More than 20 years ago, you could've read in this column that the medical mainstream's weight-loss belief that "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" is horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. As a result, popular dietary advice rarely works in the long run.

But back then bodybuilders successfully and routinely! lost body fat and gained muscle mass by focusing on the ratio of protein, complex carbohydrates, simple carbohydrates, and fat consumed rather than the total calories consumed. Yet that column did not poke fun at how run-of-the-mill medicos clung to a concept clearly shown to be incorrect thousands upon thousands of times.Instead, you read about how the medical world couldn't be affected by anecdotal evidence despite its preponderance, that their pronouncements had to be backed by years of highly scrutinized scientific research replicated multiple times by multiple researchers.That time, finally, is approaching.Many in the mainstream now based on the "early" scientific research acknowledge the problems inherent in the "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" theory and that the types of calories you eat may be as important or even more important than the total number.In fact, James L. DiNicolantonia, PharmD, cardiovascular research scientist at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, now says, "Not all calories are the same," in part because of a study published in November of 2014 in the journal Public Health Nutrition that he co-authored.In a Medical News Today online article about the study, DiNicolantonia explains the inequality in calories this way: "The fact is that some calories will squelch a person's appetite and promote energy utilization, while others will promote hunger and energy storage." This explanation sounds similar to the bodybuilding belief from years ago that many now call nutrient partitioning.And other studies besides the one done at Saint Luke's suggest that the concept called nutrient partitioning significantly affects body fat loss and muscular gain.Consider the Tufts University study published in April 2015 by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition based on 16 years of follow-up study of three long-term studies comprising 120,000 male and female U.S. health professionals. It first verified what many see as common sense: that diets high in simple carbohydrates the refined grains, starches, and sugars that also carry a high glycemic load are more likely to create weight gain.And then the research got interesting.Further scrutiny determined that those subjects who had higher intakes of red meat and processed meats were even more strongly associated with weight gain than those solely associated with simple carbs but that applying the concept of nutrient partitioning partially negated that. In other words, the heavy meat eaters who ate more vegetables (complex carbs that carry a low glycemic load or the "good" carbs) and fewer refined grains, starches, and sugars (simple carbs that carry a high glycemic load or the "bad" carbs) did not gain nearly as much weight as the heavy meat eaters who also ate more "bad" carbs.As a result, Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D.,

Dr.P.H., dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston said their study "adds to growing new research that counting calories is not the most effective strategy for long-term weight management . . . . Some foods help prevent weight gain, others make it worse."So what's this all mean to you? That even if you have no intention of becoming a bodybuilder, you should understand and apply nutrient partitioning to your diet to take the mystery out of losing and gaining weight.Bodybuilders trying to strip away all but the essential body fat base their diets around just a few foods: eggs (mostly the whites) and oatmeal for breakfast; protein shakes for mid-morning snack; a lean protein source such as chicken, turkey, or tuna for lunch along with a salad of greens and steamed cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts; a snack before lifting weight with some simple carbs for quick energy, such as a piece of fruit or an energy drink; more lean protein with a baked potato and steamed vegetables for supper; and a protein shake for a final snack.Obviously, you don't need to be quite so limited to go, for instance, from 25 percent body fat to 15 percent. To do that, you simply need to cut back rather than cut out low-sugar cereals, healthy breads and pastas, and reduced-fat cheeses. You could even consciously increase your consumption of fat-free Greek yogurt since it is so high in protein.One closing caveat: Many methods of food preparation add calories to healthy foods that easily become body fat. Consider all the ways to consume potatoes, and you'll see how dramatic the difference can be.Buy a small, 100-gram raw potato at the grocery store, and you've purchased 74 calories. Bake it at home, eat it plain, and you'll consume roughly the same number of calories though the baked potato will weigh less because of the water lost in the baking process.Now ask a typical fast food restaurant to give you 100 grams of potatoes the way they prepare them, French fried. Now you're ingesting at least 300 calories, and the overwhelming majority of the new cals come from fat which easily transforms into body fat.Now ask a typical potato chip producer to make the same swap with you, and the increase in bad cals increases again. Now you are consuming at least 500 calories, and again, just about all the extra cals come from fat.