All calories are not created equal

WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT JUST ABOUT THE CALORIES!!

Weight loss is NOT just about simply - CALORIES IN, CALORIES OUT!!!!

Weight loss is NOT just simply about - EATING LESS, EXERCISING MORE.

It's NOT!  You've got to repeat this over and over to yourself to overcome the thousands of times you've been fed this false idea in one form or another.

This very pervasive and misleading idea that "weight loss and weight gain is all about the calories" has lead to sooooo much confusion!  First of all I want to say I'm grateful to Zoe Harcombe who wrote The Obesity Epidemic,which inspired this post, by exploring this misconception in her book.

The idea that weight loss is just about the calories may sound logical and it seems to be the mainstream diet advice but just because it sounds plausible or just because it's touted by many authorities does not make a falsehood a truth.

First of all, where does this idea even come from?

Many people will tell you, like my son told me, "It's the first law of thermodynamics, Mom, you can't argue with that."

I don't want to argue with the first law of thermodynamics.  No need for that!

I do want to argue with how people misunderstand and misapply the first law of thermodynamics though.
First of all, the first law of thermal dynamics is NOT simply "Energy In, Energy Out" as it is often stated.

From Wikipedia,

"the First Law of Thermodynamics

is a VERSION of

the law of conservation of energy

adapted for thermodynamic systems

AND

the law of conservation of energy states 

that the total energy of an isolated system is constant,

energy can be transformed from one form to another,

but can be neither created nor destroyed.

So actually instead of "Energy In, Energy Out"

the law of conservation of energy is actually saying

"Energy inside a closed system remains constant".

It seems that people have interpreted this to mean that "if one consumes a certain amount of calories, then one must either burn those calories or store them as fat."

But in fact the human body is not just a simple machine obligated to either burning or storing energy at fixed exchange rates.

The human body is not a closed system and it is not obligated to conserve energy or even utilize energy that is consumed.

The human body can pass energy right on through it's system such as in the case of those who have type one diabetes and who lose weight no matter how many calories they consume.  They do this because they lack INSULIN which is necessary to store the energy of the food they consume.  Therefore, as you might surmise, INSULIN plays a major role in the matter of weight loss.

Insulin has a much bigger role in weight loss than calories.

Weight loss is much more about controlling insulin than calories.

So how do you control your insulin?

There are many things that can affect your insulin response.

But likely the thing that you can control the most and that has the biggest impact is your carbohydrate intake.

If you want to understand human weight loss, the law of conservation of energy won't get you very far.

Understanding human weight loss requires understanding the laws regarding human metabolism. Laws that govern how your human body transforms one energy form to another and what controls this transformation.

Do calories play a role in weight loss?  Yes, calories play a role in weight loss.

But they do not play the starring role that we have been led to believe that they play.

And more importantly,

it is likely that the type of calories we consume, is more important in many ways than the number of calories we consume.

So try to rid yourself of the ignorant and misguided platitude that any calorie is the same to the human body as another calorie!!!!!  Those who are promoting this idea are either just misinformed  or they are trying to sell you something.