Yeah I’m not a fan of calories in calories out, not least because I gain weight doing it.
Yeah, the course corrections are critical. Calories in / calories out is the way it works, but… the actual calories in is really hard to know, and the actual calories expended is really hard to know in general or in advance.
- The higher the scale of production for a food, the more likely that Calorie count will be accurate. The more human judgement involved in the production of a food, the less accurate. The more taste is a selling point for the good, the more likely it is at least slightly low.
- Portion sizes at home are the least accurate. The lower caloric density the food, the less this matters, though. Overdoing your spinach portion isn’t going to mess up your diet.
- Tracking kJ on the bike is the most accurate expenditure you’re going to get outside of a metabolic chamber. My understanding is that even rowing machines are less accurate… and anything else (like estimating calories from running, walking, weightlifting, whatever) is just “ballpark.”
- Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is extremely variable, both between people and for one person (in fact, your personal reaction to being in a caloric surplus or deficit might change NEAT by a few hundred Calories). Again, outside a metabolic chamber you don’t have a good way of knowing what this will be.
All of this isn’t to say that losing weight is impossible and knowing whether you’re on track is a fool’s game. Rather, individual variance is such a big factor that N=1 studies on yourself are the most valuable data. Your personal reaction to being in a caloric deficit or surplus, your NEAT and your personal efficiency turning Calories into exercise, your personal eating habits and the specific inaccuracies and variances associated with the foods you eat, etc., all of that adds up to needing to consistently monitor and adjust.
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That hot dog is missing both chili and queso… otherwise looks good.
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This is an interesting podcast on this point:
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I get coaching advise from a friend.
I pay him in letting him call me a moron any time I ask stupid questions. And yes, there are stupid questions… 
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My current preferred approach to loose weight is to go more by apetite and food choice.
I try only eating 2 or 3 major meals per day with enough vegetables, with fruit and vegetables snacks in-between. And then for quantities try to feel a little bit hungry after the meal. Not starving, but the kind of hunger that fades away after a while.
Except when I have long SS and threshold intervals. Today the workout had 60 minutes around threshold after breakfast was a double portion of oatmeal.
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Yeah you and me both
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I dunno about this - I feel like restaurant nutrition is totally up in the air - if the chef decides to add just a bit more butter / sauce / etc., this can totally change the equation. At least at home I have a bit more control over it, even if there’s more measurement error in the smaller sample size.
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Agree with you here. I worked as a corporate cook trainer several years back for a large US company. Even the highly strict restaurants weren’t always compliant with portion sizes, normally using too much.
Oil and butter was never portioned since you just “eyeball it”.
Some items like veggies and cheeses were used as the correct portions and scoops. The more confident chefs and cooks became in the restaurants I opened and trained, the more likely they were to give incorrect portions (confidence factor, or wanting items to look better by adding a little bit more of certain things).
Also there is so much variance between “1 scoop” portion across locations, management, and owners. New chefs might use a certain labelled scoop, then think it’s okay to use the same for a different food item.
Maybe I’m not eating at “upper class” places often enough, but I absolutely trust my kitchen scale more than I do an average restaurant. Go to a restaurant where they make food in front of you (Chipotle, custom pizza shops, Subway, etc) and you can easily see some of the high variance even while they are right in front of you.
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I eat 750-1100 calories each day and I’m never hungry. To be fair though, at 16 years old, I’m not an adult yet so that probably explains why I eat less. Also, I eat meals that consist mainly of vegetables and fruit so meals high in grams tend to be low in calories. I’m a 5 ft 4.
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Interesting.
I was always under the impression that most kids your age need more nutrition since they are growing all the time, once that stop then you need to stop eating that much…
I don’t know tho… My kids are still too young… And they eat a lot
When I was your age, my mom complained about never having leftovers. 2-a-days, plus school and band made me super hungry.
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That’s a crazy low number. How are you calculating the calories you eat daily?
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At those calorie levels it is very difficult to get a healthy micronutrient profile as well as essential fats. One would need to be very careful to get all the minerals and vitamins to not be considered malnourished. Especially as a teenager being malnourished can effect you for the rest of your life in terms of body growth, neural development, etc.
Those calories are basically IFBB bikini competitor doing a super hard cut. I would encourage you to bump it up to 1500 at a minimum + calories burned from exercise.
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I have a BMR/NEAT of 2500kcal - but spend about 25 hrs a week training so need to hit over 5000kcal on an average day - basically it’s all individual…
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How does anyone find time to spend 25 hours on the trainer?
wow… yes you probably need way more calories than me and my up to 10 hours…
I’m a full time cyclist so I do ride outside
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I experimented with high volume z2 blocks when the pandemic started. I had been doing 10-12 hours and did a block of 15,17,19 hours/week, rest, then 18,19 hours/week, rest, then 19,20.5 hours / week. It was basically a multi-week eating contest. It felt so nice to finish it and drop back to ‘normal’ eating for 10-12 hours.
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What is this “outside”? I have never thought that bikes can move! 
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It’s a bizarre phenomenon where a homosapien ventures beyond the safety of their home