When you diet, do you only look at calories? (Page 2)

MY BMR was tested at 2045 a day and I am wearing a Bodybugg since 5 weeks and that is prety much roughly the same what the Bodybugg gives me. Including work that puts me around 2300 calories burned a day plus my workouts. I exercise about 9-11 hours a week.

How heavy are you and what do you think your BMR is?

A Bodybugg measures your calorie burn throughout the day. I wear it 24 hours and it is pretty accurate except for biking. Here is some info: www.bodybugg.com

At my weight I burn around 800-900 calories an hour running, about 500-600 an hour swimming and roughly 400-500 an hour biking.

2300 x 7 = 16.100 basic burn + ~ 7000 from exercising puts me at 23.100 a week.

I eat about 2000-2200 a day which is ~ 14.700 calories for food and that gives me a deficit of 8400 calories a week.

You can also get the BMR tested at a lot of places. You might want to check that out.

BTW; BMR is basic metabolism rate of what you would burn if you would just be lying in bed all day doing nothing. You still have to add some calories for your normal working lifestyle in.

So do you think it would make a difference if you consume your daily calories by low carb or by a normal ratio where carbs would be about 50%?

No, going back to my original response I still consider the first law of thermodynamics to hold true. 

"Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change forms."

This means that if you consume 1500 calories and you require 3000 you have created a deficit of 1500 calories.  It does not matter if that deficit was created because you ate a diet of nothing but animal lard, pasta or ice-cream. 

I like to low carb because my body performs better by eliminating the carbs...for now.  I will eventually begin to introduce more carbs back into my diet as I get close to my goal (18 lbs away as of this morning).  When I eat carbs, as you know from your own experience, cravings all but disappear.  By low-carbing it forces my Liver to go to work and produce glucose from protein.  This stream of glucose is slow and steady and provides just enough of what I need to function.  On a 50% carb diet my liver will stop producing glucose and glucose will be supplied as part of my dietary consumption.  For some that have been eating healthy for a long time this is not such a big deal but for me personally it begins a cycle that is like a roller coaster.  Eat, blood sugar spikes then crashes which mean I am now hungry again so I eat again...and so on. 

On a different note I recently read an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine that cited a long term study of thousands of people that were put on Low-Carb vs. Low-Cal diets for 10 years.  While there was not much difference during the study regarding Heart Disease, Cancer and other ailments.  They did a follow up on these patients 20 and 30 years after and found that those people that participated in the low-carb portion had a substantially lower overall mortality rate than the low cal group.

It is believed that the damage that high levels of glucose in your bloodstream does to the vascular system may not be apparent immediately.  It will eventually yield a higher mortality rate from vascular diseases.

Please don't hesitate as I enjoy the debate in an open forum.  Challenging our assumptions is the best way to learn.

Anyway, I get the idea of how this could be a challenge after a lifetime of diet based on the traditional food pyramid.  Bagels, Pasta, Potato's and Ice Cream (OK, maybe not on the pyramid but whatever).  I struggled with the same thing when I started and wondered if I could do this.  After about 2 or 3 months I was hooked.  I still eat the foods I love to eat just without the parts that I consider nutritionally useless. 

I would not push this WOE on anyone as each person has to find a plan that works for them and the key is that it has to be sustainable long term.  Like I said before, for me personally a diet consisting of high carb foods just does not work for me. 

I enjoy my food choices and feel satisfied after I eat.  For lunch today I had taco meat over a bed of romaine with a little cheese, hot sauce and ranch.  It was fulfilling, low carb and not too high in calories.  I find that the only time I really want something high in carbs is when I am in a hurry or on the road.  It can ben difficult to figure out options when the only meal available is fast food unless you planned properly.  I have figured out food that I can eat at most resturants that is still satisfying without the carbs.