Spot on Doc. at first calories are not an issue, and shouldn't be the focus. Of course the source of the calories should be the main focus. If you are on carnivore you should be getting them from a good source. but depends on your goals, if you are trying to get lean, you still need a calorie deficit. But the best way to create that is to increase activity.
At the beginning I don’t think it matter. But after one reaches weight loss plato, calorie starts to matter. But shifting fat vs protein intake looks like also matters.
In my case I have to be careful, I'm six feet tall I weighed 330 pounds at the beginning of April I'm at 230 pounds this morning, if I put too much butter and oil in my food or if I eat cheese I can definitely gain weight, so yeah calories do matter, but in general I can eat until satiety, but not too much fat in my case, I still have excess fat to lose that my body can use.
Calories don't seem to matter when it comes to gaining weight on carnivore. I can eat 5000 calories of beef a day and not gain a pound. But it does seem to prevent you from tapping into your fat stores if you are eating too much, probably because you have plenty of fat and protein more available from what you are eating. I'm experimenting with doing 48-72 hour fasts a couple of times a month to lose that last 20 pounds.
The amount of food and the type of food matters but calories are a bad measurement. If I eat 5 donuts today or 20oz of steak, very different things will happen to my composition. The CiCo folks will say it’s the same thing, which is why people become dogmatic about this. It’s metabolic and not thermodynamic.
Good point. I found something similar. I ate much more fatty meat when I began the carnivore diet and gained a lot of weight. Now , very little meat satiates me. It's so nutrient dense. I also think nature favors those who take less .Perhaps this is spiritual courtesy connected to physiology or nature's interdependence. It truly is the greatest way to eat. The body works less and gains more. We are also being fed by light so we may actually need less. I also think that fasting is a natural part of the carnivore diet. No animal hunts successfully all the time. The body needs rest. Finding this balance is a worthy quest . Just remembered, giving up dairy made a difference as well as resistance bands which seems to upregulate the burning, giving more energy and reshaping the body even with a little effort , which makes you look slimmer or healthier in fact.
If you study the works of Dr Ken Berry and more specifically Dr Jason Fung you will realise that calories are not as significant as we first thought. It’s possible to put on weight if you have hyperinsulinemia even if you are in a caloric deficit. Insulin is a fat storage hormone and is probably more significant than calories when it comes to weight gain.
@Themeatmedic Thank you for this vid. This has been the most contradictory, confusing issue for me. I'm old ....60... muscle loss is an issue I'm feeling big time. I'm also overweight and t1 diabetic. Here's wha confuses me... "To burn fat, you need calorie deficit....to burn fat faster you need more muscle.... to build muscle you need a calorie surplus."
Nice one doc I think we need to rephrase away from calories. Energy consumed and form of energy vehicle matters. If energy is delivered in a protein vehicle ( which has a complex security system to access the energy), the body needs to unlock that security system before it accesses the energy. Fat security is simple as are carbohydrates so they are easier to unlock. The versatility of the vehicles and what they provide to the body has an impact as well. The frustration is the cico purists keep banging on about hormones are irrelevant. Tell that to all the weight watcher dieters who have metabolic issues and cant lose weight
I definitely gain weight when I eat dairy. I have been eating way too much. Started gaining weight so I’m going back to no dairy and intermittent fasting. 🙏🏻😊
I mostly agree, but CICO becomes less relevant as insulin is reduced. At the extreme an untreated type 1 diabetic will end up with zero fat no matter how much they eat, in this case CICO fails completely. The better a diet controls insulin the less relevant CICO becomes.
Calories matter, but its not helpful to track them. Your BMR changes daily. Calorie counts are the most accurate only on packaged food but those are allowed to the 5 percent off. Its all a wild guessing game. Just lower your insulin response, dont eat when you are not hungry, and everything else takes care of itself.
The issue is that we don't "burn calories", we oxidize and carboxylate. Glucose, fatty acid and amino acid metabolism all work quite differently from each other. And physics experiments don't necessarily apply to homeostatic biochemistry like in our human body. Thats exactly the problem that many people don't understand.
And all that only happens after we absorb something, IF we even do. We don't absorb fiber for instance. We don't absorb fat above our capacity for bile production. Etc.
Calories are a measurement of all energy. Not just heat energy. This is because energy is transformable. 1 calorie of heat energy = 1 calorie of chemical energy. The approximation of calories per gram of carbs , fat and protein is actually based on how the body metabolise those compounds. They is why the approximation is slight less than the measurement derived from combusting those compounds in a bomb calorimeter- because the body is less efficient and breaking the chemical bonds of those compounds.
I would stall very easily if I had too much fat, especially cream/cheese fats. Also, age matters; I’m a senior and with age I find I need less despite lots of exercise. Younger people with higher growth hormone probably don’t need to worry about quantity.
This maybe a silly thing to say but why don't we just use calories and glycemic index of a food and create a new measurement for food. So if 1000 call of doughnuts has a GI of 76/10=7.6, it would 7600 food units, but a 1000 cal of ribeye with a GI of 0 which we assume is 1 would be 1000 food units. I reckon if i ate 2000 cals of doughnuts a week which would be 15200 x 7 = 106k food units, OR 2000 x 7 = 14k food units would reflect how much weight i put on in the week. 14k food units I'd lose weight. 106k food units and i would put on about 5kg.
So 10 Krispy Kreme doughnuts is 2000 cals and 700g of ribeye is 2000 cals. But I'm food units I would need to eat approximately 4.5kg to put the same amount of weight on as the doughnuts. We can tinker with GI and possibly find a better measurement but it's not beyond us is it? Might not be perfect but a hell of a lot better than calories
In my experience which is only 3 weeks, I eat until I was stuff , I noticed I went up from 151 to 153 , so I'm not sure. I do resistance training 4-5 times a week. So moving forward I will count my calories because it seems to matter.
I'm in a similar situation, I don't eat until "stuffed" cause to me stuffed = discomfort, I eat until my body signals to me it's done and that puts me just before stuffed and i eat on a 14:10 schedule. I have seemed to have gained weight but my inches are the same. Don't weigh yourself, measure because that weight could be muscle & or water weight & if you weigh yourself with clothes on and haven't completely emptied your stomach & bowels that weight could be reflecting on the scale.
I think the body ''set point'' matters - a combination of number of factors like age, sex, genetics, bone structure, medical history, activity levels, longest maintained weight, hormones etc. These seem to determine how your body will utilise the energy from food. There are studies that show people gain differently on excess, some maintain regardless of higher calorie intake. For some unknown reasons the body refuses to store fat in some (lucky) people. For now we don't have definite and evidence-based answers. Set point theory is an interesting theory and bariatric surgeries kind of back it up.
Its MASS in MASS out, not calories in calories out. Please never ever use the term calories as it pertains to human deriving potential chemical energy from food. Calories DO NOT MATTER whatsoever. Calories are HEAT, Calories cannot be eaten, they cannot be burnt, they are MASS LESS. Everyone understand this. What you are all talking about is MASS. We are not bomb calorimeters and we are an open system. The only thing that can change your body composition is MASS. Sorry Dr you need to learn this immediately as you simply dont understand this basic idea. When you go onto your weigh in scales, you are seeing MASS affected by gravity. Not calories.
Calories definately matter. There are no magic diets. The laws of thermodynamics don’t cease to apply because you’re on a carnivore diet. There are some prominent carnivores online saying otherwise but they’re simply wrong.
Calories are a poor measurement. I think what matters more is the time you leave between meals. You just eat less when you do eat. If you add some walking while you're in between meals, it's even better
In answer to the question "Does CICO matter?" I posit that it depends on 3 co-dependent factors. a) Where one is on one's personal health journey and b) How much knowledge one has about physics, chemistry, biology and metabolic physiology. and c) How innately curious one is and the desire to question and test. In summation - It depends on what you really know. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. NB : I understand why Ken Berry and Anthony Chaffee et al say what they do - It's because simple messages work best and their expectation is that most obese people will see quick results and then learn the deeper meanings (nuances)later as they become motivated moving forward. I'm guilty of telling people that "CICO doesn't matter. it depends what your body does with those calories" in the full knowledge that Carnivore Diet has not re-written the laws of physics. It is my lived experience that if you bombard people with the minutia and atomic level physics they get confused and don't change. Simple messages and setting examples works best. 🙂 I hope this helps someone.
I agree. I think anybody who is obese will struggle to eat enough calories to gain weight. But if you only have 10 pounds of extra body fat then you might need to be more restrictive. I see this with myself, losing the first 30 lbs on the carnivore diet was pretty easy. My last 10 lbs is coming off much slower. Though now I can go all day without feeling like I must eat. I think my relationship with food has changed and I am genuinely less hungry.
@@agisler87 I am in the same situation. I lost some weight from month 3-7 and I am on month 14 of strict carnivore. I didn't lose an ounce of weight for the last 7 months. I guess it's time to start fasting ect.
Simple math. Consume more than you burn and gain weight, burn more calories than you consume and lose weight. Not sure why ppl continue making these long ass videos to say something that can be said in 8 seconds.
there are people that don't fit this formula though. i saw a body builder channel where he purposely ate like 5k extra calories a day for a while as experiment (can't remember what he ate but a lot of it was healthy fat i think. it was not junk food). he didn't gain an ounce.
Kilojoules matter but I thought eating Carnivore was filling and we couldn’t overeat. Eg. Bought 4 Patties for lunch, could only eat 3 so kept the other for dinner. Didn’t overeat but nicely satisfied. This seems to work for me. I can see some could overeat on dairy and cheese???
it is filling, but its certainly possible to over eat. once I added liver, I got a lot less hungry. Likely the body wants Nutrition, not calories, and I was probably lacking something
i can eat a ton of meat and more meals per day than most. i think some compulsive type personalities that give up carbs are still compulsive. i did not lose weight on meat eating or feel that great but i keep trying because i know the opposite diet is a disaster.
No Dr it's not an approximation of the energy value of food. Take fat, if the fat is more saturated there is less "calories" ...and protein is rarely if ever used as an energy source. You are incorrect Dr.
I am endocrinologist I have treated many people for morbid obesity... People lost weight on every kind of diet. Plan is... calorie deficit some form of resistance and cardio. Key is..... portion size and consistency.daily Life kills your progress so plan your day well. diet is... based on avoiding relatively highly processed foods like alcohol, simple sugars, oils, cheese, butter and refined carbs. Now a days everything is somewhat processed plants or animals. Choose your poison meat or vegan or whatever. Personally I am high carb vegan
I understand portion size can matter but I’m attracted to Carnivore to not count kilojoules. It’s working for me but stopping when comfortably satisfied, a little like intuitive eating. Cannot understand how your eating works?!?
What do you think? Do calories matter?
professor bart kay says calories don't matter at all because they aren't a good way of measuring stuff
Spot on Doc. at first calories are not an issue, and shouldn't be the focus. Of course the source of the calories should be the main focus. If you are on carnivore you should be getting them from a good source. but depends on your goals, if you are trying to get lean, you still need a calorie deficit. But the best way to create that is to increase activity.
I would love it if you were wrong. But you’re not.
At the beginning I don’t think it matter. But after one reaches weight loss plato, calorie starts to matter. But shifting fat vs protein intake looks like also matters.
In my case I have to be careful, I'm six feet tall I weighed 330 pounds at the beginning of April I'm at 230 pounds this morning, if I put too much butter and oil in my food or if I eat cheese I can definitely gain weight, so yeah calories do matter, but in general I can eat until satiety, but not too much fat in my case, I still have excess fat to lose that my body can use.
Calories don't seem to matter when it comes to gaining weight on carnivore. I can eat 5000 calories of beef a day and not gain a pound. But it does seem to prevent you from tapping into your fat stores if you are eating too much, probably because you have plenty of fat and protein more available from what you are eating. I'm experimenting with doing 48-72 hour fasts a couple of times a month to lose that last 20 pounds.
The amount of food and the type of food matters but calories are a bad measurement. If I eat 5 donuts today or 20oz of steak, very different things will happen to my composition. The CiCo folks will say it’s the same thing, which is why people become dogmatic about this. It’s metabolic and not thermodynamic.
CiCo folks don't say it's the same thing. At least not relatively smart ones.
Good point. I found something similar.
I ate much more fatty meat when I began the carnivore diet and gained a lot of weight.
Now , very little meat satiates me. It's so nutrient dense. I also think nature favors those who take less .Perhaps this is spiritual courtesy connected to physiology or nature's interdependence. It truly is the greatest way to eat. The body works less and gains more. We are also being fed by light so we may actually need less.
I also think that fasting is a natural part of the carnivore diet. No animal hunts successfully all the time. The body needs rest. Finding this balance is a worthy quest .
Just remembered, giving up dairy made a difference as well as resistance bands which seems to upregulate the burning, giving more energy and reshaping the body even with a little effort , which makes you look slimmer or healthier in fact.
Glad I found this and thank you for the heads up.
I can eat as much beef as I want and not gain weight. I will blow up eating as much pasta as I want.
If you study the works of Dr Ken Berry and more specifically Dr Jason Fung you will realise that calories are not as significant as we first thought. It’s possible to put on weight if you have hyperinsulinemia even if you are in a caloric deficit. Insulin is a fat storage hormone and is probably more significant than calories when it comes to weight gain.
@Themeatmedic Thank you for this vid. This has been the most contradictory, confusing issue for me. I'm old ....60... muscle loss is an issue I'm feeling big time. I'm also overweight and t1 diabetic. Here's wha confuses me... "To burn fat, you need calorie deficit....to burn fat faster you need more muscle.... to build muscle you need a calorie surplus."
Nice one doc
I think we need to rephrase away from calories. Energy consumed and form of energy vehicle matters. If energy is delivered in a protein vehicle ( which has a complex security system to access the energy), the body needs to unlock that security system before it accesses the energy. Fat security is simple as are carbohydrates so they are easier to unlock. The versatility of the vehicles and what they provide to the body has an impact as well. The frustration is the cico purists keep banging on about hormones are irrelevant. Tell that to all the weight watcher dieters who have metabolic issues and cant lose weight
I definitely gain weight when I eat dairy. I have been eating way too much. Started gaining weight so I’m going back to no dairy and intermittent fasting. 🙏🏻😊
I mostly agree, but CICO becomes less relevant as insulin is reduced. At the extreme an untreated type 1 diabetic will end up with zero fat no matter how much they eat, in this case CICO fails completely.
The better a diet controls insulin the less relevant CICO becomes.
Calories matter, but its not helpful to track them. Your BMR changes daily. Calorie counts are the most accurate only on packaged food but those are allowed to the 5 percent off. Its all a wild guessing game. Just lower your insulin response, dont eat when you are not hungry, and everything else takes care of itself.
Does Zero Calories mean that when it burns, it gives off no heat?
The issue is that we don't "burn calories", we oxidize and carboxylate. Glucose, fatty acid and amino acid metabolism all work quite differently from each other. And physics experiments don't necessarily apply to homeostatic biochemistry like in our human body. Thats exactly the problem that many people don't understand.
And all that only happens after we absorb something, IF we even do. We don't absorb fiber for instance. We don't absorb fat above our capacity for bile production. Etc.
Afetr the first couple of months I had to count calories.
Why does a measure of heat energy (calories) matter when we do not burn our food, we process it chemically? Completely different.
Calories are a measurement of all energy. Not just heat energy. This is because energy is transformable. 1 calorie of heat energy = 1 calorie of chemical energy.
The approximation of calories per gram of carbs , fat and protein is actually based on how the body metabolise those compounds. They is why the approximation is slight less than the measurement derived from combusting those compounds in a bomb calorimeter- because the body is less efficient and breaking the chemical bonds of those compounds.
I would stall very easily if I had too much fat, especially cream/cheese fats. Also, age matters; I’m a senior and with age I find I need less despite lots of exercise. Younger people with higher growth hormone probably don’t need to worry about quantity.
This maybe a silly thing to say but why don't we just use calories and glycemic index of a food and create a new measurement for food. So if 1000 call of doughnuts has a GI of 76/10=7.6, it would 7600 food units, but a 1000 cal of ribeye with a GI of 0 which we assume is 1 would be 1000 food units. I reckon if i ate 2000 cals of doughnuts a week which would be 15200 x 7 = 106k food units, OR 2000 x 7 = 14k food units would reflect how much weight i put on in the week. 14k food units I'd lose weight. 106k food units and i would put on about 5kg.
So 10 Krispy Kreme doughnuts is 2000 cals and 700g of ribeye is 2000 cals. But I'm food units I would need to eat approximately 4.5kg to put the same amount of weight on as the doughnuts. We can tinker with GI and possibly find a better measurement but it's not beyond us is it? Might not be perfect but a hell of a lot better than calories
In my experience which is only 3 weeks, I eat until I was stuff , I noticed I went up from 151 to 153 , so I'm not sure. I do resistance training 4-5 times a week. So moving forward I will count my calories because it seems to matter.
I'm in a similar situation, I don't eat until "stuffed" cause to me stuffed = discomfort, I eat until my body signals to me it's done and that puts me just before stuffed and i eat on a 14:10 schedule. I have seemed to have gained weight but my inches are the same. Don't weigh yourself, measure because that weight could be muscle & or water weight & if you weigh yourself with clothes on and haven't completely emptied your stomach & bowels that weight could be reflecting on the scale.
3 weeks isn't long either so don't panic your body does need to adjust.
I think the body ''set point'' matters - a combination of number of factors like age, sex, genetics, bone structure, medical history, activity levels, longest maintained weight, hormones etc. These seem to determine how your body will utilise the energy from food. There are studies that show people gain differently on excess, some maintain regardless of higher calorie intake. For some unknown reasons the body refuses to store fat in some (lucky) people. For now we don't have definite and evidence-based answers. Set point theory is an interesting theory and bariatric surgeries kind of back it up.
Certainly the set point matters too.
Perhaps most of the weight coming off was water weight due to glycogen depletion?
How about psmf carnivore? Id like more videos about incorporating psmf particilarly for last 5 to 10kg.
i've played with PSMF on carnivore, didn't like it. never liked PSMF personally. for some it seems to work well though.
Its MASS in MASS out, not calories in calories out. Please never ever use the term calories as it pertains to human deriving potential chemical energy from food. Calories DO NOT MATTER whatsoever. Calories are HEAT, Calories cannot be eaten, they cannot be burnt, they are MASS LESS. Everyone understand this. What you are all talking about is MASS. We are not bomb calorimeters and we are an open system. The only thing that can change your body composition is MASS. Sorry Dr you need to learn this immediately as you simply dont understand this basic idea. When you go onto your weigh in scales, you are seeing MASS affected by gravity. Not calories.
Wow. So I guess thermodynamics just really doesn't matter?
I mean, let's just ignore ALLLLLLLL the studies about calories and what they are.
@@escobarguns yes they are all wrong..when it comes to the consumption of food.
Calories definately matter.
There are no magic diets. The laws of thermodynamics don’t cease to apply because you’re on a carnivore diet.
There are some prominent carnivores online saying otherwise but they’re simply wrong.
Calories matter.
Calories are a poor measurement. I think what matters more is the time you leave between meals. You just eat less when you do eat.
If you add some walking while you're in between meals, it's even better
In answer to the question "Does CICO matter?" I posit that it depends on 3 co-dependent factors.
a) Where one is on one's personal health journey and
b) How much knowledge one has about physics, chemistry, biology and metabolic physiology. and
c) How innately curious one is and the desire to question and test.
In summation - It depends on what you really know. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
NB : I understand why Ken Berry and Anthony Chaffee et al say what they do - It's because simple messages work best and their expectation is that most obese people will see quick results and then learn the deeper meanings (nuances)later as they become motivated moving forward. I'm guilty of telling people that "CICO doesn't matter. it depends what your body does with those calories" in the full knowledge that Carnivore Diet has not re-written the laws of physics.
It is my lived experience that if you bombard people with the minutia and atomic level physics they get confused and don't change. Simple messages and setting examples works best. 🙂
I hope this helps someone.
I agree. I think anybody who is obese will struggle to eat enough calories to gain weight. But if you only have 10 pounds of extra body fat then you might need to be more restrictive.
I see this with myself, losing the first 30 lbs on the carnivore diet was pretty easy. My last 10 lbs is coming off much slower. Though now I can go all day without feeling like I must eat. I think my relationship with food has changed and I am genuinely less hungry.
Yes, that seems about right. This is what many report. Thanks :-) @@agisler87
Good approach. I absolutely agree.
@@agisler87 I am in the same situation. I lost some weight from month 3-7 and I am on month 14 of strict carnivore. I didn't lose an ounce of weight for the last 7 months. I guess it's time to start fasting ect.
I poop every 7-10 days. Never constipated and lost over 160 pounds eating carnivore. 65M
Wow 😮 that’s amazing
Simple math. Consume more than you burn and gain weight, burn more calories than you consume and lose weight. Not sure why ppl continue making these long ass videos to say something that can be said in 8 seconds.
there are people that don't fit this formula though. i saw a body builder channel where he purposely ate like 5k extra calories a day for a while as experiment (can't remember what he ate but a lot of it was healthy fat i think. it was not junk food). he didn't gain an ounce.
Kilojoules matter but I thought eating Carnivore was filling and we couldn’t overeat. Eg. Bought 4 Patties for lunch, could only eat 3 so kept the other for dinner. Didn’t overeat but nicely satisfied. This seems to work for me. I can see some could overeat on dairy and cheese???
it is filling, but its certainly possible to over eat. once I added liver, I got a lot less hungry. Likely the body wants Nutrition, not calories, and I was probably lacking something
i can eat a ton of meat and more meals per day than most. i think some compulsive type personalities that give up carbs are still compulsive. i did not lose weight on meat eating or feel that great but i keep trying because i know the opposite diet is a disaster.
find a blogger who is not a strict carnivore? I eat all animal foods and dark chocolate and feel great.
No Dr it's not an approximation of the energy value of food. Take fat, if the fat is more saturated there is less "calories" ...and protein is rarely if ever used as an energy source. You are incorrect Dr.
I am endocrinologist I have treated many people for morbid obesity... People lost weight on every kind of diet.
Plan is... calorie deficit some form of resistance and cardio.
Key is..... portion size and consistency.daily Life kills your progress so plan your day well.
diet is... based on avoiding relatively highly processed foods like alcohol, simple sugars, oils, cheese, butter and refined carbs.
Now a days everything is somewhat processed plants or animals. Choose your poison meat or vegan or whatever.
Personally I am high carb vegan
I understand portion size can matter but I’m attracted to Carnivore to not count kilojoules. It’s working for me but stopping when comfortably satisfied, a little like intuitive eating. Cannot understand how your eating works?!?