Is Fat Killing Us, or Is Sugar?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Last time I was out with one of my good friends from high school, he ate two 8 ounce burgers in a sitting. He's probably 5'8" and no more than 150 lbs.
There's a huge variation in people's appetite.
I kinda fancied myself as John Candy in the Great Outdoors.
Today - things are different; I try to be a little more selective in my meals.
I've noticed that when I'm used to overeating, it can take a lot of food to hit that point where my brain says "okay, I'm done". When I'm eating a more controlled diet, I hit that full point a lot faster.
That isn't to say I couldn't stand to eat less, or eat better today.
Nor is it to say I am not overweight - I am. But I've kinda gotten to the point that I just don't want to always be "lookin' over my shoulder" at what I eat. Instead, I just eat what I want to eat, when I want it, and just try to eat less of it. That includes better food, too.
I also try to exercise more; lately I've been doing 3-5 mile hikes with a friend on a Saturday and Sunday (or I'll do them by myself if he doesn't feel like going). I've been thinking about increasing that to a daily regimen (after work).
I also don't drink as much soda as I used to, and when I do, I try to drink only diet sodas. Otherwise I'll drink water (or if I am having a meal at home, I typically drink milk - but not always).
But yeah - there was a time I could easily eat that much, and blow past 2k calories no problem in a single meal. I could probably do it today, if I wanted to (but I'd feel bad afterward).
Plus - while it's easier to do with fast food - it can be done with regular food, too. One good-sized 24oz well-marbled rib-eye, a baked potato with all the fixin's, some kind of vegetable on the side, a salad with dressing, plus a large glass of milk - that's all enough to get you close if not over 2k calories.
Oh, yes. And I'm not even that overweight.
A huge sandwich, 32 oz of liquid, tons of fries, and then another cup of liquid?
Somewhere about mid-way through that a normal human being should feel sick and stop eating. That's not a "small" meal by any measure.
You'd be surprised. It's also not about the volume. You can have the same amount of calories in much smaller volumes... -- heck, even in a salad with the right dressing.
Which leads to the blunt advice I give most people seeking to lose weight. Sure, you might be genetically predisposed to have a slow metabolism, but at the end of the day "calories in / calories out" is as absolute a fact as it gets (of course, all things in moderation). So I say "You have two options: Eat less, work out more, pick the one you like."
"Eat better" is probably better/more useful vague advice. You can eat a whole lot of salad/veggies and it wont end up being that many calories (so, in this case, you're eating MORE, but consuming less energy/fewer calories). Same with meat. It's hard not to lose weight if you're eating a lot of (leaner) meat, because you feel extremely full after a couple hundred calories worth. If you start modifying your diet, your cravings will change too. It's all about these weird feedback loops.
How you do it doesn't matter. (eat more volumetric food or stop drinking soda, doesn't matter)
Exactly, so don't have any of that stuff around you. Easy calories makes for easy pounds. If you had to actually go out and get that bag of chips you're craving, you're far less likely to do it. Within a week of abstinence, you're not even craving them anymore.
There was once a time that I could put down a Costco box of Goldfish crackers (7400 calories) in an evening of hacking, with a few cans of Coke (another 600) to wash it down with. A package of Oreo cookies is north of 2500 calories. A "single serving" pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream is well over 1k calories.
Eating 4k calories well is hard - caloric density in good foods isn't nearly what it is in bad foods, and you're just going to physically fill up your stomach. Eating it poorly is, sadly, way too easy.
First of all, due to a variety of reasons the caloric energy mentioned on the package or menu is a very rough estimate of the amount of ATP which can be generated from it. [1]
Second of all, the psychological effects of dieting, due to the strong habitual, cultural and social effects should certainly not be underestimated. Your statement 'to pick the one you like' already indicates the emotional undertones. Just keeping a tally with calories in vs. calories out ignores this fact, instead of tackling it head on. It is much better advice to talk about making a list of: "if this, then that". For example: "I will always do exercise two times a week, three if possible. On holidays, I will find alternative means." or: "Although with care, I will not obsess about caloric intake during dinner parties.". This kind of advice works long term and creates some easy rules to keep during difficult times.
Thirdly, and most importantly: certain molecules, such as fructose and alcohol, do not participate in the feedback loop to the brain to stop consuming. Although we can practice willpower, it is much easier and tenable to consume these products together with products that contain molecules that do, such as fibers. [2]
Lastly, when exercising, it is not unlikely to increase weight due to increased muscle mass and added fat due to cold water or wind.
[1] Scientific American, fwiw. With a bit more search you should be able to find better references: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-reveals-w... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15181085
It's basically like "ignore air resistance" for most day-to-day physics problems.
The average person doesn't escape insulin responses. Counting carbs and preferring fatty foods is easier than counting calories and helps the person far more.
Well, some people can - I remember a period in my life when I was training about 10 times a week (4 BJJ sessions, 3 endurance sessions, 3 weights sessions) and having trouble maintaining my bodyweight. I was also living rent-free on a grad student stipend and nominally working on my thesis with very few other obligations and about zero social life. I was also in my 20s.
As a 'normal person' the only way I have ever lost weight is by eating less. The idea that you can exercise your way out of Fatfuckistan is absurd once you hit maturity or middle age. If I tried to train 10 times a week (the way I did) now my joints would disintegrate. Conversely, even running a small but consistent calorie deficit allowed me to lose 70 grams a day for a 15kg weight loss (mostly fat), with the same moderate training schedule that I had previously been getting fat on.
That advice might be true, bit its also totally useless in solving poverty.
The hole argument for different diets is based on alternative theories of how different foods affect your body and/or mind.
To take absurd example, maybe carrots move energy from building fat cells into a process that converts your blood to carrot juice. You could eat the same amount (in calories) of carrots and something else, spend all the energy and still end up with a different body.
That's what the debate is about. Just telling people to run more or eat less will simply not work. Running (Sports) by it self, is essentially proven to not be effective for weight lost. You can actually train fat people to run marathons.
Any diets, workout routines, lifestyle changes, etc. will change in input/output ratio that will give different results.
No, it's actually not. From TFA: "Still, further research has shown that calories eaten are only part of what determines weight. Our metabolism reflects an interplay of things like genes, hormones, and the bacteria that populate the gut, so how much energy we absorb from what we eat varies from person to person."/
Or, you work out more, but then you get a lot more hungry. So you end up eating more. If you try to fight both these conditions, then you end up miserable (i.e., constantly hungry, or miserable when trying to do more exercise).
What is really needed is lifestyle tweaks. For example, if it is a habit to grab a donut or two from the box that someone brings into the office, you need to figure out how to not do that (i.e., relate that donut to doing an additional workout) -- eventually you may be able to convince yourself that the donut is poison, and therefore avoid it.
For the exercise part -- first get in shape (takes about a month or two of daily 1-hour aerobic exercise such brisk walking or using an elliptical). Then, if you are close enough to work, at the start of spring start riding a bicycle to work at least once a week. Then 2 - 3 times a week. A 15-mile ride takes about an hour, and burns enough calories that you don't really have to worry about what you eat.
You can also make a habit out of going for a walk at night for an hour or so -- that should burn around 500 calories. And increase your metabolism. Also, if you typically eat fast food for lunch, change to a sandwich shop, or pack a lunch.
Stating the laws of thermodynamics to people who are struggling to lose weight or trying to understand how our biology works isnt helpful and just comes across as smug. It's like being a mathematician and looking down on all other fields as just being derived from math.
All in the name of science, of course.
I read a large milkshake at McD's has 850 calories, and I cannot imagine it costs more then 6 bucks.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/about-our-food/nutrition-...
For example, if you eat a breakfast of a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit with a hashbrown; a lunch of a quarter pounder and cheese with medium fries, and a dinner of a double quarter pounder with cheese and medium fries, that ends up being 2,580 calories (2,500 is considered the norm for a man to keep his body weight).
I find it pretty easy to eat a whole bag of chips (1500ish kcal) and a bottle of soda (250ish kcal) in one sitting, but I likely wouldn't feel too well an hour or two afterward. Same goes for candy, it's so easy to just eat hundreds of calories when you're at your desk and not thinking too hard about it.
If I were trying to maximize my caloric intake at McDonald's, I'd probably get the burger and also a large fries (500kcal) with the BBQ sauce (I could probably go through 3 or 4 packets at 50kcal each, so that's another 1-200) and a large soda (300kcal), for a total of 1800 kcal. Still not a fully day's worth, but close.
The really hard part is getting sufficient protein for gaining muscle mass, especially if you're lactose intolerant or vegan/vegetarian...
I find it effortless. Some IHOP menu items, for example, are like 2000 calories, and I can gulp them in one sitting -- and one 1-2 16oz cokes on top--, and I'm not even that overweight. My "maintain weight" caloric requirements are about 2300 calories.
>If you're ordering at McDonald's, your best calorie/dollar ratio [edit: s/your best/my preferred] is the ~800 calorie double quarter pounder with cheese for ~6 dollars. My daily caloric requirements are estimated at 3000 calories based on my age and gender, which means I'd have to eat a little under four of these.
Why stick it to the best calorie/dollar ratio? All the parent said is that it's easy to eat a whole day's worth of calories in one sitting.
McDonalds large fries: 510 calories. McDonalds Double quarter pounder with cheese: 800 McDonalds 2 packets of ketchup on said fries: 30 calories McDonalds Large Coke: 310 calories
That's 1650 right there.
The Chicken Piccata at Cheasecake factory for another example is 2,120 calories by itself. And that's without any appetiser. Then have a cheesecake after lunch for another 1000. Oh, and a coke for 100 more -- or a coffee with milk and sugar. Total tally? 3320.
Also not sure about this "3000 calories" estimation (unless you're very tall, exercising etc). The commonly cited figure is that the average man needs 2500 calories per day to maintain weight.
1. Various health outcomes and indicators are caused by a food or combination of foods that you regularly eat.
2. A diet is studied where these foods get removed from your diet, to be replaced with whatever the diet under study is.
3. The participants in the diet study have poorer than average health outcomes and indicators (otherwise, why would they try changing their diet?)
4. Regression to the mean happens, and all sorts of dietary changes appear to be good for your health.
Basically, if you're fatter than average, and it's caused by the foods you eat, you can fix that by making a list of everything you eat and not eating those foods. "Whatever you don't eat" is a more average diet than what you're currently eating, so you'll get more average results.
(This idea shamelessly stolen from HN user jimrandomh. Hopefully I didn't butcher the details too badly.)
Because they're asked to, as part of the experiment?
>4. Regression to the mean happens, and all sorts of dietary changes appear to be good for your health
Why would the mean be better, since in (3) you mentioned that those people had "poorer than average health outcomes and indicators" to begin with? For regression to the mean, they should have started the diet after some extreme readings. But who said those are what prompted them to the diet? People don't start on a diet when they get extremely heavy, they start and stop diets all the time, while being continuously obese.
>Basically, if you're fatter than average, and it's caused by the foods you eat, you can fix that by making a list of everything you eat and not eating those foods. "Whatever you don't eat" is a more average diet than what you're currently eating, so you'll get more average results.
Well, if you eat the same calories from your new "Whatever you don't eat", then you'll get as fat.
Let me try another way to word the same concept: why would an actor in the best shape of their life with a personal chef and nutritionist participate in the experiment? Similar logic goes for less extreme examples on this end of the curve.
>For regression to the mean, they should have started the diet after some extreme readings.
They're obese, their diet is an extreme reading from the space of possible diets. They're choosing foods that only satisfies their various needs at a caloric quantity that causes weight gain.
>But who said those are what prompted them to the diet? People don't start on a diet when they get extremely heavy, they start and stop diets all the time, while being continuously obese.
Caloric restriction diets and food choice diets aren't the same thing here. People usually start and stop diets all the time because caloric restriction diets have huge user experience issues. Specifically, the very common yoyo dieting; you feel bad about being fat so you decide to do something about it, then you do caloric restriction in a way that fails to meet many of your other needs, then you abandon the diet because the stress of not meeting your needs starts to outweigh the negative feelings from being fat.
>Well, if you eat the same calories from your new "Whatever you don't eat", then you'll get as fat.
If your current diet meets your needs at an above-average number of calories, you won't eat the same number of calories (unless you try to manually control caloric intake through some variant of calorie counting).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t8r4h http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1amh2t_bbc-horizon-sugar-v...
Also, what kind of fat? Saturated fats are very stable and easily used by the body -- in my opinion they have very very different health effects compared to cheap, polyunsaturated fats.
"avoid processed foods"
"All faddish diets are wrong and exercise is important"
"the combination of fat and sugar is bad" (not just one or the other but foods full of both like donuts are bad)
Lustig and other scientists believe that excess fructose consumption may be a key driver of many of the most serious diseases of today. These include obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease and even cancer."
See many, many studies about this on http://nutritionfacts.org
They tested this with mice, one set would have unlimited fat, another unlimited sugar, and the third set the combination of sugar and fat. Surprisingly, the first two sets of mice would stop eating when they were full. Only the third set of mice would go on eating and eating..
What? What about avocados, coconuts, olives, artichokes, soybeans…
I'd more buy the argument that our body tries to maintain a certain ratio of fats to sugar (which is usually mediated by fiber), rather than that humans historically haven't "experienced" foods with both fat and sugar…
I still don't know how much I trust the claims that fat+sugar is particularly bad, but I suspect it may have to do with some kind of second order insulin response. Like, the presence of triglycerides in the blood cause fat cells to be more likely to respond to insulin, storing fat, instead of releasing it. I dunno.
Also keep in mind GI is falling out of fashion as a key indicator. Glycemic Load seems to be more indicative of poor health indicators. That is to say, that the area under the curve is potentially more important than the max height of the curve. I'd say limiting both is probably important as well. I also highly suspect that the slope of the curve is very important in how we perceive hunger, which is why we tend to feel hungry shortly after eating foods with fast carbs...
FWIW, at the end of the day, in order to keep my wife healthy, we ended up giving up fast carbs, and she had to keep her carb count low in general. Her basic formula for a snack was to add the grams of fat+ grams of protein, and if that was bigger than the grams of carbs it was safe to eat.
Sorry I don't have links to this stuff, this was like 5 years ago, and I'm not sure if I ever saved those bookmarks. I can say it was really hard to find credible data sets. There didn't seem to be anything from America (draw your own conclusions :) ), most of everything I found was published datasets from Australia and New Zealand. Also, don't take this for anything other than anecdata, do your own research. You'll find very quickly a lot of really bad nutrition information. I had to plow through most of it, and might have given up if it wasn't for my pregnant wife, coupled with a friend with a digital signal processing background pointing out engineering problems with most of the current thoughts on controlling diabetic blood sugar levels.
1: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32798569
2: I assume measured to 25ml which is the low end of single shot size, to be in line with the standard units of alcohol they mentioned.
That's the only thing I'd really be interested in.
I wasn't at all impressed with the depth of the research they did before starting their experiment, their ability to stick to their diets, and their general understanding and approach to the potential science they could have been doing.
The whole thing was a superficial puff piece that you can't take seriously when evaluating something as important as health.
Poorly written article that felt more like a defensive hit piece (e.g., dedicating eight paragraphs to destroying the credibility of Sylvia Tara) than something that sought to answer the question posed by its title.
I like Taubes work because he's thorough and refutable (notably in refuting a lot of other studies). Doesn't mean he's always right, but I've yet to see arguments against his work that are as sound as the one he brought to the table.
Longevity like this is virtually all genetics, so it wouldn't validate any such hypothesis.
Following a paleo-keto diet has been working wonders for me, I never felt or looked better in my 30+ years. So I think fats, when they are high quality, are the best source of fuel for the body.
I read somewhere that when they want to fatten up lab mice they feed them a mixture of 70% sugar and 30% fat or something similar. When you make something much more delicious and available than what appears in nature, it screws with an animal's energy balance signals.
Whenever your diet consists of carbs and fat nutrients, the fat is going to be immediately stored in your fatty tissues, and any excess carbs that you can't burn quickly will go there also.
And if for whatever reason you're not eating enough fat, your body will crave sugar.
So basically eat healthy fats. If you don't eat enough healthy fat (e.g. from walnuts), your body will start craving unhealthy fats. And if you don't eat either then your body will crazy sugar as a last resort.
As far as I can tell that's basically the secret to staying healthy, just make sure to get enough walnuts and avocado or whatever, and once you have your RDI of healthy fats then craving unhealthy fats or sugar won't be an issue.
Does that mean you haven't included sugar in your foods yourself, or you've managed to avoid eating any prepared food since you started?
Practically all prepared foods contain sugar, though they might not call it that in the ingredients list. When next you go boy chicken or turkey, read the list of ingredients. I'm talking about the raw forms, not the already cooked ones. It's shocking.
For me, the big change was desserts. I was a fiend for those. I've tried a lot of things to ween myself from eating and binging on sugary treats. I wasn't expecting IF to be the thing that worked. That was totally unexpected.
That's in contra to how my system responds - it craves fat when I'm not eating enough of it. Since I gave up eating (refined) sugar, I don't even think about it.
I buy that argument with high-fat zero-sugar diet, but is there a reasonable evidence that eating a high-sugar but low-fat diet is healthy?
There are essential fatty acids, there are essential amino acids (protein), but there are no essential carbohydrates.
The "need" for sugar is completely manufactured, literally and figuratively.
Exercise will make most people healthier in general, particularly stuff associated with your cardiovascular system. We know that. That doesn't mean exercise will make you anything else associated with good health. It might not make you thinner, it might not change any sort of index based on medical tests normally done on inactive people. It might not even make you better looking or hotter in any way. We don't actually know any of that other stuff for sure.
This all simplifies things a lot. The advice should be: "get some exercise every once in a while. Don't worry so much about stuff that we don't actually know."
Yes, it may be true that healthier people are more likely to exercise exactly because they are already healthy, but I would imagine that is true in less that 1% of the population.
Maybe what you meant was that, all things being equal, someone who is strong and healthy is more attractive. That's probably true.
But as upofadown pointed out, there are lots of people who are very healthy and strong, and exercise a lot, but their body shape or fat percentage doesn't conform to the desires of the average voyeur.
Not trying to make a serious point about health.
> do you have to cite your expertise as an ogler of women
You are misappropriating my comment.
That's why I ignore the headlines and read the paper of any study that I'm interested in.
For me, probably most is the highly sedentary office lifestyle.
Compounding this problem, I more or less live alone and thus 'community food' (eating out) is my best access to non-frozen pre-prepared meals. I refuse to do leftovers (this is not negotiable).
The main problem with eating out is the portion size. Everything is insanely large.
I don't really know what your post is about. It starts with the word "Yes" (???) and then gives a ton of incoherent excuses for something which isn't specified.
Do you see a difference between eating leftovers and preparing a future meal? For example, I may cook extra chicken for dinner, chop up the extra pieces and put them in a salad for the next day's lunch.
Not the most healthful path you're on :/
not too much sugar.
not too much fat.
not too much food.
eat more green veges.
not too much carbon/charcoal.
avoid processed stuff.
but most important: don't tell anyone else. If everybody does it then the food industry will insidiously alter itself to pull people back in while finding a way to make good things bad.
Here's the executive summary:
1. Do not eat more calories than you need. 2. Exercise 3 times a week (or more if you have time and enjoy it), with moderate intensity 3. Ensure that most of your meals follow a good macro nutrient profile (but if you have to cut something, do it in carbs --> fat --> protein order)
Not sure why people have such difficulty grasping those concepts and will come up with statistically irrelevant anecdotes in futile attempts to prove the main concepts wrong.
Eat too many carbs/sugars -> more insulin which yields more body fat.
After awhile, I begin to notice that my body's constantly telling me what feels good or not. Sometimes good health is nothing more than a bit of awareness and experimentation.
Obesity is epidemic in our society because the food available to us presses all the "this feels good" buttons. Most people eat what feels good to them; the healthiest are the ones who intentionally restrict themselves from eating what their brains tell them they should be eating.
Another possible angle, we're so out of touch with our bodies, our emotions, our very selves. That we've essentially numbed ourselves to the signals that our body's constantly sending us.
Sitting children down in neat little rows for 16 years, while hammering them into preconceived form; no play, no socialization, no getting to know self, this seems to have a deleterious effect on their awareness.
Funny thing is that I subscribed to that often-repeated theory, and it may not be wrong, after all, that story does make sense. However, when I started to be mindful, I began to notice that sugar doesn't feel that great and it's kinda gross same goes when I ate too much meat. Just the simple act of noticing has led me to a healthier diet. The hardest part was relearning how to be present and aware, the rest is gravy.
Makes me wonder how much bullshit we've been fed over the years about ourselves.
Sugar is for energy to use immediately, if you don't use it it's turns into fat, 30% of it is wasted in that process though.
Overeating carbs is better than overeating fat.
Excess glucose (from sugar and carbs) triggers insulin production which causes glucose to be converted to body fat and your muscles to stop consuming fat. (Which also causes your muscles to be nutrient depleted leading to being hungry soon after...)
The insulin flood caused by sugar and bad carbs is your body trying not to die of glucose poisoning.
Srsly this book can add 15 healthy years to your life!