Well, it's pretty evident from my friends that calories matter, and they can track weight loss or gain in a curve with that.

But I've come to call it The Calorie Lie because I think the whole concept that we can all easily do the math on it is bogus. I can track eating incredibly minimal calories over extended periods of time and not lose a pound, when by official expert guidelines I should need at least 4000 calories a day at 400#, so should be losing all the extra calories (e.g., 120,000 required per month, eating 1200 a day = 36,000 eaten and 84,000 saved (loss of 24 lbs)). For many years prior to finding lowcarb I simply had phases where I mirrored what someone else (slim) around me ate in content and quantity, and observed that even when they lost weight on it I didn't. Since I found lowcarb I usually track what I eat, and so now I finally have real numbers for my case. If I eat a lot more food a lot more frequently through the day the weight starts to come off. The less I eat the more it doesn't and the more I can even gain.

It's not that I argue the thermal result of a calorie; that's just chemistry.

It's that I argue the metabolic process; that's biochemistry and it seems to be vastly more unique to the individual than most of mainstream science is able to fathom.

Opposite my issue for example, some people can eat enormous amounts of food constantly and not gain weight. Not merely because they are exercising a lot, but because they just can't gain it.

Recently my cousin was hospitalized. Her body had run out of bodyfat and begun chewing on her organs. She has been desperately trying to gain bodyfat for the last 15+ years -- about the same time during which I've been carrying enough for both of us and then some. She's been on every imaginable doctor recommended weight-gain plan and folk remedy rumor for that. She's been on all kinds of supplements and even medications and nothing works, period. Her body fat was so low that when she was 20 her mother had saved up money to get her breast implants because she looked like a boy, she was that flat. She has done everything from actually dieting of various sorts (suggested by docs in desperation hoping for a reverse effect) to eating enough for about 5 big male bodybuilders in weight gain mode... doesn't matter. Her body basically decided it liked being at some insanely low bodyfat% and resisted her changing that for many years. Recently it got worse, hence the hospitalization, but until now it's just been pretty much in homeostasis.

Now for people who don't have some metabolic processing problem, as it seems pretty obvious my cousin and I both must, I think it is still a unique process, it is just unique within a fairly small range. Two women at the same height, weight, exercise and fitness level and general structural size, might differ where one may be able to eat 1600 calories a day and the other 1800, in order to maintain the same weight. Usually tracking food, exercise, and weight (preferably body fat%) over time should show most people what works for them.

So as a baseline, the calorie concept does seem to be a basic fundamental of fat storage and loss; but in people already overly thin or overly fat, there's a good chance that their metabolism would make evaluation of the incoming vs. outgoing thermal energy unit math completely different.

Like most things, you just gotta mess with it, document it, and learn about what your own body is like.

PJ