a calorie is not a calorie

Eze

New member
Posted by bigp3 at www.intensemuscle.com

Okay the calorie is a calorie is a calorie thing now has been proven to be bunk, the whole “thermogenic principle” as it is called in textbooks has been shown in recent studies to be completely flawed. When caloric contents were originally established they were based on how many calories are expended when x grams of a macronutrient are oxidized. This is all fine and dandy but this does not take into account how much of the food item your body actually digests, how fast it digests it and what happens when it does digest it. Different foods have varying effects on your body this is why you can’t strictly count calories as a measure of whether or not you are going to get fat.

Let me try to explain this in a way we can all understand. Different foods affect your body in different ways and have a varying net effect on your metabolism, etc. For example, 1000 calories of sugar has a net effect on your body much different than does 1000 calories from chicken. Sugar is for the most part absorbed through your tongue bypassing the gastrointestinal tract altogether and hits the bloodstream in full force in a matter of seconds. This results in a spike of your blood sugar as we all know. Your body responds to this excessive amount of blood sugar by releasing insulin which causes the sugar to first to pushed into the glycogen stores, that is if they are depleted and then into your fat stores if the glycogen is full (glycogen spillover). Now the protein in the Chicken on the other hand must be processed by your digestive tract before entering the blood stream causing a slow release into your system. This is interesting also your body uses 15- 20% of the calories in the protein just to digest it. This in a net effect results in free calories and a boost in your metabolism because of the energy your body expends digesting it. After being digested the calories from the protein are either utilized by your body for cellular repair or converted in to blood sugar. This means that at any given time your blood sugar has not dramatically risen from the intake of this protein thus not inducing an insulin spike and potential fat storage. This is whole effect is why the Atkins diet is so effective. People can actually eat more calories on this diet and still lose weight. As you can see your body does not readily convert protein into fat. So now you can kind of see why different foods have a different effect on your body.

The key to preventing fat gain from eating is blood sugar control hence insulin control not so much how many calories you are consuming. This is done by eating low GI carbs, not mixing carbs and fats, eating a high protein diet and timing your carb intake properly. If you eat quality foods you can consume many more calories without fat gains causing an increase in your metabolic rate and changing your body composition.
 
I didn't read that, but factually 1 calorie=1 calorie. Now what form of energy is that calorie stored as, how quickly will the body make use of that calorie, what use will that calorie be put to .... well, all of that varies.

And yes I just like to make trouble. I can't help myself.
 
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