4000 Calories? Give me a break!

There's nothing more annoying than people perpetuating misinformation. When it's a medical professional that perpetuates this sort of crap then it's down right disgusting. As a medical professional there should be additional due diligence paid before sharing information, or in this case misinformation. It came to light after I responded that he is an RNY doctor. Hmmmm... methinks the plot thickens.

The issue on hand is a comment posted by an Ottawa based doctor. He stated, in summary, that Dsers need to eat 4000 calories in order to absorb 600 - 800. The rest is essentially pooped out.

WTF? For those that saw this post on the ObesityHelp Ontario forum my response is posted below. It outlines how to look at calories if you are so inclined to look at them at all. Smart DSers keep a close eye on their protein intake as well the amount of simple carbs that they eat (most shoot for between 30 and 120 grams of carbs dependent on where they are in their weight loss journey... I probably eat close to 100 grams). The rest just happens. Most DSers don't limit fat since it helps many that suffer from constipation to keep things regular. Similarly very few go out of their way to eat excessive amounts of fat for fats sake.

Anyway, my response:

Dr G****r,

Your post made me raise my eyebrows... 4000 calories a day to absorb only 600 - 800 calories?

Let's look at the math:

Dsers absorb 20% of the fat we eat. Therefore if we eat a diet that contains 4000 calories from fat alone, your comment is correct. We would absorb 800 calories. We would also need to have a toilet surgically attached to deal with eating 4000 calories of fat. Anyone who eats 4000 calories of fat would have issues

Dsers aim to eat 90 - 120g of protein a day. This is because we absorb approximately only 50% of the protein we eat. Leaving us with say 60g of protein absorbed. Use a simplistic 4 calories for each gram then we are absorbing 240 calories a day from this protein. This means we consume 480 calories to absorb that much.

Simple carbs are absorbed at 100%. 600 calories of simple carbs equals 600 absorbed.

Complex Carbs I believe (and this is the one area I have seen varying opinions on) we absorb about 60% of... the calculation is not far off the protein calculation

The sum of all this is that most Dsers, dependent on how far out they are from surgery and their own particular weight loss patterns, probably eat between 1200 and 2400 calories a day. The higher the fat intake the higher the calories.

Your comment about eating 4000 calories is very misleading to people who are just researching their options. In fact it is incorrect for the greater majority of DSers.

With respect

Ann - a dser who happens to have an analytical background and just can't walk away from the numbers :)