Counting Calories? Your Weight-Loss Plan May Be Outdated
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The idea that your body has no clue as to what type (fat, protein, carb) of you're eating is stupid.
I have advised nearly everyone in my family as well as lots of friends and colleagues to weight loss success with the following simple rules:
1. Get rid of grains, legumes and sugars
2. Eat healthy fats (coconut oil, lard, tallow grass-fed butters)
3. Eat a decent amount of protein from meat sources.
4. Lower your carbs overall (this is sort of automatic as you will not feel as hungry if you eat plenty of fats and protein)
5. Eat to satiety
Also, you don't need to go for runs, or exercise to lose weight. It's great for your overall health, but if you are overweight and the thought of exercise is stopping you, then forget it and just change your diet.
As an aside, if anyone else wants further advice please feel free to ask.
edit: formatting
legumes have 3 things that suck - lectins, protease inhibitors and phytates
lectins - known to cause inflammation and have been show to cause gut permeability which is followed by auto-immune type diseases.
protease inhibitors intefere with the breakdown of proteins into amino acids
phytates have been shown to inhibit mineral absorption
:)
I will say that following that mantra is unnecessary for weight loss unless you're very serious about it. Following my diet plan I lowered my body fat percentage to < 9% (It was the strangest thing, I was a computer geek with abs).
Everything works, some things just work better than others.
For me the rule seems to be something like: no carbs - weight goes down at a rate of ~0.4kg/day (with a lower limit at ~82kg), regardless of calorie count, and yes, I varied the amount of taste-free-fat from nothing to ~2000kcal/day. With wheat: wait gain with sickness-upper limit of ~100kg (when I get there, I feel physically sick to the point of not eating) -- REGARDLESS OF CALORIC INTAKE (~800 average daily for over a few months, while constantly gaining weight). Some carbs but no wheat - mostly stable weight, I'm still working on figuring out the good carbs from the bad carbs.
If we really understood (as a society) what truly makes for a good diet, people would be getting slimmer and not fatter.
IMHO, the most sensible diet advice comes from Michael Pollan: "Eat real food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Check out a cross-fit gym anywhere and see if you can find the pand-bear-shaped folks.
P.S. I eat pork muscle, chicken breast, tuna, sardines, mackerel and eggs and while they are rich in vitamin B12 and some of the others, they don't seem to provide the full spectrum of B vitamins. On the other hand with grains you can't go wrong, you can be sure that you're going to get B1-B9 vitamins, especially if you eat a lot of bread like I used to.
- 0.022 mg of Thiamin; RDA is 1.4 mg
- 0.052 mg of Riboflavin; RDA is 1.2 mg
- 9.296 mg of Niacin; RDA is 16 mg
- 0.150 mg of Pantothenic acid; RDA is 5 mg
- 0.245 mg of Vitamin B-6; RDA is 1.3 mg
- 2.09 mcg of Vitamin B-12; RDA is 2.4
So while tune does have enough of some B vitamins, it does not have enough of the others.
This is only partially true; there is nothing wrong with unprocessed grains/legumes if eaten in moderation. This means whole grains and not processed wheat products. Actually the rest of your advice usually lines up with the "healthy carbs" mantra which refers to whole grains, legumes, nuts and some starches.
The other thing that should be mentioned is to eat as much low-calorie vegetables/greens as possible which helps fill you without adding to your calorie count (which is still important to some degree) and also important for getting vital minerals/nutrients.
Sprouting them may limit these issues, but for me, healthy carbs are sweet potatos and some white rice now and then.
It probably depends on one's definition of "nothing wrong". The fact that grains, whole or not, are packed with antinutrients like gluten, phytic acid or lectins is well-known.
Here's the best summary on the subject that I've found so far: http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=852
Edit: lectins
:)
That summary is pretty horrible. Maybe you were testifying to the state of the literature, but it read like two children arguing. Both kind of referring to literature, but little really putting together coherent arguments.
Based on this, I think I'll eat what tastes good. :-)
Based on this, I think I'll eat what tastes good. :-)
Based on this:
You claim whole grains have sufficient minerals to negate their toxic effects. Pity that the high phytate content of whole grains binds to minerals such as iron, calcium, magnesium, and zinc in the gastrointestinal tract, significantly reducing their absorption by the body[6-8]. While they increase the dietary content of zinc, iron, magnesium and calcium when compared to refined grains, they also promptly increase the excretion of these minerals from the body. The end result is that overall mineral status improves only marginally, remains unchanged, or even worsens[7-12]. If you want to increase your mineral intake, whole grains are a pretty poor way to do it. Far better choices would be fresh non-cereal, non-leguminous plant foods, mineral-rich waters (look for a high magnesium:calcium ratio), ionic mineral solutions such as those sourced from Utah’s Great Salt Lake, and highly bioavailable mineral supplements such as those complexed to citrate, picolinate, etc.
I will not. :-)
Take this quote from one of the papers noted by the author:
The studies summarized in this review show that the recommendation for increasing dietary fiber in Western communities would not be expected to have any adverse effect on mineral absorption if we increase not only the intake of fiber, but also the dietary intake of other food components such as protein (both vegetable and animal protein) and ascorbic, citric, and oxalic acids (in fruits and vegetables). The adequate intake of minerals, fat, and simple sugars are maintained with this type of diet. The recommendations should be best interpreted in such a way as to prevent the consumption of excessive amounts of phytate, particularly for those whose mineral needs are great. Further studies are still needed in this field in order to understand the conflicting results published in the literature regarding the effects of fiber on the utilization of minerals; however, the studies reviewed in this article may give us an idea of the complexity of mineral availability in fiber-rich, phytate-rich diets.
From a cursory skimming of the references that even your author gives, it seems like only diets exceptionally high with phytate are problematic -- in areas such as Iran. I don't think the typical US diet (even at a 1 std dev) is likely to approach a problem. And as noted here, with reasonable diet modification, the problem can be almost completely mitigated.
I'm not a nutritionist, and don't think about this daily, but the evidence just isn't compelling. And often completely contradictory. Given that, if whole grains in moderation lead to a better quality of life, that's my choice.
Of course if we see that most NBA athletes and centurians avoid whole grains, I would strongly reconsider.
With that said, I actually don't eat many whole grains, and eat more fice. But purely for non-health related reasons.
* You're strategy is vague and difficult to determine compliance. How much is a "decent amount"?
* My method is quantitative. Everything I ate had a number, and that number totaled less than 15 by the end of the day.
The problem I have with your method is the idea that I need to have a huge knowledge-base to make it work. How many people do you think know if their butter is "grass-fed"? If I go to Applebees, the calorie number is listed right on the menu, yet I would never be able to find out if their butter is grass-fed.
I put off trying to lose weight for years because I thought I needed to read 10 books to figure out how. Turns out all I needed was a calculator.
forget the grass-fed butter, i shouldn't have added it in. the reason i said decent amount, is because it's not a quantitive amount. have a steak or some chicken every day.
a good diet is one that has the least work and you can stick with for life.
Eat lots of fat, some protein, little carbs.
A sugar calorie is completely different from a edamame calorie, but their end result regarding weight loss will be the same.
You'll feel completely different from both calories, but your scale won't.
Some foods — vegetables, nuts, fruits, and whole grains — were associated with less weight gain when consumption was actually increased. Obviously, such foods provide calories and cannot violate thermodynamic laws. Their inverse associations with weight gain suggest that the increase in their consumption reduced the intake of other foods to a greater (caloric) extent, decreasing the overall amount of energy consumed.
Their view isn't that counting calories doesn't work because the science is wrong, but because you're less inclined to follow through due to satiety issues associated with foods. To put it another way, you can't have a bag of chips, and counterbalance it by having a yogurt before going to bed.
To me this reporting is sloppy.
A much more accurate headline would be, "Eating the right foods will help you stick to your calorie counting diet".
Where's the data like, "People who eat fruits, veggies, and whole grains actually ate more calories, yet lost weight". And "among those who ate lots of french fries and potato chips, but yet fewer calories than others, gained the most weight."
Of course I believe those who eat a lot french fries gain a lot of weight. It's a calorie dense food. As are chips.
I'm not saying the title is inaccurate, but rather the article doesn't really substantiate it.
That's what I took away, anyway.
1. Regularly add vinegar(any kind) to most meals, or drink it diluted in water. This dramatically lowers effective GI of carbs so overconsumption is more difficult. It also has some (complex, but mostly positive) effects on body acidity and digestion. Vinegar has been documented for its properties since ancient Greek times, so it's one of the most proven aids around.
2. The _context_ in which things are consumed matters more than the _amount_. For this I mostly stick to a single rule: Meals should be either "carb meals" or "saturated fat" meals. Preferably neither, but never both.
Saturated fat acts to raise effective GI and this is the main source of the "badness" in meals like pizza, "super" burritos, burger+fries, macaroni+cheese, etc. But sausage and sauerkraut, or cheese in a green salad are relatively low-impact combinations, despite having a nominally high level of sat-fat. Similarly, even drinking a can of Coke(massive sugar-carb dose, the worst kind) can be OK once in a while, but if you have Coke with lard-soaked fries or full-fat ice cream you're signing up for the sick train.
There are tons of other contextual rules you can stack on for caffeine, gluten, the best types of fats, the best preparation methods, etc. but the sat-fat/carb one is the biggest bang-for-buck one I've found, and combining that with vinegar to mitigate the worst-case situations I can remain pretty flexible about what I'm eating.
http://www.diabetes.org/food-and-fitness/food/what-can-i-eat...
I've tried several apps from Android Market, and most of them (and, I'd say, all of them having an usable UI where I can actually try to count something) suggested me some sort of "low-carb" "healthy" recipes, even though my BMI is 17.6 (underweight).