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Four Reasons a Calorie Is Not a Calorie
UncategorizedBeyond battling our basic biology, calorie balancing is bound to fail us because a calorie is not a calorie. The difference in calorie quality is really important. That’s because the quality of the calories we eat influences our hormones. Those in turn determine our set-point. We can control our weight, just not the way you have been led to believe.
The Calories In – Calories Out theory of weight control depends on the assumption that our bodies work like balance scales. Balance scales do not measure quality. On a balance scale, a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead. Quality is irrelevant. So on a balance scale, 300 calories of vegetables is the same as 300 calories of pasta. The only problem is that the body is not a balance scale.
Let’s look at the issue another way. Breathing in smoke-filled air for thirty years does something different to our respiratory system than breathing in the same quantity of fresh air. In the same fashion, putting 2,000 calories of low-quality food into our fat metabolism system does something different than putting in the same quantity of high-quality food. Quality counts. Our bodies do not work like balance scales.
The quality of calories depends on four fascinating factors:
The more Satisfying, unAggressive, Nutritious, and inEfficienct a calorie is, the higher its quality. The more SANE it is. The more body-fat-burning hormones it triggers. The more it unclogs our metabolism and prevents overeating.
The more unSatisfying, Aggressive, not Nutritious, and Efficient a calorie is, the lower its quality. The more inSANE it is. The more body-fat-storing hormones it triggers. The more it clogs our metabolism and encourages overeating.
The more we understand the four calorie-quality factors, the more clearly we will see how eating more high-quality SANE food is the only practical way to burn body fat long term. When you stay full of SANE food, you will not have any room for clog-causing inSANE calories. When we are totally full from a super-sized SANE supper, skipping the sundae after isn’t a burden. It’s a blessing in disguise. By staying full of SANE calories, we clear our clog, drop our set-point, and enable our fat metabolism system to burn body fat for us automatically.
Sound too good to be true? More supporting science coming-up shortly.
Calories Aren’t All That Matter…Ask Anyone Taking Insulin
UncategorizedThe critical effect hormones have on body fat has been well known in scientific circles for a long time. Especially the hormone insulin. Three quick examples:
Note that there’s no mention of “eating too much” or “exercising too little.” That’s because calories aren’t all that matter. Hormones matter a lot. Hundreds of millions of diabetics have proven this for years. And that’s why long-term fat loss and robust health isn’t about eating less of a hormonally-poor traditional diet and doing more hormonally-irrelevant traditional exercise. These techniques may mask our hormonal breakdown, but they do not fix it.
Forget counting calories. Focus on eating more hormonally-helpful SANE foods, and doing less, but hormonally-helpful eccentric exercise. Eat more and exercising less–smarter. Sure that seems like the opposite of what we’ve been told to do, but isn’t it about time to get the opposite of what we’ve gotten?
Studies Show It’s InSANE To Claim “A Calorie Is A Calorie”
UncategorizedA few posts ago we covered the four factors that prove a calorie isn’t a calorie when it comes to how much they help us burn fat and boost our health:Satiety, Aggression, Nutrition, and Efficiency. Satiety is how quickly calories fill us up. Aggression is how likely calories are to be stored as body fat. Nutrition is how many vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, etc., calories provide. Efficiency is how easily calories are converted into body fat. Whether a calorie is high-quality or low-quality depends on where it fits on the SANEity spectrum.
High-quality calories are on the healthy end of the SANEity spectrum. They are Satisfying, unAggressive, Nutritious, and inEfficient. They fill us up quickly and keep us full for a long time. They provide a lot of nutrients, and few of them can be converted into body fat. Even better, they trigger the release of body-fat-burning hormones, clear clogs, and lower our set-point. In short, they are SANE.
Low-quality calories are just the opposite. They are on the unhealthy end of the SANEity spectrum. They are unSatisfying, Aggressive, non-Nutritious, and Efficient. They trigger the release of body-fat-storing hormones, cause clogs, and raise our set-point. In short, they are inSANE.
Why does this matter?
In all of the studies that follow, everyone ate the exact same quantityof calories, but one group’s calories were of much higher quality (were much more SANE) than the other groups’:
In next week’s posts, we’ll begin looking at each of the four factors of SANE eating, starting with Satiety. By the way, if the word seems oddly familiar, it comes from the same root as satisfying.
Is obesity a disease? My 2 cents…would love to hear yours.
UncategorizedRecently recorded a wonderful bonus podcast with the lovely Carole Carson (http://www.fromfat2fit.com) who asked for my two cents on the recent debate about calling obesity a disease. Given the timeliness of this, wanted to share the clip now, and be sure to stay tuned for the delightful entire show with Carole in the coming months.
ObesityADisease
Q&A: What about alcohol?
UncategorizedCalories provided by the vast majority of alcoholic beverages are inSANE. That doesn’t mean we must avoid all alcoholic beverages. It means that given our goal of minimizing inSANE calories, the best alcoholic beverages are those with the least calories.
Calorie Quality Factor 2: Aggression (The “A” in SANE)
UncategorizedA calorie is not a calorie when it comes to how likely it is to be stored as body fat. We can think about human biology like this: When we eat, a traffic cop tells calories where to go. How Aggressively calories approach this traffic cop determines their chances of being stored as body fat.
The traffic cop directs calories to repair, fuel, or fatten us—in that order. It first makes sure we have enough fuel to rebuild anything that has broken down. Next, it keeps us doing whatever we are doing. Last, it seeks to protect us from starving. As long as we have a calm and consistent flow of calories coming into our system, the cop does a great job directing them.
However, when calories approach the traffic cop Aggressively, it gets angry, throws its clipboard down, and sends those calories to fat cells. Our body is fine with a lot of food. It is Aggressive food that aggravates it. Five hundred calm calories creeping into the bloodstream over many hours are less likely to be stored as body fat than five hundred Aggressive calories rushing in all at once. Like the rest of us, our body does not do its best work when dealing with a bunch of Aggressive requests all at once.
To best understand calories’ Aggression we first need to understand how our body fuels itself. It does not run on the food we eat. It runs primarily on glucose, a sugar our body creates from the food we eat. That may seem like a meaningless distinction, but it is not.
Storing body fat is not caused by eating a lot of food. Storing body fat is about a response to eating food that causes us to have more glucose in our bloodstream than we can use at one time. That is why calories’ Aggression matters so much. The more Aggressive calories are, the faster they increase the levels of glucose in our bloodstream. The faster calories increase our glucose levels, the more likely we are to have more glucose than the body can deal with at one time. That’s when it shuttles the excess into our fat cells.
The distinction between “a lot of food” and “a lot of glucose right now” is important. We can eat all the food we want and never gain body fat if the glucose the food generates does not exceed the glucose level we can deal with right then. Fortunately, SANE foods prevent excess glucose from getting into our bloodstream. If we simply focus on increasing the amount of water-, fiber-, and protein-packed high-Satiety foods we are eating, we will automatically avoid Aggressive calories and store less body fat.