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Calories

How Calorie Counting Wrecks your Metabolism

Losing weight by cutting calories generally decreases your metabolic rate which hampers further weight loss efforts. Our body tends to maintain a stable weight, the so-called ‘body set weight’. Careful scientific studies experimentally demonstrate simple calorie restriction reduces metabolic rate On the flip side, deliberate caloric excess increases metabolic rate Maintaining weight loss after caloric...

The Biology of Calorie Restriction

Calorie restriction for weight loss does not work. The calorie restriction method of weight loss seems like a reasonable strategy but almost always fails. Calorie restriction usually decreases the metabolic rate, which reduces weight loss efforts. Calorie restriction can often cause harmful psychological effects including hunger and obsession with food. If the diet is relaxed,...

Fatal Flaws of Calorie Counting for Weight Loss

Hormones are the key to weight loss, not calorie counting. While the Calories In, Calories Out theory of weight loss sounds correct, it is flawed by incorrect hidden assumptions. Body fat stores, a very important determinant of survival, is very tightly regulated by our hormones. The Eat Less, Move More strategy of weight loss fails...

Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work for Weight Loss

Understanding your hormones, not calorie counting, leads to weight loss. Calorie counting for weight loss assumes that we can easily and consciously control both the ‘Calories In’ (through food choices) and the ‘Calories Out’ (through exercise) However, both ‘Calories In’ and ‘Calories Out’ are largely unconsciously controlled, mostly by hunger/satiety signalling and basal metabolic rate...

The Key (but False) Assumptions of Calorie Counting

Calorie counting doesn't lead to weight loss. Learn why calorie counting for weight loss doesn’t work. Don’t exclusively count calories to lose weight. Many key assumptions of calorie counting are untrue. ‘Calories In’ is NOT independent of ‘Calories Out’. That is, the number of calories you eat affects the number of calories you burn. If...

A Calorie is a Calorie, but that’s not the right question

Discover the secrets of weight loss and gain. Spoiler alert, it’s not calories - it’s the hormones. A calorie is a calorie, but are all calories equally likely to cause fat gain? Calories In/Calories Out and the ‘Energy Balance’ equation are false representations of how we gain or lose weight ‘When to eat’ is just...

Calories: The Unasked Question of How to Lose Weight

Hormones affect weight loss more than calories. The answer to how to lose weight lies with our hormones ‘Calories in, calories out’ is a false way of thinking about weight loss Different foods of the same caloric value elicit completely different hormonal responses, which affects whether we gain or lose weight Calorie counting doesn’t work...

The Failure of the Calorie Theory of Obesity

The calorie theory of obesity has been perhaps one of the greatest failures in the history of medicine. Given the number of excess deaths caused by metabolic syndrome, you could argue that it is a bigger disaster than World War II. It is based on a com plete misinterpretation of the energy balance equation. Body...

How to Control the Body Weight ‘Thermometer’

Contrary to what most people believe, long term weight loss is not simply about cutting a few calories here and there. Sure, it sounds like it works, but the bottom line is that it does not. This has been proven in countless studies and also the countless tears of unsuccessful dieters desperately counting their calories...

The Fed and the Fasted State

In order to understand how the body gains and loses weight, you must understand how it uses energy. The body really only exists in one of two states - the fed and the fasted state. When we eat, the hormone insulin goes up and insulin is released. Now all foods stimulate different amounts of insulin...

The Evidence for Caloric Restriction

There are many people, highly educated and believing themselves intelligent, that say that all diets come down to calories. So, any diet that works automatically comes down to cutting calories. It seems to be a fallback position of many academics and researchers and others who tend not to live in the real world. They say...

The difference between calorie restriction and fasting – Fasting 27

Perhaps one of the most common questions we get is what the difference is between calorie restriction and fasting. Many calorie enthusiasts say that fasting works, but only because it restricts calories. In essence, they are saying that only the average matters, not the frequency. But, of course, the truth is nothing of its kind....

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