How to Lose 100 Pounds | Hacker News Reader

How to Lose 100 Pounds

jamesgolick.com

18 pointsjamesgolick11 comments

What's wrong with aspartame? I consume that every day and am a lot skinnier than most people.

Your body reacts to the sweetness and produces insulin, which when not paired with actual sugars, turns into fat. This is known as "Insulin Resistance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_resistance)

This is not what insulin resistance is (Read his own link): >Your body reacts to the sweetness and produces insulin, which when not paired with actual sugars, turns into fat.

Additionally, items which digest to glucose trigger insulin production. Aspartame has repeatedly been shown to not. Most other low calorie sweetners, additionally, have not as well.

Saccharin had one study that showed a correlation, however, several other studies did not.

However, protein does: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1946186

Honestly curious here, why is stevia excluded from the list in the article? It would seem to fall under the same process and cause equal amount of harm? Or is it the naturalistic fallacy at work?

Oops - meant to reply here. http://www.livestrong.com/article/536467-does-stevia-affect-...

It's a lot easier for some people to avoid what they think are everything processed than some processed things.

In reality, they're surely still eating processed things, but they THINK they aren't, and placebo is all it takes sometimes.

Actually, the reason is that aspartame has a high glycemic index, so your body reacts to it roughly the same way it reacts to sugar.

http://www.glycemicindex.com/

That is not true, it was a truefact that squirted around health junkies that wasn't backed up by a consensus of the science.

Any sources?

FWIW, I found practically no information regarding aspartame on the University of Sydney site, but I did come across an article that basically said stevia and aspartame both work, but stevia was was significantly better at lowering blood glucose levels.

Sidenote: As someone who loves beer dearly, but also tries to limit his intake of foods with a high glycemic index, I was pleased to read an article [2] linked by the University of Sydney [3] about how beer has too low of a glycemic index to measure (still has plenty of calories, though).

[1] http://www.glycemicindex.com/

[2] http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&S...

[3] http://www.glycemicindex.com/faqsList.php#10

When looking I found this article which pointed at TONS of studies:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/artificial-sweeteners-insulin...

James, what challenges (psychological or physiological) did you experience when you started eating meat again? As a vegetarian of 13 years, I have trouble finding low-carb options but I don't think I could eat meat again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com