Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a health nut. Quite the opposite.

It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland.

Shed 20lbs without even exercising.

I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid sugar and corn syrup.

Any ingredients with dex-, wheat, corn starch, -ose, dairy, added sweetener, agave, artificial sweeteners, etc – you can drop it, if you try. No pasta, no bread. No white potatoes.

I wonder how much the input to our body affects us vs exercise? It seems substantial.

And it's crazy how much more you have to spend on food just to make it work. Easily 2x or 3x.

EDIT: To clarify, the interesting part is that I'm never hungry. I eat as many bananas and apples as I want. When I want some variety, my go-to is Nathan's hotdogs with no additives (no dextrose/corn starch), or throwing coconut milk into chicken with spices and garlic. For whatever reason, the weight keeps coming off, for months now.

Grain and dairy seem worth avoiding. I don't know why.

FWIW I drank diet soda before this, but it was easy to eat sugar: chocolate covered pretzels were my feel-good food. It's easy to dupe yourself into thinking you're eating healthy by doing one thing in one area, but totally the wrong thing in a different area but "in moderation." My only solution was quitting it cold turkey.

View on HN

I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas. They are very very similar foods.

Everything that is flour based is refined, lacks fiber etc so I get the pasta and bread exclusion, but the potatoes one makes no sense imo.

Overall in this thread, once again americans discover that they eat shit and simply cooking meals yourself from scratch (with limited fat of course) with no treats between meals makes you lose weight. For Europeans, the whole USA deal with food is really laughable. An american friend (largely overweight of course) was taking a starbucks with cream extrasugar and what not everyday. He was astonished when we said that it was really high on calories (and has stopped since). What is wrong that most americans (even educated ones) seem to have no idea of what an healthy diet is ?

Well, it's because our government published official diet recommendations (look up the Food Pyramid) and told us we should be eating more grains than absolutely anything else. Science on sugar has been repressed in our country, and the corn industry has exerted pressure in various ways to put corn syrup into absolutely everything. When I grew up, everything I had ever learned told me it was normal and healthy. I have more recently learned to avoid it.

We also had the food pyramid (it even originated in sweden, the WHO/FAO still edits a version of it), and I don't think it was much different. Also I don't think that science on sugar has been especially promoted anywhere either.

I don't think our preprocessed foods use as much sugar as yours (do we even have corn syrup ?). But we sure have some [edit : preprocessed foods], although they are probably not as bad as american's because of stricter regulation (bless the EU).

"The European Union, which regulates the allowed production quota of sugars, limits the production of GFS to around 5% of total sugar production in the EU, meaning that it makes up a very small percentage of the sugar consumed in Europe."

In Belgium we also had a similar food pyramid.

But government now decided to update it, and get rid of all the "economic" influence, which was steered towards grain, meat and dairy industry, and only base it on what is healthy.

To make their statement clear, they literally turned the food pyramid upside down.

See https://www.gezondleven.be/themas/voeding/voedingsdriehoek. Nevermind all the Flemish, just scroll to the picture.

Google translate works surprisingly well even on the interactive pyramid translating hover text too.

Butter is in "less" and salt and bacon in "as little as possible". With what we know now it should be the opposite.

About fat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY About salt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ygExIZm7Wo

Is nutrition and cooking / domestic skills part of the American school curriculum or widely taught ?

I don't know but it's not taught in my country.

No.

"Home Economics" used to be a common course, along with "shop", but both have experienced a decline in lieu of other courses which helps boost one's high school (grades 9-12) résumé for university applications.

If media literacy and home economics were part of the core curriculum, we'd easily see a decline in health-related issues from fast-food consumption and poor grocery shopping habits. Until, of course, Yum! Brands finds a way to partner with the schools and modifies the curriculum.

Not really. That's one of those things they've been dropping from the curriculum. Where it is taught, half the time it isn't mandatory and is often unhelpful.

I personally had 9 weeks of combined sewing and cooking, that really taught me nothing. (My sister got a lowered grade for not following the recipe exactly). I was lucky - I had already been cooking for a few years by then because I liked it. Had that been my only introduction to cooking, though, I'd not be very functional as a new adult.

My "financial" education happened in 8th grade - age 13, when you can't rent an apartment until 18 most times. This consisted of a car salesman teaching us about loans and interest and tax forms... giving us extra credit if our parents looked at a car. Even more credit if they bought one.

That said, most high schools have some sort of child development classes as an optional class. If you are interested in stem classes or otherwise on a college-bound path, you might not be offered such classes or be able to fit them into your class schedule. High school cooking, if even offered, generally focused on job placement where I lived.

About the only thing I learned in the cooking part of my class in 8th grade--which had in a prior generation been called "home ec" and "shop" but was now "life skills" and "industrial arts"--was that everything I made myself tasted better than anything that came out of the school cafeteria's kitchen.

The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the dinner spoon should go. A practical class would have graded us on our use of chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a 15-course banquet.

They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking, water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped into after high-school graduation.

My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.

Here in Utah's public schools, we have to take TLC, which is cooking/sewing.

> (with limited fat of course)

This part, in my experience as someone who is muscular w/ a low body fat percentage, is not necessary. I actually find it easiest to get very, very lean (< 7-8%) by adding more fat to my diet, along with fiber-rich foods like green vegetables.

I am American too and otherwise totally concur with what you've written. It's shocking how badly Americans eat, and how distant their diet is from what I consider the basic staple foods that humans should be eating. My dietary suggestion to anyone looking to lose weight would be to cook large batches of high-fiber vegetables and eat those before each meal. The combination of fat and fiber is key to feeling completely 'full' and satiated while maintaining a moderate level of caloric intake. Beyond that, eating a wide variety of foods and eliminating sweet drinks / packaged food gets you 90% of the way to a healthy diet.

What source of fat do you use? I have trouble increasing my fat intake without frying everything, at which point it becomes a lot harder for me to track my intake.

Heavy cream, whipped or otherwise. Or just plain butter or ghee; It's not culturally accepted, but it's tasty.

Saturated fat has a lot of downsides and usually comes along with extra cholesterol. Stick to unsaturated (i.e. vegetable) fats for the sake of your cardiovascular system.

This is under debate. A lot of recent research seems to be leaning the other way on cholesterol.

Can you cite any of the research? Here is a decent overview, but I would love to learn more.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/cholesterol/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/old-cholesterol-warnings-steep...

The book cited in this article that so many claim exonerates fats has been thoroughly debunked.

https://thescienceofnutrition.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/the-b...

That's a good read, thanks.

The meat and dairy industries are doing their best to obscure the truth on this issue. Postprandial cholesterol blood levels are a direct function of dietary cholesterol.

For example: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-do-we-know-that-cholest...

People want to hear they can eat all the eggs and butter and bacon they want but it’s just not true.

The thinking on this has completely inverted in the past 5 years. The correlation between dietary consumption of cholesterol and serum (blood level) cholesterol is limited at best. Studies which showed a linear relationship were flawed.

Put simply, it is now thought that cholesterol is a plaster over the arterial inflammation caused by sugars. It is a symptom, not a cause of plaques.

This is a snow job by the meat, egg and dairy industries. Don’t believe it. Downvotes should at least try to address the facts in this video.

https://youtu.be/vBtfzd43t8o

Here you go: https://examine.com/nutrition/is-saturated-fat-bad-for-me/

Actual studies linked within.

The conclusion from the very first review cited in your article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20351774):

These findings provide evidence that consuming PUFA in place of SFA reduces CHD events in RCTs.

i.e. replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease, which was my original claim.

From your article:

Saturated fats do increase cholesterol levels relative to polyunsaturated fats.

You need some fat in your diet, but the overwhelming evidence is that you're better off getting it from unsaturated (plant-based) sources.

And then again: http://time.com/4291505/when-vegetable-oil-isnt-as-healthy-a... , links e.g. to http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246 which has the conclusion quoted below, which is in line with what ggp claimed about whether cholesterol is the cause or just a symptom.

""" Available evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Findings from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid. """

Something being less bad than an alternative is not the same as being actively bad for you.

Going 20 mph is slower than going 30 mph but it is not going in reverse.

"The thinking on this has completely inverted in the past 5 years."

Has it really?

I see a lot of new contradictory results, but I am not aware that the medical consensus has changed (yet). I have seen articles blame fat as the, blame carbs as the bad guy and even some blaming protein. Refined sugar does seem to be particularly bad, but I have yet to see anything conclusive about carbohydrates as a food group (I searched pubmed a few months back).

Personally I am more confused than ever.

Olive or coconut oil typically. I go for things like kale, carrots, cauliflower, beets, sweet potatoes, okra, squash, asparagus, etc. It's really easy to make these taste great without much cooking skill. I always add a little salt, but otherwise I don't want to overpower the natural sweetness and flavor of these vegetables with anything else.

Muscular with 7-8% body fat (means you are into bodybuilding) and don't mention broccoli? Something doesn't add up :P

I joke, but i do agree with what you have said.

Coconut is mostly saturated fat and terrible for you. Ugh. Every professional body recommends against it.

That's begun to change. I anecdotally know a lot of people on a high-fat diet (Keto and such) and it has really worked for them. Inflammation is way down, energy is way up, weight is down, blood pressure is down, cholesterol is down, etc.

Sugars / refined starches seem to be the nutrition villains, not natural, saturated fats. (But who knows! The recommendations change almost daily, it seems.)

Yep, a lot of the science behind "fat makes you fat" came from cherry picked data.

"The Story of Fat: Why we were Wrong about Health" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY

Anecdotally I too am moving towards LCHF/Keto and so far my health has improved drastically from primarily focusing on adding fats back in after years of carefully measured low-fat low-calorie diets did nothing for me.

Anybody who has done keto and lost weight certainly does not say they had evergy on it. Those first couple weeks are terrible and you never quite have the energy you want. Thankfully it is a short term diet with specific targets in mind. Any positive effects after stopping keto are from the weight loss in general. Even keto diets recommend against a high saturated fat content but with keto your body is in a specific state that blunts the effects of a high saturated fat intake.

When you go off keto you cannot maintain the high saturated fat intake without measurable negative impacts.

Who says it? I had more energy on keto, except for one day (around a week after starting) that felt terrible and was fixed by drinking water with salt and potassium. Keto diets don't recommend against a high saturated fat content, only some do because of the common misconception that it is bad. There are no studies showing bad effects of saturated fat by itself. It's the carbs what causes the problem, fat only makes it worse.

How do you measure inflammation?

You don't. The current inflation trend is pure pseudoscience:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7465534

Not true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4155060/

I'm making a documentary about all of this stuff mentioned in the comments. Would like feedback:

http://FoodLies.org

or google "food lies film"

The article i posted specially attacks this. Inflammation is a symptom of many things including cancer, but isn't something you really aim to treat. And there is no good evidence that there is such a thing as an anti inflammatory diet.

In the anecdotal cases I mentioned, inflammation is a catch-all. More specifically, congestion and joint pain decreased significantly. In one case, I know someone who had many days where she wasn't able to walk due to joint pain. Those days appear to be gone.

Saturated fat alone is not bad at all, it's actually very healthy. However combining it with carbs it's a bomb. If you don't believe me, try to find any study with negative effects of saturated fat where the diet doesn't also include >30% of calories as carbs.

Basically any diet beyond little studied, highly specialized diets that are often done short term by athletic types (eg keto, paleo). You just won't find good data with such a small, highly self selected population that includes an high amount of exercise.

The keto community doesn't exercise that much. I know there are not many studies on ketogenic diets, but there are and the vast majority are positive.

Keto is often used as a sort of very effective diet to cut fat preferentially. For example people like body builders use it effectively after their bulking phase.

It has gained much wider adoption recently of you include things like Atkins, but true keto is still very much more often used by a very self selected group of fitness people and a limited time (although I could be wrong and don't know of any good serveys).

However keto is not a long term diet and I don't know if long term effects have rally been studied much. I know more people that do keto cycling than sustained keto anymore.

These diets have been around for millions of years. I try to explain some of this on my site:

google "food lies film"

Some more info on how the old line that "saturated fat is bad" might not be so simple.

https://examine.com/nutrition/is-saturated-fat-bad-for-me/

You can even find people who are into various forms "traditional foods" (not diet trends like paleo...though maybe that too?) go further than more cautious articles like this in affirming -benefits- of saturated fat. Catherine Shanahan for example argues in Deep Nutrition that saturated fat can be good.

The link clearly states multiple times that poly unsaturated fats are preferred to saturated fats when looking at various health factors. It just says that we dont know if it because saturated fats are bad for you or poly unsaturated fats are good food you.

Regardless, choosing to cook with coconut oil instead of olive or avocado oil clearly falls under that.

I have friends that now cook with coconut oil as one of their main oils replacing poly unsaturated oils. I think it is going to be like soy and in 20 years the nutrition community is going to do yet another 180 on it.

Not all dietary saturated fat is created equal.

There are significant differences in the way bodies metabolize the different saturated fatty acids. Sometimes the metabolic pathways compete with one another, so ratios can matter as much as raw quantity.

If you just go by total saturated fat content, without looking at the specific chemical components, you can't tell the difference between coconut oil, palm kernel oil, and palm oil.

While anything you eat has the potential to be terrible for you at a certain level of consumption, a certain level of specificity is called for. Someone who has chosen coconut oil as their staple fat has made a conscious effort to eat more lauric acid and less palmitic acid or stearic acid. If it was just a matter of saturated fat versus unsaturated fat, and they wanted to eat more saturated, they could have chosen the much cheaper palm oil or pork lard.

Even if the person chooses to eat minimal saturated fat, there are still great differences in the available dietary fats. Is it rich or poor in omega-3 and omega-6? Have any double bonds flipped from cis-bonds to trans-bonds? Are the fatty acids free or still attached to a glycerol? Does the eater have any genetic conditions that make a particular metabolic pathway slower, limited by the presence of some other nutrient, or absent entirely?

In general, we still don't know a lot about the specifics of fat metabolism. As long as there is an excess of carbohydrate in the body, lipids are generally used as building blocks of the body--like amino acids from protein--rather than for energy. They come in many shapes and sizes, like LEGO blocks, except unlike those hard plastic blocks and bits, the body can cut and bend and reshape its lipids within certain metabolic constraints.

If any particular building block is in excess, the body usually just makes more of whatever the default structure is for that piece. Too much stearic acid might get hooked together with a glycerol and dumped into the oil drop in a white adipose cell. Too much palmitic acid might get rolled into LDL cholesterol. Too much lauric acid could get put into HDL cholesterol. We don't really know for sure what the body does when the ratios are off, or what the perfect balance of ratios is.

I use Avacado oil. It is said olive oil should not be used for high-heat cooking as it has low smoke point unlike avacado oil.

Extra virgin olive oil has a low smoke point, 320F. "Light" olive oil has a high smoke point, 460F.

Avocado is King. I have it with everything I eat these days. They are a bit expensive (but 4 for $5 at whole foods isn't too bad) and they ripen quickly but they are an amazing source of fat and are very versatile.

You actually need healthy fats to gain muscle, I require 44g a day. Before I knew this I used to focus only on protein and carbs and wondered why I wasn’t gaining as much as I should be.

It is very easy to increase fat intake. I get it mostly from olive oil and peanut butter. A serving of each is 14g.

Makes sense. Cholesterol is a necessary component of testosterone, and cannot be synthesized without it.

Flax seeds. Buy them whole so they keep. Grind them in a coffee grinder just before consuming so you get the fat. Put them in a breakfast smoothie: 2 cups frozen fruit, 2 pitted dates (optional), 6 or 8 almonds or walnuts, 2TB ground flax seeds, 1 cup kale (or spinach or arugula), water.

Bacon grease, real butter and olive oil for certain foods. When you fry up some bacon, just put it into a jar then throw it in the fridge. When you need a tablespoon of olive oil or vegetable oil, use the bacon grease.

If you aren't opposed to eating fish (or don't already eat a lot of fish), you could consider incorporating mackerel or sardines into your diet. It will vary by brand, but mackerel is 230 kcal, 19g fat, 15g protein per tin and sardines (bone-in skin-on) are 150 kcal, 9g fat and 18g protein per tin. Both have a good proportion of omega-3 fats. I find mackerel delicious right out of the tin, sardines need some condiments but still taste pretty good without much work.

Fat isnt a problem. You can eat as much fat as you want(of course general advice goes about eating varied) as long as it doesent come with carbs. Its the carbs you need to lookk out for (which are also in potatoes)

The question was why are bananas "ok' but potatoes "off limits" when both have almost the same amount of carbs per gram (4.7 vs 4.3).

1 banana has 27grams of carbohydrates which is about the same as an Apple (25) or Pear (27), one medium potato has 37 grams of carbohydrates. But, their micro nutrient profiles are very different.

Further the tendency is to eat one far more potatoes than fruit. Also a banana has a GI of 52, vs 85 for a baked potato vs pure Glucose 100( http://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/glycemic-index) other sites have different numbers but always place a potato significantly higher.

> Further the tendency is to eat one far more potatoes than fruit.

I have seen one study that concluded that boiled white potato was the most filling of all the foods tested. I don't recall whether bananas were included.

Equal-calorie portions of specific foods were given to volunteers, who were then allowed to consume until sated from a buffet. Those who ate boiled whole potato first ate fewer calories from the buffet than any other "appetizer". Noteworthy was the fact that french fries and baked potato--made from the same stuff--scored abysmally by this measure, almost the worst of all foods.

Boiling, chilling, and reheating your potato to plate temperate may even enhance this effect through the process of starch retrogradation.

Bananas are typically eaten uncooked. Potatoes are barely ever eaten raw. And it would also appear that the method of preparation has an effect.

It would certainly be possible to test the experiment result at home with a food diary, to see if adding one food in particular to your diet causes you to eat more or less in total than is usual for you.

And speaking of density, normalized for calories, they both have fairly similar Fiber Densities too: https://kale.world/40-highest-fiber-foods/

Stop saying this. It's filling your arteries with plaque. If you cut out most fat and eat high amount of unrefined carbs, you will also lose weight. But it has the added benefit of not pumping your circulatory system full of sludge.

you can eat "as much as you want" as long as you are cutting carbs is because your body is in burn mode because it's deprived of energy. It's bad for you in the long term. Why anyone think they can eat as many handfuls of cheddar cheese as the want and have no consequences is deceived.

> Stop saying this. It's filling your arteries with plaque.

Source for this? In my opinion this is outdated thinking and new studies have shown the opposite.

Your answer made me go read into fat metabolism, to see if your claim of "pumping your circulatory system full of sludge" was true, and I found this was the specific biochemical assembly that carries metabolized triglycerides through the blood stream. Enjoy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chylomicron

58% of adult Europeans are overweight with 23% obese.

These rates are much better than the US, but it seems like Europe hasn’t yet figured out the whole healthy diet issue.

I am considered overweight because a doctor calculated my BMI and said I'm two kilos over where I should be. BMI is a the ratio between weight and height. I think it's kind of stupid but it got me labeled as overweight.

It is my understanding that BMI is pretty much useless for the individual to know, but it is a valuable aggregate statistic. So it makes sense for the doctor to record your BMI for the national database, but you obviously have much better information and metrics to use on yourself.

My understanding was that BMI was pretty accurate for most people and only gets out of whack for more muscular people.

BMI is a standard that applies to both women and men, so if your body fat is < ~15% you are out of the norms and BMI no longer directly applies.

It also applies less as you pass 2 standard deviations of average height.

So, if you are 6'1 and have bulky shoulders and no belly, your bmi should actually be on the high side. Warning signs are when you see ribs or when you can pinch belly fat.

You might be a bit careful with criticizing the US on Hacker News, I have been permanently banned for similar remarks.

That aside, a large part of it seems to be culture. If you're living in a university-owned dorm, it is often mandatory to buy a card which provides dinner (usually at a ridiculous price). When you don't cook, you are less involved with the ingredients of your dinner, and more inclined to just 'take what tastes good'.

> You might be a bit careful with criticizing the US on Hacker News,

Is this a problem on HN? I haven't noticed it. You must have said something really atrocious. And the comment above you make reference to, though a bit tactless, is OK in my opinion.

This is not really the place for this discussion (I probably shouldn't have started it in the first place, but apparently I am still a bit bitter), but I will briefly respond.

> You must have said something really atrocious.

No, I just stated facts (the US performing poorly on various measures).

> Is this a problem on HN? I haven't noticed it.

I didn't either. I'm not sure if it's a problem, maybe I just had bad luck. It might also have to do with how banning works: You can see your posts, but others can. So banned folks might not realize that they are banned.

> And the comment above you make reference to, though a bit tactless, is OK in my opinion.

In my opinion too. And, as I said, my remarks were similar (I think even less tactless, as I was just stating facts).

> You might be a bit careful with criticizing the US on Hacker News, I have been permanently banned for similar remarks.

People criticize the US without problem all the time on HN; if you have been banned, it wasn't because you were criticizing the US (you may have been critical of the US in the comment that provoked the ban, but that wasn't the feature of the comment that provoked it.)

Diet guidance in America has been co-opted by capitalistic food companies who push their processed junk our way - going on for decades now. The government is complicit of course. Let's not forget the laughable food pyramid [1] which adorned the walls of every school in the US for most of the 90s and undoubtedly created much confusion about how to eat (ie: fat bad, carbs good)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)

The food pyramid would be okay, if you’d actually eat the bread that the authors envisioned – full-grain rye bread, unsweetened, unbleached. That has a much higher fiber content, and much lower glycemic index.

Look at the images in the article. Notice the huge "unrefined carbs" part, and the tiny little "free sugars" part?

This is the bread the authors envisioned you to eat: https://www.baeckerei-guenther.de/cms/upload/sortiment/brot/...

By the way, try to put this kind of bread in the toaster (especially if it is not fresh) and then add a little bit of butter and salt. The more sunflower seeds, the better!

If I'm not mistaken, I believe I saw ketchup on the food pyramid in elementary school in the 1980's. :(

Little known fact...Tomatoes are both a fruit AND a vegetable!!!

That's why the cheeseburger is a perfectly balanced food pyramid meal. You have protein from beef, dairy from cheeze product TM(contains no actual cheese), grain from the bun, AND your fruit and vegetables from the ketchup.

~ Dave Thomas (Founder of WENDY's, and fitness enthusiast)

>I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas. They are very very similar foods.

they may be similar physically, but they are not similar culturally.

Sorry can you expand on this a bit? I can’t tell if this is a reference/joke or you’re making a higher point that I’m just not picking up.

I think the parent is making the point that potatoes are in general often fried, consumed in more quantities and come with other unheathly things, whilst that is not typically the case with bananas.

>I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas

Very often, you eat one banana in the morning. However, you can easily eat 3 potatoes in the morning, 1 during lunch and 5 for diner.

That's why you need to cut back on potatoes but can still eat that one banana.

Edit: Why the downvotes? This is one the main reason a nutritionist will tell you to cut potatoes from your diet. It's not a question of quality but of quantity. A single banana is easy to portion but baked, boiled, mashed and/or fried potatoes are harder. Restaurants will serve them in huge quantities and people have problems portioning them so it's easier to say "cut them out".

Woah there, bananas and potatoes are not similar foods at all. Yes they both primarily provide carbs, but the glycemic index of bananas is 48, while potatoes are at from 82-111 (https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...). Don’t make incorrect assertions.

Indeed! I would rather eat a Snicker bar than a baked potato (if I had no bananas handy).

Yes, but just to play devils advocate for the potato, don't forget, it rates much higher in satiety than just about anything, source: (holt satiety studies) https://scottabelfitness.com/potato-and-the-satiety-index/

Interesting, thanks for the info.

Potatoes are high carb, and high carb makes most people fat. To be fair, bananas are high carb too.

Also fat doesn't make you fat. A lot of people actually rapidly lose weight on a ketogenic diet with approx 70% of their food being healthy fats.

The Story of Fat: Why we were Wrong about Health https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY

You may want to remove the "t=88s". That's an excellent video I recommended many times, by the way. It has a text version with many sources linked in the description, and the rest of the channel is very good too.

Oh, thanks! I recommend it a lot too, so I guess it started partially into the video because I watched it again. Whoops.

I love that channel. Entertaining, informative, and succinct. I've learned a lot from it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Paradox

are all European cultures healthy? I got the impression Germany had a pretty unhealthy diet. Same with Turkey.

> For Europeans, the whole USA deal with food is really laughable.

That's true, but that's also unfortunately a very ignorant attitude given that half of Europeans are overweight and an increasing percentage is obese. The common perception that obesity rates in America are some bizarre cultural oddity does not help people learn from them and avoid it recurring in other countries. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

I highly suspect any highly restrictive diet will have the same effect no matter the restriction. Especially if "junk food" is one of the restrictions.

You hear plenty of stuff like "I went vegan, food tastes so much better now, I've lost weight, I have so much energy, my mood is better, blah blah blah." Same with "alkaline diet," "cabbage soup diet," "low inflammation diet," "bacon diet," "salad diet," "gluten free diet," etc.

Also bananas, apples, and coconut milk have plenty of sugar.

Pick 6 other random non-junk food foods, eat nothing but those for the next couple months, you'll lose weight that way too. Let's just say, off the top of my head, the pork chops, oatmeal, pineapple, orange, green bean, soy milk diet. Try it.

OP's remarkable point is that she is restricting food groups, not calories.

Yes, I am aware, my point stands. I highly suspect any diet that restricts most food groups will produce similar effects no matter what the food groups are. It's far from "remarkable," its what happens when you micromanage your diet plus a small dose of the placebo effect. People have written exactly the same thing about a high carb vegan diet, for example.

My mother in law also has a "I just don't eat [several random food groups]" non-calorie restricted diet as well, but the food groups are different, she says the same types of things and lost over 100 pounds and has kept it off for like seven years. Same with other people I know with omitting other random food groups.

(My mother in law actually eats outside her chosen food groups regularly, she just is really, really, really misinformed about what's in food - which further illustrates my point that it's the micromanaging and restriction, not the type of food consumed.)

Don't think so. Carbohydrates-heavy foods are the foods most associated with weight gain. Sugar is pretty bad, though not as bad as potato chips, fries etc.

The underlying assumptions are "all else equal". There are many dietary philosophies that structure what is allowed via subjective explanations of controlling cravings, etc. IOW, food choice affects selection, invalidating "all else equal".

Carbs may cause obeisity/wg more per calorie than fiber, but it's important to keep in mind a "dose response" concept.

The point is that restricting food groups ends up restricting calories as a side effect. Cutting out refined sugar means cutting out sugary drinks which is a huge source of “hidden” calories for most people.

Getting x mg of fructose from eating an apple is significantly different than ingesting x mg of fructose from a soda, for example. Don’t be pedantic.

I don't see any pedantry. OP said they dropped all sugar which would imply natural sugars as well.

> I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. [...]

> I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things.

It's not clear to me why sugar from an apple is better than sugar from soda. Can you explain or link to a source?

>It's not clear to me why sugar from an apple is better than sugar from soda. Can you explain or link to a source?

The obvious difference is that I can only eat so many apples; I've gotta eat three apples to get as much sugar as a soda pop (or a cup of apple juice, for that matter... apple juice has more sugar than soda pop.)

There is also a claim that the effort to digest an apple makes it a lot better for you than drinking the same amount of apple juice.

I'm not sure why this is being downvoted. Fruits generally have much lower glycemic load than refined carbs, the need to chew drastically lowers the rate at which you can consume it, and the fiber makes you feel full.

Dr Robert Lustig has also written and spoken extensively on the metabolic issues with refined carbs, but he's fine with fruit: https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Chance-Beating-Against-Processed/...

I often wonder about this.

The whole "modern" food are optimized/stripped to only throw sugar at you. I had the same conclusion, most natural food I can't eat more than 3 of them: apples, oranges, even strawberries they're not just sugar, they have bits of sour, acid that balance the pleasing parts and makes you want to stop after a little.

When I was sick, apples were the only fruit I could eat that left me untouched, at that time even a minute amount of sugar would make me faint.

Carbohydrates are metabolized very differently when consumed along with fiber. This is why the glycemic load of apple juice is about twice as high as an apple and white rice is about twice as high as brown rice:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...

My understanding is that it's not about total amount of sugar, but rather the glycemic index of consuming something. The whole apple contains fiber which would give it a lower glycemic index than a soda. The glycemic index of foods affects your insulin response, which affects fat storage behavior of your cells.

I don't have a link to paste at the moment, but look into books by Gary Taubes for research and sources on this topic.

This guy lost 50kg eating nothing but white potatoes for a year:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...

I personally wouldn't recommend that but it underlines the point that not all carbs are created equal. Our bodies process complex carbs with fiber very differently than refined sugars.

Additionally, carbs can be more difficult to absorb if they are mixed with fibres. Sugars in apples are an example.

It's not that they are more difficult to absorb but rather fiber blunts the insulin response. Insulin is a fat-storing hormone so the less that gets secreted, the less fat you are prone to storing. Coupling that with copious amounts of readily available carbs + fat and you're gonna have a bad time.

But that would mean taking fiber would lead to high blood sugar, and cause damage to your internals. I think the idea that fiber slows carb digestion makes more sense. With slowed carb digestion, less insulin is needed, thus the blunt response.

Not sure how you deduced that fiber would lead to high blood sugar from my response but what I was trying to convey was that fiber "slows down" carb absorption, thereby blunting the blood sugar increase which then as a corollary blunts the insulin response.

This is why most keto diets specify net carbs, which subtracts fiber out of the carb total.

Potatoes are special. If you eat them with the skin, they are the most complete food.

Little known fact... if you eat Potatoes with the skin on them, they are the only food that is BOTH a fruit AND a Vegetable.

~ Dave Thomas (Founder of Wendy's and Nutritional Scientist)

Yup, what I'm usually missing in those is the actual difference in calorie intake. Going vegan for example will reduce a lot because you'd naturally eat less fats. Going carb-free, same story. They're probably more popular than counting calories because there's Rules to adhere to, which is more easy than trying to guess how many grams of pasta are in your plate.

> what I'm usually missing in those is the actual difference in calorie intake...

Check out "That Sugar Film," it was on Amazon Prime when I saw it. Highly recommend.

In it, he goes from a zero-sugar diet to a "recommend healthy amount of sugar" (and from "healthy" sources — he is not eating candy) while maintaining the same calorie count and exercise routine.

Spoiler: he gains weight and inches and develops a fatty liver.

He went from zero refined sugar to 200g of sugar a day. The average in America is 125g and nobody would recommend anywhere near either amount. He also only ate packaged foods - presumably no vegetables, rice, pasta etc. It's hard to see how any lessons can be learned from this.

And as for the talking heads he chose, well... http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Thanks for the link. I had no idea. Up until 2yrs ago, it appears that the WHO recommend up to 50g of sugar per day and recently reduced that to half that.

I still think there is a lesson to be learned. If we can assume his calorie intake remained the same (which he claims, but given your link, who knows), we can say that the source of the calories matters. I've met a few people who only subscribe to calories in vs calories out.

Added sugar recommendations are always given as "no more than X grams per day." In other words, it's an upper limit and less is always better.

When I tried to find a recommendation for sugar I mostly found "added sugar should be no more than 5% of your calories". Eg https://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/how-m...

By keeping his calorie intake the same but replacing all foods with those containing added sugar, he really tipped the scale. I suspect with more calories he might have gained some weight but would feel better and not have that liver issue.

I've never seen an honest documentary on nutrition.

I didn't know anything about the film so I looked it up.

Spoiler: the summary given in this comment is not accurate and the film spouts a bunch of quackery.

He didn't eat he "recommend healthy amount of sugar," that would be no more than less than the equivalent amount in a can of soda.

He didn't get liver disease.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

Just got that link in the other sibling comment. Thanks; quite interesting.

Its the carbs that is the problem in my experience. Coconut has very little carbs. Eating low carb diet allow me to loose weight and stay down.

And my mother-in-law lost and keeps off over 100 pounds by restricting random food groups, however she still eats very high carb. And when I say random, I really mean random! There's literally no rhyme or reason to her choices other than she thinks they are "bad."

Same with my vegan+ friend, high carb, 80 pounds kept off for a decade. I say vegan+ because she's vegan plus she has other random restrictions.

Those are the two people I can think of right away because they've been doing their diets for a really, really long time and they always pack their own food everywhere they go. For these long term heavy restrictors, it's absolutely not any reduction in carbs.

I also eat carbs I just stay away from them most of the time. That sounds like your mother-in-law if she eats random.

No, absolutely not, I literally said "she still eats very high carb." Her diet does not restrict or limit carbs at all and she eats plenty of them. It's pretty silly to assume everyone's diet is low carb by default.

I believe she eats potatoes at every meal or at least almost every meal and she also eats plenty of white rice. Also fruit juice is on her "good" list. Though she claims she "doesn't eat sugar."

She claims to not eat dairy but she eats yogurt because she thinks it's non-dairy. No, she doesn't have a yogurt exception, she honestly thinks it doesn't contain dairy. I'm not sure what she thinks it is.

There's not many foods she does eat and her diet is the same thing for the most part. I honestly think the key to her diet is all the food I've ever had made by her has been bland and unseasoned. If you're eating bland food you aren't prone to overeat.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous and makes no sense but it seems to work for her so I can't judge too harshly.

So are you saying she eat high carb and random or are you saying she eats random? Not sure I understand your point.

Carbs are proven to make most people fatter. There are people with high metabolism who can eat anything but most people cannot eat too many carbs without gaining weight.

At a certain point it seems like the main benefit of all restrictive diets is just that they exclude junk and force the dieter to cook at home.

If you can't eat Snickers, and you can't buy high sugar-salt-fat restaurant food (which often comes in massive portions), you'll probably eat a smaller amount of more nutritious food. Which is great, but there's no real need to pursue arcane diet restrictions to get there. And in some cases, like 'alkaline' diets, you can quickly get into real trouble with nutrient deficiency just because the food pool is so small.

As I recall, The Blonde Vegan (a popular food blogger) managed to end up seriously malnourished off a diet that initially made her feel healthy and energetic. Just as you say, the productive step was "eat less crap", and the counterproductive step was "eat only these 10 foods".

While I applaud your efforts to eat well, I'd posit that with some attention, you could measurably decrease the expense if you factor in certain foods and factor out others.

For example, I enjoy tacos as lunch a few times a week. I make them from scratch, and while this doesn't adhere to your recommendation of no starches, I doubt they cost me $1.00 per taco, and that's with avocado, beans, onions, and peppers (plus the tortillas, of course). If I added meat, that would almost double the cost, so I don't.

Other foods are like that too, stir fry with veggies and shrimp, instead of beef saves me another 20-30% on cost.

I also shop at Aldi, or at Wal-Mart as often as befits what foods I'm eating, which knocks another 30-40% off of my food budget.

Eating well doesn't have to cost a ton.

I am quite surprised to see a recommendation to shop at Walmart on HN. I thought it was common knowledge that Walmart is a pretty terrible company and that people shouldn't support that?

Sure, you save money, but at what cost?

Generally money is saved at negative cost.

That's presumably because most people who frequent this forum don't fall into the same tax bracket as I do.

Ever read Les Miserables?

When it's the difference between making the car insurance payment and shopping at Wal-Mart, or not making it, and shopping at, say, Publix, the choice is less about ethics and more about practicality.

For what it's worth I do grow a garden, albeit a limited one due to the law restricting my garden to my backyard. I hope to plant fruit trees this Spring to offset more of my food costs and enjoy fresher, healthier fare.

Publix is a great store, but I can generally only shop there when they have an advertised special and I have a handful of coupons. And you really have to stick very tightly to the pre-planned list.

Generally, my staple stores are Kroger, Target, and Costco. Wal-Mart, Dollar General, and Aldi fail on one of two fronts: you can't buy everything you need from there at the same time, or the things you actually want are not really cheaper. In both cases, the cost-per-mile of making the trip determines whether it is worth going.

The grocery business has a lot of local variability, though. In a lot of places, even some near here, Wal-Mart actually would be cheaper, to the extent that I would put up with their goods that are not quite what I am looking for, with little ingredient substitutions that nickel-and-dime you on the quality. It's like how chocolates that used to have cocoa butter in them are now "chocolate candies" that have palm oil in them instead. Sure, they're cheaper, but they're no longer edible.

Wal-Mart does that all over. The garbage bags will be a fraction of a mil thinner. The chicken has just a tiny bit more brine solution added. The reconstituted juice bottles have just a little less concentrate and a little more water in them. Sometimes, a major national brand will go missing from the shelves for weeks or months, then come back with less shelf-distance allocated or a higher price, stocked immediately adjacent to the store generic.

I would almost rather make not shopping at Wal-Mart part of my diet. I can't eat calories that I can't afford to buy, so the ones I do eat have to count for more. And then I can remind myself how making X myself instead of buying it at lower cost from Wal-Mart is actually accumulating significant savings out of my stress budget. But I have plenty of competition to choose from. If it was a choice between Whole Foods and Wal-Mart, I know which one would not bankrupt me.

What's bad about Walmart?

Walmart has been the subject of political grandstanding by both parties. Over the last decade, Walmart has increased wages, benefits, and locally produced products (including food).

Yeah, I'm definitely the same way. I experience a number of clear shifts when I'm off refined carbs. Hunger, energy level, mood, inflammation level (e.g., joint pain). Fruit is fine. I fell off the wagon while with family over Christmas and I'm eager to work my way back.

Regarding cooking, I'm a big fan of the Instant Pot, the countertop pressure cooker. Tonight I made pork shoulder over cabbage [1] with root vegetables [2]. Meal cost is something like $4, and the leftovers keep and freeze well. I've even worked out a deal with a friend where we cook extra and swap.

[1] http://nomnompaleo.com/post/111934821818/pressure-cooker-kal... (also try it with a softboiled egg on top; the hot yolk is stellar on the pork)

[2] http://nomnompaleo.com/2017/11/06/instant-pot-autumn-mash

> I experience a number of clear shifts when I'm off refined carbs...inflammation level (e.g., joint pain).

I'd like to highlight this one in particular. It's not necessarily obvious that your diet has an effect on joint pain, but it really does. I've gone on low carb about four times now. Each time, before I went on the diet I had lower back pain for weeks and weeks or months on end (I have a slight disc protrusion, I know now thanks to an MRI).

Then I stop eating sugars and refined carbs (because I went low carb) and I start feeling better. It's been a week since I went back on low carb and my back pain -- that was present every day for the past several months and made me whimper and collapse on the couch after taking the dog for a short walk each time -- has pretty much completely gone away. After only a week. This is the fourth time in a row where that's happened, where it's gone away after a week of avoiding carbs.

A low carb diet is known to have an anti-inflammatory effect, and it's happened enough times just with me that I don't think it can be a coincidence.

So if you're having joint pains, seriously consider altering the foods you eat so you can reduce inflammation. These aren't the only foods that cause it, you can look them up. For me that small change has made a big difference.

Definitely. I've gone on and off a number of times as well, and the differences get to be obvious after a while. I really encourage people to experiment with diet. I have no idea what will work for bodies that aren't mine, but the process of experimentation has been great for me.

I have now been seeing from numerous sources that in order to lose weight, diet dominates exercise. One of the reasons is that exercise is associated with compensatory behaviors (such as increased hunger). So exercise for the health benefits, but alter your diet to lose weight.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-exercise-para...

Moreover, exercise is frequently associated with muscle gain, and muscle tissue being heavier than fat tissue introduces a great deal of uncertainty into tracking one’s weight.

Yeah, weight is an overly simplistic measure in determining one's health.

E.g. if my resting heart rate is lower, my blood work is "better", and my body fat percentage has gone down, I'll take the weight gain, duh.

You also have to do an awful lot of exercise to burn a substantial amount of calories.

If there's any exercise that has helped me shed weight, it's hiking. By being moderately active throughout the whole day you easily burn an extra 1500-2000kcals. Jogging has never really helped in shedding weight for me, just general fitness.

How many hours per day do you hike? You probably have to hike for an hour to offset just one chocolate bar.

I'm talking about proper hikes I do on the weekend. Like 6-10h. That's 6-10 chocolate bars, and I don't eat that much on these hikes.

Considering hiking is mostly walking, and calorie burn rates are dominated by distance, I'm guessing between 30 and 50 km? You generally burn about a quarter of what you would above basal metabolic rate per unit time walk versus running. So this would be equivalent to about a 1:30 to 2:30 run. Its very good,but certainly isn't at the level where you get to ignore food.

I ran 16 miles this morning, burned over 2000 calories. But I won't lose any weight, I am going to eat those calories right back.

That is indeed a substantial amount of exercise! Awesome work.

In a thought experiment (where it's possible to know the exact amounts) -- do you think consuming exactly 2k kcal is perfectly even with burning exactly 2k kcal? IE, is there overhead to transform the energy? Does it account for physical/energy waste?

I don't know, anecdotally it seems that if I spent X calories exercising, my hunger will adjust until I consume roughly X extra calories.

The energy expenditure does account for waste, I think only about 20-25% of the energy spent is turned into mechanical output

I have experienced the same issue when I burn larger amounts of calories. I've found burning about 500-800 calories (I run for about an hour) at the end of the day some time after dinner is my sweet spot.

2000? The standard estimate of net calories burned (cals above basal rate) is 0.98kgkm (i think it is 0.98, i usually round up to 1).

You might enjoy this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running

That should read 0.98 × kg × km

0.98 x 73 x 25.75 = 1842 kcal, not too far off

Every day the human body burns a substantial amount of calories just being alive. You have to simply not eat insulin-raising bullshit for a couple days, and start eating less or even fasting so your body starts burning the bodyfat it's been storing all that time. Worked for me (-8kg in approx 2 weeks) no exercise involved..

The Dutch have the lowest obesity rates in the developed world, at 8%, and 35% of their trips are taken by bicycle. Is that just a coincidence? I mean,technically, sure, you got to eat less than you burn to lose weight, but observably, people who regularly get moderate exercise as an ongoing practice tend to have their weight under control.

I had one winter where I didn't cycle and I gained 15 pounds before I even noticed. It took a little under a month to lose, which I did by eating less, but I also got back on the bike. That's the only time I've gained weight, and losing it wasn't some special act of will or anything, I decided to do it and I did it.

The rest of my family is sedentary, and fat. They're always talking about how they've got to lose weight but they're intimidated by it and they never stick with their diet plans for long. They don't have the intimate relationship with their metabolism that someone who excercise daily has.

The Dutch presumably also eat a Dutch diet so it's going to be tricky to disentangle. For what it's worth, the French rank right behind the Netherlands in obesity rate but I wouldn't say most people are very physically active.

My own experience and studies I have seen show that exercise leads to some early weight loss but then plateaus quickly. To lose further, diet has to be involved.

> The Dutch have the lowest obesity rates in the developed world, at 8%

Source? According to [1], obesity rate in NL is 19.8%, with some other European countries being lower.

[1] https://renewbariatrics.com/obesity-rank-by-countries/

This is another case of correlation != causation. The lifestyles that people choose to lead can heavily affect their dietary choices. A sedentary couch lord is more likely to binge on pizza than a daily bike commuter, perhaps.

This is why nutritional studies in the past need to be taken with a grain of salt. We all know from studies that too much red meat can have deleterious consequences on your health. But what we don't know is what type of lifestyles these participants led. Did they also eat junk food while rapaciously devouring heaps of sugar and soda on the side?

We're not working in a strict lab environment here so there are lots of variables that we can't possibly account for.

> I have now been seeing from numerous sources that in order to lose weight, diet dominates exercise

Indeed, and it goes the other way around too: not even counting weight in, any competent trainer will tell you that the first step to proper efficient exercise is a proper healthy diet. Losing weight then comes as a side effect, exercise being a catalyst to the diet that comes with it.

> One of the reasons is that exercise is associated with compensatory behaviors (such as increased hunger)

Personal experience: exercise comes with increased, yet highly self-regulated hunger, whereas it would slowly go unregulated when not exercising. Also, the things my body craves for are fundamentally different when I exercise than when I don't.

This, to me, comes from two types of very different feelings of what we call "hunger" (and its opposite "replete"): one that comes from stomach emptiness/fullness, and one that comes from the energy/material one needs to or has absorbed. The former is a downright lie, and exercise has a tendency to shut it down while lack thereof makes you forget the latter in favour of the former, which is then boundlessly growing because the stomach is highly elastic and is easily trained to expand more and more.

Also there seems to be a fundamental difference between both as I find the former also seems to aim to compensate some lack of dopamine/adrenaline/whatevs (this stuff is way over my head) that I get when exercising. The hunger I get when exercising is more genuine and truthful, while the one I get otherwise is more deceitful and addictive.

I've been told that if you exercise 3x an hour every week, then it will be very hard to gain weight, regardless of diet. But that came from a sports guy.

In an active week I might do 45-minutes of cycling per day plus three sets of 45-minute weights sessions, but I'll put on fat if I don't watch what I eat. Doing that amount of exercise can make me ravenously hungry.

How often do you have an "active week"? Perhaps you need more regularity?

According to my friend's theory, being hungry and eating a lot shouldn't be a problem if you sport often (and I suppose regularly).

3 out of 4 weeks are as above. 1 out of 4 weeks I might have a day or two where I take the bus instead of cycle, or feel a bit too run down / ill to go to the gym.

From September to December I was about this active (plus some pick-up ultimate or basketball here and there) and put on six or seven kilos. Some muscle, some fat. I've been eating quite a lot too; a weekday's eating is something like:

- Bran flakes cereal

- Cheese & ham sandwich

- Home cooked curry & brown rice (or equiv dinner)

- Two protein shakes (one with creatine)

- Two granola bars

- Dark chocolate bar

- Two oranges, an apple and a banana

Ok, I'm by no means an expert, so if I were you I'd research it a little more through other sources. It shouldn't matter how much you eat, with the given minimum amount of exercise. The things you list seem ok to me. Two things come to mind: you are still not exercising enough; or you are producing too much insulin for some reason. Don't be alarmed; perhaps talk about it with your doctor, get some blood tests done (?)

I'm not alarmed because this is what I expected and planned to happen. I've been interested in physiology and nutrition for a few years and the most credible sources I've read all say the same thing. If you eat above your calorific output, you'll gain weight. If you also lift heavy and eat protein, a decent proportion of that weight will be muscle. This is especially true if you haven't lifted weights for some time, which was true for me before last year.

Note, I just realised I actually gained about two or three kilos rather than six or seven, but I definitely gained a bunch. Also I'm below average height for my gender. My thigh and shoulder muscles have clearly filled out.

Perhaps there is some magical amount of cardio beyond which it's literally impossible to gain weight, but you'd probably have to be beyond a Michael Phelps level of training.

For what it's worth I had my blood tested recently and my glucose levels were fine, slightly below average. I appreciate your concern though.

> If you eat above your calorific output, you'll gain weight.

How does this account for the fact that lots of young people have difficulty gaining weight, no matter what they eat, until a certain age? Obviously not all young people, but lots even who play the Xbox or watch TV all day (i.e., little muscle mass and little physical activity).

By the way, one thing that helps me keep my weight and appearance under control is "planking", 3x 1.5 min a day (I also do it in the office, and I can read HN on my phone while doing it because I rest on my elbows). In times when I don't exercise enough, it keeps my belly flat, even when I have some fat in the mid-section. Combined with some simple yoga, it's also a nice way to de-stress during the day (keeping cortisol in check is an often forgotten factor in staying lean).

> young people have difficulty gaining weight, no matter what they eat, until a certain age

They're not actually eating above their calorific output. This is either because they're not eating as much as they think they are, or because their calorific output happens to be high. The number of calories your body burns at rest can vary a lot, even between people with apparently similar bodies, and over time in the same body. It can even fluctuate a little in response to what you eat. So, whilst calorific intake is the most reliable single indicator of weight gain/loss, it's not necessarily useful unless you are continuously tracking it and noting the effect of small modifications. Calorie counting is psychologically difficult - albeit conceptually straightforward - which is part of the reason why many people turn to fad diets or come up with creative reasons why they don't believe in calories.

I doubt those skinny young people are rigorously counting their calories. They probably have no need or desire to. They're just eating "whatever they want", which for those people at that point in time happens to be roughly equal to their calorific output. If you took that "whatever they want" baseline and added a gallon of (whole) milk per day, you would absolutely see them start to gain weight.

> planking ... keeps my belly flat, even when I have some fat in the mid-section

Right, the shape of your belly - just like the rest of your body - is determined by the amount of muscle and the amount of fat. Decreasing fat and/or (to a degree) increasing muscle will lend your belly a flatter appearance. Planking will stress your abs and obliques, which will produce more muscle in those areas. A larger effect can be achieved by heavy compound movements, especially deadlifts, or isolation exercises like weighted situps. But if you don't lift heavy weights, which I'm guessing you don't, then planking will have a significant effect.

It's all about finding what works for you. What keeps you happy and sane in the long run. For you I suppose it's an equilibrium amount of exercise in order to keep your appearance roughly steady. For me, I love to hit targets and seeing my squat, deadlift and bench numbers go up over the year is very fulfilling. But whatever our goals our, knowing more about the subject at hand can only be a good thing.

I do advanced weight training coupled with supersets, circuits, light gymnastics work, and some running. I get a solid work out for at least an hour at least 3 to 5 times a week (aside from odd ball weeks where I might get only 2 days in).

I have to be careful how I eat or I pack on the fat. I have to monitor my eating like crazy to lose fat. This gets more true as I get older. 5 years ago, it was stable at 4 to 5k calories a day (of healthy food). I've gained weight compared to then due to a less-strict diet coupled with a slower metabolism and I have to eat nearly half of what I used to to keep the scale from still sliding up. A couple weekends of my favorite pizza and beer, and I'm in for several weeks of highly restricted diet to get back to my previous weight. Sucks to not be in my twenties any more.

I don't know why people give a damn about loosing weight. You want to be healthy, which means having muscle that weighs more than fat. Never seen a thin guy and thought I would like to look like him.

I weigh 215lbs, 71" and I am 32 years old. I eat bread (which my wife makes from scratch), and other whole natural foods, vegetables, fruits, bacon, ribs, steak, fried chicken (made from scratch) etc... All my meat comes from a local farm, I actually bought a whole pig, half-cow and 50 chickens over the summer.

I powerlift, training between 6 - 8 hours a week. Resting heart rate is 58, blood pressure is 110/75. Being that I hadn't done any cardio training for about 2-3 years I wanted to ensure I wasn't in terrible shape - did a 500 yard swim in 11 minutes. I am not breaking records, but won't pass out trying to do simple things.

Eat natural foods they have been eating for hundreds of years and exercise hard. Now you can save money and time by not worrying about what the next overweight, smoking doctor will publish.

If you're an endurance athlete, weight is a pretty critical aspect of your performance. For the general population, most people really want to reduce body fat when they say "weight". Whether you want to "look like" someone is a different story

Exercise has a lot of great benefits even though it's effect on weight loss is rather minimal. One of the biggest reasons I personally work out is for the ability to learn faster. Exercise gives you more Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) which "improves the function of neurons, encourages their growth, and strengthens and protects them against the process of cell death."

"WHY Exercise is so Underrated (Brain Power & Movement Link)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsVzKCk066g

"We found that vocabulary learning was 20 percent faster after intense physical exercise as compared to the other two conditions." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17185007

Congrats on your results!

> Water tastes good now.

Drinking water feels underrated sometimes, but its a habit I've kept up for a long time. I have to keep a (mostly) full pint-glass of water around me at all times (or a bottle when at work). I never appreciated how important it is to stay hydrated when I was a kid, so I would always overheat and constantly be sweating (ironic indeed). Once I realized I needed more water I've made sure to have it within easy reach at all times.

Dropping sugar from your diet definitely is beneficial, however it's easier said than done. There's sugar in almost any food. After all, the fructose in apples and bananas is sugar as well, just not processed sugar.

What else do you eat besides bananas, apples, peanut butter, hotdogs and chicken? Doesn't exactly sound like the most varied diet. Also, peanut butter and hotdogs aren't exactly among the healthiest food options. Quite the opposite in fact.

> Dropping sugar from your diet definitely is beneficial, however it's easier said than done. There's sugar in almost any food. After all, the fructose in apples and bananas is sugar as well, just not processed sugar.

People are generally referring to dropping _added_ sugar when they talk about dropping sugar. Pretty much every model of nutrition thinks that whole fruit is good for you (in general, and of course excluding most juice).

> Also, peanut butter and hotdogs aren't exactly among the most healthy food options. Quite the opposite in fact.

Is peanut butter unhealthy? Obviously excluding the crappy ones that have added sugar.

> Is peanut butter unhealthy? Obviously excluding the crappy ones that have added sugar.

It's mostly fat with lots of salt, which is a pretty good recipe for future cardiovascular disease if eaten excessively.

Peanut butter is pretty good.

It's basically half fat, quarter protein, quarter carbs. Salt can be added or not.

They use it fortified as 'plumpy nut' to feed undernourished children in the third world back to health. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumpy%27nut )

I think that only applies to some styles of peanut butter. Jif, for instance, is more like three-quarters carbs (half of that sugar), one-quarter fat and negligible amounts of protein.

Oh, I was assuming that without further qualifiers peanut butter means just peanut and at most a bit of extra salt.

But I am not aware of how peanut butter is sold in eg the US. I am going by the German and British market here.

So, yes, if you eat sugary stuff, it's gonna be not great for you. Agreed.

On mobile so sorry for no links. "Fat is bad" is untrue. Watch any of the plethora of anti sugar films and you can get a brief history on the sugar lobby in the US and how fat's link to cardiovascular disease is limited. Salt is also not a problem, but it depends on your water intake and exercise (ie sweat) levels. Obviously, a pure fat and salt diet might not be the best choice, but both are solid parts of a healthy diet, especially if one is striving to be strong and fit.

Fat isn't bad per se. Excessive fat consumption however is as are saturated fats.

Peanuts mostly contain unsaturated fats. Peanut butter though might contain all sorts of other ingredients that are rich in saturated fats (like some plant oils).

The problem with salt is that in general Western diets already tend to use too much salt and too much salt can lead to an increase in blood pressure, which ultimately if untreated can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

Probably better to just eat peanuts / nuts, more bite and filling to it too. Eating raw peanut butter just sounds like the calorie kick people should stop indulging in.

It isn't really unhealthy as a part of your overall diet, but that peanut butter is tricky. Peanut butter lends itself to overeating - a serving size is only 2 tablespoons. About the size of a ping-pong ball. This isn't consistent with the ways most of us eat the stuff. Not to mention that it is just packed with calories. The combination makes it really easy to overeat.

Peanuts are a slightly easier option to control. There are about 45 peanuts in a serving of peanut butter. That isn't bad at all and seems a lot more filling in the long run and harder to over-do with a bit of self-control.

How do most people eat peanut butter? I like it spread on oatcakes - it's just ground peanuts, so it's like eating a handful of unsalted, unsweetened nuts.

USAmericans have a confection confusingly also called "peanut butter" that is high in sugar and salt, sadly most UK supermarkets now only stock the confection and not the nut-butter.

Americans eat both - the sugar/salt laden one all the way to slightly crunchy natural peanut butter. Most folks grew up with the processed stuff that doesn't separate when sitting on the shelf, though (not all natural).

But more to your question: Most folks spread it on fruit, some veggies, or on a sandwich, much thicker than butter or cream cheese. Too little peanut butter makes for a dry sandwich, especially if you aren't eating jelly along with it. Even when you are eating pure nut butter, it is easier to eat a lot of it. It is similar to someone drinking fruit juice or a smoothie (blended fruit only) can consume many calories in a sitting more easily than one would do with whole fruit. The body perceives it a bit differently with less chewing and whatnot.

Thanks for the response. I don't really like peanut butter all that much, but my approach to food is to just generally eat high-satiety foods and not worry about counting the exact quantity. I've found that it ends up netting out to eating the right amount anyway, without much effort. Calorie density by volume doesn't really figure into the way I eat.

It was along those lines that I figured that something that consists largely of healthy fats wouldn't pose a health concern. But I guess I wasn't thinking about other approaches to nutrition: it's entirely possible that a different approach would lead to overeating peanut butter, I guess.

Insulin is a fat-storing hormone so keeping the insulin response low is key--that's Endocrinology 101. Fructose is a sugar but is co-mingled with fiber and dose not raise the insulin response as much as unadulterated sugar.

Maybe the hot dogs we're used to eating at the ballpark are terrible for you but better-sourced variants do exist. It's just ground meat within a casing.

As for peanut butter, the jury is still out. Unfortunately it's a legume and not a nut which doesn't have that going for it.

Mm, all I can say is that it works for me. Kind of weird, yeah, but I suspect we know very little about health. There are too many variables to control for. It's not too surprising that simply dropping the manufactured stuff is beneficial.

I guess I meant added sugar. It's nuts that the food we eat won't clearly advertise how much added sugar is in it. They love conflating the two.

Nathan's hotdogs are nice because it's meat with nothing else, and it's quick to make. Bananas go bad quickly. My main diet is just apples, really, and chicken. I can't think of much else.

Kanzi apples are way better than Fuji apples, but they seem pretty rare. The peanut butter I get complements the apples wonderfully, and there's no added sugar. It says 1g with 12 servings in the jar, and it takes a couple days to go through a jar. So that's like 12 grams of sugar from the peanut butter. The apples and bananas have way more.

I don't know why it's working so well. Maybe it won't continue.

I probably gave the impression that "These are the only things you're allowed to eat," but really you can eat whatever you want as long as it fits the criteria laid out in the original comment. (No corn syrup or any of the other things I listed.) Apples and bananas just happened to taste great. Tomatoes, onions, squash, zucchini, pretty much whatever veggies you want are fine. Mushrooms too.

A ton of salt and pepper. And spice. Love me some spices.

> I guess I meant added sugar.

I think using the term "refined sugar" would also capture what you mean.

Eating lots of honey, or treacle, or brown sugar, or agave syrup, or condensed fruit juice, is going to give you the same problems as eating added white sugar.

Same experience here, sugar shifts your taste calibration up. You become attracted to high intensity, and blind in a way, to anything of smaller "dynamics".

When I cut sugar, I started to feel tastes again, in mundane things like lettuce, carrots, tomatos; felt like a cool breeze of various sensations. None were intense or satisfying in themselves, but the whole thing felt good enough, surprising, and more importantly no strings attached. You don't want to eat too much, you don't have after taste in your mouth, no sugar spike after eating. Felt just right. With "tasty" food you often end up keeping ingesting more and more. These things add up.

This is so true. The strategy that I have to not eat sugar is to not buy it. Because if I have anything sweet in the home, that apple will rot on the table.

> Shed 20lbs without even exercising.

Simply not drinking carbonated soda will do that.

Ditto counting calories with no changes to the diet composition. Pasta is fine, potatoes are OK, even deep fried ones. Just eat less, basically, and you will shed weight.

Perhaps. But the most interesting aspect of this is that I never feel hungry, ever. I eat as many bananas and apples as I can stuff my face with, and keep losing weight.

Best diet ever. Luckily I don't need much variety. I throw in some hotdogs (Nathan's brand, no added sugar/corn starch/dextrose) when I want some variety. Also you can put coconut milk in chicken with garlic and spices and it's the best thing.

>Best diet ever.

No bread, no pasta, no potatoes? I beg to differ.

You add the coconut milk in because it has sugar which compliments the other ingredients in a curry.

It's true, of course, that "just eating less" will cause you to lose weight. That part is not controversial, if you discount the fringe. However, there is evidence that this is a lot harder than it sounds, which is why we all have these weird diets in an effort to get ourselves to eat less.

Being fat is pretty terrible; Not only does it feel physically bad, but everyone seems to feel it's okay to pick on you about it, because, as we all know, how much you eat has a lot to do with it. Stop putting food in your mouth, am I right?

However, statistically speaking, once you are obese, there's an extremely, uh, slim chance of you attaining and keeping a healthy weight for any period of time.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2015.30277...

This indicates that to go from having a long term obese BMI to long term 'normal' bmi, you have to have willpower in the top 1% (If we're assuming it's mostly willpower, and I don't have a better model)

Actually, it is a little controversial. Apparently our bodies adapt to lower calories intake.

So if your basal metabolism rate is 2500 initially, and you drop it to 1500, after a few weeks/months and after you've lost some weight, if you eat anything above the 1500, you start putting weight again. I believe there are some studies that show this out there.

Intermittent fasting (skipping breakfast for instance and keeping a 16+ hours period between your last meal and first meal the next day) seems to avoid that, but I'm not sure if you can eat your original number of calories in the eating period and still lose weight, or if you can reduce the calories then. Also, low carbs anyway.

That's why a proper dietician-supplied diet will go for a calorie deficiency of a few hundred, max 500 below your maintenance; any lower and your body will go into hunger mode, and simply use less calories. Eat less, but not too much less. Losing a pound per week is about the maximum you should aim for. It'd probably be more if you're obese, but along with the fat you're losing a lot of water. (also, carbs cause more water retention)

Pasta is not "fine"--source? Pasta is all carbs, which just gets turned into sugar in your body.

Source- human history, people have been eating pasta as a staple food for centuries.

The Japanese are some of the healthiest and thinnest people in the world and have a carb heavy diet.

Two years ago I did something similar to what you've done, ie drop sugar, but I never stopped eating pasta, bread or white potatoes (although I dropped considerably my intake of bread), and I still did lose some weight. I did not increase my exercise levels significantly.

I have wrote something about my experience at my blog: http://joaoventura.net/blog/2016/chart-diet/

Bananas and apples have plenty of sugar in them FYI. Depending on the brand, same with peanut butter.

A banana has 30g carbs (15g sugars), while the Trader Joe's peanut butter I am looking at has 7g carbs (2g sugars) in a 32g serving.

A difference is if one eats an apple or banana, one gets some fiber and substance to food that probably satiates appetite more than straight sugar does. Most of the calories in peanut butter come from fat - this probably satiates hunger more than eating the equivalent amount of sugar as well.

But there are as much fiber in potatoes as in bananas. Both foods are similar. So excluding potatoes (as in example above) makes no sense to me...

How do their micronutrient profiles compare?

Sorry, I was only responding to the immediate comment about apples and bananas.

I object to pointing to 'added sugars' as the bad guys. Your body processes added sugar and natural sugar in the same way. Fruits contain vitamins, but they are also high in sugar. So the amazing changes people report might just as well be obtained by taking vitamin pills and more fibers.

I'm not saying that a better diet doesn't make you feel better, just that 'no added sugar' is just a rule of thumb. 'Natural sugar' is not in any way better (or worse) than 'added sugar'.

While technically correct, you're missing what matters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

How am I missing what matters? The glycemic index of most fruits is higher than, for example, the glycemic index of sweetened yoghurt. So it makes little sense to eat fruits instead of sweetened yoghurt (but it would be a lot better then, say, sweet cereals).

What matters is added sugar anything is higher in glycemic index compared to the same thing with no added sugar.

You're correct in that adding fibre would alleviate some of it but might as well eat the real thing without added sugar and take a piece of fruit. It's bound to be easier and better absorbed (containing various cofactors) compared to trying to emulate the cocktail with added vitamins and fibre.

In addition dairy is notoriously insulinogenic so not necessarily a good comparison (although non added sugar full fat yoghurt is probably okay).

Do you mean refined sugar? Banana is a sugar?

I'm on board with everything except eliminating pasta.

It's just so damn good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com