KCAL and CALORIES

[DDRNewbie]

Abrannan---

Sorry about the mix up with the South Beach Diet...the fish part is what I heard about, but all the same...the point stands...they all have some new item that they focus on almost to the point of absurdity.

As for the other stuff, I'm trying to find the article I read. Also, just to be clear....it wasn't really saying that when you exercised, the calories came from the steak you ate...or the pasta......or last night's chicken parmesan. What it meant was that once the stuff is broken down and floating around in your body, the fats proteins and carbs are used according to their availability.

Essentially....fats burn at a certain rate, and carbs burn at a certain rate. As it happens, the rate for carbs is much faster than that of the fats. So, it's like a drag race between a station wagon (fats) and a ferari (carbs). Even when the stationwagon maxes out its acceleration, it only goes, say, 80 miles an hour, whereas the ferari can reach that 80 mph with about 35% of its available power.

Hopefully thats not completely unintelligible (sorry for bad examples). To continue...what happens when the demand increases (exercise)? The station wagon is already maxed out.....it will only go 80mph no matter how hard you push it. The ferari, though, has plenty of power to spare, so it can shoot ahead.

Thats what happens with carbs and fats....the fats can only burn so fast, no matter how hard you push them....so in that 1 hour....you could only burn a set amount of fat.....and the rest woudl be picked up by carbs....and it would just start over the next hour (assuming you continued straight on).......you'd burn another set of fat calories and the rest would be picked up by carbs.

DDR Newbie

[abrannan]

Can you provide a reference where you read this info. Like I said, it news to me, and I've done a lot of reading.

And I disagree with your point about diets focusing on one thing to the point of absurdity. If you actually read the diet books (and it's clear that you haven't), they're a lot more moderate than that, it's just that the people who do them can't seem to comprehend what the diet is asking of them.

[sly rax]

For pounds 6-35 that I lost (down 53 now, woohoo!), I was on an Atkins diet. While I do think there are very valid problems with it (kidney failure, increased cholesterol, etc), the diet works for very odd reasons.

Anyway, the Atkins diet is only intended for short periods. This is what makes it a bad diet: it cannot be a new lifestyle. It does not say carbs are the devil, it just says that to get the diet to work, you can't have many of them.

To start the diet, you go almost no carb for a week. During that time you are DEAD tired, sore, sleepy, and almost sick. By the end of the first week, you don't feel so bad. Somehow, your body figures out how to only use fats to keep you going. Soon, you do feel energetic and normal. The diet is designed for people who are not active, as it makes you burn more fat in just doing day to day things that would use mostly sugars. Carbs are far from the devil, but this diet does seem to work.

The worst part is getting off of it. Staying very active, I went from 190 to 195 before my body finally found an equilibrium. That is what I call yo-yo dieting! After that I vowed never to do that again.

[iamjay]

I'm kicking my self in the ass for even bringing up atkins, so many people have diff views on it and what not. People who do lose wieght off the atkins call it there WOL(way of life) first you do 20carbs a day for 2 weeks(introduction) then u up it 5 carbs every week until u stop losing wieght take that number minus by 5 and try and stick with that amount of carbs a day. I'm usually around 100 since I'm a mecanic and I lift and stuff and I need them carbs but i'm still losing wieght. The carbs your suppose to have are the healthy ones not surgar. I eat veggies or bread.

This question is for abrannan cause I KNOW he'll disagree with me on this or anything I say lol. Are hotdog buns good or bad carbs? what about pasta, or normal bread? What's good carbs i can bring to my Jerb everyday? and yeah that's right Jerb

[abrannan]

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off so contrary. I just hadn't heard the bit about the carb/fat ratio burning, and was interested to learn more.

But anyway, for your question: Technically, according to most of the latest information (that I've read), all of those mentioned items are "bad" carbs (lots of processed flour, etc). Better choices would be whole grain breads (best if you can make it yourself, but I ahven't tried that yet.), brown slow-cook rice, or whole wheat pasta (kasha, for example). THe theory about processed carbs is that they've done most of the work of digesting them for you, so the carbs just shoot right into your bloodstream, instead of a slow steady stream.

But seriously, do what works for you. You're probably more active at your jerb than most of us poor desk-bound slobs, so you can probably handle a bit more easy carbs than the rest of us.

[DDRNewbie]

Abrannan----

Sorry about the diet stuff...sometimes I flap my yap a little too much. I'm not at all interested in fad diets, so really all I "get" on the subject is what I hear...i.e. this diet focuses on meat....that one on fish.....this one on veggies and un-processed foods, etc.

As for the calorie burning thing, here you go :

www.cptips.com/weight.htm

Sorry it took me so long to come up with...couldn't remember exactly where I found it. I originally came across it while reading info on bicycling (http://bicycling.about.com) and it seemed interesting.

The info we were directly speaking to is immediately under the heading "Short Cuts?" There it talks about a study performed on "fit cyclists" and such. Hope it helps.

In other news, I'm both eagerly awaiting and fearing the arrival of my own bodyfat caliper.

Let me know what you think---


DDR Newbie.

[abrannan]

Thanks for the link! I'm going to have to read into it a bit deeper, but I think they're comparing ratios of calories burned at differing exercise intensity levels, and whether or not you can burn more fat off by cycling at a lower pace. And they're right, for the conditions they state (plenty of available caloried from both carbs and fat, same duration of exercise, etc). But they're not taking into account certain things. 1) if there aren't any calories available from carbohydrates, what happens? 2) If you can only cycle at 80% VO2 max for 30 minutes, but you can cycle at 65% VO2 max for an hour or more, which burns more fat & calories?


The same principles apply for DDR. If you only have a limited time to exercise, you're better off pushing yourself with harder, faster songs, as you'll burn more calories in the available time. But if you have unlimited time to play, you may be better off playing a lower difficulty so you can play longer.

The cycling study also fails to make a differentiation between good and bad carbs and fat. They're looking at a very simplistic model, and drawing conclusions from that. The Zone diet (and the other moderated carb diets) also state that the sugar/insulin spike from carbs wears off too fast, leaving you hungrier and more likely to cheat between meals. Fats (and good carbs like fiber, and unprocessed whole grains) take longer to digest, so they release their energy into the bloodstream at a more constant rate, and stay in your stomach longer, promoting a feeling of fullness.

You can lose weight on a high carb diet. I personally know people who've done so.

I do agree with the prime sentiment in the article, however. Calories is the primary (and really the only) way to truly lose weight. Every diet I've seen is just strategies for managing the number of calories you eat, and for leaving you less hungry and therefore less likely to cheat on the diet. For the moderated carb diets (Zone, Atkins, South Beach), that means reducing or cutting out carbs that will digest too fast, cause your blood sugar levels to spike, and leave you feeling hungry an hour later. For High carb diets, that means cutting out fats, which have more than twice as many calories per gram, allowing you to eat more food in a single sitting for the same number of calories. For the Caesar salad diet, it means eating a large very low calorie salad before every meal, so that you're fuller by the time you get to the main course, and thus eat less food. Different strategies work for different people, for weight loss and for most other things as well.

Where the diets start to differ is in the other benefits they offer. High carb/low fat diets make sure you don't get saturated fats/cholesterol in your diet to help prevent heart disease. Moderated carb diets make sure your insulin levels aren't swinging wildly all over the place, and studies have suggested (at least in the case of South Beach) that they too can reduce the risk of heart disease and raise HDL (good cholesterol) levels in the bloodstream.

[musclehead]

A friend of mine showed me this site, and i thought i'd look at it. After reading this thread i would like to say a few things.

For the basic foods:
Carbs = 4 calories
Protien = 4 Calories
Fat = 9 Calories
Alcohol = 7 Calories

This is give a idea of how they comapre to each other. Even though Carbs and protien have the same amount of "energy" in them, protien is diffrent in that it dose not get stored in the body like carbs and fats. That's why diets like the Atkins work, but like someone posted, its better used for a short period of time.

Also is was mentioned , not eating carbs, like in the atkins, caused some to be tiered. Which due to the fact that you don't have any method of getting the calories you need directly. It has to be taken from the fat cells. That process can take a few days to extract it and convert it. That is why if you are going to preform some cardio work, like form DDR, you'd want some carbs in your system to be able to get that energy you need. Don't get me wrong though, you still need some protien in your body to make enzymes, hormones, and other body chemicals. Protein is an important building block of bones, muscles, cartilage, skin, and blood. So take some. For some info about protien.

my.webmd.com/content/article/85/98577.htm?lastselectedguid={5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348}

Now, to lose wieght you need to find find out how many calories you need per day. I can't recall the calculation for it, but i did find a web based calculator for it.

www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

So you want to go about 500 under whatever you need per-day to loss wieght. So just watch what you eat and be smart about it, and add some cardio. Include some carbs in there since your doing cardio work. But for those starting new using DDR i'd advise some protien too since they would be building some muscle in thier calfs and legs from the movemnt, and bouncing (i tend to do small jumps to keep beat *shrug*).

A note on doing cardio work, you'd want to alteast make your workout 20 mintues long of continous movment. If you can get to 60-80% of your heart rate that you;d be very helpful too.
Max heartrate = 220 - age roughly.

Final note then i'm done. For those of you also interested in building muscle, but this it would effect your wieght. Muscle wieght more than fat. So if you gain some wieght, that fine. Building muscle allows you have a higher metabolism, so in a long run if you keep you food intake constant the high metabolism would make you lose wieght. Now if you add cardio to wieght training, the reasults would be very nice. So consider adding some of it to your work out if you want.

I used to be a fitness trainer for a a few months, and been working out and taking some classes about it for the last 5 years. I'm still in college 9studying in Eng) and i am not certified in anyway, but this is what i learned. Though i'd share it. Hope it helps and best of luck to all of you.

[orangina]

Excess calories DO get stored in the body no matter if they are protein, carbohydrate or fat.
The reason low carb diets work is simply because protein is very satiating..ie you dont get hungry when you eat protein as easily and so you dont have as many problems eating less calories. Bottomline low carb/high protein diets work because they are low in calories!
The reason they dont work long-term for many people is because they are hard to stick to.
Please do not think that you can eat as much protein as you want and it wont get stored in the body because that is simply untrue.

[orangina]

South Beach Diet is not a bad diet..except the fake foods in it..ie aspartame BUT overall it has a lot of good points. It helps people get the SUGAR out of their diet initially so they can get back in control.

Items like hotdog rolls , and other processed foods are usually full of high fructose corn syrup and other gunk..so no they are not good for you.

Sugar in moderation is ok..but many folks overdose on it.

[lumon]

Well I have been reading through the thread and intill someone FINALLY mentioned the protien. I use to be on the atkins too. though there seems to be alot of insights already, Id like to add my 2 cents.

Its a very tough diet, and all in all.. to get the best results you really dont wanna eat Beacon, steak, fatty burgers... and all that junk. Tuna, eggs, lowfat turkey goerge forman hamburgers, baked chicken chopped up dried hamburger. Were the REAL way to go. To get good resulsts. The only real fatty things were teh cheese, and maybe some low carb milk once in while. It is short term, but really its meant to be both low carb and low (used loosely) fat, and high protien O and lots of water!!! If done right you could lose around 3 or 4 pounds a week (I did for lil while).. and ended right it can stay off.

Its the fastiest and heatliest way to do the atkins. But MAN is it hard. Its all in how you look at it though, (I pretended to be a ham eating robot from Nebulon )

Any who thats my 3 cents

[Kitana]

I agree that lowcarb works but I don't think it's good to loose more then 2 pounds a week. You could be loosing muscle along with fat and that's a bad thing because muscles depend on how well your metabolism is doing. For every pound of muscle to burn 50 calories everyday 24/7. If you loose muscle then when you start trying to maintain your weight, you end up setting maintainence in a harder manner. Once you try eating carbs again you probably will suddenly get your pounds back on. Low carb diets are quick painless weight loss but not a way of life. You wnat to improve yourselve in the long run. Low carb diets are bad to live on forver. Who wants to live on forever eating meat? I think the zone diet is the healthiest version of the new fad diets out there. Fruits and complex carbs are a must! They are your perferred fuel source. I tried low carb before and it works but it's very hard to stick too. That's why i suggust just eating healthier carbs such as beans, wild rice, etc. You don't have to change your diet drasticly but it's good to change ur diet for the better, healthwise.

[SSC]

I'm not even reading most of these posts, but it's time to get something clear.

Any diet that says you can eat a steak, a pound of bacon, and two meat patties but you can't have an apple is B/S!

Get with it people, Atkins is dangerous. Stick to a true diet, cut your amounts in half, eat 5-6 small meals a day, and don't eat crap food.

[abrannan]

SheScreamedClaudio said:

I'm not even reading most of these posts, but it's time to get something clear.

Any diet that says you can eat a steak, a pound of bacon, and two meat patties but you can't have an apple is B/S!

Get with it people, Atkins is dangerous. Stick to a true diet, cut your amounts in half, eat 5-6 small meals a day, and don't eat crap food.

Read Atkins before you make blanket statements. You're talking about the "old" style Atkins, not the new Atkins that was released a few years back. The new Atkins recognizes saturated fats, cholesterol, etc as things you want to avoid, and limits, but not eliminates carbs from your diet.

[SSC]

I see...

Well I was on the Atkins back when it was 'getting big,' I guess you could say.

Despite being out of shape always, my doctor said I had never had worse cholesterol, all that blah blah ycerites that I don't remember. Anyway...

[mattmanp]

I know this is back to the original topic and all, but I didn't see anyone state it so I thought I'd offer.

kcal and Calorie (capital C) are equal to 1,000 calories (lowercase c).

All the nutritional facts on food packages are in Calories (capital C).

I hope that helps.

[atheistium]

Varg said:

Is DDR actually reliable when counting calories? It seems a little too easy to burn calories on it.

yeah that what's I want to know :-)

[king1ear]

Hey Everybody! Just some of my opinions:

Point 1: When losing weight, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. The only time you should be concerned about the type of calorie you are burning is when you are muscle shaping. In which case you should do a quick pre-workout of 15 minutes to burn the carbs, then an hour to burn fat, and then stop before the muscle starts burning. Most weight-lifters eat carbs after working out to keep their muscles in shape.

Point 2: Figure out your caloric needs for the day and split that up into workable meals. For instance, if I wanted to consume 1500 calories a day so that I am short 500 of my normal 2000 calorie burning (500/day=3500 calories a week, 1lb lost) I would plan my day like so:

Breakfast: 300 cal
snack: 100
Lunch: 400
snack: 100
Dinner: 500
snack/dessert: 100

You be surprised what you can make out of those counts.

What I never short myself of eating are vegatables and fruits. If I'm ever hungry, I swallow those. No candy bars or junk is in the house, just as a way to fight off the temptation late at night. Plus I drink plenty of water and try different teas.

I personally find this diet easiest. Calorie counts are provided on nearly every food or can be located on the internet. I adjust here and there, and it has all become natural after awhile.

Point 3: The most important! TREAT YOURSELF. I give myself over to temptation every Saturday, as I like to call it "Indian Icecream Day". If i see something that I want I just tell myself I can have it Saturday, if I'm still craving it then then I have it. But in most cases I'm just craving something else. But whatever, I allow that day for indulgence. I think it's very important to allow yourself to eat something you really really enjoy that's bad for you, every now and then that is.

Okay, I've blabbed enough on this topic, which isn't the topic. Take care y'all.

[nonskanse]

The message seems mostly on topic...

I agree with calorie == calorie == calorie ad infinitum...

However, people try to tell me-
"Don't eat after 8pm"
"You burn fat fastest in the middle of the day, so eat your big meal then"
"dont eat after working out, you are burning fat at that time!"

While they all have their own wisdom - many people eat unhealthy food as nighttime snacks, eating more in the middle of the day makes me personally a lot less hungry for dinner, and if i eat after working out I tend to eat more since workouts make me hungry, so it might be a good idea to wait a little while until my brain is back in control...
none of them are really the issue!

Lately my current roommate tried to tell me that you shouldn't eat after working out because your glycogen stores are depleted and so your body turns instead to the fat in your body to burn instead of the glycogen. I'm sure that's 100% true (the stores being depleted)..
BUT if you eat 500 calories immediately after your workout and your body converts that to energy, or if you wait an hour and eat 500 calories and your body starts converting that, you've still used up the same calories during and post-workout and you're still only eating 500 calories...
Unless it requires a tremendous amount of energy to use up fat and a very very small amount of energy to digest food, I can't see the logic in it.

There is no trick to it! Eat healthy, eat a little less, exercise more!
Calorie == Calorie.

[0rion.78]

atheistium said:

yeah that what's I want to know :-)

i would like to know this also. discounting arm movements, just steps and what the game counts, is it really that accurate? if it is, then that would be awesome!