I have been participating in a Stanford Medical research study since October. The name of the randomized control study is "One Diet Does Not Fit All" (http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/DietbyGenotype-Study....). The basic premise of the study is that as almost everyone has one of two insulin responses to glucose and that if you have one response, you should be on a low-fat diet, and if you have the other, you should be on low-carb.
My personal results have been quite successful. I was randomly assigned to the low-carb diet. I basically eat vegetables, meats, and cheese. I avoid everything from bread, to rice, to even nuts and fruits. On this diet I have lost nearly fifty pounds since I started. So it's been pretty successful for me. (I will admit that I had no idea whether it's the particular diet I'm on, per se, or the fact that I'm on any diet at all -- that I am paying attention).
I also accept the premise of the study: one diet does not fit everyone. Sometimes I meet people and they say it's as simple as calories in, calories out. Some people say everyone should be on this diet or that diet. I don't know -- I don't presume that my diet would simply work for everyone. The human body is a very complex system both for any one person, and for the population. I tend to believe the central premise of the study (and we'll see if it works out): that different physiologies lead to different beneficial diets (and perhaps much more).
There is a lot of story here: exercise being easier, meetings going more smoothly, my colleagues and family and friends supporting me, YC giving me a new t-shirt, buying a new wardrobe, my changing interactions with women (I'm strait, and who knows if this is due to me looking better or me being more confident)...etc...I'm planning to write up a (as is often the case) too-long blog post on it all when I'm finished with the study on October.
What gets lost in these discussions is the intricacies of calories in vs. calories out.
Bodyweight should always vary based on calories in vs. calories out. You can't create mass from nothing and if you're burning more calories than you take in then you have to lose mass or else your body is a perpetual motion machine. What people ignore is that:
1. Certain things change calories out. In some women (for example those with PCOS) their calories out drops dramatically and continues to vary based on their calories in. Their bodyweight is still obeying the laws of calories in vs. calories out but the calories out drops and so it feels like there must be something else going on, that cals in vs. cals out doesn't work.
2. What people really care about is not bodyweight but bodyfat. So even though everyone obeys calories in vs. calories out you can still change what your body does with those calories by adjusting your macronutrient ratios (nutrient partitioning). Decreasing carbs can change your insulin response and cause your body to lose more fat vs muscle which is what people really want. Also your body uses carbs to create glycogen which is stored as water weight.
3. Different macronutrients affect satiety differently. If you just binge on carbs you'll generally be hungry again very soon. If you eat high fat then you'll be full longer. There are also microoptimizations that occur like shifting leptin levels.
It's the source of a lot of arguments. One camp says keto is magic, the next says it's just a trick to keep your calories low, and both are right. Diets like keto do help you keep your calories low, you can't binge and eat 5000 calories of meat and lose weight, but there are also other benefits.
Personal anecdotal evidence: I disagree. It's simple.
I met a former USMC drill instructor who at 45 was 4% bf and could bench several times his weight. He told me he exercised 5 minutes a week (one for another discussion) and ate at McDonald's every day.
I grew up in France eating "organic" and plenty of veggies and so on and I was intrigued by the idea that "what" didn't matter, only "how much". I thought I'd give it a shot, and ate McDonald's for one or more meals a day, keeping the total around 1300 kcal/day, and each meal below 400 kcal. I still remember the look a friend gave me as I ate 1/3 of an avocado bacon thickburger from CJ and chucked the other 2/3 into the bin.
I lost 7kg in 8 weeks starting at 35% bf. I also increased the weights on big machines (leg press, bench, weighted pull up) by around 20% during that time. Felt perfectly healthy throughout, and mostly not hungry. I also exercised around 10 minutes once a week, walked around 100m a day to and from work and otherwise spent the time sitting. I might do it again this time with a health checkup before and after to get some hard data.
Looking back at the papers, books and other "evidence" I read, I found it very hard to find any that controlled for calorific consumption. I want to see a study that goes, for example, paleo vs McDonald's, at equal kcal/day, hydration and meal timing. I want to see the variance not explained away by simple calories in/out.
Interesting. This actually seems to be in line with the low carb approach which claims that fats starts getting burned only after all the carbs are gone. It's less extreme though, in the sense that true "keto" approaches say a few days are needed to enter a true ketonic state with very low carb consumption.
If I understand intermittent fasting correctly, you eat the same amount (so calories in/calories out don't change), you just don't eat for a part of the day (e.g. 12 hours) or every second day and eat that much more in the "allowed" window.
Whoah interesting. That's been how I've eaten for a number of years now, through nothing other than a quirk with how I feel hungry. Odd, very odd. I wonder if thats why my weight (I'm slender but fit, despite not exercising as much as I want to) stays exactly the same. But then, I'm also fairly young (heading into my mid-20's), so a quick metabolism and the fact I'm likely still growing helps too. Just interesting to think about though!
This is definitely true, if you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. But this is really hard to enforce for many people. Without blatant calorie labels on everything you eat, it's really easy to go over and then assume that it must not be true.
The human body is more complicated than that. Different foods cause different levels of insulin response. Insulin tells the body to "pack it away as fat." As mentioned in the article, it's likely insulin is more relevant to heart disease than saturated fat intake.
The role of insulin also helps to explain obesity observed in malnourished populations, people who simply aren't taking in enough calories to get fat, but are.
I also take issue with your message toward people who are struggling with overweight. It's not just that overweight people are bad at staying within limits; it's that fat cells stimulated by insulin to grow send messages requesting more energy, stimulating appetite.
You can't not lose weight if you burn more calories than you eat. Where does the extra energy come from? I'd like to see examples of overweight people that are malnourished in the sense that they don't eat enough calories.
I fully support the claim that some foods make you more hungry than others, even if you eat the same amount of calories. It'd be pretty hard to consume 2000 calories of spinach without rupturing your stomach, but it's easy to eat 2000 calories of chocolate chip cookies with milk.
First, metabolic rate is not constant. If you feed your body few calories, your metabolism adjusts so as to use few calories. Fat cells that are stimulated to grow scream loud for their share of the energy, ensuring that they get their needs met even if the rest of you is weak, tired, and resorting to stealing energy from muscle and other tissues. This is not a zero sum game. Certain conditions may cause someone to retain water, which can add to weight independent of calorie consumption and use.
As for examples of obesity occurring concurrently with low caloric intake, take the Pima native Americans in 1905, where most of the obesity is in women, who were quite physically active, basically treated like beasts of burden. You can find the same trend in 1928 with Sioux on a South Dakota Crow Creek Reservation--very high levels of obesity in coincidence with extreme poverty. In the early 1960s, MIT nutritionists calculated that Trinidadians were getting no more than 2000 calories per day, yet they were seeing an extreme obesity problem among the females.
> You can't not lose weight if you burn more calories than you eat.
True. However, you can eat less and not lose weight, or eat more and not gain weight, because while Calories Consumed = Calories Stored + Calories Expended, by the laws of thermodynamics, the variables are not independent. If you exercise more, your body acts to try to get you to consume more calories -- and if you don't, by making you not want to expend energy the rest of the day (some studies of kids exercise programs show that the kids become more sedentary the rest of the day). Further, the type of calorie consumed affects the balance of the other side of the equation as well.
20 calories a day is theoretically 40 pounds of fat over 20 years, but nobody can perfectly maintain their caloric input to within exactly 20 calories of maintenance level a day -- our body guides us with signals and changes our metabolism. The arguments about things like fat, carbs, etc. are that the wrong foods mess with these signals and the metabolism in ways that make it substantially harder to stay at a healthy weight or to lose weight.
>Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance
>The results of our study challenge the notion that a calorie is a calorie from a metabolic perspective. During isocaloric feeding following weight loss, REE was 67 kcal/d higher with the very low-carbohydrate diet compared with the low-fat diet. TEE differed by approximately 300 kcal/d between these 2 diets, an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity
>In conclusion, our study demonstrates that commonly consumed diets can affect metabolism and components of the metabolic syndrome in markedly different ways during weight-loss maintenance, independent of energy content. The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin42- 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP.
I don't have that much time to look at the link, but at the first glance it appears that at least some of the studies reviewed relied on self-reported calorie intake, so the subjects were not kept in laboratory conditions where the food intake was strictly measured.
This has been shown to be widely inaccurate, for example here and in the references to this study
That, and the fact that most natural high carb foods, like fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains have a low calorie density compared to high fat foods. It's much harder to overeat on them, because they have more volume and fiber.
"most natural high carb foods ... have a low calorie density"
Need to combine with the equally true observation of most modern processed high carb foods have a ridiculously high calorie density.
Apples are only in season some of the year, so when you can get them, pig out, of course it takes a lot of work to find and harvest apples and the natural supply is fairly limited in quantity and your stomach can only physically hold so many apples ... and millennia later the same taste receptor and insulin feedback loops results in some dude drinking an entire 2 liter of corn syrup soda while sitting on the couch watching a movie.
When people recommend legumes, they're not normally talking about peanuts. It's like people recommending fruits aren't normally talking about tomatoes.
Note how peanuts and bacon have similar caloric densities, yet black beans, brown rice, oats, and corn are much much lower? These are the legumes and whole grains parent is likely talking about, not peanuts and whole wheat bread.
Note how even chicken breast and light string cheese are twice as dense as than those whole grain products.
Note how high water content fruits and vegetables are king.
It's actually pretty easy to do without food labels. Apply this simple test: are you feeling dizzy from low blood sugar and is your stomach hurting from hunger?
If yes, then congratulations - you're burning more calories than you're eating. If no, then don't eat for a while. If no and you're actually feeling even a little full, stop eating, right now.
You'll get used to the lower calorie input after a while and the feeling of hunger won't be as sharp.
It's actually pretty easy to do without food labels. Apply this simple test: are you feeling dizzy from low blood sugar and is your stomach hurting from hunger?
It actually wouldn't work in each and every case. I practise intermittent fasting, up to two days, and quite often I wouldn't feel dizzy and my stomach wouldn't hurt, at least as long as I have plenty of water. But I'm sure I'm burning more than I receive on fasting days!
As Evgeny says, fasting doesn't necessarily cause those symptoms. I've fasted for a day or two at a time as an adult (and about two weeks once as a fat teen). Hunger as a physical sensation is probably not usual thing to feel in the West (or, at least, in America). As an obese American, it takes more than 24 hours of fasting for me to be physically hungry; the vast majority of the time I eat for social reasons, or from boredom.
In my social circles, the most common response to a question about food is "I could eat" rather than "Yes, I'm hungry", since the latter is never literally true.
It is a strong argument and I know to many examples where this is just simply not the case.
I myself have been eating all my life big portions of food couple times a day, mainly with meat and potatoes, sometimes with some salad though a lot of times without any. I'm not a big fan of sweets, but I do eat bread and some other stuff containing carbs, simply because it is almost impossible to avoid it these days.
At the same time I'm developer spending most of my time in front of computer and I do not go to gym. It has been like this for the last decade, though in the last 5 years I have spent much more time in front of computer and much less doing anything else. Yet my eating habits hasn't changed, neither did my weight. Since I was 16 and my wight was always 90-95 kg, I'm >1.9m height. I believe that this case just proves that calories in vs calories out doesn't always apply. Otherwise by now I should be obese whereas nothing even remotely close has happened.
Don't forget that your basal metabolic rate is not constant in different circumstances and over the duration of your life. It actually goes up if the calories consumed go up. I guess in some lucky individuals it may go up high enough to offset all extra calories - but, surely, to a certain limit.
Also, this BMR varies between different people - even if their bodies are very similar. So that is probably the source of the confusion "i know this guy who eats all the time and is skinny, therefore the calorie theory is wrong".
This page has links to numerous studies that prove the calorie in - calorie out theory. As far as I know, this theory was not yet disproved by any clinical study.
> So that is probably the source of the confusion "i know this guy who eats all the time and is skinny, therefore the calorie theory is wrong".
If we have evidence that something isn't true, and we even have theoretical reasons why it wouldn't be true, why continue calling it "confusion" when someone points out that it doesn't seem true?
(By the way, no one, anywhere, is disputing the laws of thermodynamics when they say that "calories in / calories out" isn't the whole story.)
Except you don't. A guy who eats all of the time and is skinny has a high metabolism. That's still 'calories in' < 'calories out'. The reason it's being called 'confusion' is because someone has made the mistake of thinking 'calories in' = 'weight'.
>By the way, no one, anywhere, is disputing the laws of thermodynamics when they say that "calories in / calories out" isn't the whole story
That's precisely what they are doing. Metabolism, poor calorie absorption, exercise, etc all fall under 'calories out'. It is the whole story, it just doesn't provide a lot of useful details about how to boost the 'calories out' category.
Unless you are done kind of magical machine, or perhaps have some kind of digestive problem which prevents you extracting energy from food, then you are obviously burning the calories you consume.
Even given a relatively sedentary lifestyle, you probably require around 2500 calories a day to maintain your weight. That's actually quite a lot - it's perfectly possible that you don't consume more than that with a couple of big meat-and-potatoes meals every day.
Things like alcohol, soda and snack can add huge calorie counts, and I suspect that in many people these are the factors that are causing weight gain. Have you ever actually added up your calorie intake for a day? It might be lower than you think.
I've been 1.8m and 64kg since I stopped growing. I know I overeat most of the time. Where does the additional energy go? Why is it stored as fat in some people, not in others. There is more to health than simple calories in = calories out.
Can you run us by a typical day of food? I'm not discrediting you, but from experience, what for you is overeating, for others is considered undereating.
Do you have any more information about those different insulin responses? Did they use genetic testing to assess your response? It sounds very interesting.
To me the most amazing thing is that we still have "low fat" food around and that it is still labelled as healthy. Instead, the low carb food is either labelled "low carb" or "paleo", which are both names that remind this gym fixated people everybody laughs at. Then you have all the vegan/vegetarian crowd who laughs at who eats meat and steaks. It's a mess.
As a vegetarian, I don't laugh at people eating meat. In fact, when it comes to nutrition, eating (the right) meat is likely the most rational choice based on today's understanding.
As a sidenote, I have looked into low-carb/keto diets and I've found that those are rather hard for vegetarians; reducing carb intake from some sources (rice, pasta) is easy, but even staple vegetarian foods rich in protein (tofu, lentils, beans, quinoa) are 1:1 when it comes to protein:carb content.
Another thing to mention is that being vegetarian in a central European country limits you to a very few number of restaurants you can eat out with friends; I do not know of any place around that would serve vegetarian low-carb food. This would imply that I always bring my own food from home to work, socially exclude myself by not eating anything when we go out eating with friends, and so on.
If you want to be on a low carb diet as a vegetarian you have to accept eating processed food, and a lot of it.
Specifically: Soy Protein Isolate, TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein - it does have carb so don't overdo it), and Seitan (Wheat Gluten), if you are not a vegan then add eggs to that - perhaps as egg whites (i.e. more processed food).
Nuts are reasonable too. Then add in a bunch of low carb vegetables (i.e. no root vegetables), and avoid fruits for the most part.
A sample breakfast: TVP soaked in egg white with some nutritional yeast for flavor, fried as an omelet.
Snack: A cup of protein shake with as little sweetener as you can manage to handle. (You would have to buy pure soy protein isolate powder and add the sweetener yourself - most places put in a ton.)
Lunch: Seitan - fried or baked, and salad (watch the dressing - most have sugar, make your own).
Dinner: Vegetable stir fry such as zucchini, mushroom, and onion plus oil for satiation.
It's easier to be a meat eater, but if you are not a picky eater it can be done.
PS. Tofu is not 1:1, it's closer to 4:1 so it can probably be used. TVP is about 2:1.
As to the sugar, I find myself using stevia a lot now. You have to experiment with it; with some foods, you really notice the taste, and it doesn't work very well as a sweetener. But in greek yoghurt, for instance, stevia tastes really nice and not at all unlike sugar.
That brings me to a second point; as a vegetarian, one of my best investments was a simple reusable yoghurt strainer. Natural yoghurt has a lot of carbs in the form of lactose, but straining it into greek-style yoghurt removes these sugars, leaving protein and fat (which you can control by choosing no/low/full fat yoghurt). Add some stevia to it, and you've got a healty breakfast, snack, and/or dessert without any carbs.
I think it should also be said that relying solely on soya protein is not the best idea. It's a complete protein, yes, but there's very little we understand about nutrition--one of the few things we do know is that variety is better. That being said, the firmer the tofu, the fewer carbs--plus it's easier to cook (fries up nicer). If you get sick of tofu, paneer is a good alternative, and easy to make as well.
Finally, chia seeds can be a useful addition. They don't have a taste (but they absorb an incredible amount of liquid, so you can soak them overnight to make pudding), but are packed with fat, protein, and fibre (approx. 32% fat / 16% protein / 35% fibre / 7% net carb by weight).
Where in Central Europe are you? I lived in Vienna and now living In Berlin, and while it was a bit of a struggle being vegetarian in the former it think over here there are actually quite a lot of good options (obviously not anywhere near as good as some other places like San Francisco).
As large, relatively "hip" capital cities, Berlin and Vienna are probably a "best case". In the German-speaking countries, there does seem to be a growing awareness and interest in vegetarianism, but in small cities in Germany I find my options in restaurants basically limited to pasta and pizza -- and of course falafel -- (though there are enough vegetarians and similar that there are shops selling tofu, vegan cheese, meat substitutes etc.). From what I've heard, the rest of central Europe is even worse.
Yes for sure - the local cuisine is heavy on meat & dairy so you'll have to rely on ethnic and speciality places, which mostly exist in the big metropolitan cities.
Czech Republic. I don't complain about generic vegetarian places (indian food, asian food, some pasta), but if you wanted to go low-carb here, you find nothing.
Keto is not meant for long-term use. You will have one miserable life if you could pull that off but i doubt you could even if u tried. It works really well for cutting that last bit of stubborn fat when u trying to show your six pack.
As with anything, it depends. I'm also not suggesting that keto is harmless long-term, just that it's not inherently harmful. Several sections of the Wikipedia article are instructive: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
Animals do provide high quality fertilizers and ecosystem services. I'm trying to cut out factory farmed meat. Hence, budgetary constraints cause me to choose less meat and more pastured eggs.
Soy is insanely toxic. Until recently, Asians didn't consider it edible, except for monks who used it to decrease libido.
You are shifting the argument by cherry picking Australian beef production (vs meat production in general). Overwhelmingly most meat production is fed using harvest from cultivated land, hence the claims are irrelevant to the general discussion in addition to being factually uncredible.
About the questionable facts: the 25x claim is not substantiated in any way. It doesn't in any way substantiate why use of fertilizers to grow plants for human consumption would be worse than growing grass for the equivalent nutritional value of cows.
Lastly, even if you ignore the irrelevance and the bad claims, it concludes that ethically you should only eat rangeland grown meat and kangaroos, a clear counterargument for the usual meat eater diet!
You are shifting the argument by cherry picking Australian beef production (vs meat production in general).
Yes, though not intentionally - this is just an article I read recently so it came up in my memory. I believe, though, that a lot of small animals die because of farming grains everywhere in the world, not only in Australia. Other factors, indeed, may vary greatly.
Lastly, even if you ignore the irrelevance and the bad claims, it concludes that ethically you should only eat rangeland grown meat and kangaroos, a clear counterargument for the usual meat eater diet!
I agree - if one's aim is to minimize the number of animal deaths or the amount of suffering, that seems to be the answer.
If you drink milk and consume eggs, aren't you still perpetuating the same system? I mean after a cow no longer can produce milk it's not like it will go to a cow hospice.
For a critical response to Gary Taubes and the many other cholesterol confusionists, I highly recommend the videos by the PrimitiveNutrition Youtube user. He has over 30 hours of entertaining video analyzing medical studies and arguments related to this topic including the common attacks on Ancel Keys regurgitated in TFA.
I'm a fan of Gary taubes (lost 30kg with simple low no-carb diet), those videos aren't really convincing. In the first one he talks about pork rinds being very bad, but really it's a good way to get some crisp in your food when you don't have flour and eggs. I couldn't get through it because of all the breathing.
The other day at work I caved and went for a pub-lunch, a burger with cheese, served with chips and coleslaw. I enjoyed it but immediately afterwards thought 'damn, that was greasy,' and remembered my marathon running colleague who always refrains from going for a 'crappy burger' with us. But here's the thing: I didn't feel hungry for the rest of the day. In fact I skipped dinner completely, just went for long walk round the city and stopped to have a beer somewhere. If you want to lose weight, surely the trick is to consume less calories per day and avoid the feeling of hunger. Few people are going to have the discipline to refrain from eating when they actually feel hungry, day after day after day.
I can second this. It's actually quite easy to test on yourself. Try two kinds of breakfast for a few days each, and compare how much snacking you want to do before lunch:
1. Bagels + scone
2. Eggs + bacon
For me, the second kind undeniably leads to less hunger later in the morning. After a breakfast of 4 scrambled eggs + 4 strips of bacon (so 550-600 cal) I can easily not feel hungry at all until lunch. Couple of small bagels with some cream cheese + scone (also ~550-600 cal) and I feel much less full after a couple of hours.
This has been my experience with low carb - I can eat a high protein, high fat meal that will stuff me and be ~1000 calories, but I'll be satisfied for at least the rest of the day if not most of the next. Even if it's just calories in / calories out it's a clear win over my normal diet.
Of course people used to think this long fasting is really bad (my parents, for example), but it seems like new research says it's fine, if not healthy for weight loss.
Most low fat foods aren't really that low fat, but only contain less fat. If you calculate the percent of energy coming from fat from such foods it's still large. And more importantly, those "low fat" foods are still factory derived high sodium low fiber foods, not natural foods, like fruits, legumes and whole grains which contain almost no fat. What people call low fat is really just not good enough.
For a seriously healthy low fat diet, read The Starch Solution by John McDougall. http://www.amazon.com/The-Starch-Solution-Regain-Health/dp/1...
However, low fat or high carb still misses the point of focussing on macronutrients instead of micronutrients. Micronutrients are a good indicator of the quality of foods. Micronutrients: vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, are important factors in satiety and long term weight loss maintenance. Whole foods like nuts, seeds and avocado's aren't low fat, but high fat, but can help in weight loss, because of their health benefits. Read Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, who elaborates on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Live-Amazing-Nutrient-Rich-Sustain...
I have experience in combining Eat to Live + The Starch Solution which got me from a BMI of 27 to 20 for three years already. I eat relatively high carb / low fat, with the moderate addition of some nuts, seeds and avocado's. I find this works best for me. I've excluded almost all saturated fats AND free unsaturated fats like olive oil, which contain almost no valuable micronutrients.
> Whole foods like nuts, seeds and avocado's aren't low fat, but high fat, but can
We know that some people snack on these foods because they think the foods are healthy. Thus they take in several thousand extra calories that they don't need per day, on top of their regular meals.
I've been eating a low-carb diet for the past 2 years. In that time, I've lost roughly 20lbs, while my blood work has gotten dramatically better. (Cholesterol: 160 (92 HDL, 64 LDL), Triglycerides: 46, Blood glucose: 92). More importantly, my energy level has 'evened out', such that I no longer get sleepy in the afternoons or feel sluggish after dinner in the evenings. I don't take special care to count calories, or avoid fatty foods. I eat lots of salads and vegetables, but also eat steak dipped in melted butter, and eggs-and-bacon for breakfast.
After I stopped eating carbs, I couldn't help but notice how much sugar is in _everything_ that most people eat. Most brands of peanut butter, for example, have sugar as the second ingredient. Ditto for 'whole wheat' bread, which frequently has sugar added.
Before beginning this diet, I was a believer in the calories-in/calories-out model, because of it's appealing simplicity. The truth is, your body isn't a calorimeter, and metabolizes different calorie sources in different ways..simple carbs break down easily, early in your digestive process, while proteins are broken down more slowly. Some foods can't be broken down at all without the help of intestinal flora, or are excreted without being digested at all. Thus, it's much more useful to say that, in order to lose weight, you have to _metabolize_ fewer calories than you burn, regardless of how many calories you consume.
I've been eating a very high fat, very low carb diet now for almost 2 years. In that time I've shed 20 pounds (and I was never fat) and my cholesterol numbers have improved significantly. My experience is by no means scientific evidence, but just thought I'd share. Reading "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living" by Drs Phinney and Volek was life-changing.
People make things more complicated than they are. Just eat more plants. Eat less super-easy-to-digest free-calorie foods, such as refined sugars (sucrose).
This includes simple starches such as you find in white bread, rice and pasta. They get converted into sucrose right away. It starts in your mouth (amylase enzyme in your saliva), just one simple molecular change and it's... glucose! That's why it tastes sweet if you keep on chewing a piece of white bread.
White flour products are tasty though! So consider them as more of a snack, like cake or potato chips, and less as part of your daily meal.
I am one of the people who thinks that "calories out > calories in" is most important. I've tried (in the spirit of Feynman) to poke holes in this, so here's the stuff that would persuade me I'm wrong.
1) satiety. Some foods make you feel full, so even though they're "fat" you eat less. (This doesn't counter CO>CI but explains why people fail at it).
2) abysmal quality of research on weight loss. Lots of the research is poor quality and we really don't know what works. Better quality research is always a good thing.
3) gut flora and genetics. Genetics plays a role in everything so I'm sure that it is easier for some people to be fat than others because genes. We know that some gut flora helps some people stay slim. Nwe know that some other gut flora helps some people become fat. A double whammy would be unfortunate.
4) evil food industry. Seeing a bag of sugar (in whatever form, but especially candy) sold as "LOW FAT FOOD!!!" is infuriating. I tend to ignore the HFS arguments but I agree that the vast amounts of sugar eaten today is very harmful. Making food "hyper paletable" and making it seem like it is much quicker to get that food than prepare your own healthy food has done a lot of harm. (See popcorn chicken cersus a roast chicken).
5) judgementalism. CO>CI may be true but it is simplistic and it is often given with judgemental messages. As HN middlebrow dismissal shows contrarianism is human nature, thus saying "CO>CI! Develop some willpower, go for a jog!" Will devolve into discussion about a bunch of stuff. People like me need to find a better way to deliver that message.
Granted, a primary source would have been better, but the NY Times does link to several. Though you didn't cite a lot of primary sources in your own comment, I would still be interested in your real response to the referenced studies.
A better title: "Why black-and-white thinking is bad for your diet and moderation is good". Actually, that could pretty much replace the whole article.
From the review, this book seems like a rehash of Taubes' two excellent and well researched books on the same topics. Taubes was the first to make the broad historical connections that also seem central to this book. Even the book title, "The Big Fat Surprise" is a play on Taubes' famous 2002 New York Times article "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?". What, if anything is original to this work? From the Economist review, we have no idea.
Personally I will be glad when they get what to eat/not eat settled once and for all...
As it is now, there are so many changing/competing theories out, and with such frequency I have been forced to abandon considering any of them at all and just eating what I feel like.
About 10 years ago, my two sons and I worked out with George Turner as our coach. George was a gruff, ex-Marine in his 60s known all over the world and had many weight lifting awards to his name and wrote for magazines. His nutritional advice used to scare my wife. Essentially, it was a high-protein, low-carb diet.
He told us not to fear fat cause it was good for us. Nor eggs if you worked out cause cholesterol wouldn't stick to anything. If you were hungry, "Eat!!", he would shout at my son who was 100 pounds overweight. "Listen to me cause I'm right!"
This made no sense at all. He told us he used to give talks at the local medical university on nutrition. He complained that doctors were not given enough classes on nutrition and he knew more about it than most of them.
In nine months, all three of us were strong as an ox. My overweight son lost 100 pounds. I lost 40 pounds.
This is common knowledge now it seems on http://reddit.com/r/fitness also look at stronglifts.com
Wish I knew this 20 years ago...
Basically: squats, barbell exercises is key.
Starting strength recommends a gallon of milk a day...
Man, you would make the world's fastest doctor. "Hello Mr. Johnson, great to see you again. Let's have a quick look here. And...yep... looks like you're still alive. Now, if you'll just sign here. And, we're all set. Keep up the good work! Next!"
seriously though being alive is an accomplishment for most organisms in the 3.45 billion year history of life on Earth, an accomplishment in the vicious wild, and an accomplishment for civilized humans in the face of tragedy, neglect, disaster, disease, war, or certain human-caused problems (violence etc).
In industrialized nations, today, being alive at all is a goal few people would set for themselves who are lucky enough to enjoy health and basic freedom from war, poverty, famine, natural disaster, violence, etc.
While I don't mean to detract from your life's amibtions, you are entitled to them, I think you can almost certainly have higher ambitions than being alive.
Of course, I don't know you personally, so who am I to say? Congratulations on what you have accomplished.
My personal results have been quite successful. I was randomly assigned to the low-carb diet. I basically eat vegetables, meats, and cheese. I avoid everything from bread, to rice, to even nuts and fruits. On this diet I have lost nearly fifty pounds since I started. So it's been pretty successful for me. (I will admit that I had no idea whether it's the particular diet I'm on, per se, or the fact that I'm on any diet at all -- that I am paying attention).
I also accept the premise of the study: one diet does not fit everyone. Sometimes I meet people and they say it's as simple as calories in, calories out. Some people say everyone should be on this diet or that diet. I don't know -- I don't presume that my diet would simply work for everyone. The human body is a very complex system both for any one person, and for the population. I tend to believe the central premise of the study (and we'll see if it works out): that different physiologies lead to different beneficial diets (and perhaps much more).
There is a lot of story here: exercise being easier, meetings going more smoothly, my colleagues and family and friends supporting me, YC giving me a new t-shirt, buying a new wardrobe, my changing interactions with women (I'm strait, and who knows if this is due to me looking better or me being more confident)...etc...I'm planning to write up a (as is often the case) too-long blog post on it all when I'm finished with the study on October.