The diet that really works
women.timesonline.co.uk
women.timesonline.co.uk
Heck I can summarize it in 2 words:
Modified atkins.
But is this method a modified Atkins one? It requires dieters to experience not only the food that paleolithic human ates, but also the frequency of insecurity of hunger and periodic exposure to unaware danger in life. I had an old boss before who stuck to Atkins after coronary artery bypass to lose 40 lbs, but he still ate a lot, ate frequently and he hated the feeling of being hungry. The method in the article actually wants you to experience randomly meal skipping and hunger to get into the zone. I think at this point, it is different.
DeVany is a very interesting and credible guy with a different spin on eating and training than you'll usually find.
Check out especially his warnings about marathon/endurance running [1] compared to the typical media celebration of marathon running as some ideal of fitness [2].
[1] "Top Ten Reasons Not To Run Marathons", http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html
[2] "The Perfect Human", http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html
It's not a diary, it's an article about a new diet. Tell me about the diet. You want to add a supplement about the author fine. But I don't need 3 pages of useless text about the author without once mentioning what the diet actually is.
Sorry, but there is too much garbage in the world to spend 15 minutes reading all about some dude, and only then discover that the diet is no good for you.
First tell me about the diet. Then, if I'm interested tell me about the dude.
It's personalizing color, and it also lets the author explain how he's seen DeVany "half-naked".
You must really hate novels.
Not everything is written for an audience with ADD, nor should it be.
At least I thought I wasn't - this was billed as "The diet that really works". And that's what I was here to read, and then I didn't.
You want to write "personal insights about the man who made the diet that really works" no problem. I might even like to read it - but that's not what I was expecting.
You say you are writing about a diet, then do so, or change the title.
It was a fine piece of writing, I enjoyed the short read.
So if you feel misled by an attention-stealing headline, blame the headline, not the article.
If it is a scientific publication. Your point is right. But take it easy when same material is published on newspaper for general female readers. It is not to their taste.
I remembered most of time when I wanted to argue some points with all my girlfriends that I've dated, they remember much better when I said some stories around the point. They usually responded worser when I just tried to cut the crap and strike the point.
It's a shame he loses much of that respect as we near reason #1 and they get increasingly 'silly'.
Let's take #2: "At least four particiants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years. Purely anecdotal, but consistent with the elevated S100beta counts and TKN-alpha measures. Perhaps also connected to the microthrombi of the endothelium found in marathoners."
I'm researching this with google but, "In the United States, the annual incidence of brain cancer generally is 15-20 cases per 100,000 people." http://www.oncologychannel.com/braincancer/index.shtml "In 2007 more than 20000 runners completed the race." http://www.bostonmarathon.org/
I can't quickly find numbers for the preceding years, nor how many each year had run it previously, so lets assume the numbers increased linearly over the preceding 10 years to give a total number of runners as 100,000. That, rather conveniently, suggests 15 - 20 incidents of brain cancer should result. Shock result - marathon running prevents brain cancer!
#1 is the first runner of the marathon, Phidippides, died. Hopefully I don't need to explain why this one is silly.
Some of his other points would be worth further study but I can't find a single point without weaknesses.
The death rate would appear to be 5.6 per 100,000 according to this source neuro-oncology.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/6/3/179.pdf
It is worth noting that this is the annual rate suggesting that 5 runners of the Boston marathon should have died from brain cancer in the last year alone.
I'm not saying his reasoning is sound, but your rebuttle isn't either.
It's a 'back-of-a-napkin' calculation. Certainly not accurate but a nice place to start for future refactoring.
:)
Carbs, not fats, are modernity’s most deadly assassins. And, even if they don’t kill you, they make you feel worse. I sleep better without them and I seem to have become a nicer person; what with that and the weight loss, my friends – or were they enemies? – barely recognise me.
The good, the bad and the tasty
The fundamentals of Arthur De Vany’s diet: bin the carbs and packaged food, and delight in lean meat and at least two veg meals
- Cook by colour and texture so that meals look beautiful. If busy, skip meals with little worry. You don’t have to have three square meals a day. Snack on nuts or celery. Drink plenty of water. I also drink tea, coffee and a little wine.
Carbs Avoid bread, muffins, bagels, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, vegetable oils, beans or anything in a package — empty, high-calorie foods with a high carbohydrate content.
Flavour Spice up your food with fresh ingredients such as basil, garlic, parsley, rosemary, spring onions, avocados and nuts, and use various oils, such as olive oil, for flavour.
Celery adds texture (and is good for testosterone too).
Fruits Fresh fruits of all sorts are good; I focus on melon and red grapes. Fruit juice is out. I have one or two fruits with most breakfasts; now and then a piece with other meals.
Vegetables Eat lots of fresh raw, steamed, sauteed or grilled vegetables. I never use frozen, canned or packaged vegetables.
Protein Eat plenty of meat, such as ribs, steak, bacon, pork loin, turkey and chicken, but trim fat from the edges. Fish, seafood and eggs are also good choices.
Breakfast I tend to eat last night’s leftovers: turkey with jarlsberg cheese and fruit, bacon with red grapes, omelettes with rosemary, olives and spring onions.
Lunches Usually salads, with red cabbage, romaine lettuce, spring onions, garlic, kale, broccoli or cauliflower, with salmon, tuna, turkey, chicken, pork or steak.
Dinners I sometimes eat a whole rack of ribs with salad and vegetables. Or a large steak, trimmed of fat. Almost always there is a beautiful salad and vegetables.
From "The China Study" about high-protein diets:
"And yet these books are immensely popular. Why? Because people DO lose weight, at least in the short term.[...](about a study) The first sign that all is not rosy is that these obese subjects were severely restricting their calorie intake during the study (35% fewer calories). [...](list some problems) Additionally, they found that the dieters had a stunning 53% increase in the amount of calcium they excreted in their urine, which may spell disaster for their bone health. The weight loss, some of which is simply initial fluid loss, might come with a very high price. [...](from an Australion study:) 'Complications such as heart arrhythmias, cardiac contractile function impairment, sudden death, osteoporosis, kidney damage, increased cancer risk, impairment of physical activity and lipid abnormalities can all be linked to long-term restriction of carbohydrates in the diet.'".
Yeah, that sounds likely.
</sarcasm>
De Vany, Arthur & Walls, W. David, 1996. "Bose-Einstein Dynamics and Adaptive Contracting in the Motion Picture Industry," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(439), pages 1493-1514, November.
Too many articles submitted recently that were poorly researched and written.
* avoid fizzy drink as much as possible * avoid crisps (do americans call them chips?) * go easy on fried and fast food (no need to cut them out completely) * Try to cut down on alcohol, but I don't really follow my own advice here!
Then
* walk or cycle as much as possible * take the stairs instead of the lift for 5 floors or less * and exercise 4 or 5 times a week doing whatever you find fun.
Maybe I am just lucky, but I never seem to put on any weight, and I do eat fast food and drink plenty of beer, but I do exercise a lot and cycle to work each day.
Food brings in not only calories, but various other nutrients that your body needs to keep itself in good condition. It can also bring in things that the body works hard to get rid of, and still do damage while they're being removed.
You really only need calories. It's a terrible life, and no fun, but you could live off sugar water + a multi-vitamin.
However, as you age, your calorie expense goes down dramatically at one point... for some it's around 25. Others it's around 35. Others, it never happens! But most people find that at some point they have to seriously decrease their intake of food (without changing their lifestyle otherwise) or else they get a spare tire pretty quickly!
To me, I'd rather enjoy my food and then just spend an extra 15 minutes at the gym to balance it out instead of sustaining myself with horrible tasting lumpy green goo
For balance you should be ideally looking at calories absorbed = calories burned.
Why use different words? Well, firstly we absorb calories differently for different food types - we certainly do not absorb the full 100% of all calories available in any food. So measuring 'calories in' becomes 'caloric intake * %absorbtion'. It'll actually be some sort of integral of this products for each foodtype that you consume.
And then there is the question of calories burned. If you really want to stay slim, the best way to do so is to burn more energy when at rest. Of course, the easiest way to achieve this is by training your body to burn energy by doing exercise. But it is important to note that the calories burned just to keep you alive generally exceed the amount you burn during exercise by a decent factor.
But all of this is really nit-picking. Your basic premise remains true, you just can't beat physics. Anyone that is depending on this sort of information to optimise their weight-loss program has missed the point. Your lifestyle should not be so close to making you gain weight that these factors play an important role.
If you're eating a ton of fruit a day, keep doing it! It's probably the healthiest thing you can put in your mouth.
To be super healthy eat lean protein sources in every meal, a ton of vegetables, some fruit, and some good fats like fish oil and olive oil.
It did not say that fruits in general are bad.
This also bothers me: "But what’s different about Arthur is, first, he is not selling anything, except for subscriptions to his website."
The "not selling anything but..." bothered me too, also "Thirdly, he is very smart. His reasoning is immaculate and he knows a lot more than your average doctor or nutritionist." The doctors on TV trying to sell me on chocolate bars also look very smart...
"You must have a playful, intermittent form of exercise. And you must exercise. The benefits are profound. Make it fun, intense according to your own fitness and goals, and brief. Brevity and intensity are keys. Intensity means a little burn in the muscle, not heaving and straining. Brevity means you do not release stress hormones."
He agrees with you.
3-4 sessions of 45 minutes per week, at a decent level of intensity, is about right for most people.
That being said, your statement is unfounded. If you're LIFTING, and lifting HEAVY, then yes, it doesn't make sense to go for more than 45 minutes, for exactly the reasons you stated.
However, cardio? People will see huge cardio benefits if they run for a long time. There's no "negative fitness effect."
Yes, you may burn muscle, but it's not like you're going to all together stop burning fat. In fact, when you hit glycogen depletion (the 'hitting the wall'), your body will switch energy burning modes entirely, and start burning a TON of fat.
I'm nit-picky about your statement because America, as a whole is in such a crisis. We look for any excuse to get out of exercise. Those idiots at the gym lifting 10 lb weights? Do you really think they're getting a good workout? They're not lifting heavy, and they can go far longer than 45 min doing 7 lb arm curls. What about those on the treadmill, walking for 45 minutes while talking on the cell phone?
As a society, we've become too used to everything being easy- we want an easy job with lots of money, we want to consume everything, and we want to be able to eat what we want, and just have the pounds come off.
Losing weight is hard. It takes discipline and focus. Now, especially in the two weeks of the Olympics, we should be able to collectively get off our fat asses and look at what some Americans have been able to accomplish with a ton of hard work and sacrifice.
Think Michael Phelps works out 45 min a day? All those gymnasts? Tyson Gay? So maybe you should step back, realize there's more to life than T-nation, and look at actual exercise science.
T-Nation is the equivalent of looking at some IT trade magazine talking about Java applets and their Web 2.0 capabilities. Yeah, it can be done. Is it the best tool for the job? No.
Most people that go to the gym are mainly trying to look better so those people should be doing heavy lifting. Even most training calls for time with heavy weights. Thus, the 45 minute or so rule. You point out a major caveat: Most people are not going anywhere near their limits. Around 45 minutes of high weight/volume training, one should naturally notice a loss of power not quit prematurely due to a stopwatch.
A (fat) person once told me she heard some advice that one should do cardio at a pace in which one will not experience heavy breathing and still be able to hold a conversation with the person next to them. What's next? Laying in bed as cardio?
Beginner advice: It's better to go out and just do something rather than overthinking it. Look at the people who are skinny, ripped, massive, fast, or whatever your goal is and do what they do. Many people apply premature optimization to working out. Diet matters but guys in prison become huge on three square meals a day. Sets and reps matter but Arnold wrote something to the effect of, "I don't know why beginners worry so much about details. If you are bad at pull ups, do as many pull ups as you can, rest, repeat." The key is to push yourself and measure your progress to make sure you are actually improving.
Could you post a link or reference for one example of someone who cut calories and "trained like a madman" and still got fatter?
There's a lot of debate about hormones, metabolism, calorie quality and optimum exercise. However it has still proven difficult to break basic laws of physics.
Google for "overtraining" or read the articles on t-nation.com or musclebulletin.com.
"I'm sorry but these dudes look like AIDS patients. Would it kill you to at least get a tan and not remind the world of the Holocaust? And could you butch up the sport a little bit? Because deep down I know the male divers I just saw are in shower right now, naked, loofahing each other's taut athletic bodies... ."
With a bit of literary magic, over the course of 2 pages, we go from the Olympics to colorful commentary about Japan:
"You gotta wonder about the Japanese some times. These are the guys who invented vending machines that distribute soiled panties that you can take home and either use as Dennis Hopper ether masks or make soup with them. And they're the ones who invented underwear that you can wear six days straight by rotating them 120 degrees each day for three days and then turning them inside out and then repeating the underwear carousel thing for another three days. And then there's the bukkake thing, which is kinda disturbing even for a preternaturally open-minded guy like me."
So... I guess thanks for the exercise tips and the obviously credible reference but I think I'll stick with training like a madman and not eating as much.
If you are specifically trying to lose weight, limiting calories is key, but you must eat plenty before and after these madman workouts and then don't eat as much on non-workout days. Just be sure to eat healthy stuff with a good ratio of macro nutrients. If you don't, the training will be more difficult and less effective.
Luckily, your body should be pretty good at telling you when it's hungry. Don't fight it (much). Diet and exercise info is all over the map, but the basics I have mentioned here are more or less undisputed.
I have seen the elitism at Crossfit, but I read the t-nation forums for a few months. They were much more negative than, say, Crossfit.
He is selling a 4 DVD set for $139.95
But I'm unclear on what you think is terrible for him, long term. His diet or the training? Keep in mind his diet is what his body needs right now. I don't know what you're basing your conclusions on.
Eating and then burning 10k calories a day probably ages you significantly faster than eating and burning 2k calories, possibly even 5x.
Also, most people, including elite athletes, are very poor at listening to their bodies and eating accordingly. There's a lot more to eating than simply being hungry. It's very much a habit. Google around for the psychology of eating, it's actually mind-boggling how complex and deeply rooted in our psyche it is. (Actually, most bodily functions go a lot deeper than we think.)
Ex-athletes are often very overweight specifically for that reason. They stop the exercise but not the eating.
I'm very aware that eating has a significant pyschological component, but, again, if you're going to say "ex-atheletes are often very overweight," I'd like to see studies.
Humans, on the other hand, have three billion.
When I met him, I thought that there was no way he could be a swimmer!
Also there's a lot of evidence that all of that drastically increased metabolism basically burns years off of their lives.
But we also shouldn't make it officially legitimate which will encourage a higher volume of such posts.
Edit: Umm, you guys like wordy articles about fad diets with bad signal/noise ratio?