The Diet Fix
sciencebasedmedicine.org
sciencebasedmedicine.org
1. What we eat.
2. A temporary change to what we eat that will produce correspondingly temporary results.
Another thing that trips people up is the paralysis rational human beings often experience at the start of a monumental task. Changing your diet to be healthier is, for many people, such a huge undertaking that they can't get started. Like so many other things in life, the trick is to start small. Try putting one less sugar in your coffee or, every time you open a Pringles can, throw the first ten chips in the trash. If you keep doing small things one day you will laugh at how little they really were while being awed by how far you've come.
I'd like Taubes to be wrong on some points, but the author would rather argue against his misunderstanding of Taubes, which doesn't help.
This is the same as saying that all fat should go to the feet because of Gravity and the laws of physics are unavoidable. It is pure non-sense.
Do you know how to measure calories on food? You burn it and measure the heat it generates. How this apply to our body function is a mistery to me. To anyone actually.
Taubes theory is based on hormones, which is what the medicine proved for the last century that is what regulates all kind of function in our bodies. Make much more sense, no??
Calories in - calories out muchbe relevant to a thermal plant, no to our body producing fat.
It's the same old shopping channel and sideshow sales pitch people have peddling for hundreds of years, except it tries to play on a mark's trust for scientific authority instead of religious belief or new age mysticism, the same way some magicians pass off classic tricks as clever mentalism by exploiting people's belief in the power of modern psychology.
And the actual obesity cure it outlines is the same as every other mainstream diet: Reorient your whole life around planning, purchasing, preparing, eating and recording a weighed, calorie counted, macro-nutrient balanced diet, and try to get some more exercise as well.
Most people, particular in those groups most risk of obesity - those poor in time and money - will never be able to adopt such a strategy. Consider a single parent trying to raise three or four kids, while working a couple of jobs, and travelling everywhere via long public transport journeys. There's no way that they're going to be do all this.
Processed food is successful because it: - is cheap - tastes good - is easy to acquire - is easy to prepare
Any solution to widespread obesity needs to provide a source of healthy food that at the very least matches processed food in these regards.
So what's the best way to acutely raise leptin levels when they're depressed from caloric restriction? Flexible diet solutions like the ones talked about in the article. High-carb "refeeds" - some people call them cheat days - are particularly helpful [2]. The trick is to binge on carbs (not fat!!!) while remaining at a caloric deficit, which is where a calorie journal definitely comes in handy. Things like sweet potatoes and pasta will fill you up and replete your leptin levels.
As an aside, while we're talking about leptin and flexible dieting, intermittent fasting is wonderful for flexible dieting. I'm working on a website right now that's based on the leangains method [3], which is great for folks in the moderately overweight category. For severely overweight or obese folks, Dr. Krista Varady (who I had the pleasure of speaking with on the phone recently), has published a ton of research on intermittent fasting over the past decade and just wrote a book called the Every Other Day Diet [4], which I highly recommend for anyone trying to lose a lot of weight quickly and safely and keep it off.
[1] http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-hormones-of-bo...
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336
[3] http://www.leangains.com/2010/03/intermittent-fasting-set-po...
[4] http://www.amazon.com/The-Every-Other-Day-Diet-That-Weight/d...
For most, dieting is to maintain the status quo. Overweight or obese people drink and eat diet beverages/foods, or conform to some self-imposed diet, to maintain their current health. They know they can't give 100% into their desires, or they could have dire consequences (hospitalization, death), but they are not determined enough to take the actual steps to losing weight (significant diet change, routine exercise).
I see this everywhere. Family, friends, etc. They all say they're dieting, but year after year they are as out of shape as always. They are happy and content with themselves, because dieting to them does not mean "get fit like those gym guys on T.V."
Looks like a great beginning to a book.
One could write a great informational material only basing themselves on these myths.
As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.
"Exercise: You can’t out-exercise a bad diet, but regular exercise helps keep weight off, and changes your attitude for the better. And exercise has enormous health benefits beyond any impact on weight. What exercise? Something. Anything. “Some is good, more is better, everything counts” Freedhoff suggests."
But people forget that they burn more calories during a single night of sleep than they do doing 3 hours of cardio a week. Balance is important, but shedding nutrition & health mythology is even more so.
The only hitch is that fads are by their nature transitory, so at some point the stupid people will flit away from gluten-free to some other fad, and the market of gluten-free products will collapse. Which will kind of suck for those who actually need them.
It's a great book, and more accessible than you might think.
Read them all, or only the topics that matter to you; Lyle is one of the best in the world.
I inherit high cholesterol (above 220 at one point), but I've managed to lower it through diet alone by drinking a lot of fruit juice (but I also have to watch out for diabetes . . . ), and I've also got it lower through very heavy exercise alone (but I also have to watch out for skeletal/joint injuries . . . ).
As I've gotten older, I've noticed more and more that what I eat has a noticeable effect on my mood, alertness and just physical feeling of well-being. I've also noticed that every time I exercise now, I feel really good afterwords.
I don't think that diet and exercise are a panacea, but they could at least go a very long way to alleviating symptoms and preventing illness. I also think there is way too much pseudoscience and BS going on around exercise and diet that it makes it that much harder, and a lot of programs (high intensity workouts like CrossFit and exclusionary diets like Paleo) are completely irresponsible and very likely worse for people in the long run. It also doesn't help that most of these programs are faddish and very dogmatic, with no tests to back them up.
>Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss. You can’t outrun your fork- not in the long run.
Edited my original comment to reflect this.
For those who have a controlled weight already, is a higher metabolism actually something to aim for?
People who practice calorie restriction for life extension do seem to exercise but not to raise the metabolism, they view that as a tradeoff.
Perhaps not; as I get closer and closer to my ideal weight, I wonder if I should taper off my exercise routine. The problem is that exercise has more benefits than just higher metabolism. There are hormones that get released by exercising, not to mention that functional fitness is necessary if you are trying to reach a goal.
I'm not an expert, nor have I seen any research along these lines, but I've heard arguments made that since exercise speeds up metabolism and gets the blood flowing, it should clean out things like histamine (reducing allergic reactions) and disease faster. There's all sorts of reasons to not take my experience as scientific, but I certainly seem to have less allergies, heal faster and get sick less often the more regularly I exercise. I also tend to be more relaxed, have higher clarity and am on more of an even keel emotionally after I workout (and it tends to last most of the day, so I prefer to workout first thing in the morning).
Repeating a comment I made below, this makes no sense at all to me!!
His argument in his post saying Taubes is wrong is "The laws of physics are unavoidable". That makes no sense at all! There is no logical reason to believe that calories (a thermodinamic unity) is transformed in fat in our body - and no science to prove it either.
This is the same as saying that all fat should go to the feet because of Gravity and the laws of physics are unavoidable. It is pure non-sense.
Do you know how to measure calories on food? You burn it and measure the heat it generates. How this apply to our body function is a mistery to me. To anyone actually.
Taubes theory is based on hormones, which is what the medicine proved for the last century that is what regulates all kind of function in our bodies. Make much more sense to think how a diet affect hormones and how it affects are body producing fat, no??
Calories in - calories out must be relevant to a thermal plant, no to our body producing fat.
That's not to say that body fat is strictly dependent on caloric intake, but to certain extremes, there's no way around that fact.
What is calorie? Is is something? No! It is a unity of measuring heat. That's it! Doesn't matter at all.
Anything can become fat on your body, but what decides it is the hormones saying to your body "this will become fat, this will become muscle or blood or etc, and this is pee or poo".
Counting calories is a proxy at most. But people started to treat the proxy as thing in itself, which it isn't.
Over 100 years of hospital-ward, double-blind, clinical trial weight-loss research have ALL shown the exact same thing; Nothing comes remotely close to the effect calorie intake has on weight. The macronutrient content of diet (ie. low-carb, mostly sugar, or high protein) and meal timing has NO significant effect and is completely drowned out by the influence of calorie intake.
But of course that's boring and difficult. What sells books and adverts on Dr. Oz is "calories don't matter".
Okay then eat your recommended calories worth of cocopuffs for breakfast, since it's all about energy. Calorie counting oversimplifies the problem. Sure it might describe what is going on, but it can be a poor guide for a dieter trying to decide what to eat next.
I didn't say its ALL about energy, just that nothing comes close to the contribution of calories in weight-loss. The type of food you eat is completely drowned out by how much food you eat. So you CAN eat only cocopuffs and lose the exact same weight you'd lose eating a "balanced diet" consisting of the same # of calories (which means both diets contain the same amount of energy), although you risk becoming malnourished over time.
If a dieter's goal is to lose weight, the amount of food they eat (or more precisely the amount of food + amount of activity) is most important. This fundamental principle makes it easy to decide what to eat next. However if the goal is long term health, athletic performance, or growing muscle, then we need to modify how we choose. But it's really not that complicated for almost everyone; just eat mostly whole foods.
I read all related articles about fat and didn't find where he defends this claim (only general explanations about different types of fat and its relation to heart diseases).
Also I am no expert at this topic at all, and I wouldn't understand all the scientific study both sides claim to have. But make sense to me that the fat I eat isn't stored as the fat in my belly, as cow milk doesn't become milk for mothers, and as osteosporis (the lack of calcium on your food) isn't easily fixed by eating more calcium on your food.
I've posted here about my experiences with weight loss before (tldr; I got involved with weight watchers, have personally been involved with hundreds of people losing hundreds of pounds each over ~10 years).
There is no person on this earth that can eat less calories than they use and not lose weight. It's not possible. So there are two very easy ways to lose weight.
1. Eat less calories (than you use).
or
2. Burn more calories (than you eat).
(or a combination of the two - as a lifelong program like Weight Watchers promotes.)
Obviously it can be hard for some people to eat less calories.
I'm not saying it's easy, I'm saying it's simple.
However, the trees are macros.
Macros are important for goals. If your goal is simply "lose weight", sure, just care about calories. But if you have a more refined goal (recomp, spare muscle, lose bodyfat, athletic performance, build muscle etc), the macros are vital.
I do think people lose the forest from the trees. However, I find that people lose sight of the path through the trees just as often. Both are important.
By definition it would have to be true that you consumed fewer calories than expended. Calories in/calories out is not wrong, it's just not useful (or at least it's not a nearly complete picture).
Calories in/out are not independent variables. The type of calories you consume dictate at least: 1) how your body processes the calories you consume, 2) the energy you will have to expend, and 3) the hunger you will feel.
Unfortunately I wasn't completely comfortable with the types of meals I ate with that lifestyle.
But it did make me feel as though the whole calories in - calories out was nonsense. Especially after trying (and failing) diets based around that (weight watchers) multiple times.
>But it did make me feel as though the whole calories in - calories out was nonsense.
As a diet methodology, calories in vs calories out is not very effective for the general public. I too have lost more weight via keto.
But when I really tracked what I was eating I found keto simply kept my appetite under control better. This is extremely valuable but ultimately it was still down to calories.
(You also tend to drop a ton of water weight when you first start keto which makes it seem super effective at first)
But alas I got so sick of chicken for dinner and eggs for breakfast, and I guess just got too bored with the meals. Gained it all back :-(
(I actually haven't eaten an egg since then. And I avoid chicken now. I'm wondering if some people develop an aversion to foods they eat too regularly?)
(This is just a response to your comment, I didn't come away from the post thinking the book treats everything else as just noise.)
I am also interested in how many people read the article, get interested in the book, find they cannot purchase it, and then never bother coming back to check it.