Comments on: The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: Daylight Savings Time Edition

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:25:51 +0000

With the special ability to go back in time and falsify the data in hundreds of experiments :)

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:20:04 +0000

Forget it, Tracy. You disagree with Kevin, so you must be lying.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 03:05:50 +0000

(Not that there isn’t BMR, but that calories in excess of BMR do NOT have to be ‘burned off in activity or they will be stored as fat’ on a per calorie basis)

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:29:41 +0000

And yet, the study I gave above proves *it does not work like that*

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 02:07:26 +0000

@Johanna:

Wow, not even giving me the link, making me look it up. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood tonight. ;)

The first paragraph of that comment is obvious sarcasm.

The second paragraph is consistent with my comments here: “Energy you consume and don’t use doesn’t just magically disappear because the person has ‘a good metabolism.’”

I guess I could have been clearer, but obviously someone with a higher BMR (someone with a lot of muscle, which is metabolically active) is “using” that energy that is being consumed. Calories consumed in excess of their BMR (even if it’s a higher-than-average BMR) will still be stored as fat.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:56:16 +0000

No. I’m not sure how you can get that from what I’m saying, which is “Calories In, Calories Out” is a myth.

That’s not how the human body processes energy. It does not work like that. This has been proven by every single study *ever – NO study has demonstrated the calories in, calories out method for weight loss or weight maintenance. Many, many studies have demonstrated this. (This ‘not working’ is before the negative impact of starvation diets on mental and physical health …ie, they don’t work *and* they are harmful beyond that)

By: jim

jim — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:20:06 +0000

Thats nice.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:51:25 +0000

No.

By: jim

jim — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:39:58 +0000

Tracy and/or Johanna, is one of the points your arguing basically summed up that : the basal metabolism rate will vary from individual to individual and it will vary based on an individuals current body weight?

By: Kai

Kai — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:22:46 +0000

The biggest relevance of ‘this modern world’ is that it has air conditioners. In earlier times, that extra hour of daylight was often spent outside. Today, that extra hour is often spent inside with the air conditioner on. There is a very good chance that the extra time running an air conditioner outpaces any savings from the less time running lights. Unfortunately there is a lack of determinate study, but the theoretical math puts the value of daylight saving time into question.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:55:25 +0000

Hahaha, ok, I think the lesson I just learned here is that posts about Daylight Savings Time lead to long, involved threads about weight loss.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:35:00 +0000

@Kevin #57: (Sorry, I missed this earlier.) So I guess comment #71 on the November 7, 2011 mailbag was written by some other Kevin, then?

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:20:46 +0000

Above should have read weight gain of 25%

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:04:40 +0000

@Baley

Ok, lets see how moderation treats me now!

So, another example – the Vermont Prison Experiment. In it, prisoners (volunteers in exchange for early release) were fed a diet of 8000-10000 calories a day for 10 weeks, in attempt to achieve a weight gain of 25. That’s 560,000-700,000 calories.

They gained an average of 36 lbs. 36 lbs is 126,000 calories (based on 3500 calories per pound of fat which is actually ALSO not true)

You can clearly see that that’s a difference of between 434,000-574,000 calories … 6200 – 8200 per day (for men ranging between 130 and 185 lbs at the beginning of the study, who followed ‘normal prison routine’ – what do you think their BMR was?)

Calories in/Calories out simply *isn’t true*

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:30:26 +0000

Also, what Johanna said!

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:24:31 +0000

(and one reason it is false is because those 3500 calories may not come from fat)

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:21:10 +0000

@Baley – no, that’s exactly *NOT* what I am saying – I am saying “But still, when your body does burn those 3500 EXTRA calories, you will lose a pound. It’s simple math” is false.

By: Johanna

Johanna — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:16:16 +0000

@Baley: It’s actually not a trivial difference. It’s the difference between “rules” like “cut 100 calories from your diet, and you’ll lose 10 pounds a year forever” being true and being false. It’s the difference between thinking “if you say you’ve cut calories and you’re not losing weight, you must be lying” and not.

It’s also the difference between saying “losing weight is so easy that everyone can (and therefore should) do it” and questioning whether we’re asking people to go too far in pursuit of the ideal body. In the starvation experiment Tracy mentioned – in which participants were allowed more calories per day than they would be on many popular diet programs – many of the participants developed severe mental health problems. Is that worth it?

By: Baley

Baley — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:24:12 +0000

Johanna, Tracy, Kevin et al, it sounds like the difference between your arguments is interpretation. Basically, you’re both saying the same thing, only the 3500 calorie deficit is harder to define. Kevin is right (consume 3500 fewer calories or burn 3500 more calories or some combo and lose a pound), but Tracy and Johanna are right, too, in that it’s hard to determine when you have burned those extra 3500 calories (eating less is the “easy” part). When the treadmill says you’ve burned 400 calories, for instance, it has no clue how many calories your body has actually burned (which varies due to all of the reasons cited by you folks above). But still, when your body does burn those 3500 EXTRA calories, you will lose a pound. It’s simple math, but difficult application. If you start eating 3500 calories fewer a week, you may lose a pound the first week but not the second, due to the possible decrease in bmr, right? But that still doesn’t change the fact that if your calories in are fewer than your calories out (burned during exercise or sitting still based on bmr), you will lose weight. Sure, things like thyroid issues affect this, but the math still applies!

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:20:41 +0000

Kevin, my more thorough explanation is stuck in moderation twice but yes, I am saying that those things are both false, as proven in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment – which if you’ve studied diet and nutrition extensively, you should have heard of.

[In summary, if a deficit of 3500 calories involved the loss of a lb of fat, the men would have lost twice the weight they did]