does it really matter what you eat?

is a calorie really a calorie whether it's from lettuce or a cookie? It's just so hard to believe that if I ate my calorie range in cookies or did it with healthier food I could still lose weight...I'm just curious what you guys think...thanks!

You'd believe it if you actually did it, because cookies are calorie dense so the volume of food you'd eat would be much less, so you'd probably be hungry most of the time.

If your obesse you can probably get away with eating just about anything and loosing weight. The lower your BF gets the harder that will be. And if your shooting for fitness model body fat levels, then no way in hell unless your blessed with some awesome genes. Macro's are important to be healthy tho, your not getting your macro's or micros from eating cookies. You need protein and fiber and fat. Carbs aren't required, but most of us do need them. The body will survive, just not well.

Try to get your macro's inline, I personally shoot for 40/40/20 (carbs/protein/fat), and try to make the fat's healthy as possible, unsatured's, healthy saturated, fish/olive oil/flax. Make sure your taking your multi-vitamins to help keep your micro nutrients inline.

A lot of people on these boards say a 'calorie is a calorie', which works to an extent. But its not the 100% truth, nutrient timing is important. Body builders who constantly cut/bulk are aware of how to get their body to shed and gain quickly, and all of them differ slightly on their diets. But i've yet to come across anyone in atheletic condition that honestly believes a 'calorie is a calorie' and you can eat whatever/whenever as long as your 'calories' are at the end of the day/week, under your BMR for optimal fat loss (that is FAT loss, not weight, if you wanna burn all the muscle off your body, go eat all the cookies you want).

Original Post by techraven:

If your obesse you can probably get away with eating just about anything and loosing weight. The lower your BF gets the harder that will be. And if your shooting for fitness model body fat levels, then no way in hell unless your blessed with some awesome genes. Macro's are important to be healthy tho, your not getting your macro's or micros from eating cookies. You need protein and fiber and fat. Carbs aren't required, but most of us do need them. The body will survive, just not well.

Try to get your macro's inline, I personally shoot for 40/40/20 (carbs/protein/fat), and try to make the fat's healthy as possible, unsatured's, healthy saturated, fish/olive oil/flax. Make sure your taking your multi-vitamins to help keep your micro nutrients inline.

A lot of people on these boards say a 'calorie is a calorie', which works to an extent. But its not the 100% truth, nutrient timing is important. Body builders who constantly cut/bulk are aware of how to get their body to shed and gain quickly, and all of them differ slightly on their diets. But i've yet to come across anyone in atheletic condition that honestly believes a 'calorie is a calorie' and you can eat whatever/whenever as long as your 'calories' are at the end of the day/week, under your BMR for optimal fat loss (that is FAT loss, not weight, if you wanna burn all the muscle off your body, go eat all the cookies you want).

 That has got to be one of the best posts I have ever read on CC. Couldn't have put it any better.

I was talking about for weight loss not fat loss specifically. If you go on the cookie diet, you will lose fat but a lower percentage of the weight lost will be fat because cookies are low on protein so your body will burn off more muscle.

If you are concerned strictly with weight loss then a calorie is a calorie, however for other health reasons the macronutrient ratios matter. Also, if you eat lots of simple carbs then your blood sugar will be unstable, so you'll be hungry a lot of the time.

... and malnourished. There aren't many vitamins in cookies. You would have all kinds of weird symptoms. For starters, your hair, skin and nails would dull and turn brittle.

symptoms like this

 

It bothers me so much when people say "a calorie is a calorie". There's also a thing called nutrition to consider! Good replies, people!

I didn't read all of the responses, so I apologize if I am being redundant, but it makes a difference what you eat IF you care what your body looks like after you lose weight. Long ago when I did weight watchers, I lost 20 lbs but I still had a flabby body even though I was at a healthy weight. And even with working out six days a week my body doesn't get very firm unless I eat extremely nutritious foods in correct proportions. If you are seriously overweight it probably doesn't initially make a huge difference in terms of losing vs. not losing, but it makes a huge difference in what is going on inside of your body. I also am aware that for some people just reducing calories is a huge step. It took me a long to time to go from calorie reduction to eating healthier to exercising regularly and now to eating as clean a diet as I can. I suppose it is better to take a first step then to not take one at all, but in the long run eating nutritious foods is always the best way to go.

taking into consideration the carb/protein/fat issue... what about a cheesburger?

carb=bread, protein=meat, fat=dressing in it.

Does this fit into a "healthy diet"? and I mean the 1dll cheeseburger..not the huge whopper or something....

There's nothing wrong with a cheeseburger.   Meat, bread and cheese are all perfectly good foods.  If you were left on a desert island with only cheeseburgers to eat you'd actually survive quite happily.  Much better than if you'd been shipwrecked with a crate of bananas, in fact.

If your diet is well balanced - and I would say 25-30% protein, 40%-60% wholegrain carbohydrate and 25-30% fat - and if your food is good quality  then a calorie is a calorie.

Original Post by emily6:

is a calorie really a calorie whether it's from lettuce or a cookie? It's just so hard to believe that if I ate my calorie range in cookies or did it with healthier food I could still lose weight...I'm just curious what you guys think...thanks!

Yes a calorie is a calorie.  Your body takes whatever you eat and quickly breaks it down into simple components and disperses throughout the body.  A calorie is just one portion of the nutritional value of the food you eat.  That does not mean eating your daily allotment of calories in cookies has equal nutritional value of a well balanced diet, but it does mean that you can eat cookies and still lose weight.  

strikez,

Interesting, a gram of insoluable fiber is 1g of carbs, which is 4 calories. But your body cannot digest it... 4g of whey protein takes about 30 minutes to digest, and then turns to glucose, which if not used in about another 30 minutes will be stored as fat. But 4g of casein takes 4-6 hours to digest. Yes, a calorie is a calorie. Gravity is 9.81m/s^2 across the entire universe. And god is my one true creator who wrote a book about a rain that fell at aprox 2 inches of water a minute across the entire earth while a man in a boat road out the weather in his comfy 460 degree superheated atmosphere (Atleast he had a polarbear and a koala to keep him company).

Yes, a calorie is a calorie, period.  And yes it really does matter what you eat.

Original Post by techraven :

strikez,

Interesting, a gram of insoluable fiber is 1g of carbs, which is 4 calories. But your body cannot digest it... 4g of whey protein takes about 30 minutes to digest, and then turns to glucose, which if not used in about another 30 minutes will be stored as fat. But 4g of casein takes 4-6 hours to digest. Yes, a calorie is a calorie. Gravity is 9.81m/s^2 across the entire universe. And god is my one true creator who wrote a book about a rain that fell at aprox 2 inches of water a minute across the entire earth while a man in a boat road out the weather in his comfy 460 degree superheated atmosphere (Atleast he had a polarbear and a koala to keep him company).

 A calorie is the amount of energy to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree celsius.  A dietary calorie is a kilocalorie - and that is universal.  So 100 calorie cookie has the the same calories as 100 calories of casein.  Trying to pretend it is different is as silly as your insulting post.

A calorie is a calorie when speaking scientificily, but when it comes to weight loss or muscle gain, its not that simple.

strikez, techraven wasn't talking about the definition of a calorie straight from a science textbook. Anyone with half a brain can look up that definition. He's saying that different types of calories are metabolized differently in the body, which is significant when trying to loose weight in a healthy manner. Can you loose weight by eating nothing but cookies...sure. But will you be healthy in the end for doing it this way? I highly doubt it.

I get so frustrated with this whole "a calorie is just a calorie" argument. While it may be true in the perfect world described in a textbook, things are a little bit different in the real world. To me this whole argument, just sounds like an excuse people make to eat crap.

The question the way I see it is, "Does it matter calorie-wise what I eat?"  And the answer is no, but nutrition-wise it makes a huge difference.  Calories do not equal nutrition, they are merely a unit measure of energy.  You lose weight when you burn more energy that you consume.

If you eat 1500 calories of sugar in the morning, you'll have metabolised and stored it by the time the afternoon roles around. Your body will be significantly deprived and you'll start burning muscle mass off...

http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails. pl
http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails. pl?2

Have charts of the metabolic pathways... Trying to simplify that as you are is absolutely retarded. It will only work to a certain degree, and the less fat your body has the more likely its going to be to store, and burn your muscle off unless you get your nutrients right, and TIMED correctly.

I've yet to see the "Cookie To Six Pack Diet" and unless my cookies are nutrient dense and timed correctly, I doubt I ever will. Except for a few freaks of nature that can get away with it.

This site is 'calorie-counting', but the context is in weight-loss/being healthy. I'm not going to tell someone they can lose weight while 'eating cookies', as much as I'll say 'just don't eat anything'.. Both work, but shouldnt the goal here be to get people to be healthy/change habbits/lose weight and keep it off? If you lost weight by eating a significant intake cookies, if you ever get to 8% bf by doing it (I doubt it), you'll have pretty much fasted all the muscle off your body (who cares?). I'm not going to suggest to anyone that they _EVER_ shed muscle off their body unless they are going from Mr. Olympia to Lance Armstrong, in which case biking 400miles with 18" biceps probably won't win you any gold medals.

Original Post by emily6:

is a calorie really a calorie whether it's from lettuce or a cookie? It's just so hard to believe that if I ate my calorie range in cookies or did it with healthier food I could still lose weight...I'm just curious what you guys think...thanks!

 

 I read some of the other posts but really, I think it depends on the COOKIE. You can make some awfully nutritious cookies using whole grains (oatmeal for instance), fruits, even toss in some veggies like carrots or zucchini shredded finely (think zucchini bread), plus use Splenda sugar (not that I like artificial sweetners much but this is better than the others.) or even molasses or honey to sweeten. I'm sure there are some good healthier than chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. That way you can eat healthy AND have cookies.

Original Post by techraven:

If you eat 1500 calories of sugar in the morning, you'll have metabolised and stored it by the time the afternoon roles around. Your body will be significantly deprived and you'll start burning muscle mass off...

http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails. pl
http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails. pl?2

Have charts of the metabolic pathways... Trying to simplify that as you are is absolutely retarded. It will only work to a certain degree, and the less fat your body has the more likely its going to be to store, and burn your muscle off unless you get your nutrients right, and TIMED correctly.

I've yet to see the "Cookie To Six Pack Diet" and unless my cookies are nutrient dense and timed correctly, I doubt I ever will. Except for a few freaks of nature that can get away with it.

This site is 'calorie-counting', but the context is in weight-loss/being healthy. I'm not going to tell someone they can lose weight while 'eating cookies', as much as I'll say 'just don't eat anything'.. Both work, but shouldnt the goal here be to get people to be healthy/change habbits/lose weight and keep it off? If you lost weight by eating a significant intake cookies, if you ever get to 8% bf by doing it (I doubt it), you'll have pretty much fasted all the muscle off your body (who cares?). I'm not going to suggest to anyone that they _EVER_ shed muscle off their body unless they are going from Mr. Olympia to Lance Armstrong, in which case biking 400miles with 18" biceps probably won't win you any gold medals.

A calorie is still a calorie - no matter how you try to make it out to something different.  Your wacked out childish fantasies about muscle just don't work for those who are losing weight.   You might think you know some "secrets" to weight loss, but it is just a bunch of BS.  Billions of people on this planet do just well on a diet of mainly rice.  They could out work you any day.  Most of them have less than 8% body fat.  

What makes you think the goal for everybody is get below 8% body fat?  I think you need a few cookies just to relax.  Of course if you eat a cookie, all the muscle will fast off of your body.

Even having this discussion with you is a waste of time, because you "think" you have all the answers for everybody.  In fact you are just spouting pseudoscience that has little or no validity.

Wow strikez…“childish fantasies” and “secrets to weight loss”…Where are you coming up with this stuff?! All techraven is trying to do is give helpful advice based off of his knowledge/experience. Isn’t that the point of this site; to help and support people trying to loose weight in a healthy manner? Telling them  they can eat whatever they want because “a calorie is just a calorie” is completely unsupportive advice. Sure they might loose weight this way, but this is in no way a healthy approach loosing weight. If you want to tell people to loose weight in this manner, that’s your prerogative, but don’t sit there and insult someone who’s concerned that they do it healthily.

You also mock techraven’s reiteration that it is important not to loose muscle, but this is pure fact, not some “fantasy” in his head! No person (aside from a body builder or serious runner) needs to loose muscle when they are losing weight. I don’t care if they are 120 pounds with a BMI of 20, if their fat percentage is high (which it likely would be on something such as the cookie diet), they are probably not healthy. In no part of his argument has techraven advocated an 8% body fat percentage for everyone; he has merely stated that a healthy body fat percentage (based on gender) should be a goal for someone trying to loose weight in a healthy manner.

Also, when did techraven ever say that a calorie is not a calorie? You are totally and completely misinterpreting his argument. He admits that thermodynamically, a calorie is just a calorie. But things get a heck of a lot more complex in the body. You’ve obviously never taken a single science course in your life if you can’t comprehend that. Study a metabolic pathway and then tell me that everything is digested/stored the same way…

Oh and by the way…that rice you speak of, it has protein, fat, and complex carbs in it. So why don’t you do some research before you insult someone who actually does their homework.