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Low-Carb Diet Trumps Low-Fat Diet In Major New Study
An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times reports on a new study (abstract) showing that low-carb diets have better health benefits than low-fat diets in a test without calorie restrictions. "By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity. While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat. They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,' Dr. Mozaffarian said. 'Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that's a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.' ... In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation and triglycerides — a type of fat that circulates in the blood — plunge. Their HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group. Blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, stayed about the same for people in each group."
Eating a balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise is better than any fad diet.
Simply eat what your body needs... beyond that, exercise. That is why people are getting fat. Not because they're eating too much but because they're not doing anything.
Look at what Michael Phelps ate. Something like three pizzas a day or something. And he was in great health at the time. Won Olympic gold medals and everything.
The diet is the wrong way around to solve a problem. Which is how to stay healthy without exercising. Now maybe there is a diet that does that but most of them say "oh and exercise"... well, if you exercise the rest isn't important.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Don't eat anything (nutritious), you lose weight really fast.
Is butter a carb?
There are several diets out there- particularly Keto, that people have had a lot of success with. In just 2 months I almost lost 30 pounds (call it water weight all you want) and it was a low carb, high fat diet. My bad cholesterol even went down a couple points, and I still feel like I have my muscles. There is a lot of research supporting this idea out there, if you realize that the FDA is probably bought out by people who make high-carb, high-profit foods.
Though just one sample (in my case) isn't significant, this is also my personal experience. Since I started avoiding bread, potato (not sweet potato), rice, pasta and sugar, I've lost a lot of weight. Part of the reason though, is that these foods are all over the place and very cheap, whereas my sweet potato mash with chicken breast and steamed green beans takes a little effort to produce.
So I do wonder if it's more about availability than it is the form of calories (the emptiness of many carb calories notwithstanding).
That is a bit too simple. Lots of modern food contains so much energy that our internal alarm switches are blown off-line. Therefore, you don't feel full anymore and you keep eating. That is called Insulin resistance (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) It is hard to overeat on apples. It is easy to overeat on sweets.
Off course, the food industry just loves to create food that makes you keep eating, because that will also make you buy more of it. That is why even organic meat contains sugar and all kinds of syrup nowadays. The first step to a healthy life is to eat real food.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Interestingly, you are using a topnotch athlete's condition to apply to the rest of us. In the criticisms so far applied, they left out age.
More appropriately, try cutting down on carbs and focus less on fat.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... they have that gasoline taste.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'm quite sure it flashed around here some time ago.
Ezekiel 23:20
What kind of diet did they start from? If the participants were typical Americans, it was probably something that was very heavy in sugar and other refined carbohydrates; more so that in fat, if I'm not mistaken, so cutting down on carbohydrates is no doubt the most important improvement to the diet one could make. Cutting back on fat would probably be the next, big step.
It is sometimes hard to remember just how extreme the typical Western diet is; it is perhaps particularly visible to me, because I have completely stopped drinking sweet drinks (including fruit juices and artificially sweetened drinks). Now I find I can't get through a whole glass of Coke - it's just too much, but only a few years ago I could drink whole liters of the crap.
As others have remarked, there is no need to follow any special diet, just stop eating and drinking crap. Of course, with the selection available, that in itself is actually not easy.
I recently lost 40+ pounds in ~6 months using Atkins and no exercise (just started exercising this week). I'm 46.
My takeaways:
1. If calories in calories burned, you'll lose weight.
2. The hardest part about that is controlling appetite.
3. The best way to control appetite is with a low carb diet.
This is the second time I did Atkins. The first time (10 years ago), I lost 60+ pounds in 6 months and I exercised 5 days a week. A guy at my gym had a shirt that read "Look great naked! 90% diet, 10% exercise" and the shirt was right. Diet is much, much more important that exercise when it comes to weight loss.
So, uh, no - diet isn't unimportant - it's the *most* important thing for weight loss - at least in my personal experience.
The abstract lists significant % changes for the low-carb group - but doesn't show the numbers for the low-fat group. If the change is significant but tiny then it may as well be insignificant.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Just restrict calories. I lost the most weight doing that. I was eating 2200 calories a day and I was never hungry except when I woke up in the morning. After mastering the calories, I went to restricting sodium and increasing protein while decreasing carbs. Just one step at a time. It eventually became habit. Exercising is a must to maintain (or increase) lean tissue. The net result should be fat loss.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
More important than either of these is the calorific value of the relative diets. Both of them (low carb / low fat) ultimately work by restricting the types of food, and therefore the calories, that are consumed - just via different methods. Claiming that fat is bad is simply false.
A person can choose to eat this or that and it is his own responsibility. But, when the government decides, what's good for you (based on some "settled" science), it not only affects citizenry's opinion and makes us less responsible for ourselves, it also leaves millions directly controlled by the government — such as pupils in government schools — without choices at all.
Now, I don't doubt, that some of the stuff removed from schools by our omni-scient and caring Congressmen will never be considered good for anyone again. But they still force fat-free chocolate milk on kids, for example, in seeming contradiction to this new study. Maybe, both ought to be available — and parents, rather than the Federal government, be allowed to control the children's nutrition?
Sadly, the movement seems to be in the wrong direction. Some parents are already being punished for children eating incorrectly. And though in this case (200+ pound 8 year old), it is fairly obvious, that the parents are, indeed, screwy, it is likely to be a "poster-boy" for future interventions in cases less and less obvious.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
A healthy diet can't be summarized in a sentence. The healthiest diet is what your body needs, and what your body needs depends on your individual body chemistry, your environment, your lifestyle, and probably a half a dozen other factors. That's why dietitians are not all unemployed (although they may not always be totally trustworthy, they can probably provide you with something better than low carb or low fat).
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Polyinsaturated fats (omega 3 and omega 6) are essential. The body cannot produce them, and they are required for major functions. Cutting fat means starving the body for something it needs
On the other hand, carbs are just fuel, and we can create glucose from amino acids if we need some.
Simply eat what your body needs... beyond that, exercise. That is why people are getting fat. Not because they're eating too much but because they're not doing anything.
That's not nearly as easy as you so casually make it sound.
Look at what Michael Phelps ate. Something like three pizzas a day or something. And he was in great health at the time. Won Olympic gold medals and everything.
Michael Phelps is a professional athlete who worked out at a high intensity for 3-6 hours every day. I assure you that no one reading this is doing workouts anywhere close to what he did because it is not our job. You could not find an example which is less similar to the life most people have or want to have. I had a coach in college who was an Olympic gold medalist. I've seen what it takes up close and I'm pretty sure you haven't. It's not glamorous and it is very draining both physically and mentally. Guys like that can eat that much because they are burning 4-5000 calories per day. Nobody with a desk job is likely to be able to do that. Most people who would even try would burn out very quickly. Pretty much nobody is going to do it without a carrot like an Olympic medal sitting out there to motivate.
Years ago I was a division 1 college athlete so I've actually done workouts like what Mr. Phelps did and guess what? I don't have the time or the motivation to work out like that anymore. Most people have no appreciation for how hard it is because they only see game day from the comfort of their couch. When you get past about 30-35 years old the body doesn't recover like it used to and frankly your desire to go out and torture yourself diminishes significantly. Work out more? Love to except I have a job, a family, community responsibilities, and at my age the amount I can do isn't what it once was because stuff breaks on me. He'll I even actually coach the sport I played in college at the high school level and I can't find time to work out much. I'm supposed to pile on 3+ hours of exercise a night on top of a full time job and other commitments and still get any sleep? If you can do it my hat is off to you but I haven't met many people who can.
Eat less, exercise more? Yeah that's the core of it but it is NOT easy.
FYI, fat resembles gasoline a lot more than carbs do :)
Myself a type 2 diabetic. The reduction in carbs has done more then any medicine in reducing my blood glucose numbers. People eat far too much carb and many times those portions are two or three times what one person should eat. I personally believe our obsession with over eating of carbs eventually contributes many of us not only to large weight gains, but also other long term health issues such as diabetes. Portions in America are out f control and our more sedate lifestyles only add to the problem. If we were more physically active, the added carbs would not be such a issue. People don't need fad diets and pills. They need to eat only what their bodies need. Unfortunately, many are eating portions sizes that would be for two or three people not one. The scariest part of this is that even younger people are packing on pounds at alarming rates. When at their ages they should easily handle even some excess off calorie intake. This just proves that even perfectly healthy younger people are dooming themselves down the road to conditions like diabetes, heart disease and other health issues early in life.
Does anyone know if its possible to eat a low carb diet as a vegetarian?
A couple months ago, I posted a detail of the diet I was on during January. I'll repost it here. It isn't the best argument that a high-fat diet causes weight loss, because of how radical it was. And it was short-term only. But it did work.
=======================
Let me tell you the long version of my one month diet. The short version is I lost 30 pounds in 31 days, and never felt any different.
On January 1st, I started a month-long diet plan. I had scrambled eggs in the morning, with mushrooms, onions, red bell peppers, and breakfast sausage mixed in them. I sauted the vegetables first in butter, added the sausage, and then the eggs, with some salt and seasoning. I made four days worth at a time, using eight eggs and half a package of sausage. So on average I had two eggs and two ounces of sausage. The calorie count was about 600 calories.
For dinner I had a salad. For a good salad, start with a big bowl. The ones I used hold a quart or more. Shred four leaves of iceberg lettuce, add a couple leaves of romaine, throw out the stalk part (or eat a couple as I'm making the salad). Add half a large tomato, diced, handful of chopped onion, sliced hard-boiled egg, shredded cheese, halved black olives, a few croutons, and small amount of ranch dressing. I prefer Thousand Island, but would have used too much, so went with Ranch, which I don't actually like. If the wife had made chicken the previous night, add a piece of chicken, sliced or pulled. Calories without the egg or chicken was about 100 calories, and is what I had half the time. With an egg add another 80, and with chicken add 300.
So for a month, Jan 1st to 31st, with only a couple exceptions, I had 1000 calories or less a day. The biggest exception was because I was out of town with my wife for a doctor visit one day. I ate a healthy dinner, but a few more calories than a salad. The other exception was a salad at Wendy's for lunch, also out of town, and a salad for dinner at home. Also, for a snack during the day, I would have eight to ten black olives, or a banana. I ate a banana on five or six days, and the black olives on fifteen to twenty days. The other days, I had nothing more than scrambled eggs and a salad.
To round that out, I drank at the most, a quart of water a day. One glass in the morning after breakfast, small sips during the day when my mouth was dry, and one glass after dinner. Again, the two exception days, I had diet soda or tea with the meals. With the salad of course, I got some more liquid, but the water my body used was simply provided by breaking down the fat cells. And I broke down a lot of fat cells. When I got up in the morning and used the toilet, my urine was a very dark orange. That was from the debris, solids and liquids, of unneeded cells.
During that month, I never felt tired, worn out, or light headed. I went from 230 pounds to 200 pounds. I did the same work I do all the time, fixing computers, crawling under desks, carrying them out to the car and back, installing network printers, etc. I didn't go to the gym at my apartment complex, or do any other workout.
As for hunger, I am always hungry anyway. I usually snack whenever I have the chance between jobs, tv shows, slashdot flamewars, and am still always hungry. So going a month being slightly more hungry wasn't really noticeable. Really, it's more boredom than hunger to begin with anyways.
Of course in the five months since I went off the diet, I regained some of the weight. Eight pounds in the first two weeks, as the depleted-but-surviving fat cells refilled with water. But that means I managed to destroy twenty-two pounds of them in one month. I want to go back on the diet, and get well below 200 pounds, but just haven't yet. Maybe now that my daughter's finished school, I can plan my life a bit more again.
--
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
This is not a low-fat diet. The 30% recommendation was an incredibly tepid compromise: the standard American diet is around 35% fat. So this its along the lines of telling peoople "Oh, you smoke 35 cigarettes a week? Try to keep it to 30."
For comparison, the Ornish plan is around 10% calories from fat.
So this study compared a high-fat, high-sugar diet (no restrictions on an America's sugar intake == high sugar) with a higher-fat, no-sugar diet. The usual crap research that people tout as showing low-carb diets useful.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Then why were people from 50 years ago not hugely fat? Because they were not eating all your little hipster diets and they were not fat.
The lack of understanding betrayed by this is almost ludicrous.
They didn't need to eat a "hipster diet" 50 years ago to avoid getting hugely fat, because an enormous part of the problem is the percentage of our food today that is processed, and the percentage that contains vast amounts of sugar (and particularly high fructose corn syrup). Which is exactly what (many of) the "hipster diets" strive to emulate.
I realize that on Slashdot, where people tend to be highly math-oriented, it's a popular fallacy to believe that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. However, studies like this one have been coming out for years now showing that that's simply not true.
Some kinds of energy are easier for our bodies to extract from food than others. Some kinds of food make our bodies feel more full than others. And our bodies need more in terms of nutrition than just calories—so, contrary to one of your other posts, no, a 12 thousand calorie diet of pizza cannot be healthy, unless the toppings on that pizza are very carefully selected to provide the nutrients that our bodies actually need.
It would be nice if nutrition were a simple formula, where you could just calculate calories in minus calories expended and come out with a nice, pleasing mathematical formula. But the human body isn't a spherical body in a vacuum, and "calorie" isn't a unit of nutrition, no matter how much you try to make it so.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Someone posts a scientific article about dieting and everyone posts their wild unproven theories about dieting.
If I wanted to read wild speculation by uninformed nobodies I can find that elsewhere.
no, I was making an extreme example to make a point and some people have a very hard time dealing with arguments made with a sledgehammer.
Using an irrelevant example to hammer home a point isn't really a very good persuasion tactic. Yeah if we could all work out for hours a day that would be great. Problem is that the real world has other constraints that make maintaining a healthy weight difficult. Your basic point (exercise more) is a good one. You don't need hyperbole to make it.
The point I made is that exercise can make a 12 thousand calorie diet of pizza healthy.
Healthy? Not so much. Just because you can burn the calories doesn't mean that pizza magically becomes health food. The proportions and composition of the food matters for health. I assure you that the guys riding the Tour De France who burn 7-10000 calories per day aren't eating pizza as a diet staple.
Does that mean you can just eat chocolate cake all day? Probably not, there isn't enough in chocolate cake to keep a man alive. But assuming it had all the vitamins and minerals... you could live on it just fine for your whole life so long as you exercised properly.
Live? Probably. Healthfully? Probably not. Odd are you would end up with all sorts of not so fun physical problems.
It goes back to that stupid super size me documentary where the fool sat there, over ate at mc donalds, and didn't exercise. Shockingly he got fat. Never mind he would have gotten fat eating practically anything else like that.
You are aware that others have attempted to replicate his "findings" without success. Basically that "documentary" was a bunch of made up bullshit as far as we can tell. If using an irrelevant example is bad, using a false example is worse.
Animal products are the new tobacco. Watch what doctors and nutritionists actually do themselves. As they continue to research diet and health (not just weight, but actual health), the researchers slowly but surely quit eating animal products and factory processed foods. They end up with a nutrient-dense (not calorie dense) plant-based, low oil/fat, organic diet, and they or someone in their family learns to cook. Because it's still very difficult to find a healthy meal at a restaurant (where "hyper palatable foods" rule -- and yes, Google is your friend).
What happened to the researchers working the tobacco issues was that all the researchers quit smoking. Even the ones doing research for Big Tobacco and published all those misinformation and misdirection pseudo-science papers about how tobacco was either good for you or at least not bad for you. They all quit. Then the doctors quit. And after four or five decades, most of the consumers had quit. But people still smoke which just proves the power of consistent marketing.
Food is going to make tobacco look like a walk in the park. But history is indeed repeating itself. Right now, the researchers are eating less and less meat, diary, eggs, sugar, and salt. Ask them. Talk to them. Doctors too. Ask your doctor(s) what s/he actually eats.
What you aren't going to find, is researchers and doctors following the diet in this study. Because they know it's ridiculous, and they know it's unhealthy.
If the government is providing food directly, such as in the case of school dinners, then they should absolutely attempt to provide a healthly diet based upon the scientific consensus. Just because the science isn't perfect doesn't mean we should throw it away and let anyone decide what's healthly.
Now you could certainly make the arguement that no one should be able to decide what someone else eats, and in most situations that's a great point. But in the case of school dinners it's inevitable that someone else will decide what the children eat, in that case it may as well be done based on evidence and reasonable policy not the whims of someone who's only qualification is that they had a child.
Many people think that what works for them, works for everyone.
When I was in my 20s, even in my 30s, I could eat everything I wanted at every meal and not gain weight. I probably had an unusual metabolism.
In my 40s that started to change.
In my 50s I find that eating 'moderately' results in steady, long term weight gain. And if I don't exercise, I gradually lose muscle mass.
So without having age to frame these anecdotes, I just don't put much weight in claims like "just cutting out sweet drinks does the trick". It might be all you need in your 30s but as we age and our metabolisms slow, we need more. We need this science.
... the second time ... means that it wasn't sustainable. A habit pattern of exercising is crucial in our sedentary modern lifestyle. Diet alone can poison your body into burning fat, or slowly waste away, but exercise is a crucial part of sustained health.
30% calories from fat is not low fat, it's a paid for advertisement and not a study.
I track my calories quite closely. Have for a few years now. Late last year, I went off meds - steroid-based - that I'd taken for decades for a chronic condition which had gone away. In the course of about 2 months, I gained ten pounds without changing my caloric intake. Freaked me out because I'd worked so hard to lose the weight.
That strongly suggested to me that there are in fact, other factors at play than just calorie balance. Calorie balance is a significant component but there seem to be other significant factors at play as well.
I love reading through this... lot of people that have never been on a low carb diet, and likely have been thin their whole lives, giving everyone else advice.
Low Carb diets work. Very well, and the weight stays off, unlike low fat diets. You have more energy, are less hungry, less irritable, etc... The problem with them? Our entire food industry is completely centered on Carbohydrates. You cannot find low carb foods easily. Want a sandwitch for lunch? You can't have bread! Potatoes, the number 1 vegetable in the US, are completely out. No pasta! No Rice!
you're basically eating Steak and Fish, with vegetables, all day every day. Those things don't heat up in the microwave well.
Not very useful unless we know where the high-fat subjects got the fat from. Did they get it from McDonald's or from walnuts and baked fish?
I took care of my father for two months after he got out of the hospital for not taking care of himself and becoming diabetic. Doctor put him on a low-carb diet (135g per day). I had to go on the diet with him since he got mad when I ate better than him. I lost weight and felt better.
I just started a new low-carb diet (150g per day) six weeks ago, taking everything I eat with me to work in a one-gallon plastic bag and having meat for dinner at home. Trimming down and feeling better again. I take 45-minute walks on the weekend to exercise.
The low(er) carbohydrate group had more muscle, which translates into a higher metabolism. They also, by nature of the diet, avoided highly processed foods.
"""
The high-fat group followed something of a modified Atkins diet. They were told to eat mostly protein and fat, and to choose foods with primarily unsaturated fats, like fish, olive oil and nuts. But they were allowed to eat foods higher in saturated fat as well, including cheese and red meat.
The low-fat group included more grains, cereals and starches in their diet. They reduced their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, which is in line with the federal governmentÃ(TM)s dietary guidelines.
"""
The low carbohydrate group ate more protein, which is essential to maintaining muscle. Also, knocking out "cereals and starches" probably knocked out highly processed grains and sugars. I think it's not so much what they're eating but what they're NOT eating: highly processed CRAP.
Lookup Clarence Bass. The guy looks GREAT at 75 and has maintained (and written about) a moderate diet and exercise plan since 40. I'm nearly 40. I love being active. I've competed in many sports including soccer, football, track and bodybuilding. I still have a good metabolism, good muscle mass and low body fat. Through variations of my diet I've found that a moderate diet including unprocessed or minimally-processed and uncooked foods is the best diet for me. Whole milk, nuts, avocados, fruits, brown rice, beans, salmon, lean beef or turkey, steamed broccoli, etc. A low carbohydrate diet makes me weak. I can't muster the explosive energy for an intense exercise session while carbohydrate depleted. When in ketosis (completely carb depleted), my breath smells like alcohol, my joints ache, I'm irritable and generally feel like crap. Maybe I'm different. My favorite pre-workout meal is a bowl of rice about an hour before. Carbs are fine. Just not the super-processed stuff.
You really don't need any carbs at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Schwatka
This study has a huge hole in it. It didn't regulate how many calories the participants took in. Which would be fine, it both groups took in the same amount of calories. But they didn't - the low fat group took in considerably more. So rather than show that low carb diet is superior to the low fat diet, it shows (*get ready to be amazed*) that eating more calories results in weight gain.
Look at what Michael Phelps ate.
Michael Phelps was a gold medal Olympic athlete who was basically in training 24/7. Most of us have jobs, an other things in our lives which prevent us from training 24/7 with an Olympic trainer.
Also, what the hell is a "hipster" diet? I think this is a big sign that people need to stop talking about "hipsters". Since when were "hipsters" known for being fat?
I've really come to believe that the word "hipster" doesn't mean anything anymore. It's just an adjective that you attach to things you don't like.
Did you even feel the breeze?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This study allows writing a hypothesis, but doesn't actually provide us much in the way of scientific knowledge.
This study really does tell us very little, except that they don't know how nutrition variables affect health outcomes. They don't have any idea why the one group lost weight over the year of the study, and there is no long term result (i.e. over your lifetime). There also aren't any details about the kind of LDL. The summary is either intentionally misleading or the submitter didn't read the whole article (not surprising) as the article says specifically they didn't test for that.
The study also didn't actually determine how many calories were consumed. It was a "general guidelines" with very little controls or limits. They encouraged lean proteins, but allowed saturated fats in small or moderate amounts, but there was no limit afaict. They also didn't say how overweight the people were at the beginning of the study. I presume they were overweight as both groups lost weight, and these weren't 20-21 BMI people who somehow dropped into the unhealthily underweight range, but - again - hard to tell.
It's interesting, no doubt, as was the recent study tracking the use of reduced vs full fate dairy products (there was, iirc, no statistically significant weight or health change difference in the two groups). Unfortunately, without the "why" we're left with yet another set of potential guidelines which are based on observations but without a compelling reason. Good for religion, not so good for science.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And I can assure you: the guys riding Tour de France are eating pizza but mainly they eat pasta!
A bit here and there but as I said before it's not a staple of their diet, particularly while racing. My father is as I type this on the staff for a pro cycling team in one of the major tours so I get steady reports about what they eat during stage races. I've hosted a continental pro cycling team at my house for a week and yes I've taken them out for pizza among other things. I know exactly what they eat and how much. (it's a LOT) Yeah they'll eat pizza but generally it's a lot of pasta, cereal, fruit, protein (mostly chicken but others too), eggs, pastries, plus enough sugar to feed a flock of hummingbirds. Pies of various sorts are pretty popular with the european guys. Nutella, honey, nut butters, jelly/jam, on breads. Subway is pretty popular among fast food places. Lots of energy bars and goo and energy drinks while riding. They're fairly omnivorous but very carb heavy for obvious reasons. Since pizza is not especially carb heavy, as Cookie Monster would say - it is a sometimes food. During the big tours the teams will typically have a chef prepare their food. The amount they need to eat to keep their bodies fueled is actually so much that it is hard to do. They need calorically dense food per unit volume.
FYI hosting a team of pro cyclists is like trying to feed a swarm of locusts. You wouldn't believe how much they eat.
All those foundings in this study could have been 'discovered' by an internet research (google is your friend). ... and how much a simple big mac with french fries (plus ketchup! plus the coke!) is in calories. ... so your willpower only helps to resist a cake with cream. ... actually they eat low carb ... funny, isn't it?
We know since 30 years or longer how nutrition works and how to proper eat and stay healthy. Well, we as 'we who care' or 'we, the scientists who researched it'.
It is astonishing, amazing even, that an american institute does a study about a topic that is basically 'researched out'.
But I guess that is the typical american arrogance. Assuming first no one ever really did 'a study' and if they figure 'oh, someone did' they jump onto the wagon: 'yeah, but that was in europe'. So european studies are not trustworthy? Or is it that 30 year old insights aged somehow and are no longer valid? Hint: http://www.montignac.com/en/th... or Atkins(Atkinson?), btw an American as far as I know. He also solved everything around nutrition. But well, instead of simply understanding what is going on you call it 'diets'. Sigh, I believe Atkins lost his credibility when companies started to sell pre packed food for the microwave with his name on it.
Anyway, lets get a few things straight many people here falsely assume about diets and nutrition.
EXERCISES
Exercises make you more healthy, but they don't help you to stay or become slim in case you eat to much
You can easy verify this by googeling how much energy you burn, sitting, sleeping, running, swimming
LACK OF WILLPOWER
Will power does not help if you eat the wrong things or fall into the american myth that you should eat a snack 6 times a day (rofl, those six snacks alone have more calories than the rest you eat over a day). Hint: exercising does not help
GENETICS
The influence of genetics is nearly non existing (for a white anglo saxon christian american). Yes, Maori or Inuit have a slightly different metabolism, they even become really 'fat' by only eating proteins or 'fat'
SWEETENERS
(chemical) Sweeteners have no calories in themselves, but they
a) are triggering some responses in the body, like insulin levels, but also change absorption of other carbs in your guts. So the prime mistake e.g. is to eat an ordinary cake/torte with a coffee containing sweeteners. That will increase the 'calorie bomb effect' of the cake a ten fold, a normal coffee with sugar is much better.
b) most (chemical) sweeteners are suspected to cause cancer (well known since over 30 years, but it seems the food industries can avoid to make this public somehow, Aspatam, Saccarin, Cyclamat etc.)
c) Fructose or other 'sweeteners' are proclaimed to be not digestible. Well, see below, that actually depends on your personal gut bacterias.
GENETICS AND BACTERIA
While the genetics of humans have a low influence, the genetics if the hut bacterias have a high one.
The general mantra that it is healthy to eat lots of fibers is wrong in many cases. If you believe you are eating super healthy but you are fat nevertheless chances are you caught some bovine bacterias that can indeed prepare the fibers (which should be undigestible) into carps that your body happily is digesting. The estimate is that about 25% of the 'super fat' harbour bacteria like that.
Now the explanation: INSULIN
Suppose you eat to fat. Extreme example: you eat a pound of butter. You would never do that? Wow, ever ate 100grams mousse au chocolat? That mousse contains roughly 90grams of butter, a bit of chocolat and a bit of eggs. Well, perhaps only 80.
What happens if you digest that? Well, the simple answer is: nothing. That is one of the reasons it is a famous dessert. On paper it has a lot of calories but they are all fat. That means: if you eat that as a breakfast, 90% of the fat w
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
for a whole year? color me...meh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I also lost about 30 lbs, with no exercise, by changing my diet to a low-carb diet. But I used a closed-loop feedback for food selection for less than US$20.
I (and several others) purchased a blood sugar meter. Basically, we would check our blood sugar levels (BSL) at 1 and 2 hours after eating. We all found that some foods would take us up to 120 (the upper limit for our experiment), but some foods blasted BSL up to 200. Avoiding foods that triggered high levels caused us all to lose weight, feel less hungry, and we snacked less or not at all. All of us saw significant-to-radical improvements in our health. The real surprise is how many foods affected some of us, but not others. The more we compared notes on food, the more we realized it to be dependent on the person's response. Foods that affected all of us tended to have wheat, corn and related by-products.
I share this, hoping others will give it a try and report back.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all diet makes as much sense as a one-size-fits-all shoes and clothing. I'm convinced we need to take advantage of the feedback tools available and customize your own diet, based on your body's reactions.
Place nail here >+
I gave up crabs for nothing.
So tire of this mess
Eat a balanced diet containing reasonable portions and exercise as often as you can. Driving everywhere and feeding from the McTrough like an animal will result in being a fatty no matter what you cut out.
Were they eating *exactly* the same foods, bar the differnce in fat and carbs, AND NOTHING ELSE?
Even more, which group was getting more high fructose corn syrup?
mark
I was talking to my doctor on a regular visit and said I wanted to do a low carb/paleo type diet. We did some blood work for some before numbers. A year later I had lost 62 pounds. The only thing I changed was what I ate. I was active before, but could not get the weight off.
My blood pressure went down.
My overall cholesterol went down, good stayed the same, bad plummeted.
Triglycerides plummeted.
etc.
~~~~I have a very happy doctor now.~~~~~
The hardest part? Eliminating rice and most pasta.
The best part? Never being hungry. I could eat as much as I wanted.
I should add that I live on a farm. I can eat naturally raised beef, goat, pork, lamb, chicken (and eggs) and turkey (and eggs). I also like to fish. We work with neighbors and trade for veggies. Not buying processed foods has saved A LOT of money.
Say what you want about the study, but it worked for me and I'll never go back
Procrastination; I'll think of a sig tomorrow.
Since I started avoiding bread, potato (not sweet potato), rice, pasta and sugar, I've lost a lot of weight.
I did even less -- I cut the added sugar (specifically fructose) to the AHA recommended limits, but I allowed myself to eat all the other carbs I liked, and as much raw fresh fruit as I liked. Weight fell off me and has stayed off for 6 months now. My waistline dropped by 4". So far it seems I can basically eat as much as I like, including carbs, whenever I'm hungry, and stay at a healthy weight, so long as I keep my sugar intake low. So personally, I'm pretty much convinced that Dr Robert Lustig is right about fructose.
Of course, YMMV, I'm not a doctor, etc etc.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It is what bodybuilders do when cutting.
All these diets are worthless without calculating your macro requirements (weekly if carb cycling).
If you want to know how to burn fat, read bodybuilding articles.
Btw, also check out Matcha Green Tea Powder. We use green tea A LOT.
Didn't he get shouted down by "the scientists"?
That is not a large sample. One news report in a bit of hyperbole said this will settle the issue once and for all. One good thing, maybe, is that the 150 people in the study were mixed race age and sex. As opposed to all prisoners or all white male Harvard Pre-med students who 'volunteer' in order to pass a class; the later used to be the norm.
Ah, the maybe. Some people are born with a high % of fat, some like me and my parents and grandparents were skinny as a rail. Some like me and one parent and 2 or 3 grandparents gain weight when we hit 30 or so. Some never gain too much weight. Is there a difference between those who start life overweight compared to those who gain weight over time, and at what age, and those who never gain weight other than activity level and calorie intake? Has anybody ever studied the differences between such groupings?
One thing people don't seem to understand is that, what is important is not how much weight you lose. That is just aesthetics. It is about how you change your long-term health prognosis.
You can be overweight or even obese and still be much healthier than a normal-weight sedentary person. Eating a balanced diet that goes light in foods packed with saturated fats, simple carbohydrates, and little else and getting plenty of exercise is the key to being healthy, and you may even lose a little weight too.
All the fad diets in the world will not improve your health. They will just MAYBE make you skinnier. But remember, most diseases correlated with obesity are not caused by them and you are at a similar rate if you are thin but have the same diet and exercise habits as the average obese person.
The study is paywalled but from the article:
The high-fat group followed something of a modified Atkins diet. They were told to eat mostly protein and fat, and to choose foods with primarily unsaturated fats, like fish, olive oil and nuts. But they were allowed to eat foods higher in saturated fat as well, including cheese and red meat.
[...]
The low-fat group included more grains, cereals and starches in their diet. They reduced their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, which is in line with the federal government’s dietary guidelines. The other group increased their total fat intake to more than 40 percent of daily calories.
Of the three macro-nutrients protein is known to be the most satiating per calorie.
And things that are high in protein (meat, eggs, nuts) tend to be the same things that are high in fat. While things high in carbs (grains, starch) tend to be low in protein.
So a big effect of a low-fat diet will be fewer calories from protein, and a low-carb diet will mean more calories from protein. I'm almost certain that the low-carb group ate a lot more protein than the low-fat group, and I'll bet that was responsible for the additional weight loss.
This is important because it means these results are completely consistent with the hypothesis that fat is the most fattening macronutrient, followed by carbs, and then protein being the most thinning. The reason why low-carb was the most thinning is that the weight loss caused by the additional protein overcame the weight gain caused by the additional fat.
Can anyone with access to the study confirm if there were big differences in the protein intake?
I stole this Sig
Look at the fruit juices sold now in the grocery isle. 80% of them are fruit juice "cocktails" with added corn syrup. Because diluting fruit juice with water and adding corn syrup is cheaper.
Cut down on breads, rice, potatoes, and any other flour-derived products, and instead increase your intake in proteins (mainly fish, tuna), essential oils (olive, sunflower, pure butter,), and associable vegetables for the carrier. Your weight will eventually start dropping by about 3 pounds per week. Not suggested for hard-to-core couch potatoes and those already being vegetables (in hospitals).
With over 360 comments already, this may get ignored. But here it goes...
I think the idea is to retrain your body to burn fat (in-take and stored) for Calories.
I a am sure there are some obese vegetarians, but it seems to me that most long-time vegetarians tend to be average, to thin.
I survived for several months on Copenhagen, candy corn and multivitamins. I don't advise this.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
I saw a shooner race on youtube on one of the lakes.
There are sailing races all the time on the Great Lakes. I have a friend who has been racing on the great lakes for decades. I did a little bit back when I was a wee lad on Lake Erie. Good fun.
Well, I don't know if I prefer fresh water over the sea.
Well, you can drink the freshwater and there aren't any sharks to worry about. :-)
Ann Arbor is nice, rings a bell.
Lots of tech companies there taking advantage of the University of Michigan graduates including Google. The half-serious joke is that the barristas all have PhDs in that town. Lots of tech companies, research groups and startups. Plus a neat town to live in. Good food, interesting people, lots of neat events. A little too obsessed with the football team 8 weekends in the fall but otherwise very cool. Check out Zingerman's Deli if you ever visit - one of the best deli's in the whole USA. No joke.
Well, I would prefer to crew such a ship :) working on my sailing education.
I rode a tallship earlier this year. They have week+ long excursions where you can crew the ship and sail along several of the Great Lakes. Pretty cool stuff.
What is not mentioned is that these low-carb and the low-fat diets were both done in the context of the typical, and rather terrible, Western diet. Since no distinction is made between simple and complex carbs, naturally 'low-carb' is going to win, since sugar is the worst offender for creating obesity.
I also have to roll my eyes because we already know what a healthful diet is. The most massive study of this kind in history came to a simple, unambiguous conclusion: eat a whole-foods, plant-based diet, and keep animal protein under 10% (even better, 5%) of your total calorie intake.
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The abstract says, "A low-carbohydrate (<40 g/d) or low-fat ( >30% of daily energy intake from total fat [>7% saturated fat]) diet.".
If I am reading this correctly the low carbohydrate diets only had 40 grams of carbohydrate, or less, per day. This is a major change from the typical American diet, one medium size potato contains about 40 grams of carbohydrate. With such a low bar the usual habit of eating lots of bread, pasta, potatoes and rice is not possible and you really have to try changing your diet. As one of the major failings of the modern Western diet is too much processed, simple to digest carbohydrates the changes they made were probably exactly the right ones to make.
While the low fat diet stipulates less than 30% fat, the average American diet gets about 35% of their calories from fat. I can imagine that these people only slightly tweaked their diet. Maybe they ate as before but consumed lower fat versions of the same meals, a recipe to eat more sugars and other processed carbohydrates.
So I am not convinced by the simple description that this study shows more fat is better, I think it is really shows that too many simple carbohydrates are bad.
Well that is how I read the study, what actually happened may be different.
The most dangerous drug
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Casteism
Very true, but many people are trying to keep their carbon footprint to a minimum nowadays, and exercise goes against that... what with all the huffing and puffing.
The study was badly flawed and does not support the conclusion in the headline.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...
I take no position on whether "low-fat" or "low-carb" is more stupid. They are both stupid. The body needs adequate amounts of both, and nutrients that are only available, or absorbable, in the presence of one or the other. While there are many unanswered questions in the science of nutrition, there is overwhelming evidence that nutrient-dense diets, all else being even close to equal, are ALWAYS superior to calorie-dense diets. In other words, avoid high-fat and high-carb diets and eat as much natural food, in as close to its natural state, as possible. Avoid refined junk. Exercise. If you are of color or live someplace other than the equator, supplement with vitamin D.
Nonaggression works!
1. I and my family are vegan (7+ years) and completely buy into the belief that our bodies operate better on fruits and veggies.
2. we eat a lot of seeds, nuts, and beans - including soybeans, and moderate intake of mostly whole grain products.
3. we all eat as much as we want and don't have any weight issues - my 55 YO wife eats like a horse and wears size 2.
4. my son is very athletic and was ahead of almost all of the kids in his age group in reaching puberty despite warnings from our carnivore friends and doctor that he'd be delayed.
5. other than an occasional cold, none of us get sick and we tend to get very mild colds relative to co-workers.
My point of this is that I think that this diet is superior for long-term health and household budgets, than one containing organic meats etc.
Can anyone prove me wrong?
You're misunderstanding our objection. A Calories is a Calorie. This study doesn't contest that claim.
Regarding the study, that's what I said.
Whether you eat 12 thousand Calories in pizza or 12 thousand Calories in kale, the impact on your weight will be the same.
Regarding the pizza, that's what I said.
TFA is a citatin against this statement, though far from perfect.
Regarding my statement about pizza and kale, that's what you said.
The study was a comparison between a high fat / low carb diet and a low fat / high carb diet with no calorie restrictions. My comparison of a pizza and kale does not follow a high fat / low carb vs low fat / high carb distinction, and it is calorie restricted. Since the study and my statement regarding pizzas and kale are orthogonal to each other, your claim that "TFA is a citatin against this statement [about pizza and kale], though far from perfect" is incorrect, since my statement about pizza and kale and the study have nothing to do with each other. Since they have nothing to do with each other, one cannot be a citatin [sic] against the other. It is incorrect to point to a calorie unrestricted study as a citation against a statement that hinges upon restricted calories.
Additionally, your statement that "with nothing available about their relative calorie consumption, probably on an average it was similar" is entirely baseless. It amounts to begging the question, in that you assume the conclusion (that calorie consumption was similar, i.e. that a calorie is not a calorie when it comes to body weight) right from the start.
Your other statements about gut biomes and water weight, which you've repeatedly tried to insert into the dialogue, have no bearing on any of this.
And finally, your statement that "there is a lot of other outputs like heat, sound, flatulence, gas, faeces, gut flora" regarding the energy from metabolism is irrelevant. While heat is a very real end product of metabolism (an average human, at rest, emits about 70W of heat, which works out to roughly 1500 Calories per day, otherwise known as basal metabolism), the rest of your "outputs" are negligible, as humans are capable of generating only very low levels of sound, expel flatulence, gas, and feces that are devoid of digestable calories (nutrition label calorie counts are determined by summing digestable calories, not bomb calorimetry), and maintain relatively stable quantities of gut flora. Since the outputs that you list are negligible, they're not relevant to a discussion about how one can't gain fat weight from calories that one doesn't consume or how one can't avoid fat gain if one metabolizes more calories than one expends.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.