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The Obesity Epidemic — Is Medicine Scientific?
An anonymous reader writes "An award-winning science author, Gary Taubes, has written a book that pans the medical community's treatment of the obesity epidemic. What is interesting is that it looks like the medical community is behaving in a very unscientific manner. Taubes points out that the current medical orthodoxy — that consuming fat makes you fat and exercise makes you thin — has no basis in research. In fact, all the available research points in quite another, and more traditional, direction. Here's the (excellent) podcast of an interview with Taubes on CBC's 'Quirks and Quarks.' So, has medicine become a non-science? Is it mostly a non-science? Somewhat?"
From personal, scientifically-measurable experience, I can tell you that gaining and losing weight isn't a matter of 'good calories' or 'bad calories'. It's a matter of calories. Burn more calories than you consume over a period of time, and you will lose weight. Burn fewer calories than you consume over a period of time, and you will gain weight. Yes, it's that simple. I suggest you all put down this claptrap, and read The Hacker's Diet by former AutoCAD developer and AutoDesk VP John Walker. It's done wonders for me.
My blog
When it comes to the current thinking on nutrition, there is a definite point to what he's saying.
But to say that Exercise has no effect on weight loss is just plain wrong. Exercise changes the way your body processes the food you put into it (or, more accurately, your body adapts to the amount of exercise that you get). Building muscle causes you to require more calories in your diet to support that muscle. And building stamina causes you to burn a lot of calories in the process. And if you want to venture into the unscientific realm, consistent exercise helps to stabilize your mood and makes you less prone to food cravings (the cravings for sugary foods and for fatty foods are based in imbalances in Serotonin and Dopamine levels).
There is a dire need to re-examine everything we know about a healthy diet. People get so worked up about things like trans fats while completely ignoring the elephant in the room (high-fructose corn syrup). Everyone I know who's given up corn syrup, to the extent that it's possible in the US, has lost a minimum of 10 lbs.
But to suggest that exercise isn't a vital part of a healthy lifestyle is wrong, and potentially very dangerous.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
But insulin makes you hungry and eating carbs especially sugar makes you release insulin.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I lost 25 pounds after I simply cut out bread, potatoes, and sugar from my diet.
In the mean time, I added a gallon of olive oil every 60 days and a pint of cream a week.
Tho fit already (sports twice a week, regular walking and exercise) I started developing diabetes (of course my mom and grandparents had it so I'm kinda doomed there). Despite cutting out enormous amounts of carbs and sugars (I was previously drinking 1,000 calories of soda a day), I continue to slide in the bad direction on my blood sugar. It's not diabetic yet but it is just a matter of time.
My diet consists of large amounts of vegetables, meat courses, almost no grains (2-3 ounces a day tops).
I think people have different needs based on their genetic history.
I agree that a lot of "science" these days is opinion, hysteria, or someone's hidden agenda.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
what about eating in moderation with exercise? Why does it have to be so extreme, i.e. no sugar, no fat, "no" something?
The recommended amount of exercise is 30 minutes per day -- it's actually a fair amount, if you're biking or jogging 30 minutes per day, and eating in moderation, i.e. let's say within the FDA guidelines for diet, and you're still overweight, then you might have a medical need for weight treatment. Otherwise, try all of those things first.
stuff |
To answer the questions of the summary, I don't think it will ever be an untainted science so long as the government, businesses & religion stick their noses in it. Couple that with the difficulty of applying the scientific method to humans (average life span of 75 years and ethical problems) and I think you'll see why medicine is a 'non-science.'
Patents, legislation & belief in what is good for you are what ruin medicine. Look at all the Hindu medicine that was ignored by the West for the longest time because it was
Medicine will continue to be a non-science no matter how hard the community tries. The public's assumptions and beliefs that "Since I can eat McDonald's every day and be thin, everyone should be able to" merely exacerbates the situation.
I eat whatever I feel like and I'm in great shape. This is not the case with the majority of Americans.
My work here is dung.
"For 50 years, the advice on dieting has been very clear..."
Um, hardly. This kind of sentence attempt to draw the reader into a sense of agreement from their most-remembered anecdotes so that the rest of the premise is seen as new. But in reality, fad dieting advice is all over the map and has been since it was part of pop culture, which goes back a *long* way. Spoonful of mercury, anyone?
The only good dieting advice has been through a good understand of one's own body. Allergies, lifestyle, location, education, economics, etc all play roles in what chemicals you put in your and how you burn energy.
This book's position is just another in the lineup of positions taken about the human GI system and energy usage. There are many strategies, both workable and not. Unless you know yourself well, no change is a worthwhile change - its all so much guessing.
Additionally, one has to ask the philosophical question...is the goal to eat yummy/available food or live [potentially] longer lives? There's no one answer, really.
...and I have a feeling neither do they.
Look, we've all been told quite a few different contradictory things when it comes to health and diet. Milk was bad, milk was good, milk has lots of carbs, etc. Eggs are bad, eggs are good, egg yolks are bad but egg whites are good. Cholesterol issues -- have less meat, focus on vegetables and carbs. Diabetes and obesity -- must cut down on carbs. Going strictly vegetarian may make you deficient in certain things only found in meat. Coffee is bad for you, coffee is good for you. Chocolate bad, chocolate good. Wine bad, wine good.
I think the only constant I have heard is that exercise is good for you and that eating things in moderation is probably a good thing.
I don't have time to LTTFP, but I know what worked for me. I was morbidly overweight, and I tried a number of things to get rid of it, including the traditional low-fat + exercise regimen. What finally worked was to eliminate or drastically cut high-glycemic carbs from my diet (rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, sugar, and the like). That, coupled with moderate exercise (walking 1 or 2 miles) helped me to drop 90 pounds in about a year.
I believe there is a relationship between high glycemic carbs, blood glucose spikes, and insulin, which will cause certain body chemistries to convert and store much of that intake as fat.
Wish I had discovered this 15 years ago.
Proverbs 21:19
Calories in greater than calories out => gain weight.
Calories in less than calories out => lose weight.
At least, that's how I thought it worked. I decided late last year, as a new years resolution, to start Operation Flab. My weight had crept up, ours is not a physically active field to begin with, and middle age (I'm 46) didn't help.
I've made some healthier choices in my diet, cut back on portions, exercise vigorously 3 times a week, and have lost significant weight. I feel 100% better. There is no magic: I didn't gain it overnight, and I'm not going to lose it overnight either. Heroics never work, because too great a lifestyle/diet change will never last.
I didn't bother with a health club membership or anything like that. My sole expense was an MP3 player.
...laura
This thread is ripe for turning into a flame-fest, but you may want to do at least some casual reading on what insulin is and the processes the body goes through to process fats, proteins and sugars. There's a thousand variables involved in how the body processes raw materials it takes in and what it does with the materials it creates from them. No combination of those will result in your blanket statement.
Some people can get all they need to run their bodies on a lot less calories than others.
I can raise my burn rate for several days by playing hard sports for three hours. People comment that I feel like I have a fever.
My friend who has developed problems after a life time of being thin has low thyroid and other hormone feedback systems. And she is always hungry- constantly. Even when she eats, she will be hungry again a while later. And not eating does not cause the hunger to fade like it does for me- it just gets stronger.
I have another friend who has the *reverse* problem. He is slowly losing weight (like a pound a year) despite eating heavily and it is getting kinda critical. He has a messed up endocrine system too.
Some people are messed up so that any exercise just destroys muscle (they do not get stronger).
I wish people would not be so judgmental about these things.
Some people eat because they are sad- some were raised and trained on bad food- some were never trained to enjoy physical activity. Some people have hyper metabolisms that allow them to eat heavily and still remain thin.
And there is some evidence recently that fat people die less of many diseases. The anti-fat attitudes stink of group-think gone bad.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
FTA:
For the last thirty years, medical advice on obesity has been very clear. Eat less and exercise. But what if that was all wrong, a big fat lie, as Gary Taubes would put it? or In fact, according to Mr. Taubes, everything the medical profession advocates, in terms of eating and exercise, is at best a waste of time, and at worst, may actually be killing us. Of course medical advice is clear. Exercise does make you healthier and stronger. It helps your immune system and metabolism. It is true that you should only exercise the amount you are able, and that over-exercising can put added and unnecessary strain on important organs which can be dangerous. One thing that the medical field is learning though is that a good portion of your body shape is due simply to genetics. The "medical community" has not been caught up and derailed by the "diet and exercise" bandwagon. They are currently doing more and more research into the amount we are affected by our own genes.
There are some doctors who do not have the absolute latest information and they will sometimes claim that diet and exercise are the only thing that is making someone larger and there are (of course) a few scam artists trying to make a buck off the "simple little pill" or "this is the only piece of equipment you need to be thin" commercials and insatiably people will fall for it.
The point is, the medical field is right in giving this person that advice. He should eat less, he should exercise. It WILL make him healthier. It may not make him look like Brad Pitt, and he (probably) always be larger than normal, but just because a component of obesity is genetics does not mean everything to do with obesity is genetics. It also does not mean the "medical community" is stuck in the stone age with "non science."
The original generic sig.
Not more of this low-carb propaganda bullshit.
I understand your anger, but the issue here is whether the low-carb propaganda is really bullshit or not. It is a matter that should be investigated, otherwise those dismissing it as bullshit would effectively act as anti-low-carb zealots, instead of following the scientific method.
Also, we have to wonder why the US (the country where the Food Pyramid originated) is also where the "fatness" phenomenon originated, and why the countries that start to follow the "american way of life" (fast food, sedentary life, high-calory carb snacks) tend to follow american's fatness. This phenomenon, at least country-wise, behaves like an epidemic.
It is amazing that the food industry as a whole does not take responsibility for this. They fill everything with MSG which is basically a neuro-toxin. It not only overexcites neurons to death but it leads to hyper-tension and heart arrhythmias. It can cause an increase in total blood cholesterol levels by reducing the ability of the pancreas to metabolize cholesterol and expel it from the body.
High Fructose corn syrup is a substance which the body does not recognize as a sugar so no insulin is released to handle it. Wonder where that goes in the body? How about the lumps of fat everywhere.
Hydrogenated Fats (a.k.a Trans Fats) are the worst offender of them all and are the reason Saturated fats got a bad name. This is the substance that hardens the arteries and raises your LDL while lowering your HDL, combine with MSG it is time bomb for heart disease.
There is research by a Doctor Mary Enig that explains the truth about what fats are good and which are bad. Basically the human body needs a 1 to 1 balance of Omega3 and Omega 6 fatty acids. All the vegetable oil that is being pushed on us is Omega6 with very little Omega3 readily available. And if you deep fry with unsaturated oil the fat molucules are unstable, the heating process causes the molecules to bend and connect in ways which are currently defined as trans-fats (i.e. fat molecules not found in nature)
These are the some of the the things the medical establishment chooses to overlook as it is more profitable to leaves the causes of the problems in place and treat the symptoms until we all die.
In January I had an irregular heartbeat and high blood pressure, I was sent to a cardiologist to get tested, they said everything with the heart looked fine and they had no idea what was causing it. They put me on blood pressure medication and sent me on my way. Well I hate medication so I did some research and found the link to MSG and how it causes irregular heartbeats by inducing a Taurine deficiency. I changed my diet to avoid MSG as much as possible and also started a Taurine supplement. Now my heart beat is regular and my blood pressure is way down.
I relate this story because your life is really in your hands. The minute you surrender it to doctors you risk the chance of never being normal again. Always question the cause of things, don't just accept band-aids on symptoms. Also read ingredients and find out what effects they may have on the body.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a hot button topic for me. Good luck all!
I use the Physics Diet.
It has to work, because it's physics.
He makes the extraordinary claim that Official Nutrition has been getting it wrong for the last 40 years. However, he provides and discusses a solid body of relevant and eminently respectable (Lancet, JAMA, NEJM, etc..) citations to support his claim. Color me 95% convinced.
He notes that the application of the first law of thermodynamics (the slogan is "A Calorie is A Calorie") to a homeostatic dissipative system like the human body is beyond simplistic. It is simply wrong.
The core of his thesis is that a cellular-level metabolic disorder caused over time by consumption of concentrated and rapidly available carbohydrates, and the insulin spikes they provoke, is the cause not only of obesity but also of type II diabetes. Briefly, fat cells become too good at extracting glucose from the blood and storing it. This results in cellular-level semi-starvation in other body tissues, expressed at the organismic level by eating more and exercising less.
He depicts the high level of investment in the competing "gluttony & sloth" model of obesity which exists in our medical establishment and in our culture. Indeed, from his portrayal this viewpoint is very close to being an ideology rather than a theory, in that dissenters are cast into outer darkness rather than refuted.
He discusses the personalities and politics involved in the alleged disastrous wrong turn, and points up some interesting coincidences involving what research gets funded, and what research doesn't get funded, by for example sugar producers.
I'm intentionally being very brief. If you have a personal stake, read this book and form your own conclusions.
--
phunctor
Not more of this low-carb propaganda bullshit
What annoys me is low carb stuff tastes bad, so they up the salt content, or put more of other things that improve the taste but make it bad for you in other ways.
Eating healthy means cooking a lot of your own food from ingredients, not pre-packaged food, and getting exercise every day. Exercise is an important part of a healthy diet, you digest food better if your body isn't always being carried around everywhere by cars or sat in chairs.
Eating healthy doesn't even mean low fat, it can involve fat, suger, salt, anything, provided you eat reasonably, are aware of what your eating (meaning you cook a lot of it yourself) and get that exercise.
Here's a link to an article by Taubes that originally ran in 2002, and sounds like it was the seed for this book.
"What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63
It's long for a NYTimes article, but it's an interesting read. I'm sure the book updates much of the data.
Probably not whole grains. That whole grains are better for you is a myth. No cultures with a tradition of long lived good health eat wheat or rice bran - or any non soluble bran. They feed it to animals and eat the animals. Also, such cultures treat soy with great wariness and respect. This too they feed to animals, unless fermented and aged, and even then they eat it in very small quantities.
The reason is partly phytates, and partly irritation of the bowels, and partly plant estrogens. Wheat bran is non soluble and so is an irritant to the bowel. But because of phytates, it prevents the absorption of minerals. The plant hormones in soy are just plain bad for you. Brown rice is lower in delivered nutrition than polished. It is not how much nutrients a product contains. Its how much it delivers to you when you eat it.
We are embarked on a huge uncontrolled experiment in nutrition, and one undertaken without the slightest evidence in its favor. We started out with a diet which obtained about one third of its calories from saturated fats, about one third from protein, and one third from partly refined carbs, generally all eaten together with a variety of vegetables. Curiously enough, heart disease was rather low. I say partially refined - the bread before the invention of modern industrial baking was sourdough long fermented and slow risen, and was made from high extraction but not whole wheat flour. It was chewy, low GI and very digestible. These foods were eaten slowly in sociable meals. They were not wolfed down on the way from one place to another, or held in one hand while typing with the other.
We moved from this to a diet which substituted refined and often hydrogenated vegetable oil, high in polyunsaturates, for the animal fat. We then added to this recently the most industrialized kind of processed food there is: soy 'milk' and meal of various kinds. This too raised the proportion of vegetable oil in the diet. We then had a campaign to lower total fat consumption, which led us to a high carbohydrate diet, but high in those same vegetable oils.
Our last state was worse than our first. Nothing in our evolutionary history has prepared us for such a diet. Its consequences are continual hunger, over eating, endless snacks, obesity, and degenerative diseases.
What do we need to do? Go back to the traditional comfortably off working family diets of about 1900. Meat and two vegetables, high extraction sourdough bread in liberal quantities, oatmeal, full fat milk, butter, cheese, fish in moderation. Minimal amounts of vegetable oil, minimal amounts of sweets. Pastry made, if one has to eat pastry, with suet. No snacks.
Women are the especial victims of our current dietary mania and the diet industry. If we could do one thing to improve the health of society, it would be to abolish dieting, dieting books, and conversations about dieting and one's weight. Couple that with only eating at mealtimes, cooking only real food from scratch, using ingredients available in 1910, and we would all be infinitely better off.
Read "Nourishing Traditions." It will change your life.
This is absolutely true. You can't dispute the fact of this statement taken in isolation. In isolation.
However, it's a fine example of blinding yourself to the causes. The questions at the heart of the debate between low-carb and low-fat diet proponents are the following:
So just saying calories are calories is like saying BTUs are BTUs and putting heating oil in your gas tank in the hopes of getting better MPG.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The recommended advice of replacing fats with carbohydrates was repeated so often and so forcefully by everyone, that it's now printed on the back of almost every box of food in the country, in the form of the "USDA food pyramid". It was so often repeated that when I was a child (in the 1970s) things like wonder bread with a bit of margarine were considered health foods (lots of carbs, no saturated fat).
I had always assumed that the medical community had done large-scale long-term studies demonstrating that such a diet led to an increase in lifespan, a reduction in disease, and a loss of unhealthy pounds. Apparently, such studies were never done.
But then the massive Harvard Nurses Heatlh Study was performed, ending in the mid-1990s. In that study, researchers followed 40,000 nurses for decades, in what was the largest and most comprehensive study on human nutrition ever. The study found that replacing fats with carbohydrates had absolutely no effect on longevity or disease. Furthermore, replacing butter with margarine (the standard dietary advice for decades) led to no benefit either. IIRC, the only nurses who lived longer and had less disease were those who ate nutrient-dense monounsaturated fats like almonds and cashews.
As a result of the Harvard Nurses Health Study, researchers in nutrition quietly dropped their assumptions about dietary fats causing disease.
I still can't believe it. The standard dietary advice from 1960 to 1990 must have been the single largest pseudoscientific load of crap in modern history. What a colossal embarrassment. If the USDA publicly admits that it was mistaken then it will be a long time before people trust it again.
I've been following the south beach diet for a couple of months now, and I have already lost a significant amount of weight. I don't follow it exactly, I use it mostly as a framework than anything else. It makes a lot of sense, and the scientific explainations of why it works makes sense as well. For those who don't know what it is, it's basically cutting out all highly processed foods from your diet and to stick to whole grains and whole unprocessed (ie not from a box) food.
It's not really a "diet" in the traditional weight-watchers sense. It's a change in eating habits, and I really think it could benefit a lot of people. Besides the weight loss, I feel like I have more energy and things like heart burn, which I suffered from regularly, are nearly eliminated.
I got nothin'
You basically said it here -- the "diet" doesn't matter so much -- if people would stop eating foods that suck and if they'd get up off their butts sometimes, then they will be healthier.
My mother has been overweight for some time. She has a medical condition which caused it. She ate well and exercised and she was still overweight. She just couldn't do anything about it. Doctors prescribed her some medication to help the issue, but itcaused all kinds of problems, so she went off it. She gained the weight back. People like that are pretty much the only ones I feel sorry for when it comes to weight.
Hell, I could stand to lose a good 30lbs myself. And ya know what, I'm the one to blame? I'm a computer programmer that sits around eating crap all day. That's my fault. I also used to be very fit, and that was also my doing. I ate well, actually, more than I eat now, and did a little bit of exercise.
It just takes a little effort and common sense. Most people want the magical easy solution...
---
Rob Flynn
Pidgin
Speaking as someone who is currently in medical school, allow me to put forth the falsifiable claim that you don't know what you're talking about.
The vast majority of medical school applicants come with degrees in scientific fields (usually Biology or Chemistry). To be considered for admission they must to do well on the MCAT, a difficult test which stresses scientific knowledge and reasoning abilities. Once in, they are drilled for the first two years with what's called "basic" sciences, where they are expected to gain an in-depth understanding of a wide breadth of information all directly based upon accepted scientific literature. Mastery of this information is tested via the USMLE Step 1--again, another very difficult test.
So, please, enlighten us as to where you're getting this idea that modern medicine is taught unscientifically, because as far as I can tell your notion is not based in reality.
The funny thing is, a common argument that I hear on a frequent basis is that because medical school is taught by PhDs and not MDs, it is focused too much on scientific details and not based on clinical reality. There is no point in training a family doctor to be able to draw out the TCA cycle or recite G-protein signaling transduction pathways as such information has no impact on treatment or diagnosis.
-Grym
Medicine is scientific where it can be. Any time in which you must observe a group that consists of humans, you are incapable of running multiple tests across multiple generations. You're dead before you find out what long term effect a lifestyle can have.
As for being fat. If you eat like a predator, you'll have a body like a predator. If you eat like a herbivore, you'll look like one.
So, eat huge portions of animal flesh, late in the day, and stay away from sugars and starches, and you won't look like a cow.
The more you force your body to get its energy from fat, the better it will get at doing it.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
You're like every customer who calls into customer support: they know the symptoms, are vaguely aware of the underpinnings of the machine and are absolutely convinced they know what the issue is.
Do yourself a favor, and treat your next interaction with your doctor like a call with tech support: understand that they know more about how the system is supposed to work than you, understand that you know more about how your system works than them, transfer that knowledge to them, and be patient while they wade through the standard troubleshooting steps (did you reboot your machine? do you get enough sleep/vitamins?).
You'll actually have a chance of getting some use out of them, and live a better life.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
After having read the majority of the threads it seems that everyone on Slashdot thinks they are a nutritional expert. Somehow I don't think that is the case.
As for being fat. If you eat like a predator, you'll have a body like a predator. If you eat like a herbivore, you'll look like one.
I agree with my tribal elder's wisdom from the ages. (aka Citation needed.)
This is a good scenario on how it is supposed to work, but most doctors spend so little time with a patient that they do not listen to you, they assume they are always right. It is more profitable for a doctor to kick business towards a drug company than it is to actually help cure you of what is causing your symptoms. I wish it worked as you describe. maybe there are a few doctors out there that still help people, I wish I had found one.
"If you eat like a predator, you'll have a body like a predator. If you eat like a herbivore, you'll look like one."
Why only eating? Why not acting? Chase down those animals yourself (with no tools); that'll improve your body.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
You seem to forget a tiny inconvenient fact about predators: they don't get their fat from the local store. They have to RUN, sometimes all day, in order to get something to eat. Just buying some fat shit in Wall Mart, eating it in front of the TV, then turning in to a late-night slashdot session, for sure WON'T make you look like a Cheetah. Sure, you should train your body to get its energy from fat. However, the only way to do it is to EXERCISE, with the correct heart frequency and for a prolonged time periods (at least one hour per exercise, at least 3-4 times a week). I've been running for the past 8 months. I feel WAY better, my waist circumference has decreased significantly, my heart frequency is now around 60-65 (was: 75+), and my blood pressure went 10-15 points down. I don't go out of breath by going 2-3 floors by stairs any more. Actually, I even barely notice it. I really don't believe I'd have seen the same effect if I just started "eating like a predator" instead. I'm still over 100kg though, but I'm working on it.
Umm. I don't agree with the low-carb fad, but using conservation of energy as your rationale is utterly moronic and has no relevance to the issue. It is a gross oversimplification, and ignores any process that might selectively absorb (or not absorb) and store (or not store) different compounds. Of course the energy is conserved, the question is how and where it is conserved.
I'm not splitting hairs at all. Left handed sugars for example are not metabolised, but otherwise carry identical amounts of energy as regular right handed sugars which are metabolised readily.
That's because our bodies have specific nutritional requirements. You can push one chemical pathway by loading up with one set of energy carrying fuels and the body will respond in one way. You can push an entirely different set of pathways by using different fuels and attain a different response from the body.
All calories are NOT equal.
Deleted
high calories "carb" snacks? WTF? Find me *one* that is a snack not a drink.
Everything in snacks is either high fat, and saturated fat at that (chocolate, chips, fries, etc.), or high in the "So Great for You" high-fructose corn crap. The only high carb thing available are the soft drinks and "juices". Or people started eating high carb snacks like apples, oranges, bananas, pineapples? The calories in those are mostly all from carbs!
Fatness is from one thing and one thing only - eating too much *calories* and not getting enough exercise.
The low-carb propaganda just leads to
* depression (you need sugars for seratonin)
* kindey failure - switching your diet to high protein puts a heavy load on kidneys, and thus problems
* low energy (no carbs! guess what?!)
Carbs are really *needed* as long as you use them up! If you take a 800 calories shot of carbs from your McLarge Cola and then sit on your couch, you'll end up either fat or with diabetes or both. 800 carbs consumed => 1600 calories burned in exercise and you'll be fine and feel good. And no, diet drinks are even worse for you.
But then this the problem - people are inherently *lazy*. They will chose to die than get off their couches. At least that's what 60% of Britons would do. I bet it may be even worse in US.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6994632.stm
Taubes is extremely biased in his presentation of available evidence. For a scathing critique of his abuse of science see this article.
1. Muscle must be fed. Fat doesn't. Strength training builds muscle, which if nothing else consumes calories all the time, just much less at rest.
2. What goes in must either be used or go out. If I eat 6 pounds of food a week, and manage to consume 3 pounds of that as energy, eliminating 3 pounds as indegestible waste (you know what I mean), I neither gain or lose. If I work harder, or replace fat with muscle, I need more energy. It comes from somewhere.
3. If I eat less, I will eventually lose weight. The key word is 'eventually'.
4. If I work more, and don't change my diet, I will eventually lose weight.
5. The equation is, eat less, work more, and be patient. My body may well try to hoard resources in response to the apparent famine or starvation of not so much food.
6. Keep a balanced diet. Not feeding your body nutrients, especially calcium and trace elements, is very bad.
7. Portion control. Just do it.
8. Keep at it. Patience.
9. Drink plenty of water.
10. Read items 1-9 regularly and heed.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Sure... provided you have no real understanding of the processes involved.
The common, simplistic explanation of nutrition is that you consume food, which your body then breaks down, releasing the energy of chemical bonds, which your body then uses as fuel. We measure the energy released in a unit called calories.
This description is fine, and it suffices for most day-to-day discussions of food, with one caveat: It's fiction, almost from top to bottom.
Just for starters, when nutritionists talk about calories, they're not really talking about calories like a physicist would. They're really talking about "food calories," which I believe are equivalent to kilocalories. This may be a minor point, but it serves to illustrate that if you think nutrition science maps directly onto physics, you are wrong.
Second, and more importantly, any good college chemistry instructor will tell you that the body does not "release energy" from the chemical bonds in food. Chemicals form bonds because the bonded compounds are the lowest-energy state for those particles. In other words, it takes energy to break a chemical bond, not the other way around. Digestion allows us to extract energy from food because we break down certain chemical bonds and cause those chemicals to form other, different bonds -- bonds with an even lower energy state than the original form. Our bodies can then take advantage of the surplus (and exactly how is still another story).
If you understand this, it should be obvious that digestion can be a fairly complex process, not all food is equal, and you can't measure the "calories" in a food as if you had a gas gauge.
Breakfast served all day!
Well, I actually like my brain being adequately supplied with oxygen, thank you! :-)
To be fair about it, predators also eat the bone, blood, organs, entrails and even the ruminate inside. They need to since flesh (muscle and skin) doesn't have the mineral and vitamin content an animal needs to survive.
So, be sure to have a nice slice of kidney pie, bone meal, some chitins, and liver with that hamburger! Yum-o.
Honestly, you'll get farther eating like the omnivore you are: meat, vegetables, herbs, fruit and few processed carbs and sugars.
I've been following the south beach diet for a couple of months now, and I have already lost a significant amount of weight.
"I've been using Cold FX for a couple of months now, and I haven't had a single cold. I've been investing in winter wheat futures for a couple of months now, and I've made a fortune. I've been watching red-haired people for a couple of months now, and a lot of them seem to be left-handed." Anecdotes like these aren't worthless, but they aren't very conclusive either.
it's basically cutting out all highly processed foods from your diet and to stick to whole grains and whole unprocessed (ie not from a box) food.
Your main problem will be to find someone to dispute this advice. You just need to add lower taxes, increased services, and motherhood to your platform and you can run for congress.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
My girlfriend happens to be a doctor, and currently works in a 'obesity clinic', and she is going for a PhD in public health, with a focus on obesity, and she left me with the impression that:
- Real medicine never was a 'real' science. It's absolutely shocking how many publications, treatments and diagnosis are based purely on 'gut feelings', or incoherent theories. Just pull up any statistics on malpractices, and be shocked. No other 'science' could get away with so many errors, after such a long time of experimenting. This happens in part because medicine is a rather unique applied science: there're a lot of psychological factors, and incredible amount of measuring errors, a gigantic level of complexity and tons of historic 'baggage' that doctors have to face every day.
- Medicine is getting a lot better in this aspect - there seems to be a relatively new way of thinking (in the medical community, at least) called "Evidence based medicine", which, if i understood correctly, could be basically summed up as applying scientific principals to the medical processes
- Obesity in specific is extremely complex. Almost everything you do has some influence on you body-weight and composition. Of course the laws of thermodynamics apply to human beings, too, but there are a gazillion factors that influence just how exactly the body deals with excessive calorie intake, or lack thereof, ranging from genetical to psychological and social factors. Just a basic example would be that if you simply stop eating for a week, you usually lose LESS weight compared to if you start 'snacking' all the time, eating 5 little meals a day (basic theory behind this sems to be that the body switches to 'emergency mode' if there's no food around, trying to save as may energy reserves as it can)
- Most theories seem to me to be a wild mixture of anecdotal observations mixed with biochemistry, somehow resembling Freudian theories - they are coherent in them selves, but lack a level of 'scientific interconection' to other knowledges. So it's quite common for a specific theory in obesity to me contradictory to a theory of e.g. neuroscience. As long as both theories "kind of" work, it doesn't seem to be a top priority to resolve that discrepancy (in contrast to what i have observed in 'hard sciences'). AS far as I can tell, thee's no real proof or reason why Whiskey shouldn't be as bad as Vodka in a diet, yet (here, at least) it's common knowledge that whiskey's ok, but vodka will make you fat - and as long as this works, it doesnt matter that much why this happens, or if it happens at all.
yes, lets start eating lots of low GI food.
Your weight is based on how you respond to your appetite, not on how much you exercise. Fat and protein are low GI. So are most whole grains and basmati rice. It's the white flour and sugar (the primary non naturally occuring foods in our diet) that have the highest GI. Fructose (fruit sugar) is the only low GI sugar.
and for those who don't know, high GI foods increase your appetite by causing a spike in insulin levels which makes you hungry after the food you eat has been broken down.
Scares the hell out of the cat, though...
When I eat like a Predator, I grow claws in front of my mouth and and have iridescent blood. Also, I click a lot when I talk... I should probably have that looked at.
The plant's spiritual energy and karma are getting back at them for eating it.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I started running about 8 years ago...
I was a bit over 100 kg (230 lbs) when I started, now I am down to about 165 lbs (75 kg), and my pulse is in the low 40's first thing in the morning... My wife loves the way I look, I feel great, I eat just about everything in sight (4,500-5,000 Cal/day), and I write better code after my mid-day run break... Ask anyone who went from a sedentary lifestyle to an active one about how they feel, and how healthy they are, and you will find similar stories...
I can accept the premise of the article, that conventional wisdom on weight is unproven, but I think that is due to not having done the right experiment yet, not the falsehood of the conventional wisdom...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
My family taught me something when I was young and came to America, and miraculously became pudgy... "they have sugar in EVERYTHING here", so we cooked at home, and ate at home a lot, and bought mostly the basic building blocks of food, and... (ding ding) made it at home. There was never a shortage of sweets in the house, or of food. And once we dropped the soda pop and store bought cookie fads, our fat content dropped.
:) Salads, etc. My diet is as varied as it gets, and yet I'm in good shape and I've lost weight. Interesting? I was shocked. I have had two to three week breaks in my exercise routine, and yet no weight gained, and I lose little to none of my conditioning. (First day back I usually run half a mile, but I can get back to two to three miles a day the next day... shocked the life out of me since I was so used to what the idiots in school taught us. Seems almost everything school teaches can be thrown out once you graduate... preferably before. Including the lack of a good warmup before exercise, which is what destroys so many people's joints.) Strangely enough, I have "healthy levels" of the following. "Blood Sugar", "cholesterol", "blood pressure", "heart rate", with no murmurs, no palpitations and roughly no issues whatsoever.
Here's the catch. I work out and jog (swim, bike, etc, that's beside the point), but I do it to keep myself physically strong and resilient. I don't exercise to lose weight. It didn't really work, all it did was convert some of the fat to muscle. The rest went away as I began to eat regular healthy meals and cut down on the crap food to once a week or less. (Never cut the nasty stuff completely, or the cravings will find another way to surface, psychologically speaking. We're human and we're tempted, find a way to replace your cravings with something less nasty, that'd be it.)
My secret? I eat at least an egg a day, regular tea and hot chocolate, sausages or meat once a day
Rule #1? Live a good, healthy and complete life, stop struggling for shit you don't need, and stop fighting battles that don't gain you anything, not even satisfaction (which is more important than people think.)
Rule #2? Stop living with fear. Fear is the only thing you should fear, if anything at all. If something you do makes you "afraid", find out why, and get rid of the problem, don't just suppress the symptoms. Oftentimes fear will simply be some choice you make that you don't understand. Fear is among the worst stressors out there, yet few realize this. Getting into a fight with your boss and walking out of a job without fear is better than living each day at that job constantly afraid that you'll lose it someday and that you won't make payments on that brand new SUV you didn't really need (or want) or that three story house that only you and several ghosts live in (or whatever it is that keeps turning on the lights each night.)
All in all, remove fear by understanding what causes it and deal with it. That and discover the things that satisfy and please you, and surround yourself with those things. Often they are cheaper than you can imagine. Short of hunting and fishing, I have VERY few expensive hobbies. My garage is bigger than my house, as is my shop. Most of my "toys" I built myself, and will continue to do so. I use my life as an example, merely because I've been through all the problems many complain about, and have found ways to complete the needs behind each problem without rushing into a marriage or running into the arms of the nanny state or going on clinical drugs. Do I still have issues? Hell yeah. If I was perfect, I wouldn't be human.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
The reason that predators have the bodies that they do is that they have to go chase after their prey and burn up a lot of energy patiently stalking their next meal. They also sleep a lot in order to conserve energy, since their meals have the annoying habit of not wanting to be eaten, making them less plentiful than, say, grass, which is pretty much everywhere and is far less likely to struggle.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
What you're saying makes sense, but I think you miss the major items in the article. Three major points:
1. Easily digestible carbohydrates stoke your appetite. Fats and proteins suppress your appetite. For example, pick a day and eat as many cookies as you want. Pick another day and eat as much cheese or beef as you want. You'll eat less than half as many calories on the meat or cheese day.
2. For some people, strenuous exercise tends to stoke the appetite. It does no good to burn 500 calories on the treadmill or do squats, pulldowns, and shoulder press until your arms and legs can't move if you go home hungry enough to eat two cheese steaks. When I was lifting weights 6 hours a week, a typical lunch was two cheese steaks with a salad and a dessert. I didn't get any fatter - but I didn't get any thinner either. (I also didn't get much stronger - I seem to get much better strength gains from strength training from just two or three 45 minute workouts per week.) Exercise is extremely helpful and important, but if strenuous exertion stokes your appetite, take that into consideration and only exercise moderately. Thin + mild exercise is better than Obese + strenuous exercise.
3. (Most important) Cutting fat in your diet has not been linked to reducing your risk of heart disease. When some guy who lives on McDonalds Super Size meals has a heart attack, we've been taught it's because of the fat, period. But in fact, he's had tons of sugars in his soda, burger buns, and condiments, tons of starch in the fries, trans-saturated (i.e. not naturally occurring) fats used to cook the food, and tons of salt on the fries and in the sandwiches. (Ground beef and chicken have relatively little salt naturally, but fast food burgers and chicken are almost all positively loaded with it.) The beef in his burger probably had nothing to do with his problems.
My bet is that the mother in the previous post might find her appetite reduces further if she put more fats and protein in her diet, and if she did moderate exercise (but not so strenuous as to send her appetite through the roof), it would help even more.
More proteins and fat, and less simple sugars = a lower appetite. That makes it easier to Eat Less And Exercise More.