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Q. Does it matter what I eat as long as it's under my calorie count for the day?

A: This is the question that has generated a raging controversy in nutrition for years. The short answer is that, yes, it absolutely matters, but that doesn't mean you can ignore calories.

Conventional wisdom — which is often not very wise and certainly isn't in this case — is that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. This has been the premise behind all calorie-counting programs including Weight Watchers (which simply substitutes "points" for calories), and it is certainly the dominant theory today. You can always count on a spokesman for the American Dietetic Association to give voice to the position that it doesn't matter what you eat; what matters is how many calories you consume.

A More Complicated Truth
The body really doesn't behave like a calorimeter. It behaves more like a chemistry set. The food you eat actually triggers a whole series of hormonal events, which can either set you up for fat loss or make fat loss fiendishly difficult. So, yes, calories count — but where they come from matters a lot, as well.

As far back as 1957, two researchers, Kelwick and Pawan, investigated the question of whether what you ate matters in an ingenious way. They put volunteers on a carefully controlled diet of 1,000 calories a day, but one-third of the subjects ate 90 percent protein, one-third ate 90 percent fat and one-third ate 90 percent carbohydrates. The results were interesting and counterintuitive: Those on the 90 percent protein diet lost .6 pounds a day. Those on the 90 percent fat diet lost .9 pounds a day. And those on the 90 percent carbohydrate diet actually gained a little. Though the research findings are not all in agreement, enough studies now exist for us to be pretty sure that it's easier to lose weight (especially body fat) with more protein and fat and less carbs in the diet, even when calories are kept at the same level.

But this has often been wrongly interpreted to mean that calories don't count. I frequently hear from people who think they're "doing Atkins" by eating unlimited amounts of fatty meat and cheese — sometimes thousands of calories a day worth — and are wondering why they aren't losing. The fact is, calories most definitely do count — but they're not the whole story.

This was never better illustrated than by another ingenious study done by Penelope Green at Harvard, who put one group of dieters on a "low-carb" diet of 1,800 calories a day (2,100 for men) and another group of dieters on a standard, "low-fat" diet of 1,500 calories a day (1,800 for men). (She had a third group, but I'll tell you about them in a minute.) You'd think that if calories were all that mattered, the low-fat/low-calorie folks would have done better. But they didn't. The low-carb group actually lost a little bit more weight, even though they were consuming 300 calories more than the low-fat group.

An Interesting Twist
Dr. Green had a third group that combined the "best of both worlds." She put them on low-carb fare but kept their calories at the lower level — 1,500 low-carb calories for women and 1,800 low-carb calories for men. And guess what?

This group lost the most weight of all.

So for the best results, keep your calories relatively low — your goal weight times 10 is a good starting place — but also pay attention to where those calories come from. Clean, quality protein, good fat, unlimited vegetables and as little sugar as you can manage. Get the white stuff out and concentrate on "Paleolithic" food — stuff your ancestors could have hunted, fished, gathered, plucked or grown, stuff your great grandmother would recognize as food.

The bottom line: Calories really do matter, but they're just not the whole story. If you concentrate on eating real food — and less of it — you may not have to count calories as carefully.

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