Can I lose weight from just dieting?

@humanity: also, on a simpler level, 300 calories of apple is like, three medium sized apples while 300 calories of pizza is like, a single slice. I would be willing to bet an ordinary person is unlikely to eat more than one apple in a sitting, but likely to eat more than one slice of pizza so...short version definitely is that while there is more to human health than calories in calories out, they certainly aren't a lie.

I am in no way an expert so this is only my experience so take this with a grain of salt.

I lost just over 150 lbs on Keto in 2010/11 and have kept it off via a generallyhealthy keto-ish diet and moderate exercise. I did almost no exercise for the first 90 pounds or so but something strange happened - as I lost weight, I became more confident and found I wanted to get out more and do more active things then before. Now I hike, play sports again and just generally get myself out there much more.

I get being self conscious about your weight. I've been there, I was morbidly obese and addicted to food. I weighed over 370 pounds. For me, I had to reallytake care of my diet first and the rest fell into place around me after having success there.

Plus, and this is important, exercise will not help you lose weight in many situations. In my case, I had an unhealthy relationship with food, not with exercise. It will help you be healthy and achieve more specific lifestyle goals but changing your life habits related to food is the only proven and reliable route to weight loss. You will need to do what I did: Get real with yourself, fix your dietary habits and go from there.

You can do it - I know this because I did.

I loss 60 pounds this year, with a combination of diet and increased activity. for the first several months though I was mostly focused on diet. My simple advice is to set a calorie goal for the day and use a food logger (like MyFitnessPal) to log all your eating. you calorie goal should be based on your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), your activity level, and how fast you want to lose weight. try for a 500-1000 cal deficit every day. I have an easier time sticking to my budget if I try to keep my diet lower in carbs, they just don't satisfy me. Tracking calories SUCKS but after 7 months I have gotten used to it and just accept it as a shitty thing I have to do. In the last couple months I have been focusing on being more active; skinny me actually likes running A LOT. but, there is no rush to get to that get your diet in order and focus on the exercise when you have time and feel good enough to do it.

@alwaysbebombing said:

this.

The trick is finding ways that work for you to keep your intake lower than your output. Everyone has the One True Way to do it, but there ain't no such thing.

Don't sweat the details. Eat fewer calories while maintaining or increasing energy expenditure. Take reasonable, planned, short breaks from restricting your diet to give yourself a break. Be patient with yourself.

Good luck!

@matoya: What follows is a summarization of my own obsessive research over the past 4 years. I'm trying to lose weight too.

Your weight comes down to calories in vs calories out. It's physics. The 3500 calories in broccoli will add a pound of weight to your frame. 3500 calories of ice cream will also add a pound to your frame.

That said, you do not care about weight. You care about how much fat you have, and that is body composition. Not weight (well, obviously fat weighs something, but follow me). The actual composition of your body depends on what you're actually eating.

A diverse diet with vegetables, lighter meats, good fat (way more fat is good than pop health science would say. Eggs are great, don't let anyone convince you otherwise) and darker grains will make you feel a lot better and will build a better body than a diet consisting of pizza and ice cream, even if the calories end up the same. And such a diet might even be easier to have a caloric deficit on (the way you actually lose weight). Protein and fat are satiating. They will keep you full longer than carbohydrates. Carbs like veggies and basically any plant that hasn't been processed to hell will have fiber, which slows down digestion and keeps you full longer. This can help reduce craving and make your new lifestyle easier to maintain.

But in the end, it doesn't matter if you only eat broccoli, free range chicken and quinoa if you're eating 5,000 calories of it a day. You still need to eat less calories than you burn from existing. And that requires you pay attention. There are apps that make it easier. MyFitnessPal has been mentioned in this thread. It can scan food that has a barcode, and has a database to ball park the food that doesn't.

Don't be afraid to ball park. Perfection is the enemy of good enough, and you just need to be good enough. Plug in a target number, try to hit it. Are you not losing weight/inches (again, you only care about fat. Scale number ultimately doesn't matter)? Eat a little less. Repeat.

Also, get active. If you can afford it, consider a gym membership. If you get it, go every day.

Go every day.

Even if you don't do anything, just go anyway. Bring a book. There are probably chairs near the front. Just make a habit of being at the gym at some point every day. Try to find something fun you can do there. Many gyms have classes, or courts for playing basketball, or pools. It's not all barbells and treadmills.

Anxiety keeping you from the gym? I feel you. Everyone has said that no one cares, and it's true. Most people are more focused on their music and routine to pay attention to anyone else. But otherwise, here's a link to a bodyweight exercise routine, most of which you can do at home. Some you might not have the mobility to do, but that's okay. You do as much as you're comfortable with.

Either gym or a home routine, try to do something that helps develop muscles. While losing weight, you won't put on much muscle, but you need to do strength training anyway to keep the muscles you have. And heads you, you do have muscles. Maybe not in your arms, but I will bet you have strong legs (Hi, my name's Beforet, I've been fat all my life and have calves of steel).

In the end, it comes down a lifestyle change. And it is hard. I'm going through it myself, and I have screwed up many times. At a certain level, if you want this to work you need to learn to like the journey. None of this is worth it if you hate yourself during it. Find a way to eat healthy that leaves you happy. Find a way to exercise that is fun. Make a goal out of it. I do weight lifting, and half the reason I go is that I like making numbers go up, and every time I go to the gym I add another 5 pounds to the barbell. You need to make the whole thing worth it to yourself somehow.

Good luck, duder. Lots of people have started this road, and there are more success stories than people tend to talk about.

Speaking from my experience as an athlete who had to cut weight to compete. Just limit your calorie intake and exercise a lot. I tried to keep mine under 1800 calories( or 400-600 less than you usually eat) a day when i had something close coming up and you have to eat clean nutrient dense food like spinash, kale, chicken breast. Right now I train with some guys who train 2-3 hours a day to lose weight, but they can't lose weight because they can't because they can't maintain a diet. It takes a lot of discipline and self-control and a lot of people fail, I used to dream of pizza when I was dieting. Also I've never done it, but the Ketogenic diet like Whforde did will work wonders if you can do it.

Lost 80 pounds in 8 months on keto. Didn't even track stuff. No exercise except a job that involved walking and being on your feet but nothing heavy.

These threads inevitably fill up with conflicting advice that I'm not really equipped to sift through, but my (hopefully mostly orthogonal) two cents:

• Build muscle. It might not be your goal to get buff (though it can come in handy), but my understanding is that the muscle will eat fat/raise your calorie usage just by merely existing and being used enough for your body to not decide to atrophy it, let alone when you're putting it through regular workouts and forcing it to recover. I've generally found that I only start putting on weight when I've been sedentary for long enough to let the muscle fall away.
• I don't think you need to go to the gym in order to get a good workout regime going. I much prefer "calisthenic" strength training, things like pushups and chinups, to lifting weights or using expensive machines that are designed to make you repeat motions that, I don't know, might be designed to be reasonably applicable to practical activities you'd actually engage in or might not? Get a chinup bar or find a good branch on a tree or something. Find a guide that'll give you intermediate workouts you can use to step your way up to things like proper chinups and pushups, since you're probably going to find even doing one actual chinup difficult right now. I had this really cheesy book written by some macho former prison convict dude that detailed a lot of these intermediate workouts (did some googling, I believe it's called Convict Conditioning?), the shtick was kinda silly but the intermediate workouts seemed very well-designed, so it might be worth digging up that book. Don't worry about doing a specific routine so much as settling on workouts that you can do a set or two of 5-20 reps each of (with say, 5 minutes between sets, but do what you're comfortable with). You're trying to improve your body, the weight loss should come later.
• That said, don't ignore cardio. Start running, or get a bike, and slowly increase your distance and/or pace until you're covering, say 5km on foot or 20km on bike. Again, I wouldn't worry about burning a specific amount of calories or anything like that, you just want to get fit and have more energy and be a little less depressed. The fat should melt off when you're healthier and have more muscle to feed.
• Look into taking up a sport or physical recreational activity. I've done climbing and Karate at various points in my life. I think you'll find that just about any decent center for these kinds of pursuits will be pretty chill about body weight, and you'll find that as you get more serious about them your fitness will become this automatic thing that you just take care of because you want to perform better.
• Try to avoid hurting yourself. Listen to your body -- if your ankles or knees or shoulders or whatever are complaining then give it a rest or tone it down, and don't worry that you're blowing off your routine and will remain fat for the rest of your life because of it or any nonsense like that. See a doctor if you have any ongoing or acute problems.
• It might be worth seeing a personal trainer to pick out specific workout routines that'll work for you, especially if you find you can't do various workouts for whatever reason.
• I have no idea what to tell you about diet, other than that having an overly restrictive diet seems waaaay harder than having a normal person diet with whatever good nutritional advice you can find mixed in, combined with good exercise routines.

I'd say so. I lost ~40 lbs back in 2012 with the help of a fitness tracker and some calorie counting. I kept the calories eaten number lower than the calories burned number and later that year I was at my goal weight. I didn't change what I was eating, I just late less of it. I also made an effort to move more, just around the house, such as by walking around the room while watching movies. It worked out.

Whether you should do that is an entirely different question, I'm just saying it worked.

@matoya

That's what I did when I was younger and it worked. I didn't step foot into a gym before I started losing weight (still haven't since I'm cheap) and I dropped close to 100 pounds. Honestly, I think it was around 85 but it's close. I was well over 250 pounds, wore 3XL shirts, wore size 38 jeans and even those were getting a bit too snug. After I got rejected by a girl I liked (I knew why even if she wouldn't say it) I decided to lose weight and get into shape. I ate better by cutting out fast food (basically just watching what I eat) and exercised 5 days a week at home.

I googled exercises and designated certain days to certain kinds of exercises and how many sets and reps I would do. I never counted calories because that was a level I wasn't prepared to go to nor was it something I really cared about doing and everything turned out pretty good here. I'm 5`11, was around 260 and up (never weighed myself until I dropped the weight but I was a big boy) and now I'm 176 and 18% body fat; my goal is to get to around 12% body fat.

You can do it, buddy. It'll be hard as shit and you'll fall off the wagon, because we all do, just make sure to get back on it.

EDIT: Also, I started drinking damn near nothing but water, so that absolutely helps as well. Energy drinks, soda, coffee and all that stuff? I never touch it. I've been doing this for so long that I don't even consider what I'm doing out of the ordinary or any kind of diet, it's just how I operate now especially with the exercising.

@zevvion, @broccolirob and @humanity have the best advice in here. Listen to them.

Regarding calories they are worth the same. The difference lies in the source. It is still simply energy with different caveats, depending on the source.

Eat only what you cook yourself and you're bound to loose weight. It's very unlikely that you'll be eating unhealthy foods every day, once you realize what amounts of fat, salt or sugar go into them.

This may be marketing material, but maybe it could work for you?

Yes. My bf lost 20kg by cutting soda and most fast foods from his diet.

I think just adopting a sensible diet, and going for regular walks would probably benefit you greatly to start... now I've finished talking to myself, what can I do for you?

Edit: Actually once you feel confident enough, and start shedding a few pounds, running is a terrific for anxiety and boosting confidence.

Just cut crap out of your diet, no more sugar primarily (its in everything refined or processed), you'll be amazed at the result, even in a short space of time.

Its a tough thing your trying to do, but once you get in good routine you'll nail it. Good Luck Dude :)

@matoya:Yes but it will take longer and you will gain it back unless your very careful. At age 18 I was 230 pounds and not happy at all so I started walking and almost totally removed processed sugar from my diet, Unless you want to go to some extreme you can't really remove it all but I stopped drinking pop and juice and had appositely no takeout/junk food or pre-made meals, by age 20 I was 134 pounds and was under weight for my height, after some adjusting in my diet I went up to 150 pounds and I have been there give or take a few ever since (I'm 29 this Jan). If your goal it to simply loose weight and not get swoll then eating less and a 20 to 30 min walk a day will show you result's in at most 30 days. The human body need's so many calories a day to maintain or increase your body mass so if you take in less than you need to maintain your current weight then your body will use it's stored energy (fat) http://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html this site will help you but calorie counting is not a science and there are variables but it's a good way to start, be sure to read and record all the calories you have and try to aim about 500 less than you need for the first while and see how you feel. I don't know what your diet looks like but if it's high in sugar your going to feel some bad cravings, I recommend you buy a few kinds of sugar free gum and chew some when your feeling hungry or start craving sweets. Feel free to msg me to.

Lowering your intake can contribute to weight loss, but it's not that simple.

Eating less is just that -- eating less. Unless one is eating better and giving your body something to do with the fat it has, little will change. Your body can and will create fat with anything you give it. Losing that fat requires burning it as fuel -- exercise.

To be fair, the diet IS the biggest part of weight loss and not exercise. Also exercising from home has worked for me as well. I just do Youtube videos that are just body weight exercises and do it almost everyday for about 30 - 60 mins give or take. At least I don't have to go to the gym since that part also expends time unless you have one that is just on the way home from work or something.

Oh. its not something I'd easily recommend but if you're fine with peeing more often as a consequence then definitely drink LOTS and LOTS of water. It definitely helps. I get full a lot faster that way.

EDIT: Oh by the way, exercising does help with certain goals like if you want to be better physically (doing everyday tasks doesn't seem as difficult etc.) as well as improving cardiovascular health, and a bunch of other benefits. Weight loss however is much more dependent on what you take in. If you keep eating and consuming a lot of calories, the amount of effort you put into exercise would just be evened out. You just have to be smart and disciplined with your food choices and eating habits.

I lost 45 pounds in 3-4 months with zero exercise. Just cut carbs completely and eat eggs, bacon, cheese, meat, and butter until feeling full and you are all set.

@gaspower: yeah that is one of the most important things besides dieting. Thirst and hunger are often confused.

I would not recommend it right now, but in the future, you should try fasting for a while. After a 24h or more fast you will relearn what hunger actually is. There are different plans to introduce fasting into your life, but I think you should be healthier and exercising regularly before trying to introduce it.

PT here. Walking is great, keep doing it, and do it way more. Walking is way more effektice for fat burning than running, as running starts burning carbohydrate after around 15 minutes.

My tip: Walk when listening to the bombcast or other things. One to one and a half hours of walking a day would be great for you, and it's a good time to think and reflect on the day, which is great for mental health as well.

As for food, don't go cold turkey and eat nothing. Eating is what makes the body start burning fat, calories etc. Try eating food that takes a while to digest, as you will feel less hungry, and the process of digesting food will keep your body burning for longer.

Good luck man, and please, don't listen to literally half of the comments here. They don't know what they are talking about, and is way more anecdotal than scientific.

Exercise is terrific for both the body and mind. The psychological benefit that comes from a fitness regimen cannot be underestimated. I've never been a fan of the idea of dieting over exercise, because although you may lose weight, that doesn't automatically equal good health. With exercise, you can afford to eat (although an improvement in nutritional intake goes without saying) as you're burning calories and raising your metabolism, whereas dieting alone will force you out of a habit that might be difficult to break--although not impossible with enough willpower. They go hand in hand. Cutting out the junk food is step one, building walks and eventually aerobic exercise (short jogs--even five minutes to begin with) into your daily routine is step two.

Don't bother with the gym. Walk. Cut out the sugar and junk food. Drink water. Progress might be slow, but don't give up. You can do it!

I don't have excessive knowledge of dieting but one thing I read/heard time and time again is that the easiest significant thing you can do to reduce your calorie intake (and thus your weight or weight gain) is to forego any drink that has sugar in it. All sodas, sweetened juices and double caramel drizzle lattes basically. These are calories that don't do anything for you and you are quite literally just pouring dissolved sugars into your body. Move over to plain water, sparkling water, unsweetened (or very lightly sweetened) black or green teas, black coffee. You're going to miss the taste at first but you'll find that your mouth starts picking up on the flavors of tea and coffee once they stop being overwhelmed by the simple and strong taste of sugar.

When it comes to exercise: exercising at home is absolutely doable and not just a subpar gym experience. For my first 1-2 years of training I was training at home either with bodyweight exercises or with light dumbbels.

I think it's actually a great way to start because

a)you don't get the anxiety (which is a totally valid concern!)

b)it's harder to make excuses that you don't want to go train today

c)simple bodyweight exercises are very good at getting the feel of activating specific muscle groups and at having a general idea of which parts of your body are responsible for what movements.

This channel is a goldmine for beginner friendly workout material without any worry of having a bunch of supplements and useless gadgets thrown into your face with every exercise routine. The guy's been working out for like 30 years I think and has a deep knowledge of the dos and donts of losing weight. Just type in keywords like 'beginner' or 'simple' in the search bar.

Oh and walking 10 miles a day is absolutely awesome for your health and it's really good you've made it a habit. I wouldn't be surprised if dropping sodas and continuing to walk daily would be enough to significantly reduce your weight.

Calories are not a big deal. It is absolutely sugar that is the problem. However calories can be extremely useful through the right lens. For instance, say you were gonna grab a quick lunch and the sandwich you grabbed has 1,200 calories in it, it probably had a ton of other bad crap in it too. I've been doing a workout plan called ARMageddon by Steve Weatherford, and I've been forcing myself for the first time ever to consume calories at an amount needed to gain muscle. Hitting 2,500 is hard as hell, but I'm actually still shedding pounds. Years ago I ballooned up to 235lbs and started watching what I was eating and exercising, I cut almost all sugar out of my life, and in less than a year was down to 175lbs.

I saw in some other comments people said exercising doesn't matter, that's absurrrrrd. You absolutely want to exercise. The problem is some people go to the gym, hop on an elliptical for an hour and throw some light weights around and think that means they can eat poorly still, or even eat worse thinking they've more than made up for it. Put in a good workout that has you sweating and hating life the next day, and you'll see results, and it will get easier, but you have to eat better.

I also saw somebody say they have too much anxiety to go to a gym, I'm just curious if you could clarify why? I'm by no means John Cena or something, but I do consider myself in good shape, and I can tell you if it is because you're afraid to get made fun of, I don't think that will ever happen, and I've never seen it happen. When I see somebody out of shape come into a gym or working out, I am not making fun of them in my head, I'm thinking "hell yeah, keep it up!" You have questions about an exercise or need a spot, from my experience, just ask! Gyms are optional, people don't HAVE to go there, so it might totally surprise you how cool people there are, and happy to help and give advice. Don't ever be ashamed to go to the gym and exercise, that takes guts and effort, and you could be doing a million different things but you CHOSE to go there instead.

I stopped drinking soda and I lost 12lbs over a few months. So you can certainly lose weight from a change in diet, but you'll need to be pro-active if you want to lose more than a few lbs here and there.

I'd recommend doing simple things like the push-up challenge or jumping rope. Both are easy solo activities and can be done in the comfort of your own place.

A lot of misinformation in this thread.

You can never exercise and still effectively lose weight. All that matters in weight loss is that your 'Calories Out' exceeds your 'Calories In'.

Can you spend 45 minutes on an exercise bike and burn 500 calories? Sure, definitely. You could also just not drink those two cans of Coke with dinner and it will have the same effect on your body (in regards to weight loss).

This isn't a magic formula. Weight loss is hard, but not a mystery.

@mmmslash: Except that you are wrong. Please read "Good calories, bad calories" by Gary Taubes. All calories are not the same. Second law of thermodynamics does not apply to dieting.

Also science has proven this to be true many times over in recent years.

@void: Well, you read a book, so you probably know everything there is to know about nutrition.

@mmmslash: I really don't. But science seems to disagree with you. Also I've tried it myself by eating copious amounts of fats instead of carbs and lost a lot of weight with no exercise. And yes, my cholesterol and blood levels is fine. More than fine, even.

Yes I lost 40 pounds in the space of about 4 months by just dieting. The trouble is keeping it off. I've gained some of it back, but it's a push-pull thing, you know? I'm already losing it again.

Exercise is good though. You should exercise, not because it'll help you lose weight, but for all the other reasons it's good for you.

Buy a jump rope and use it constantly. Diet can go a long way, but you're gonna need some cardio.

@void: There is a real miscommunication here. I am extremely pro-keto. Sugar is the devil, not fats. It's unfortunate that an essential nutrient and undesirable extraneous subcutaneous humanblubber have the same name, but what are you going to do.

Regardless, sugar is so terrible because it's empty calories that make you want more empty calories. Too many calories in and not enough out, and you get fat.

I don't disagree with you at all, except that calories do matter. They are ultimately the only thing that matters. You can get them from good places and you can get them from bad places.

@mmmslash: Glad we agree on keto. But you are actually still incorrect about the calorie in and out thing. The human body is not a closed system. If you are on a keto diet you can eat more calories than you normally would and still lose weight. The excess calories are not absorbed when carbs are out of the picture.

The biggest secret to weight lose is to just..eat less. Like, seriously, that's it. Eat what you want, just consume less of it. Exercise, of any kind, can absolutely help. But simply not putting as much stuff in your body=how you lose weight.

There are plenty of ways to do it 'better' or "faster' or 'more healthy" but literally the bare-bones issue is 'eat less". Which means you could eat whatever you want, just less the normal, and lose weight. Now, obviously, going on a healthier diet, with small portions, and adding some exercise as your able is best. But Simply drinking 1 less soda a day will produce results.

All of the various diets and such out there tend to be fads. They work, or they don't, some better some worse, and never universal 'this works for everyone". Except what I've said, and I can't repeat it enough. Just Eat Less. And not like "omg I have to starve myself?!" No. Just eat a bit slower, and cut out 10% of your current portion size. And poof, your done. Do you have to cut soda completely? Well, better if you do..but no. Do you drink 7 a week? Drink 6. There, you'll lose some weight.

Again, the more you do the better, but people would be shocked how simply removing a few hundred calories a day can do to their weight over a period of a few months.

Yes

@matoya: When i noticed the same thing i decided about a year ago to do the same and what has worked for me on keeping fit and lean is a few things which fit into a busy lifestyle!

1. Don't like the gym? Go buy some weights, they aren't that expensive and you don't need a 100kg just a decent set will do,nothing stupid.

2. HIIT workouts, these can be found online (Joe Wicks on YouTube), they're hard work but burn tons of fat and only take 15 minutes..

3. Drink at least 3 litres of water a day, that will just in general allow you to lose weight, really important!

4. I eat lean meats and protein in the week with veg but i still have crap food, i'm still able to go eat takeaway once a week or the some chocolate on the weekend, but just in moderation and know you're guna go burn that badboy off the next day in your HIIT.

5. I workout typically 3 times a week Mon,Wed and Fri. 15 min HIIT workout and 40 min weights. Then have a protein shake and you're sorted.

If you just do this you can still eat plenty and you'll notice in time the weight drop off and turn into muscle, just got to stick it out when it's tough and eventually you'll enjoy it. It's not easy and it takes time if it didn't everyone would do it. Good luck!

Calories in/out isn't quite accurate, you have to maintain proper protein/carb/fat balance. Also, glycemic index plays a role as well. Oatmeal and sugar both break down into glucose, except once does it a lot slower and hence much lower insulin spike.

@void said:

Second law of thermodynamics does only apply to closed systems, of which the universe is one. But the human body, while generally using entropy driven chemical reactions, is an open system. We increase the entropy of food, instead of our own.

If you put a person in a thermally insulated room with enough food and comforts for a week, then the room would become a closed system and in a week's time the temperature of this room would have dramatically increased, the second law of thermodynamics would apply to this room. The law states that in a closed system, the amount of Entropy is always increasing or remaining constant. Heat is the most common form of entropy.

The temperature would have increased because the human body is constantly radiating about 100 Watt worth of power. The cold chemical energy of food is converted to body heat, in many entropy driven chemical reactions. BTW over two thirds of calories we eat are used to maintain our body temperature, which is why exercise is so frustratingly inefficient at burning calories. Basically more than two thirds of the calories you burn during exercise the body would have burned in that time anyway... This makes smart and healthy nutrition much more important than exercise.

yes.

Yes, just dieting is the easiest way to lose weight. My friend has lost 30 pounds in a few months on the keto diet. He's still slovenly, but getting skinnier! That said exercise is fantastic for your body and your mind.

I went on a low carb diet at the end of July this year and, with the help of an appetite suppressant for the first month, have managed to lose around 50 pounds. I cut sugar out completely and drank only water and Powerade Zero. I would eat pizza and other high carb foods every once in a while and I still lost 10 pounds a month consistantly. I'm nearing the end of month 5 of the diet and I'm starting to fall off. It can get boring eating the same foods all the time but I think I needed a little bit of a relapse to start on it again fresh. But yes, dieting works. My recommendation is to cut out sugar, fried foods, breads, and anything high in starch.

When your medication increases your apatite it sure is hard to control the urge to graze all day. Cutting out the sugary drinks would be the first thing to do. Don't skip breakfast though otherwise you'll be much more likely to snack later in the day.

@matoya Go to a dietitian. As someone with the degree, I can tell you there is a high amount of false information in this thread. Unless you already knew the answer to your own question, you won't be able to sift through this stuff to find the legitimate answer. If you have any sort of health care, they cover a few sessions per year. Trust me, do that.

Science 100% agrees with him. Energy is energy. Kcalories are a metric of energy, not a specific variation. It's all ATP and nothing else. The misconception you're making is a difference in health benefits, which has nothing to do with kcalories and more with the source you take it from.

This I say as somone who has been keeping up on research and attended many seminars by the likes of Asker Jeukendrup.

You're also both wrong about sugar. Beyond thinking your body does not store excess kcalories if you don't consume carbohydrates (like... what?), it's also completely possible to eat a diet that is comprised of 80% sugar and lose weight drastically. Nutrition is much more nuanced than you seem to understand. Statements like 'sugar is the devil' is a clear tell sign someone has no idea what they're talking about. Whenever someone tries to blame weight gain on any one or two specific nutrients, they are always wrong.

As far as keto-diets go, the actual research, and I mean legitimate research, not whatever you have been reading, is still inconclusive. Most signs point towards it being sub-optimal, where others show some promise. The only thing that has been proven is that it decreases your physical performance significantly.

@zevvion: I do not believe that not eating carbohydrates does anything magical. I think carbohydrates are a shitty source of energy for the body.

@mmmslash: Carbohydrates are the only source of energy for your brain. As I said earlier, outstanding long term research on prolonged keto-diets is still ongoing so I cannot claim that keto-diets are bad for your nervous system or overall health, but it sure isn't something I would assume to just be healthy. If you look at the fact that your body will desperately try to break down your lean tissue to make up for a carbohydrate deficit to fuel your brain to prevent your body from shutting down. But as I said, who knows. Maybe it's totally OK.

Other than that it's been proven time and time again that high carbohydrate intake increases your physical performance. Not important for playing videogames, no. But if you live an active lifestyle then there is nothing bad about it. I'll point out the only research that actually suggests carbohydrates are bad for health are those where the subjects lead mostly sedentary lifestyles.

I wouldn't tell every single person to go out and eat 80% of their total intake from carbohydrates, but I also wouldn't say they are bad or a shit source of energy. As I said, it's nuanced.

Yes, energy is energy. And yes, kcal is a metric of energy. When did I say otherwise? All I was saying is that kcal in/out does not apply to dieting as the human body is not a closed system.

And please do tell which actual, legitimate research you are referring to. Is anyone of them RCT studies published to JAMA or NEJM or similar well regarded science journals?

Wrong. Extremely wrong. If you consume less energy then you expend, you will lose weight. Not a single study has been able to prove otherwise.

I'm talking RCT's, systematic reviews and, oh you know, professional guidelines, among others like lectures from professors I was talking about earlier. Not to mention results from my own work and that of colleagues. I'm not interested in started a science link debate since it's painfully obvious you're not educated on this subject at all, naming JAMA and NEJM before you even do the simple ones where stuff gets published first like ajcn or the highest regarded evidence based practice studies that are meta-analysis but instead list RCT's which can be debunked in before mentioned meta-analysis. From your tone I can gather I shouldn't have replied to you against my better judgment.

But trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I wouldn't have clients if it were otherwise since I'm under review a couple a times a year to keep them.

I'll use this opportunity to repeat myself: @matoya do yourself a favor and go to a dietitian. While there is some good advice hidden in this thread, most of it are unproven and often debunked hypes. You must understand there is a difference in getting educated from a professional with real in depth knowledge and getting advice from people who play videogames, read some stuff on the internet and think they suddenly are an expert. As someone who happens to be earning his living in this field, I can tell you that's what's happening here.