problem is not only controlling our impulses, but also changing the entire American food economy and rewriting our beliefs about what constitutes a healthy diet.

Oddly, this nutrient-hormone-fat interaction is not particularly controversial. You can find it in medical textbooks as the explanation for why our fat cells get fat. But the anti-obesity establishment doesn’t take the next step: that fat fat cells lead to fat humans. In their eyes, yes, insulin regulates how much fat gets trapped in your fat cells, and the kinds of carbohydrates we eat today pretty much drive up your insulin levels. But, they conclude, while individual cells get fat that way, the reason an entire human gets fat has nothing to do with it. We’re just eating too much.
 Entire Article Here

Lets just be real, check out the chart, calories out calories in is an illusion. We need to be filling ourselves with simple whole (REAL) foods and reducing our consumption of everything else. We need to exercise for a hundred of other reasons besides just getting thinner, and we need to stop focusing on the number on a scale and pay more attention to other numbers (blood pressure, blood sugar, etc.)

And that is how you get fit...not skinny, fit - yes there is a difference.