I could care less about how much people eat or how much they weigh, but for those who do want to lose weight, or more importantly avoid gaining it, let's get some accurate and honest information out there. That's what worked for me.
MJCherryB, regarding your comment below and reference to two studies. As you've requested of others here, I read both. The first merely suggests that different types of calories go through different conversion processes within the body, and that 100 calories of protein may result in fewer calories available to the body for fat conversion or activity than 100 calories of carbohydrates - because the chemical breakdown and conversion of proteins creates waste heat that uses up some calories. These are basic chemical processes that every human body goes through, and one of the main points of the article was to posit an explanation for the apparent effectiveness of high-protein diets. It in no way contradicts the idea that eating more calories results in weight gain.
The second study, of 1704 American Indian children, is even less on point. These children, average age around 7, were given three years of education on healthy behavior and eating. At the end of the study, they were no different than the control group in terms of BMI. However, they also exhibited NO CHANGE IN DAILY ACTIVITY OR CALORIE INTAKE over that same time period. Sorry to shout, but here are some quotes from the abstract itself:
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"Motion sensor data showed similar activity levels in both the intervention and control schools."
"energy intake (by direct observation) was not significantly reduced in the intervention schools."
So there was no difference in energy intake or physical activity between the control and test group, and no difference in BMI either. The study showed that the interventions they attempted had virtually no impact on diet or activity - an important finding, but that doesn't mean that there is no relationship between BMI and diet/activity - in fact it tends to show the opposite.
MJCherryB:
Do you really think that the weight problem here isn't based on cheap, readily available processed foods, sedentary lifestyle, and empty liquid calories? I guess it's possible it's due to something else, but all that seems very logical to me.
Well, I would say that I don't know. That might be the cause, it might be part of the cause, it might be part of the cause for some people, but actually, personally I doubt it's that simple.
And one of the problems is that the old "calories in/calories out" equation doesn't always work. < a href="http://www.nutritionj.com/content/3/1/9">,Here's a link to a pretty dense study on that: < a href="http://childobesitycourse.com/blog/fallacy-of-just-eating-less-and-exercising-more/">here's just a quick and easy example of that.
