The extra sugar from the apples that doesn't get used up will be stored as fat. It's just far less likely to over eat on apples. If you ate until you were stuffed you could easily triple or quadruple calories in chips and your brain would signal for more tasty treats sooner to boot.

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A calorie is a calorie.

There was Professor a few years ago who went on a "twinkie diet" and lost weight. I think it would be harder in general to eat crap and lose weight as your body is still craving proper fuel, so end up eating more than 2000 calories.

Also, everything in moderation. An apple a day is a good thing, a dozen apples a day not so much.

So I just ate three oranges when I could have just eaten one cookie!!!! On the other hand, I got so stuffed from those oranges that I couldn't eat that cookie even if I wanted to...

And that one cookie might have been actually been better for you than three oranges...

Depending on type, the cookie might have had more fat, fibre and other nutritional properties than three sugar, water, and vitamin C filled oranges.

Darn it!!! And I just counted the calories: 254!!!! That could have been one nice juicy cookie. And that is half of my hard work running today (burned 500cals) wasted on oranges.

Found the Twinkie prof article:
http://www.cnn.com/...nkie.diet.professor/

The conversion of carbohydrates, once metabolised, into fat, even in instances of overfeeding, is exceptionally poor in humans. Other animals excel at it (pigs for example).

De novo lipogenesis is the term for this, some reading :- http://www.asbmb.org/...rticle.aspx?id=15872

However in circumstances of caloric overfeeding of carbohydrates will ensure that almost any other energy source (fat, protein) will be stored accordingly. Whilst there are all sorts of non-equal rates between ingestion and absorption (thermogenic effect etc) it still largely comes down to energy in vs energy out.

the whole calorie in/calorie out thing is just a first order approximation to how the body actually processes food. This assumes that insulin response won't vary with the type of food you eat, but that's just not true. Food high in sugar elicits insulin spikes, which in turn has other metabolic consequences.

Insulin is suppose to make the body turn excess glucose into fat, but if you have insulin spikes, then the nutrient will turn into fat before your body could actually extract the energy and expend it, which in turn makes you feel hungry. So while it's kcal in and kcal out, when it comes to dieting and caloric needs, this makes it much harder to shed weight due to the excess sugars.

Robert Lustig has done quite a bit of presentation on this, and while i don't agree with the hyperbole of going so far as calling sugar poisons, there is a point to be made that sugary food has quite a bit more impact than what their nutrition labels suggest

So sugary food results in insulin spikes which in turns makes you hungrier than a non sugary food. So you go and you eat. BUT if you do strict calorie counting and do not follow your hunger cues after a sugary food (I.e. you exercise your will power), then it won't be stored into fat, right???

And hunger cues not solely attributable to insulin. The hormone ghrelin can be affected by a number of factors. One of which may be the particular microflora present in the gut. Bacteria are seemingly a very crucial part of the puzzle.

It is massively complex and goes far beyond "sugar is bad".

as Tapeworm below mentions, it's a lot more complicated than that. The main take away here is that it's not a simple kcal in /kcal out. Also, that fat is already stored there after the insulin spike. You exercising control just means that you won't eat the extra amount equal to what has been converted to fat in order to satisfy your daily caloric needs. As a gross simplification, say you need 2000 kcal a day of normal food. To get to the 2000 kcal, you binged on sugar, some (say 100 kcal) of the sugar intended for metabolic functions gets shunted off into fat storage due to the insulin spike. You now have 100 kcal of sugar converted into fat, but the body still feels hungry as it's 100 kcal short. You exercising your will power means that you won't find another 100 kcal to meet that need, but some of the sugar has been converted to fat. This is one reason why dietary fibers are important as it slows down the rate of absorption of sugar and in turn makes the insulin response much more mild in comparison. This is also why it's recommended to eat small meals throughout the day as the associated insulin response won't be as drastic.

You are also operating under the assumption that your basal metabolic rate won't be affected when you feel starved. The truth is that it does. So now instead of needing to burn 2000 kcal a day, the starved body, in order to conserve, needs a less amount, and you'll have to adjust accordingly because hunger has adjusted down your basal caloric needs.

and the whole notion of exercising your will power is almost a bit too quaint. For one thing, did you know that people are more apt to give into their urges later on in the day after they've already made quite a few hard decisions? I'm sure if you are a full time fitness model or athlete you can make all the right decisions and exercise will power throughout the day, but for the average person with stress coming from job and home, it's quite a bit to ask.

When you say 'sugar' does it matter if it is fructose from fruits or refined sugar from a candy? Is all sugar equal from an insulin perspective?

One of the newer frontiers of research is a look into the micro biome- specifically in to the gut and the zillions of critters (fungi, bacteria, viruses etc.) which live there and feast on foodstuffs we ingest and products created within the digestive system.
One aspect of this environment challenges the long held fallacy that a calorie in to the system is automatically a calorie available to us (the human). Instead, a calorie may be consumed, destroyed or otherwise used by these critters and, thus, unavailable to us. Therefore, a given calorie in a person whose microflora uses that calorie does NOT "apply" to the human who has ingested it.
In other words, that calorie in is not necessarily a calorie in to the human's metabolism.
This could be a part of why calories in vs. calories out is not the same equation for everyone . Simplifying greatly, some people have guts which use those calories and, therefore, they are able to ingest more without seeing the expected weight gain.

All very true, but still somewhat misleading (without reading the acrticle you linked to) as it doesnt take into account the fact that a fat cell will happily store glucose as well as triglycerides

The truth is that the whole "starvation mode" thing is well and truly over hyped as is no where near severe as many make out.
http://hypothermics.com/...t-the-games-begin-2/

The short answer is yes a calorie is a calorie and you are correct that in order to lose weight you must create a calorie deficit.

Consuming exclusively one food group or as you mentioned one food source is certainly not optimal for an athlete in training or any human being for that matter, but yes you would lose weight if you were to do that.

Yes, yes fat cells can "absorb" glucose at a far great metabolic "cost" than storing of fatty acids - especially in adipose de novo lipogenesis - which is very metabolically inefficient, IIRC, like 25% "energy cost" to store glucose (and then covert to fat) vs 2% "cost" to store fatty acids straight up.

Guess which the body prefers to store, especially when carbohydrate intake is running high?

Happy to be corrected on that, in-depth physiology is not my strong suite. But the whole process is certainly more nuanced than "carbs get turned to fat".

How far did you run?

I ran 5k in 23:36 and then 3k in 17:01. My app tells me I burned about 480 calories. I am 130lbs.

As others have said, a calorie is a calorie. However, there are certain foods or food habits that make it easier to get more calories in. So you're right that from a pure weight loss perspective, it doesn't matter that you eat 2000 calories of chips or 2000 calories of apple. However if you eat 2000 calories of apple you're more likely to actually stop at 2000 calories (maybe apples and chips aren't a good example, but you get the idea).

sugar is a broad term as there are monosaccharides (glucose, fructose, and galactose) and disaccharides (e.g. sucrose). The body responds to these sugars differently as some have to be converted before used, and some are broken down faster than others. So insulin responses would be different

but as far as all fructose are concerned, there's no difference between fructose from candy and fructose from a fruit. But a fruit also has higher water content say compared to candy, and there's an issue of volume that comes into play. So while 60 kcal of candy (18grams) is primarily comprised of 15-16 grams of sugar, 60kcal of fruits is comprised of 15-16 grams of sugar and a lot more water, thus making a big difference as far as satiety is concerned.




not a peer reviewed study...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9734736
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-29056-5_22


granted, i could be wrong (have been previously regarding the Cori cycle as newer discoveries in the past 10 years differ from what i was taught), but the link you provided certainly isn't convincing

Do you know where I can get some of these critters, perferably the ones that like ice cream the best? : o)
If you could develop beer critters, you would be a billionaire

Fair enough. I ask only because in my experience one of the biggest traps for people trying to lose weight is over estimating expenditure. A rough rule of 100 cal per mile (factors speed/effort into it) seems to usually work but you're on the small side so might come in overstated. Most machines and watches are very complimentary in their estimations. Anyway - 480 sounds about right...

More to your original question:

I don't know if a calorie = a calorie anymore... I am open to persuasion that we don't understand the system well enough to assert that, but what I do know from personal experience is if you accurately track the number of calories in/out and observe effect on weight loss you can then increase/decrease rate of weight loss by adjusting your calories. It may not play out in the 3,500 cals = 1 lbs that always gets kicked around but you can compensate for the lack of insight into the system by working with the variables you can control.

You might lose weight faster eating 2,000 cals of vegetables a day than 2,000 cals of McDonalds, but either way if you keep what you eat more or less the same you can predictably influence change in weight by adjusting input.

FWIW

A calorie is not a Calorie.

(sorry, had to do it)

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Thanks!! I have been tracking my calorie intake as I am trying to lose 10lbs of baby fat. I used to always operate under the rule of eating unlimited veggies and fruits and never had any weight gain issues with that (but I also trained and raced a lot). Now I find that the unlimited fruits and veggies rule is not working in terms of weight loss. I actually have to stay within the alloted caloric intake and if I eat an extra apple and go over my daily caloric intake (net of exercise), I don't lose weight. It is bizzare and kind of makes me want to skip the fruit and just eat chocolate, lol.