Calories In V. Calories Out Is B&#%!$@!t
WARNING: This post is brought to you almost exclusively by Emotional Me. She isn't happy.
Whoever came up with the idea that weight loss is merely a matter of calories in v. calories out was a moron. But I might be a bigger moron for buying into it. Being overweight is a hugely complex issue, one that might be affected by, but has a lot more to it than, merely eating too much or moving too little. If it didn't have a lot more to it, there wouldn't be so many of us who dieted and failed to lose weight, exercised and failed to lose weight, cut portions and failed to lose weight. Who just plain failed to lose weight.
Do a little research and the internet will tell you that in order to lose 1 pound of fat, you simply need to eat 3500 fewer calories than you have expended. Allow me to demonstrate to you that this is b@#&$%!t, using myself as an example:
Using multiple factors including my height, my weight, my sex, my age, and my level of activity (which I underestimated, just to be safe), I calculated my Basal Metabolic Rate and the number of calories required by my body each week at present time in order to maintain my current rate. We'll call that number B (for Baseline).
Next, I used My Fitness Pal to track every single item that passed my lips during the past seven days. I'm not kidding about that. If I ate it or drank it, I tracked it, including my 1 calorie calcium supplements and my 5 calorie multivitamins. I missed nothing. My Fitness Pal is great in that it keeps track of each day's calories and also charts your average calories throughout the week. We'll call the number of calories I consumed C (for Consumed).
According to the experts, weight loss is a simple matter of B - C = X . If X is a negative number, then that means you're using more calories than you're eating and you should begin to lose weight. If X is -3500, then you should lose 1 pound. This equation is crap.
I know this because in my B - C = X equation for last week, my X = -7036. I ate 7036 calories fewer than my body required to maintain its weight last week. And what happened? I lost 0.3 lbs.
0.3
Frankly, I'm hocked off. But more than that, I'm scared to death. All the lap band can do for me is to help me to consume less food and fewer calories. If doing that won't actually translate into weight loss, what the hell have I done? What have I spent all those thousandds of dollars on? What have I put my body through? What have I been obsessing over for all this time? Has this all been a big, heinous mistake?
I'd like to allow Logical Me to talk me down from this clock tower I'm occupying at the moment, but frankly, I can't hear a word she's saying over the ranting, raving, and screaming of Emotional Me. Eventually, I hope Emotional Me gets tired and shuts up (or just screams so much, she loses her voice) and Logical Me can get me back on track, but today, so far, is NOT a good day.
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