[Kodix]

Here is a proposed mechanism: count calories as they are on the label, see if you lose weight. If you do not, lower them further, still counting by the label.

It doesn't matter if they are exact for a given person so long as the labels are consistent. They are sufficiently consistent.

I'm curious - have you tried losing weight, and is this from personal experience? Because I found it trivial by just counting calories and keeping a watch on my weight. I don't doubt that sometimes the calories I absorbed were less or more than what I wrote down, but that doesn't really matter in the long run - they're sufficiently accurate.

[DannyBee]

"It doesn't matter if they are exact for a given person so long as the labels are consistent. They are sufficiently consistent."

You argue this with literally no data, and all available data says the opposite.

The people charged at the FDA with coming up with the mechanism for these labels disagree with you, and have found 30-50% variance for a ton of foods.

"I'm curious - have you tried losing weight, and is this from personal experience? "

I can lose weight fine (and i'm actually at a normal BMI, FWIW :P), and i don't violate the laws of thermodynamics.

However, counting calories from labels was the most useless thing i could ever do.

I literally burned 1500+ calories in exercise a day, and ate less than 1500 calories by nutrition label calculations, and did not lose weight. I tried a variety of different foods/etc. I'm a scientific guy, i have logs of data :P I didn't cheat, kid myself, whatever.

It turns out, for various medical reasons i won't get into, i am not in the "vast majority" for whom these labels are targeted, and so the numbers on them are simply wrong by about 20-30% for me (this is factual, and was actually part of a controlled study). The out calculation was accurate enough (IE the exercise part of it). But as you can imagine, when trying to lose weight, 20-30% in variance matters a lot.

You can argue "i'm outside the norm", but i suspect, based on what i saw, that i am not.

[DannyBee]

and just to satisfy any curiosity, since i know 1500 calories of exercise a day sounds like a lot:

I was not fitbiting or any crazy mechanism to count getting up from the couch as exercise, or counting anything other than the actual exercise calories as "calories burned". Thus, it should have been a significant underestimate due to resting calories burned, etc.

In any case, it was running 5 miles a day, as reported by GPS, at 8:15 pace (which is roughly 120-150 calories per mile, depending who you believe, but i took the low side), and then running 1000 calories on an elliptical (which is about 1-1.5 hours at high resistance and fast pace, depending on pace).

The elliptical i used was one which slightly underestimates calorie count (by about 3%, at least according to two peer-reviewed studies), unlike most, which overestimate (by about 15-20%).

[dragonwriter]

While input-side variability may be a factor, if you are doing time-and-exercise-description without closer monitoring to determine your calories out, output-side variability is also a likely factor here.

Also, doing that much exercise, you can maintain a calorie deficit (a real deficit of calories absorbed vs. burned) and not lose weight by gaining muscle as fast as you are losing fat (muscle has a lower stored-energy content than fat); you'd need more than just stepping on a scale to distinguish that.

[dragonwriter]

> It doesn't matter if they are exact for a given person so long as the labels are consistent. They are sufficiently consistent.

AFAIK, the main reasons that the calorie counts are not accurate for all people is variations in absorption for particular nutrients due to metabolic variations. These variations between people are specific to particular categories of nutrients (some are at the level of macronutrients -- particularly that I've heard of, differences in general fat or carbohydrate metabolism -- some more narrow.)

This would make the top-line calorie counts (or, more precisely, the relationship between top-line calorie counts of different products) inconsistent as well, in that for a person with absorption different than that targeted by the labeling, product A with 500 Cal and product B with 600 Cal might not merely provide different Calorie counts than 500/600 to that person, but product B might provide less Calories than product A, depending on the specific nutrient composition of those calories.

[sliverstorm]

I have to imagine many of the people who argue that sustained caloric deficits do not lead to weight loss are engaging in magical thinking to justify their weight.

Guys, metabolism is just too complicated for humans to understand, so there's nothing at all I can do about being overweight, it's literally beyond my control

There's got to be some kind of cognitive dissonance or something at play; how else could a rational mind convince itself that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to the human digestive system?

Or the justifications that say, nutrition labels are not PERFECTLY accurate so it's hopeless from the start. I personally guarantee if you drink one can of Coke a day and eat nothing else, you will lose weight; I don't care whether the nutrition label is perfectly accurate.

[Kodix]

That's been my impression as well. It seems like the same thing you see a lot of heavier people say ("oh, it doesn't work for me") except with more complex language ("oh, it's much more complicated than that. We understand nothing about this, this rough model is completely unhelpful!").

I really wouldn't have expected that sort of reaction on this forum ahead of time. It's a bit disappointing.

[DannyBee]

"I really wouldn't have expected that sort of reaction on this forum ahead of time. It's a bit disappointing."

You have presented literally no evidence to support your argument, which boils down to "it's close enough, if everyone just did hard work and tried harder instead of being fat and lazy, they'd lose weight, and anyone who says otherwise is just being fat and lazy".

I am neither fat nor lazy (I'm actually probably one of the most in-shape adults you'll meet). I can literally prove that your argument is wrong for me.

Instead, what i see is "oh, well, it's sad everyone but me is wrong". With no evidence to back this up.