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To: an amused spectator
Whatever happened to counting calories?
51 posted on 08/07/2002 12:20:36 PM PDT by Guillermo
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To: Guillermo
A low-fat 1500/day diet will make you *ravenous*.
55 posted on 08/07/2002 3:18:44 PM PDT by Mamzelle
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To: Guillermo
"Whatever happened to counting calories?"

Count them all you want. But don't expect them to tell you very much. The calorie theory is really not very realistic. When scientists take a dab of food and burn it in their calorimeter, they get the absolute fuel/heat content of that particular dab of food. The problem with this is that many times, this isn't what happens to that same dab of food in our bodies. Some of the calories will be sent as fatty acids to hair, skin, hormones, and eyes. Some others will go as amino acids to muscles, others will go to the gut to provide energy. Anything more than the body can use when it is hungry will be stored as fat, and some might even be excreted. So keeping close tabs on calories doesn't really make much difference.

There IS, however, metabolic evidence that points to the fact that anything over 72 grams of carbohydrate foods in the diet is simply stored. + - 72 grams is the amount that the body can use efficiently. Anything over that is sent to the liver as the raw material for glycogen. If all the storage areas in the liver and muscles are already occupied by glycogen, there is only one thing left to do with those surplus carbs: back to the liver for transformation into triglycerides, then to the fat cells. So, you could say that all those triglycerides in your blood didn't come from bacon and eggs you sneaked for breakfast yesterday, they came from that 1-pound cinnamon roll you washed down with 8 ounces of orange juice you had this morning. And they are all on their way to your fat cells.

60 posted on 08/07/2002 3:31:50 PM PDT by redhead
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To: Guillermo
Counting calories is bunk. It assumes that all calories
consumed are required to be burned. It does not account
for dietary changes that allow calories to be excreted
too.
122 posted on 08/14/2002 1:59:40 PM PDT by oldcomputerguy
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