When it comes to the calorie argument, there are generally two

camps.

Camp 1:

Then theres camp 2:

And then they do this.
Then theres a third camp. Those who, like me, believe that both of the
other camps kinda, sorta, have a point and should calm the fuck down.

But, well get to that in a bit. First: what in the hell actually is a calorie?
What we talk about when we talk about calories

The word calorie comes from the Latin word, calor, meaning heat. And
thats what calories are: units of heat or work. Or, to be more precise
The approximate amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of
one gram of water by one degree Celsius.

The key word here is energy. Calories can be used to measure all types
of energy in chemistry, and when we refer to food calories, we use the
term Kilocalories or Calories (capital C).

While the Calorie is common in todays lexicon, it wasnt always like this.
And to fully understand the calorie argument, its important to understand
how we arrived at the modern day iteration of Calories. To do that, we
have to go way back. No, like waaaaaaay back.

Calories: The (very abbreviated) Origin Story

We can actually trace the first mention of calorie balance and body
weight to around the 5th century, when this guy
What was that? No, thats not God, dumbass. Its Hippocrates the
Greek Physician and the father of modern medicine. As I was saying,
Hippocrates was espousing the idea of energy balance way before all
you cool kids were.
Ok, enough showing off Hipp. Jeez were moving on.

Fast forwarding a few more centuries and we enter the Age of

Enlightenment, and this was when the scientific method and reason
became the modus operandi.
From here, a few key events happened in a relatively short period of
time that greatly advanced our understanding of calories and nutrition.

The first of which starts with the Father of Modern

Chemistry, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier.

Born to a family of rich lawyers in Paris in 1743, Lavoisier was a French

aristocrat who set the stage for our understanding of the body and
calories; namely, respiration and metabolism. A tax collector by day, he
spent his evenings involved in science research and experiments.

Seeing as Lavoisier was, you know, significantly fucking rich he could

afford to have various apparatuses built to help him with his research,
amongst these was the first calorimeter: an apparatus for measuring the
amount of heat involved in a chemical reaction
Lavoisiers Guinea Pig

In 1780, Lavoisier conducted the first of his experiments that quantified

the role of oxygen and metabolism.

He placed a guinea pig into a cage that was placed inside a

double-walled container.

There was ice in the outer wall maintaining a constant temperature

and ice in the inner wall. The heat from the guinea pig melted the ice in
the inner wall.
The melted ice would drip down through a plug at the bottom of the
calorimeter where a bowl would collect the water. This led Lavoisier to
believe that energy came from oxygen turning to carbon dioxide and
heat or, respiration.
A few years later in 1789, Lavoisier extended his findings to people by
performing a series of experiments measuring the oxygen consumption
of a person at rest. With the help of his assistant Armand Seguin and his
wife Marie Anne Paulze, he discovered that physical activity like lifting
weights and the digestion process increased oxygen uptake; these
findings would be amongst the first quantifying what we today know as
the basal metabolic rate. (1,2)

Lavoisier measuring carbon dioxide output of Armand Seguin, while his wife records the
results

Lavoisier also believed in the conservation of mass matter was neither

created nor destroyed, but, like all savants, he was way ahead of his
time and lacked the resources to prove this to any significant length.
Unfortunately, soon the French Revolution began and the revolutionaries
were all, Hey, fuck you rich tax collector, dude, we want our money
back so we can eat, and well, Lavoisier was beheaded. I know, sad.

Ok, were moving on.

Julius Mayer and The First Law of Thermodynamics
In June 1841, at the age of 27, German physician and chemist Julius
Von Mayer published his first scientific paper, Remarks on the Forces of
Nature, in which he determined that living systems conformed to the
first law of thermodynamics: energy can be neither created nor
destroyed, only change forms.

This law also explained how the metabolism transformed food energy
(calories) into heat energy for use by the body or if it wasnt used, stored
as fat.

It was also around this time scientists began to develop bomb

calorimeters to measure the energy value of food.

Max Rubner: A Calorie is a Calorie

Max Rubner was born in Munich in 1854 and In his early twenties he
trained under Carl Von Voit who had begun studying respiratory
exchanges in humans.
By 1889, Rubner had built a remarkably accurate bomb calorimeter
which lead to many of his findings, most notably: the thermic effect of
protein, the energy laws of physics applying to caloric balance, and his
most fundamental finding that a calorie is a calorie.

The three major foodstuffs, carbohydrates, protein, and fat can replace
each other in accordance with their heat-producing value, he wrote. He
termed this The Isodynamic Law.

Rubner was the first person to measure the caloric value of protein, fats,
and carbohydrates. Rubner also noted that unlike the bomb calorimeter,
the human body wasnt able to metabolise nitrogen from protein, and
these calories were excreted through urine.

After several experiments, correcting for urinary nitrogen losses, he

finally arrived at these values.
While Rubner was on the right path, he didnt have the equipment or the
methods to advance his findings any further.

A decade later, a scientist from the other side of the world would build on
his findings and establish the calorie we know today.

Atwater and the Modern Day Calorie.

Wilbur Olin Atwater was born in 1844 in New York. By the time he was
an undergrad, the Civil War had started. Atwater didnt enlist, opting
instead to pursue a degree in agricultural chemistry.
By 1869 hed earned his doctorate and established a food analysis
laboratory at Wesleyan University. Around this time, European scientists
had begun building whole-body calorimeters, large enough to house
people.
Atwater caught word of what the Europeans were doing, and in the early
1880s travelled to Europe to work with these researchers and see what
all the fuss was with these calorimeter machines.

One of these researchers happened to be Max Rubner. Atwater soon

learned how to use whole-body calorimeters for performing energy
balance studies in humans and, after two years in Europe, returned back
to the US.

By 1895 Atwater had completed building his own whole-body

calorimeter, and began a series of experiments.
The whole-body calorimeter could house a human volunteer for several
days, allowing Atwater to measure the human metabolism by having
volunteers perform physical activity and then analysing the heat
produced. Using this information he was able to quantify the metabolism
and the balance between food intake and energy output.

In 1899, Atwater published calorie values for protein, carbohydrates, and

fats. Building on Rubners work before him, Atwater noted that calories
were also lost to digestion. He corrected for these losses and arrived at
what we now call The Atwater Values.

*In case youre wondering: the USDA rounded up the 8.9 calories per gram in fat to 9
calories per gram in 1910.

As a testament to the quality and diligence of Atwater's work, we still use

the 4-9-4 Atwater values on food labels today almost 120 years after
he'd originally derived them.
WHEW. What a ride, huh? So thats how we arrived at the modern day
iteration of calories, the calorie counts you see for carbs, fats, and
protein on food packaging today, and the idea that the first law applies to
the human metabolism.

But, theres a slight problem. Shits a little more complicated than that.

The part where I explain why shits a little

more complicated than that
When Atwater established the calorie values, he wanted to represent the
available, or, metabolisable energy, i.e. the calories available to the body
for use after correcting for calorie losses via undigested and excreted
calories. Atwater could then use these values to predict the number of
calories people ate in a day.

For example, if a food item contained 30g of protein, 40g of carbs, and
20g of fat, using the Atwater values he could estimate the total calorie
count of the food item to be ~460 calories.

Atwaters goal with all this ball-busting work was to determine an

effective diet that could meet the nutritional needs of the people at the
time and establish a scientific standard of living (5).

Even though Atwater noted, one chief cause of corpulence is

overeating (6), or: youre gaining fat because youre eating too damn
much, body weight regulation wasnt Atwaters goal.

Which finally brings me to my fucking point: Remember in this article

when I told you that calories in, calories out was kinda super
complicated? And then I drew that amazing hamburger that nobody
complimented me on?
 You can compliment me here

Well, thats what Im expounding on now. Yeah, expound, because fuck

you Im fancy.

This is you.
And this is android you.

Both the real you and android you require a certain number of calories to
stay alive and function. However, while both of you require the exact
number of calories, the way those calories are processed will differ.

Android you:
Android you is a machine, like a bomb calorimeter, and the number of
calories your mechanical twin consumes will equal the number of
calories it burns. Ergo: calories in = calories out.

But, the human body isnt a machine, and so, calories in/calories
out looks a bit more like this:

There are a lot of factors internal and external that explain why
calories in doesnt equal calories out as efficiently in the human body as
some people believe.

And thats what were looking at next.

The Complexities of Calories In and Calories Out

Your body kinda hates math

Back in 1958, scientist Max Wishnofsky wanted to quantify the number

of calories it would take to put a person into a calorie surplus or a calorie
deficit. So he did a bunch of experiments and concluded that a pound of
fat contained 3500 calories. And if someone wanted to lose a pound fat,
theyd have to create a weekly calorie deficit of 3500 calories, or, 500
calories per day.

Fast forwarding to recent times and Wishnofskys 3500 calorie rule still
pervades mainstream fitness lore: to lose or gain a pound of fat you
need to burn (or consume) an extra 3500 calories a week, or 500
calories per day.

Unfortunately, theres a problem. The 3500 calorie rule assumes that fat
loss is kinda like this:

When in reality, fat loss is more like this:

As you start to lose weight, a number of adaptive mechanisms kick in
that try to stop you all of which I wrote about here. So please go read
that because Ive written about the topic so fucking much that any time
its brought up the urge to smash my head against a brick wall
intensifies. And its these adaptations that throw a wrench in the 3500
calorie rule people dont lose exactly the amount of weight predicted.
As researchers in this review point out, ...the 3500-kcal rule predicts
that a person who increases daily energy expenditure by 100 kcal by
walking 1 mile (1.6 km) per day will lose more than 50 lb (22.7 kg) over a
period of 5 years, the true weight loss is only about 10 lb (4.5 kg),
assuming no compensatory increase in caloric intake, because changes
in mass concomitantly alter the energy requirements of the body.

People respond differently to over and underfeeding

When you overfeed people, some gain more weight and fat than others.

In one study, researchers overfed 16 healthy human volunteers by 1000

kcal/day over their maintenance intake. Youd expect them all to gain an
equivalent amount of weight. But they didnt heres a table of the
results.
Ive highlighted the weight gain row. Take a look at the last column, titled
Range: some people gained 1.4kg and others gained up to 7.2kg after
they were overfed the same number of calories.

A similar thing occurs when you overfeed identical twins: one twin gains
more fat than the other.

I know what youre thinking: what the fuck?

There are a lot of factors that happen beyond our conscious control. One
of these is the impact on NEAT: even when overfed, some people dont
move around as much as others.

Cooking and Processing

Cooking and processing foods changes the number of calories available

to the body.

Richard Wrangham, author of, How Cooking Made Us Human, has

carried out a number of experiments exploring this.

In one interesting experiment, rats were fed either raw peanuts or

peanut butter.
The raw peanut rats lost significantly more weight than the peanut butter
rats. Wrangham noted cooking loosened the structures of the cell walls
that bind energy in food, making it easier for digestive enzymes to
access more calories.

Heres a cool microscopic image showing this:

The same thing happens with meat: a hamburger patty, for example, will
provide more useable calories than a steak; this is evident in how easy it
is to eat a burger patty compared to a steak which requires considerably
more chewing.

Lets look at one more example.

In 2010, researchers compared the effect of whole and processed foods

on the thermic effect of food the amount of energy your body uses
during digestion.

Take a look at this graph from the study (the blue and red edits are
mine).

The whole food meal required almost double the amount of energy to
digest.

This is why two meals could have an equivalent number of calories, but the
calories left for use and storage after digestion can differ greatly.
 The Macronutrients

The macronutrients carb, fat, and protein each have different effects
in the body.

- The most obvious being the differing caloric values: Carbs and
protein have 4 calories per gram, while fat has 9 calories per gram.
Meaning 10 grams of carbs and protein contains 40 calories, whereas 10
grams of fat contains 90 calories.

- Storage: Carbs are seldom if ever directly stored as body fat, while
dietary fat is.

Jose Antonio has shown that a similar thing occurs with protein. He had
participants consume 800 calories of protein over their maintenance
needs and found, "consuming a hypercaloric high protein diet does not
result in an increase in body fat".

- TEF: The thermic effect of food is how much energy the body uses
digesting and storing the food you eat. Each macronutrient has a
different thermic effect.
 - Carbs: 5-10%
- Protein: 20-30%
- Fat: 0-3%

Protein has the highest thermic effect of all three macronutrients and this
is one reason why when people are overfed protein they dont gain
exactly the predicted amount of weight a lot of the calories are lost to
heat during digestion.

For example, eating 200 calories of protein means youve lost 60

calories to TEF; so your body only has 140 calories available of the 200
you consumed.

Compared to eating 200 calories from fats or carbs. The TEF of carbs
will leave your body with a useable 180 calories.
And 194 calories from fats.

This is why you can eat two meals of an equivalent caloric amount, but
depending on the macronutrient composition of the meals, the number of
calories left after digestion can vary greatly.
 Calorie counts on restaurants and food labels arent always
accurate

The calorie counts on food labels and some restaurants arent always
100% accurate (1 , 2) . Heres an interesting video that takes a look at
this.

With all of that said, Calories are still of the highest

importance.
Yes. The law of thermodynamics may not be the most efficient process
when applied to the human body for the plethora of reasons I just
noted but it still applies. And calorie balance counts. More than
anything else. Because, as Im about to show you, when people
consume more calories they gain weight and when they eat fewer
calories they lose weight.

Calorie Increases = Body Weight Increases

When we track calorie and body weight data from as far back as the
1970s roughly when the obesity epidemic began theres an eery
correlation.

In 2009, researchers wanted to determine how increased energy

intake and reduced physical activity was contributing to the US
obesity epidemic.

To do this, they took calorie data from 1970 to 2000 and inserted it into
equations relating energy intake to body weight. The graph below shows
the results.
The researchers concluded: The predicted changes in weights derived
from the equations suggest that increase in estimated energy intake is
sufficient, by itself, to explain the increase in weight in the US population

Heres a graph from obesity researcher, Stephan Guyenet, who

plotted the prevalence of obesity (blue and red lines) with calorie
intake (green line) from 1960 to 2009.

Since the 1970s obesity has more than doubled, correlating exactly with
the rise in calorie intake.

As Guyenet points out, Americans are eating about 400 calories more
today than in the past. This alone can account for the entire obesity
epidemic.
Oh, and seeing as were on the topic, heres something else thats
interesting.

This graph is commonly used by anti-sugar crazies to support the claim

were consuming more sugar than before.

Source

*GASP. SHOCK. HORROR*

But. Wait a minute. Why does the graph only chart intake up to the year
2000?

How astute of you, internet friend. Heres why: This is another graph by
the venerable Stephen Guyenet:
Well. Would you look at that. Oh, you dont see it? Ok, look at this graph.

I combined both the graphs and it becomes clear why anti-sugar crazies
stop at the year 2000; it doesnt fit their narrative. Sugar hits a peak in
the year 2000, but since then has been steadily declining while obesity

continues to rise. Why? Because were consuming more calories.

And its not a certain type of calorie either its all calories.

When we plot macronutrient intakes from 1970, you see increases in all
three: carbs, fats, and proteins. Surprisingly, carb intake has actually
decreased.
Data source: Trends in energy intake among adults in the United States: findings from
NHANES.

Portion Size Increase -> More Calories Consumed -> Weight Gain

Portion sizes have markedly increased since 1970 in parallel with

increasing body weight.

Simon Gillespie, the CEO of The British Heart Foundation, said: We

know that portion sizes influence how much we eat. Put simply, larger
portions encourage us to eat more and shape our view of what is a
normal amount to eat.

But how much of an increase, exactly?

In 2013, The British Heart Foundation commissioned research to assess
how portion sizes in the UKs main retailers compared from 1993 to
2013. This is what they found:

Individual shepherds pie ready meals have doubled in size,

increasing by 98%
A stated portion of peanuts is 80% larger
Individual chicken curry ready meals are 53% larger
A portion of crisps from a family pack has increased by 50%
Individual chicken pies are 40% larger
Meat lasagne ready meals for one are 39% larger
A portion of garlic bread is 30% larger

Heres another image showing the increase in portion size taken from
the CDCs The New (Ab)normal campaign.
But wait, theres more!

Ok. Im tired of typing. Im gonna go take a nap. My assistant Ted is

taking over this part.
Source
The same thing happened in 2015 when a science teacher lost 56
pounds in six months eating nothing but McDonald's; in 2016, when this
guy lost 100 pounds eating pizza; and more recently, the guy who lost
fat eating ice cream.

So, what, youre saying food quality doesnt matter?

No, thats not what Im saying, dumbass. Food quality does matter
more on this in a second and nutrition and health is more than just
calories.

But, I show you all this to elucidate the point that despite all the
semantics and nuances people argue over: calories apply to the human
body and before you worry about anything else, you need to sort out
your energy balance because regardless of how healthy, organic, or
gluten-free, a food is if you eat more than your body needs, youre
going to gain weight. And guess what? Even healthy foods cant negate
the ill-effects of carrying excess body fat.

I intentionally picked examples of people losing weight eating twinkies,

pizza, and ice cream because theyre extreme and they make you stop
and pay fucking attention. They also prove that when it comes to pure
weight loss you can lose weight eating anything as long as youre in a
calorie deficit, in no way am I advocating getting high off Oreos or
mainlining packs of candy or eating ice cream off of a models ass that
doesnt even make any sense, but guess what? I dont give a fuck. Food
and diet quality does matter because:

A calorie may be a calorie, but food is not

just food.
Sure, you can lose fat by controlling calories and eating Twinkies,
McDonalds, or ice cream. But a good diet is so much more than
changing your body composition it should also promote healthful
eating, for a number of reasons.

Vitamins, Minerals, and Fiber: Your body requires certain amounts of

essential vitamins and minerals to keep you healthy and your body
functioning optimally. To add to that, the importance of fiber in the diet
cant be understated: it can lower blood pressure, cholesterol, aid in a
healthy gut, and even lower the risk of cancer. Eating whole, nutrient-rich
foods will help you consume adequate amounts of these.

Satiety and long term maintenance: One of the biggest struggles

anyone will face when dieting is hunger. Eating a diet that helps keeps
you full will increase your chances of succeeding with the diet and
keeping the weight off.

Factors that influence the satiety of a food:

- Protein content
- Fibre content
- Water content
- Energy density
- Food composition: solid or liquid?

This is why, whole, nutrient-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, whole

grains, and lean proteins are going to be more satiating than ice cream,
candy, or fast food.

Disease prevention: While someones propensity to contract a disease

or fall ill is multifactorial, a persons diet does play a key role. In one
study, titled Healthy Living Is the Best Revenge, researchers wanted to
identify the healthy lifestyle factors that could prevent chronic diseases.
Amongst the factors never smoking, having a body mass index lower
than 30, performing 3.5 or more hours per week of physical activity the
researchers also noted, adhering to healthy dietary principles (high
intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain bread and low meat
consumption) can have a strong impact on the prevention of chronic
diseases.

Another study that looked at the nutritional quality of a diet and the risk
of chronic disease found that certain dietary patterns similar to the
above; fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean meats was associated with
better weight control and better health and longevity.

Good nutrition is important, and your diet should consist of healthful

foods, but, again: healthy eating alone wont equal weight loss or good
health if youre neglecting calorie balance.

Whatever, man. I did X diet and didnt track

calories and lost weight.
Yes, Im sure you did, because guess what? You were controlling your
calorie intake whether you realised it or not.

Heres the super secret of the dieting world, thats not really a
super secret: all diets work because, in one way or another,
whether they admit it or not, they have you controlling your calorie
intake.

Fasting diets have you eating inside of a restricted window

of time; or, as is the case with ADF (Alternate Day Fasting)
 restricting you to one, very low calorie, meal a day.

Low carb diets have you greatly reducing calorie content

via restricting carbohydrates, or, in the case of Ketogenic
diets, omitting carbs completely.

Vegan diets have you eating only plants

Paleo has you restrict all processed foods.

Juice cleanses make you drink nothing but blended grass

and earth until you shit out all of your insides.

Gettit?

And this isnt conjecture, either. A number of studies have shown

this to be the case.

Like this one.

In 1964 a group from the Institute for Medical Research in Oakland,

California, set out to study the impact of different macronutrient
compositions on weight loss in obese patients.

The study involved five obese patients residing in a hospital metabolic

ward.
The patients were fed a liquid formula diet containing the same number
of calories per day either 800, 850, or 1200 (depending on the patient)
for ten weeks.

Every three or four weeks the investigators changed the formula to vary
its content of protein (from 14 to 36 percent of calories), fat (from 12 to
83 percent of calories), and carbohydrates (3 to 64 percent of calories).
ALL of the obese patients lost weight at a constant rate, regardless of
the nutrient composition of the diet; whether fat or carbohydrate intake
was high or low what mattered was the total calorie deficit.

The title of the study was eponymous to the findings: Calories Do

Count.

A similar experiment was done in 2009, with researchers concluding:

Interestingly, when several popular diets are analysed they all, in one
way or another, abide by certain healthy patterns. Summed up in the
table below.
Yh, but hormones...
Theres a popular idea perpetuated in the mainstream media that people
gain fat because of a hormonal imbalance and not because of a calorie
imbalance.

The problem with this idea, barring wanting to rip my fucking eyes out, is
they have it backwards. Do hormones impact body composition? Of
course they do, and anyone who says otherwise is a cuntmonkey who
doesn't know what the hell theyre talking about. However, hormones are
influenced by calorie intake and not vice versa.

If you eat fewer calories than your body requires (a calorie deficit) or
more than your body requires (a calorie surplus) hormones like leptin,
cortisol, insulin, thyroid, testosterone are all affected to some degree.

If you eat in a calorie deficit: leptin and thyroid hormone drops. This, in
turn, means you expend fewer calories and are hungrier. Extended
periods of low calorie dieting can decrease testosterone levels and
increase cortisol, leading to muscle loss and lowered libido. All of this in
an attempt to stop you from ostensibly starving to death.
Conversely, if you eat in a calorie surplus: leptin levels increase, T3
returns back to baseline, hunger decreases -- energy levels increase,
you start moving more and expending more energy --, testosterone
increases, and cortisol drops.

Hormones do matter and do affect body composition but hormonal

imbalances are inextricably linked to energy balance, so blaming
hormones alone is misguided. (Thanks to Georgie Fear for this edit.)
Thus, a calorie imbalance begets a hormonal imbalance.
So, the next time someone says something about hormones and fat
gain, dragon punch them in the motherfucking neck.

Whats a dragon punch? Oh, my bad. Its when this happens:

And then you do this:
Its not as simple as calories in and
calories out: but track your calories
anyway.

Yes, its not as simple as calories in and calories out. Yes, the human
body is a lot more complex than a cute sounding maxim. But, despite all
of that, you should be paying attention to your calorie intake for a
number of reasons Im about to list in an easy to digest bullet-point
format.

Training Wheels For Your Nutrition

Calorie tracking is training wheels for your nutrition. It teaches you

about food. When youve tracked for a while you learn what foods are
high in carbs, protein, fats; what foods are good sources of key vitamins
and minerals, and fiber; you learn how many calories are in your
favourite restaurant foods. You learn what actual portion sizes look like
and you stop falling victim to mental errors like the health halo effect of
food.

Soon, you may not need to track as youll know enough to eat without
using a calorie tracking app. But, to get to that point you first need to
learn all of this shit, and thats what tracking your food intake does.

The Obesogenic Environment

Were living in an eat more and keep eating environment. In this

obesogenic environment, high-calorie food is everywhere, easy to
access, and when it isnt, you can be sure theres an advert reminding
you.
These hyper-palatable foods are easy to overeat while concomitantly
providing a large number of calories. And as long as you reside in this
environment, which isnt going anywhere, your chances of gaining fat or
having trouble losing fat will remain. You cant rely on your intuition, or
eat according to your natural hunger and satiety cues not at the start,
anyway because the environment doesnt allow for that.

The best way to combat this is to have some semblance of calorie

awareness and control.

Self-monitoring and Weight Loss

In a number of studies, individuals who self-monitor their calorie intake

lose weight more effectively than those who dont.

In one study: Individuals who were successful at reaching their 5%

weight loss goal during the intervention self-monitored more than twice
as often (81 days of self-monitoring) as individuals who were not
successful at meeting the 5% goal (35 days of self-monitoring).
In this review, all of the 15 studies that focused on dietary self-monitoring
found significant associations between self-monitoring and weight loss.

And heres a handful of other studies showing the same thing (1, 2 , 3 ,
4, 5). Calorie awareness is also a key behaviour trait of those who have
lost weight and kept it off for more than 5 years.

Makes the Impalpable Palpable

People are terrible at reporting food intake and a gazillion studies that
have shown this over and o ver and over and over and over, over, over,
over againand again, because nobody knows how many calories are
in foods and thats where the utility in calorie trackers lies they make
the impalpable palpable.
If someone is overeating the archetypal "I'm hardly eating and I just
can't lose weight!" and you have them track calories, all of a sudden,
"Oh my god, I can't believe I was eating that much." (The reverse for the
self-proclaimed hard-gainer).
The calorie tracker quantified the previously unknown.

Accuracy isnt the point. Tracking food intake provides constraints and
gives you a tangible baseline to work from. Once you have a baseline
you can make adjustments as you go along. Its better to be off by 20%
but make progress than be off 100% and not make any progress.

Autonomy
Having a choice in how and what you eat frees you from the shackles of
the fad diet industry. You no longer need to eat a certain way and hate
your life doing it because a fuckknuckle on the internet told you. You get
to decide, and this is perhaps the biggest factor to achieving and
maintaining fat loss in the long run: eating in a way that fits you
psychologically, sociologically, and physiologically.
Last year, Greg Nuckols wrote an article titled, Training
and Diet are Simple Because Your Body is Complex.

And thats the point I want to end on: the human body is infinitely
complex (just read Gregs article to see what I mean), there are things
a lot of things we still dont know, and probably wont ever know. But.
What we do currently know is sufficient enough for us to implement and
make progress with.

Sure, calories in and calories out might not be perfect but it works
because its good enough.
Footnotes

All the shit I couldnt fit into the main article or other points of interest are
provided here.

1. The Calorie: A (very abbreviated) Origin Story sources:

- A Short History of Nutritional Science (there are like 4 parts, enjoy)

- History of the calorie in nutrition
- Why Calories Count, Marion Nestle
- Does the history of food energy units suggest a solution to "Calorie
confusion"?

2. Heres a video and an article showing how modern day metabolism

research is conducted.

3. Who actually invented the term calorie is unknown. As James

Hargrove said, We all teach this unit, and nobody knows where it came
from, not even the historians of nutrition.

While some claim it was Nicolas Clement, he never used the word
calorie in any of his published writings, only in his notes. Since Favre
used the term calorie in his published work, its generally associated with
him, however, theres evidence that the word calorie was being used as
far back as 1824 as a unit of heat.