[winkle]

Based on all of the responses to this comment I can see how someone would be completely confused on what they need to do to lose weight.

While admitting the rest of this thread is bonkers, I'll explicitly list the formula you should follow right now (science is always evolving): Change in Body Stores = (Actual Calories In - Calories Not Absorbed) - (Resting Metabolic Rate + Thermic Effect of Eating + Physical Activity + Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)

This is the more nuanced formula of calories in, calories out. Changing one variable in that equation can have an effect on the rest of the equation, which is why it appears calories is not equal to calories out. You can read about each variable here: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/metabolic-damage.

I should note that this program is published in scientific journals: http://www.invent-journal.com/article/S2214-7829(16)30006-9/... http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11764-016-0582-z http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/osp4.98/abstract

[wmblaettler]

"Calories Not Absorbed" really got me thinking. While a food is labeled with their potential calories - the amount actually extracted from the food by your gut will vary significantly based on the composition of the food. The bioavailability of calories for example in a cookie versus some fibrous raw vegetable are going to differ significantly, being absorbed at different rates and to differing degrees of completeness.

Here is an interesting article with an important take away: "In general, it seems that the more processed foods are the more they actually give us the number of calories we see on the box" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-hidden-t...

[rubber_duck]

I found this recently [1] suggesting that 15-18% of calories from peanuts are excreted. It's probably more for me since they give me digestive problems and that's what made me curios about the subject too.

So I guess eating processed food vs food that's hard to digest actually matters a decent bit if you're counting calories (10-15% of your calories is not insignificant - that's almost half of what you're trying to cut on a calorie restriction diet)

[1]http://www.peanut-institute.org/images/materials_10_19046826...

[winkle]

Calories not absorbed has also made me think about diets like the raw food diet. Eating raw uncooked vegetables is going to reduce the calories you absorb while taking up more volume in your stomach.