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Comment by mholmes680 | Hacker News Reader

But, wait....

#10 - eat less fat? That runs counter to science too...

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-con...

Fat is very dense in calories, so if your goal is to reduce caloric intake, reducing the fat will go a long ways towards that goal.

That is first order thinking.

If eating fat satisfies you for longer than salty carbs, the net calories will be better. If it keeps your insulin levels steadier, it will effect calorie absorption. And so on.

Humans are not bunsen burners: we are impossibly complicated chemical systems with massive reflexivity built into them.

But calories from fat are more satisfying and might very well let you eat less calories over all.

This is why I can't see anyone eating 4000 calories of fat without feeling so full they'll throw most of it back up.

I have eaten 4000 calories of fat in an afternoon, mostly in cream and butter as part of a giant poundcake trifle [0]. I didn't throw up but I really regretted it all evening. This was at a time when I was very active and eating around 7000 calories a day.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifle

Supposedly, this works if you eat fat and protein with very limited carbs, if any. For instance, I would gag if I had to eat those sticks of butter by themselves, but I can easily eat a lot of slices of cake. This all is the basis of a ketogenic diet, kind of like Atkins on steroids

>Fat is very dense in calories, so if your goal is to reduce caloric intake, reducing the fat will go a long ways towards that goal.

This thinking empowers so much over-eating in today's diet world. There's a trope with the broken low-fat wisdom that when you buy low-fat foods, you're almost always buying high-sugar high-salt foods (have to replace flavor somehow).

Even worse, upper intestinal lipids trigger a feeling of satiation, of fullness, through the gut–brain–liver axis.

If you deprive yourself of lipids, you deprive yourself of satiation -- eating a healthy mix of fats in your meals helps you feel more full and sated and eat overall less, and feel good about eating overall less.

If you buy processed foods that are advertised as fat-free or low-fat variations of foods that would typically be expected to be other than low- or non-fat, yes. A head of cabbage doesn't have sugar added to it to make some kind of low-fat cabbage.

I'm regretting commenting now. Like a bikeshed next to a nuclear plant, anybody who has ever lost any amount of weight has an opinion on how it's done.

Reducing fat reduces caloric intake. Note the word reduce (I even emphasized it), instead of remove, or replace. Yes, fats are a healthy part of a good diet. No, you should not omit them.

Of course, don't take my word for it. RTFOP, which made the recommendation in the first place.

Reducing fat reduces caloric intake.

Looks like you're doubling down. Your statement is 100% correct. The problem is, fat calories are more satisfying than non-fat calories, so you are more likely to eat less if you eat protein + fat instead of protein + carbs + less fat. That's just the wait it works.

One should eat less fat and carbs, but in doing so one will be less satisfied and be more likely to snack or eat larger portions later, negating the effect.

The problem is that while I am a good and level-headed person, my future self is a hungry bastard.

From a metabolic point of view, that is correct. What others are trying to point out is there is a mental aspect to that, involving our appetite feedback loop. The human body is a highly interdependent system, not a set of isolated microservices.

The way I view it is to maximize the enjoyment out of food. Don't just view it as fuel to be ingested as fast as possible; savor it! Appreciate the flavor of that rice, that bacon. It may sound like becoming a food snob—which it can if one has elitist tentencies—but it's more about appreciating the components that make up the food we eat, and turning it into an art.

An implied requirement for that is to slow down and take the time to eat. There's about a 20m delay for the feedback loop of satiation to occur. So eating slowly and in courses gives our bodies the time to appreciate what is coming in and for the mechanisms to provide better feedback. I'm always amazed at how some can ingest a 1800 kcal meal in 15 minutes: no feedback can happen that fast.

(Disclaimer: yes I'm French)

> Reducing fat reduces caloric intake.

Indeed, but people who want to "lose weight" actually don't care how heavy they are, they care how they look and want "to be slimmer" which is the actual result we're trying for while colloquially using the term "lose weight" to describe that effect.

(this is of course a sweeping over-generalization where there are actually a number of other reasons, related to health, fatty liver etc...)

With a goal of "BEING SLIMMER" we're actually more interested in draining triglycerides from our fat cells so they shrink. (after that we can induce apoptosis and kill them off via freezing but that's another story).

Since the goal is to drain fat cells, we're actually better served by keeping our bodies in the state where they are "emptying the fuel tanks (stored fat)" as opposed to "burning the cheap stuff (carbohydrates)"

By reducing CARB intake we can keep the fat-cells open and draining. BUT in order to reduce carb intake, we have to replace it with a macronutrient which will induce satiety.

Dietary fat is that macronutrient.

It you a eat a lot of fat you will get fat too. Its all about moderation. If you eat 4000 calories of FAT everyday you will get fat.

Eating 4000 calories of anything will make you fat.

Eat (drink) 4000 calories of gasoline. wont make you fat. point is: only calories you can convert into "human fat" will make you fatter. that process can not happen without certain chemicals (hormones) in your body, like insulin mentioned above. it's not as straightforward as that which was op's point.

Are your confusing nutritional calories with physics calories? When people talk about diet, of course they are talking about calories obtained from digestion, not combustion engines.

Energy is energy, a calorie is a calorie in gasoline, food or electricity. However when talking about nutrition labels, those are generally an estimate of calories potentially extracted by humans (which I think is what you mean with nutritional calories). I'm not confusing anything. But some people seem convinced that the car analogy is exactly how the human body works - you put food into your mouth and it gets "burned" by exercise or stored (calories in, calories out) and no amount of evidence or science seems to convince them otherwise.

Have fun eating 4000 calories of carrots, cabbage, broccoli.. even eating brown rice is hard! Carrots have about 200 calories per pound, so we are talking about 20 pounds of carrots per day. Brown rice (cooked) has about 200 calories per cup, so again, 20 cups of brown rice?

Meanwhile a cup of vegetable oil has about 1900 calories.

The 7.4oz bowl of organic brown rice on the desk in front of me has 310 calories. It's roughly a cup by volume as well. I could easily eat 15 of them over the course of a day.

Not if you burn those same 4000 calories a day.

Unless you're Micheal Jai White[0] or Dwayne Johnson[1], you won't burn 4000 extra (kilo)calories a day.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fylDp1VtZbA&t=2m30s

[1] http://www.muscleandfitness.com/nutrition/meal-plans/smell-w...

My running app estimates I burned a bit over 4000 calories in the marathon I ran last weekend!

Though clearly this is an exceptional event, not something I could do even semi-regularly.

> It you a eat a lot of fat you will get fat too. Its all about moderation. If you eat 4000 calories of FAT everyday you will get fat

Calories-in-calories-out without considering the hormones that drive both satiety and crucially fat-storage-vs-fat-mobilization (and thus drive both how many calories are craved and how many are burned) is misguided. CICO isn't wrong, but for all practical purposes what drives CICO in real life are those hormones, which are in turn affected by the ratio of fats and carbs in diet: chiefly insulin and leptin. How those are affected by 4000kcal-of-carbs-low-fat (badly) vs 4000kcal-of-fat-no-carbs (benign/beneficially) is easy to find out.

4000kcal of fat and low carbs, if one could stomach it for years, after a few weeks of keto-adaptation? They'd be a tad little bit fatter than they'd like, and feel profusely hot and sweaty. As their leptin and insulin sensitivity gets ever-better, 4000kcal will soon become impossible to stomach, however. 4000kcal of carbs and low fat for years, just become obese and get metabolic syndrome.

> Calories-in-calories-out without considering the hormones

Your argument here boils down to: CICO is easier with a balanced diet. I don't think a reasonable person is going to argue against that.

> after a few weeks of keto-adaptation? They'd be a tad little bit fatter than they'd like

Honestly, if they could stomach it, they'd balloon up just as much as its opposite. Keto-adaptation doesn't change how your body processes fat, it just does a better job of not making a person feel ill when eating more fat in their diet.

> I don't think a reasonable person is going to argue against that.

You'd be surprised.

Can confirm. Did a year long dirty-bulk on a ketogenic diet while lifting heavy weights, got fat (and didn't really put on that much extra muscle either)...

What was your daily diet like?

Lots of eggs, bacon, beef, cheese, 35% cream and peanut butter.

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