I do find it funny that the IIFYM parts was made to be the made thing to be concerned with ahha. It does work, I'm not saying it doesn't.

My main point was that there really does appear to be variable 'feeding efficiency' between individuals. It could give a better reason as to why some people have more trouble gaining or losing weight. Skinny people obviously are skinny because they eat less, but maybe some are predisposed as they aren't as efficient at extracting all of the nutrients from what they eat? I would like to know if such a thing is true. If a group of people were taken and given the same food, and there were variances in feeding efficiency, I would be interested to see it. Or, if they were given food made of the same calorie and macronutrient content, but different sources of food to make that content, would the feed efficiency be the same between them?



I know =]

i guess the point was that counting macros and calories based on food labels isn't as accurate as most would like to think..i only point out IIFYM because I have seen a lot of proponents of that bash on the idea of 'eating clean' as being a waste of time..there is no real definition of eating clean, but most do know that when people in general say that, it refers to more micronurient dense and calorie sparse foods..this article and my question further points that less processed foods may make it easier to lose weight because the body can't necessarily extract as many macronutrients from that food as it can from more highly processed foods

body composition will be determined by what the body absorbs vs what it uses - that is inescapable (and I understand that is the premise with IIFYM)...but, my point was that the quality of the food we eat should be based on more than just what the labels show for calories/fats/proteins/carbohydrates..if the caloric and macronutrient content of a food is X, but our body only extracts Y, then it

that is why people who diet end up doing a lot of continuing regulation and tweaking to figure out what it takes to lose, maintain, and gain, so for it to be perfect, it has to be done on an individual basis, which i am completely for

so, for example, if we were to determine two people need 2,000 kcals per day with 55% carb, 30% pro, and 15% fat and they go about it via different foods (or even the same food), is it possible that one person may be getting enough nutrients and the other may not, simply based on each person's ability to utilize the food they ingested? is it entirely as simple as counting the labels?

Not sure if youre taking into account fiber, as it speeds up digestion and may prevent digestion of other energy sources (not prevent, but make you dispose of the food before it can be fully digested).

I also think feed efficiency would be hella hard to measure and that difference in metabolism between different individuals will be a bigger factor to pay attention to.

The things brought up are pretty interesting
but they literally say nothing about idiosyncrasies as they're blanket statements
They talk about cooked vs raw food and I can accept variability there. The contention on that side of the argument is actually weakened by the fact that the more cooked & processed foods are (which constitutes our diets), the closer the calories are to what's on the label.

I sincerely doubt there's much difference in "feed efficiency" in terms of actual digestion, absorption, and utilization between two individuals. And there's no data to support any supposition like that either. However, where there IS a major difference in is things like NEAT, TEF, and hunger/satiety hormones. When grossly overfeeding individuals for several days to see metabolic responsiveness, they've shown a wide discrepancy in actual calories burned between individuals. Of course your body doesn't want to store more fat and will aim for homeostasis.. but some people are MUCH more "efficient" at not storing fat/burning fat and really, essentially increasing caloric expenditure to fight that off. The other data comes from actually seeing great differences in the hormonal satiety response post-prandially between those "naturally skinny/lean" individuals and those that aren't.

So yeah.. I think you're on the right track in the curiosity but I think you're focusing on the wrong things. Instead of on actual, like, food absorption and such, you should look at the other aspects. I'm pretty sure studies done on transiently eating mass amounts of food, to overfeeding for prolonged periods of time, to the use of laxatives / inducing vomiting have pretty much concluded that most of what goes into our intestines is absorbed and utilized with great celerity and efficacy.

what would you say about competitive eaters? like that Matt Stonie kid on youtube, #2 in the world and he's scrawny as hell. claims that after a certain point, food stops being digested and absorbed and just... exits.

Counting calories doesn't matter. Calorie counting does.
Think about it.
-Jaden Smith

counting calories is pointless just make a fist and fill your plate with veggies equating to its surface area and your outstretched hand for the proteins. win

I've never heard of that being true

Okay I've already made a previous post but to get into more, we can talk about the gut microbiome, though it's too nebulous to say anything for certain.

There's been studies (at least in other species) that suggest the gut microbiome is dynamic (obviously) and regulates absorption of certain things.

Here's one such study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3517662/

they basically showed a certain type of ubiquitous gut bacteria greatly increased the absorption of lipids into the enterocytes and increased number/size of subsequent lipid droplets. This implies actually MORE absorption of the same fats occurring which would clearly lead to an increase in the # of calories.

Furthermore, this bacteria in particular has been found in many obese patients and is more proliferative in times of food abundance. They've shown there's a shift in the major phylum of gut bacteria when food is more scarce.. and that also means less lipid absorption.

I have no idea how/why the bacteria would actually be augmenting lipid absorption. One possibility is that they produce a large amount of short chain fatty acids and that's where a bulk of it comes from. Perhaps it's a specific phylum (ie the ones that are more present in food abundance) that produce more of them? Probably something else to do with a majority of this noted effect though.

Corroborating these findings and thoughts, it's been shown elsewhere, such as here (and others actually, I just remembered the title to this one exactly): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC524219/ --- that germ free mice lacking a gut microbiome were actually leaner than their counterparts. And that introducing a canonical flora to these animals, they became obese. Interesting thought. I believe this would imply the gut microbiota is negative in any sense, it just happens that there are "lesser evils" down there.

You know I love intermittent fasting / time-restricted feeding, so here's a recent study exploring some of the complex dynamics of the microbiome under certain conditions: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413114005051

And what do you know.. as I said above about diff types of bacteria, this found something similar: "TRF Decreases Relative Amounts of Presumed Obesogenic Microflora and Increases Relative Amounts of Presumed Obesity-Protective Microflora"

Going back to the first study I cited, they did propose a few mechanisms by which the gut microbiome affected lipid absorption:

"We propose four nonexclusive mechanisms by which microbes might stimulate FA absorption and LD accumulation in enterocytes. First, microbes might increase bioavailability of FAs by modifying the production or composition of bile salts (Swann et al., 2011). Second, microbes could directly contribute to luminal lipolytic activity that promotes FA availability for potential absorption in the intestinal epithelium (Ringø et al., 1995). Third, microbes might enhance FA absorption indirectly by evoking physiologic responses in the intestinal epithelium that stimulate its inherent absorptive capabilities. Finally, the microbiota might reduce rates of fatty acid oxidation in intestinal epithelial cells permitting increased storage of FA in LDs."

I won't go too much further. The gut microbiome is one of the most interesting topics to me and I've love to keep discussing it.. but in terms of how it actually affects ABSORPTION? I have no idea. I've really only seen that 1-2 studies on that specifically.
So I'll end with an incredible figure from a very recently published paper. This should give some of you others that aren't up on the research behind it how exactly the gut microbiome could impact our body to promote obesity, diabetes, inflammation, etc.

how can clean foods be real if our iifym isnt real

brb, loose str and weight
bulking fail