I don't get it, how is that a myth or controversial.
Cutting empty calories is the easiest to remove calories from daily total.
Exercise further decreases the ratio of calories in calories out.
Bottom line is: calories in - calories out.
There are caveats there for sure, like increasing muscle mass increases idle caloric burn. Different types of food have different effect promoting or impeding metabolism.
calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago. Different types of food and diet cause different degrees of weight gain or loss.
For an extreme example compare 100 calories of glucose to 100 calories of fibre, both are types of sugar. The fibre contains an extra electron that acts like a shell, and the body has to expend energy breaking that bond to make it digestible. So most fibre passes through you without affecting your weight.
The most useful measure of food is the Glycemic Load. Not Glycemic Index which is a measure of the net glucose in the food. Glycemic Load is a measure of how the body responds to the food. E.g. cold potatoes have the same calories and GI as hot potatoes, but their measured GL is actually lower, so cold potatoes are better for controlling weight.
> calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago.
Not really, it's just that calories-in is worst-case that's what's on the foods box, you cannot magically produce more energy but it's well known that not everything can be processed by the metabolism with the same efficiency.
So with extremes like your example the difference is naturally huge, but that doesn't matter in practice if one balances their consumption just somewhat it averages out and approaches something between upper (100%) and lower (0%) of efficiency, and in reality it rather close to the upper bound (averaged) as our metabolisms are quite efficient with the food most humans actually put into them.
Your glycemic index rule holds does not violate the calories in calories out rule, it's just more precise regarding the actual upper bound.
Not really. E.g. look at my second example, cold potatoes vs hot potatoes. Same calories, same exact ingredients, but hot potatoes are significantly worse than cold potatoes.
I dont have the link to hand, but there is a GL database maintained by Harvard, I think, that demonstrates this. I will look it up later for you.
It’s still calories in vs calories out. What changed is that our understanding of what determines calories in and calories out has become more nuanced. For instance, your examples
My examples demonstrate that calories in / calories out is false. I don't quite get your point? A calorie is a measure of the useful energy released from burning stuff in a furnace. It was invented to compare the efficiency of different fuels for steam engines. It has no relevance to humans, who don't use a furnace and steam power, but a complex chain of cascading chemical reactions.
What I mean is that "calories in" is not literally calculated by the total energy you put in your mouth, but rather the energy your body absorbs from that. And as you note that might be different based on the food, how the food is prepared, content of the food, etc.
Likewise "calories out" is not literally calculated by adding up your movement & exercise. We know that things like hormonal levels, etc can all impact how much energy your body is expending.
> calories in - calories out was debunked a while ago.
No, it wasn't. It's the generally accepted model of human weight gain. It's what most scientists who study this topic believe to be true. (And really, it's the only model that makes any sense, and is incredibly easy to test)
They only people who disagree with this model are considered to be outside the mainstream of science. They might be right (I don't think so though)
- but it's certainly not debunked.
Obviously if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you’ll lose weight. But the inverse is not necessarily true. It’s possible to consume more calories than you burn and still lose weight, because your body doesn’t necessarily utilize all calories consumed.
Just because the USDA is 30 years behind the science doesn't make them right. There are hundreds of studies now debunking it. Do you really want to contend that 100 calories of fibre is the same as 100 calories of glucose? Ridiculous. In fact, the calories model never had broad academic support. Ansel Keys research is a joke today.
Guess what else has massive effect on metabolism? Exercise.
Also, various workouts have a lot of other important effects. Increasing bone strength, improving body resistance to inflammatory processes, developing micro vascular system… simply managing calorie in/out ratio won’t get you any of this. And dropping weight in a dumb way may do more harm than good.
"If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone."
What do you mean 'on that ride alone', are you doing more than 4 hours of excersise a day, every day? Because that's like 0.1% of the population, most can't even fit that in their diary, let alone have the stamina/etc.
Average bloke goes to the gym for an hour couple times a week, at that level you calorie consumption is basically unchanged - its withing an error margin of natural variability of food you eat.
I used to ride amateur cycling races, then just do a nice amount of rides/runs.. Now I'm in situation where time outside the house is hard to manage. I try to cut the calories, but weight keeps growing and overall health decreasing. Looking forward to stabilising family circumstances to have time to head out enough...
From what I observed myself, cutting calories is very difficult and result is miniscule. Adding some cardio (2h/week? 5h/week?) helps so much more and allows more flexibility with food. Also cutting calories does not help to increased overall immunity. Cutting calories is hard on mood (as in, no sugar high and tasty foods are limited) yet exercising allows to keep tasty foods AND gives runner's high. Win-win...
As for tight schedule, I don't believe in gyms. People waste so much time driving to/from favourite/affordable gyms... Running right out home and doing body-weight exercises at home would be both more beneficial to one's health and cheaper.
P.S. I mean regular non-exercise day is 1600kcal. 4 hours ride would be 2000kcal. So exercise day would be ~ 3400. Obviously it long-ride is weekend affair. Then one or two run 10k runs or quick 1h ride (another 1k kcal each). So ideally it adds +500kcal/day. And a lot of cardiovascular health. Well, it was 2 years ago before kid was born... Now it has a loooooot of variation.
Did you read the article? because this specific thing is what the science that the article covers explains.
tl;dr: your body burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of exercise. However, it allocates those calories differently: if you don't spend them on exercise then it will spend them on stress (and presumably other stuff).
Which totally makes sense as to why my depression & anxiety fade if I run or work hard.
> your body burns roughly the same amount of calories regardless of exercise
Can you explain how this makes sense?
Different physical activities (running vs. sitting, for example) require different amounts of energy to perform. Calories are a unit of measurement for this energy. It sounds like you (via referencing the article) are claiming that a human will expend the same amount of energy in a given period of time regardless of their physical activity.
Yes, that's exactly what the article is saying. If you burn calories doing exercise, the body will spend less on stress response. But if you burn less (or none) on exercise, then it will spend more on other things, eventually coming to roughly the same calorie expenditure (as they measured). Which is why exercise helps with depression - your brain has less calories available to spend on stress responses and generally messing with your mood.
Even different workouts have very different calorie outcome. E.g. running at steady pace burns more than bicycle riding at steady pace at similar heart rate.
Bullshit. My body goes through 1600-ish kcal on an idle day.
If I go out on a 4h steady bicycle ride (= 100km), I go through 2000 kcal on ride alone. That’s much more than my body burns just being there.