I guarantee you, if someone will follow a reasonable plan with work, discipline, and passion, they will lose weight. There is no magic to it, just stick with the plan and change your ways.
When it comes to losing weight, a calorie is not a calorie. You can eat the right kind of calories and you can lose much more weight and faster than on a low-fat diet. Didn't you see this article posted the other day? Even the New York Times, of all people, is finally getting it.
A Call for a Low-Carb Diet That Embraces Fat
When people, like myself and others, on this thread talk about "calories in, calories out," being nonsense, this is in large part our frame of reference - people losing weight (or not gaining it). Not some laboratory equation or a law that appears to not be really relevant to the discussion.
Just as the type of calories consumed helps determine weight loss, the same could be said of weight gain.
"It (calories in, calories out) is a drastic oversimplification that doesn’t account for the complex metabolic pathways that different foods go through, or the effects that foods have on our brain and hormones."
A calorie is a measure of the amount of energy and it is always the same. It has always been defined in this manner. Amino acids, carbohydrates and fats are all metabolized using different pathways, and yes, there will be different efficiencies for each. But the untrained person rarely understands the difference between a calorie, and the efficiencies of that calorie.
Not some laboratory equation or a law that appears to not be really relevant to the discussion.
So if an overweight person consumes 1,200 calories a day, while burning 1,500 calories a day, over an extended period of time, they won't lose weight? How does that work?
The article referenced in the NYT's is interesting but it certainly does not deny thermodynamics. Yesterday, a meta-analysis was published in JAMA that indicates the source of the calories doesn't matter when it comes to weight loss. The conclusion of the study was that significant weight loss can occur with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet. People should use whatever diet works for them instead of debating which one is best. That's because if you burn more energy than you consume, you will lose weight. Same as it ever was.
Look something is missing here. If an animal, a human, a penguin, consumes X calories more than it burns, they gain weight and vica versa. The calorie source is not relevant.
I know about hormonal influences, I know about BMR, I know about differences in metabolism. I think you are losing sight of what I said.
Metabolic pathways has nothing to do with the discussion of calories in, calories out. If you consume 1000 per day and you burn 1100 per day from whatever source, you can’t maintain your weight. What is so difficult about fathoming such a simple concept?