Peanut butter and bananas on toast (Hi PixKristin!) to add:

Happy Birthday Nutty!

a calorie is a calorie in terms of weight gain, since weight loss is a result of expending more calories than you take in.

On the most simple level, that's true in a laboratory. However, studies have shown that calories often don't work that simplistically in people, for a variety of reasons, including: hormone levels; medications a person is taking; metabolic damage caused by previous attempts to diet, etc.

Unfortunately -- and I say this as a fat person who wouldn't complain if I were less fat -- the human body isn't a lab-calibrated calorimeter.

Also, and I don't want to discourage Alibelle or anyone else from dieting if that's what they want to do, but diets don't work. It's been proven, repeatedly, that over 95% of people who lose any amount of weight on a diet -- and I mean as little as 2 pounds -- cannot maintain the weight loss for longer than 5 years.

I'm not trying to jump on my fat acceptance soapbox; I just want to note that weight loss, and the maintenance of same, is very VERY hard.

However, studies have shown that calories often don't work that simplistically in people, for a variety of reasons, including: hormone levels; medications a person is taking; metabolic damage caused by previous attempts to diet, etc.

Right, but do those things lead your body to process a hamburger calorie different from a broccoli calorie? Or does it mean you process calories as a whole differently than other people?

Happy Birthday, Nutty!

The farmworkers told deputies the suspect woke them Saturday morning by rubbing spices on one of them and smacking the other with an 8-inch sausage.

Am I the only one wondering which spices were used? Really? OK.

Am I the only one wondering which spices were used? Really? OK.

No. No, you're not. Also - what kind of sausage?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NUTTY!!!

Happy Birthday Nutty!

Also, What Steph Said.

Also, I am about to go on a killing spree at work.

I'm not trying to jump on my fat acceptance soapbox; I just want to note that weight loss, and the maintenance of same, is very VERY hard.

I've stopped thinking about losing weight. I still go to the gym about five times a week. And I try to be reasonable about my diet (I'm not eating all these pies I'm making, I've given some away). I feel AMAZING just with the working out (and not for 3-4 hours, either, sometimes, just as little as a half an hour can feel good).

That's the metric I'm using--how good I feel. If I happen to lose some weight, yippee. If not, I still feel pretty damn good.

Also, and I don't want to discourage Alibelle or anyone else from dieting if that's what they want to do, but diets don't work. It's been proven, repeatedly, that over 95% of people who lose any amount of weight on a diet -- and I mean as little as 2 pounds -- cannot maintain the weight loss for longer than 5 years.

But I don't want to look like this anymore. I mean, there's changing a diet, but are my workouts futile as well?

Right, but do those things lead your body to process a hamburger calorie different from a broccoli calorie?

There is some evidence that simple carbohydrates cause more weight gain than their equivalent calories in protein and fat, possibly because they trigger an increase of insulin in the blood stream.