Cory Blickenstaff | Tue August 05, 2008
Hi Anoop,
Love the site. I’m curious of your thoughts on the book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes?
Here is a link to a coverstion with him:
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/nov17.html
Cory
How Many Calories Should I have to Lose or Gain Weight?
June 26 2008
How many calories do you need to Lose weight or fat? Losing weight or gaining weight is all about calories. It doesn’t really matter what you eat or when you eat. If you don’t agree, I would recommend you to read my article The Best Diet for Fat LossFor people who agree, let’s move on:
How do I find my daily caloric expenditure?
In order to find how many calories you should have to lose or gain weight or your maintenanace calories, you first need to find out how many calories you are spending during a day or your daily calorie expenditure. Daily calorie expenditure consists of three components:
Daily Caloric Expenditure= Basal metabolic rate (BMR) + Diet-induced Thermogenisis (DT) + Activity-induced thermogenisis (AT). We will look at each as we go along.
Figure 1: The pie chart shows the percentage contribution of each component to your daily calorie expenditure.
How do I find my Basal metabolic rate (BMR)?
Basal metabolic rate is the number of calories you burn to maintain your vital functions such as breathing, pumping blood, maintaining muscle and nervous system and so on.
The ideal way is to use an indirect calorimeter to find your basal metabolic rate (BMR), but it is clearly impractical. So forget the ideal way. The other option is to estimate or predict your BMR using a population specific equation: We will use the Harris-Benedict Equation, which is specific for sedentary and moderately active individuals (I have slightly changed the original equation to use lbs and in., but the equation remains same):
Table1. The equation to find your basal metabolic rate (BMR).
For example, I am 5’8”.To convert my height from feet to inches, multiply with 12. That is, 5 ft * 12 = 60 in. So, 60 in+8 in = 68 in.
Weight = 160 lb.
Height = 68 in.
Age = 29 yrs
So my BMR (Men) = 66.47 + 6.23 *(160)lb + 12.67 * (68)in - 6.76 * (29)yrs
BMR = 66.47 + 996.8+ 861.56 - 196.04
BMR = 1925 - 196
BMR = 1729
How do I find my activity-induced thermogenisis (AT)?
Activity- induced thermogenisis (AT) is the number of calories you burn while exercising, walking around, watching TV and so forth.
To calculate your activity induced thermogenisis (AT), multiplying BMR with the appropriate Activity Factor from the table below.
Table 2. Activity factor to find you activity-induced thermogenisis (AT). For example, my AT is 1.5 1.5 (AT) * 1729 (BMR) = 2594 calories. So my AT = 2594 - 1729(BMR) = 865 calories.
How do I find my diet-induced thermogenisis (DT)?
Diet- induced thermogenisis (DT) is the number of calories you spend for digesting, absorbing and storing all that food you eat.
Diet- induced thermogenisis (DT) is usually 10% of the BMR (.1 multiplied by your BMR).
For example, DT = .1 * 1729(BMR) = 173 calories.
Daily caloric expenditure
Therefore, Total Caloric Expenditure= Basal metabolic rate (BMR) + Diet-induced Thermogenisis (DT) + Activity-induced thermogenisis (AT).
So my Daily caloric expenditure = BMR + AT+ DT = 1729+865+173 = 2767 calories.
Conclusion
That is all. If I want to lose weight, I eat slightly less than my caloric expenditure. To gain weight, I eat slightly more than my daily caloric expenditure.
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Anoop | Tue August 05, 2008
Hi Cory,
Thanks! I know you from Somasimple.
My thoughts: It is just another diet book. Period.
Gary loves to talk about the science in the “50’s and 60’s and anecdotal evidences”. He just ignores all the direct studies which show if you over eat, u gain weight and if you eat less, you lose weight or just anything which doesn’t go with his hypothesis.
He talks about how the Health & Diet report from 1988 showed obese people ate less but still gained weight which is supposedly his big evidence. The funny part is the guy who was in the committee and who drafted the report himself says the report was wrong because the food intake was based on self reports. New techniques, like doubly labeled water clearly shows that normal folks underestimate food intake by 10-30% while obese under report food intake by 30 -50%. Of course, Gary never mentions about the new techniques because he only has access to papers from 1950’s and in-direct epidemiological studies.
To counter his argument, you don’t need even research. If insulin is what makes you fat, all the people who are on insulin injections, people who secrete insulin continuously should be obese as hell. If indeed insulin was the culprit, all Asians would be fat pigs: 70% of the calories in Asian diets come from carbohydrates. Also why haven’t studies using meta analysis looking at different low carb and high carb diets never found any numbers stunning enough like what Gary found?.
I love how he urges the scientific community to take it more seriously. I guess the scientific community has better ways to waste their time.
G.A Bray has an excellent article published in Obesity Reviews on Gary’s book. I can send it you, if you give me your email.
Cory Blickenstaff | Wed August 06, 2008
I’d love to see the review. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
I felt like Taubes had a poor understanding of behavior. I could see his point in how diet can dictate behavior, those in a starvation mode always being hungry and lethargic for example, but he ignored or denied that behaviour can drive diet as well.
I’m also curious of your thoughts on the 2 books by Michael Pollan, “Omnivore’s Dilemna” and “In Defense of Food?”
These and Taubes book are the three I’ve read most recently on the subject.
Cory
Anoop | Wed August 06, 2008
You will never hear a real science writer talk about 1950 & 1960’s, how this guy said that, this and his parents said this, especially when there is plenty of direct causative studies.
I havent read those books. I think he is talking more about health and less about weight loss. And it could be true that processed and modern farming methods takes away lot of nutrients.
But again it is just hard to say that the diet back in those days was the best beacuse they all look pretty buff in pictures. On what basis is he saying that those people were healthy? Most of them died pretty early beacuse of natural calamities, predataion & epidemics. If they had lived longer probabaly they would have died from heart attack and cancer too. Who knows.
Also there are quite a few diet’s like the “neanderthal diet” and “warriors diet” which automatically assume that if we ate that food back in those days that should be automatically good. The reality is that we din’t have a choice. We ate those beacause that was what was available at that time and not because we knew that’s the best diet.
Also all these prehistoric diets forget the part exercise played in those days. In those days, you had to run (hunt) in the first place to get food. So exercise was a major component. But most of these diets never mention about exercise and credits everything to the diet.
Anoop
Cory Blickenstaff | Sun August 10, 2008
Hi Anoop,
The folks over at the science based medicine blog posted recently on the topic of weight loss and diet:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=181#more-181
Looks like you’re in good company. Thanks for the review on “good calories, bad calories”. I’m hoping to read it tonight.
Cory
Anoop | Mon August 11, 2008
Hi Cory
I have been reading that blog lately.
They have an impressive list of authors!
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