Dinner Diva
Calories In Calories Out
By Leanne Ely, CNC
We all know we can lose weight by eating fewer calories, but one university professor from Kansas took this concept a step further. He decided to do an unscientific experiment to see if it mattered what type of calories he consumed; or in other words, if the foods really mattered. He lived on 1800 calories a day, but these were high calorie fattening foods like Twinkies. How do you think it worked?
Interestingly, he lost 15 pounds, but he sure didn’t feel good. He said that his head felt like it was “in a vice”. He also acknowledged that the risks of this diet long term involved high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, and possibly diabetes. All very dangerous side effects.
Bottom line, it’s more than just calories that matter. The calorie in, calorie out theory teaches us that it takes 3500 calories to create 1 pound of body mass. If you eat more than you burn, you will gain weight. If you expend more than you eat, you will lose weight. While the professor mentioned above was not trying to prove that his diet is healthy, he did succeed in showing just because you lose weight on a particular diet does not mean that it is healthy. Losing weight should not be the only goal of eating right.
Instead of worrying so much about calories we should be worried about what we are ingesting. Weight loss in and of itself does not mean that one is healthy. Long term ingestion of the chemicals found in concoctions like Twinkies is dangerous and should not be encouraged. This unscientific study does not address many issues that other long term studies have addressed. However, there is no doubt that lowering your calorie intake can be advantageous, especially as you age.
If you want to try to control your calorie intake, go ahead, you will indeed lose weight, but eat the healthiest most natural whole foods that you can afford; avoid sugar, corn, additives and chemicals, and you will feel better and look better, too.