Is It Calories In vs. Calories Out?

There are many mixed statements about whether or not calories taken in vs. calories expended is the key to health and weight management or if nutrition is a little more complicated. So is it calories in vs. calories out? The question is: Is what calories in vs. calories out?

Recently two publications have made a splash in the world of diet and nutrition. The first is a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which shows a lower mortality rate amongst overweight and obese subjects. The second is Dr. Robert Lustig’s book Fat Chance, which focuses on the role of sugar in metabolic disease. The two converge in a very interesting way.

The most common goal in fitness is weight loss. This is where the calories in vs. calories out debate begins. The thought is that if you take in less calories than you expend each day then you will lose weight no matter what you eat. A burger for breakfast, french fries for lunch, and a milkshake for dinner would be just fine as long as it was under your caloric requirements. Is that really an option? Well, it depends on what you’re talking about.

People lose weight for two main reasons. One is aesthetic and the other health. The latest article on the affects of being overweight or obese seems to suggest that extra body fat is not necessarily detrimental to your health and may even have a positive affect. It’s easy to walk away from that feeling like extra body fat isn’t anything to worry about. However, that train of thought misses a very important point, namely, if you can be overweight and still healthy then perhaps the opposite is also true: you can be thin and still be very unhealthy.

Enter Fat Chance, Dr. Lustig’s book. He makes the claim that yes, being overweight is not necessarily unhealthy because the superficial body fat doesn’t kill you, metabolic syndrome does. Metabolic syndrome is your body chemistry gone haywire which can lead to conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Being overweight, Dr. Lustig says, can be a marker of this condition, but the two don’t have to come together. Excessive sugar intake, he argues, is the number one element that pushes obesity over into metabolic syndrome. This would explain the results of the study on overweight and obese individuals. It also backs the idea that it is possible to be a perfectly normal weight and still be very unhealthy on the inside.

So, to come back full circle, it it all about calories in calories out?  Is what calories in vs. calories out? If you just want to lose fat to achieve and aesthetic, then possibly yes.  However, it may also be true that you can be skinny on the outside and nevertheless unhealthy on the inside. If you’d like to be healthy you have to address what is going into your body and how that affects your body chemistry. Sometimes the aesthetic does not by default come with health benefits.

The best place to develop a plan that will give you both aesthetic results and health is with a fitness professional and/or a nutritionist. As with everything in fitness, the answer is simple and yet not simple, so get some guidance.