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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.
Anyone that has tried to exercise and eat what they want can tell you that it doesn't work. You also need to eat fairly cleanly. Phelps is like 7 feet tall, extremely active, very muscular and was taking both legal and not-so-legal supplements. You can't equate the nutrition needs of someone working out 2+ hours a day doing high-impact strength and endurance training with your average person.
...Steve
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.
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The whole point of studies such as this is to find out exactly what is the crap that you need to avoid, really. That part certainly isn't common knowledge.
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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,
No, in fact, that's the opposite of what this study shows. I'm not surprised you got this wrong, because you are simply parroting the prevailing thinking, but it is plain wrong and this study shows that. Of course, so did the ketogenic/Atkins diet, but you ignored that so it's not surprising that you're ignoring this.
Irony: Holding forth with an obsolete opinion as a reply to an article about a study which proves your opinion obsolete. You may try again, but you have failed abjectly and you're spreading bullshit misinformation to make yourself appear relevant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree with your statement but what people *need* to understand about exercise is that its not really about the calories you burn while you are doing its about your overall metabolism.
If you say go hiking most weekends in summer and cross country skiing most weekends in winter, you are going to have a great deal more muscle tissue on your legs are arms than someone who spends their weekends in front of their xbone. You will also have cardio-pulmonary development to support sustained high output.
That muscle tissue and elevated metabolism is going to sit there burning more calories during the week while you sit in the office at your desk. So in the context of exercising to lose weight its not really about the energy expenditure in performing the direct act, its about about turning your body to "run hotter".
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I would think
Studies like these are how we end up with less of the 'I would think' and more of the 'we are pretty certain and here is why...'. You probably are right of course - but that's not the same as knowing for sure. Nor does it give any kind of thought about in what kind of ratio's one could best eat food. Lots of grains with a few vegetables is probably not so good as few grains with lots of vegetables.
Bulldust.
I can walk on a treadmill for an hour or simply avoid two thin slices of wheat bread. They are calorie-equivalent.
Weight-loss is best accomplished by reducing caloric intake. Trying to exercise weight off is fruitless.
Exercise is great for muscle toning, avoiding injury, increasing balance, beefing up air intake, and strengthening the heart.
It's a huge mistake to think weight-loss can be accomplished by exercise.
It's a huge mistake to think that wellness can be accomplished by diet.
The two should be used together to work on two separate issues.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
The reason rates of obesity and associated afflictions like diabetes have skyrocketed in the past 30 years, is not because Americans' willpower has somehow become more lacking. It's because of the atrocious job the authorities have done in demonizing fat, and encouraging a high carb low fat diet. Fat does not make you fat carbs do by triggering an insulin response that converts the sugars in the blood stream into fat to be stored in cells.
That and the fact that we subsidize corn and soy at the federal level. Processed foods like Cheetos and Hot Pockets end up being cheaper than healthier foods. So people on a budget (most Americans) can stretch their dollar by buying cheaper food that is higher in simple carbs and salt but not very nutritious.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Wrong, it isn't just the exercise. Its the muscle mass.
It isn't enough just to walk a little. you need to build some muscle so your baseline metabolism goes up. That muscle needs to be sustained with a constant extra supply of energy. If you stay in bed all day you will still burn some calories. If your body is very fit then your baseline metabolism will probably be a great deal higher.
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Please don't assume that the diet of an Olympic athlete consuming ~12,000 calories a day has any relevance to what is a generally healthy diet for you.
[FUCK BETA]
When people have a strong will, they are healthy.
Sorry, that's complete nonsense. The reality is that few people over the age of about 30 have a fully working, fully healthy body. Stuff goes wrong and it has nothing to do with will power, it's just genetic defects, the lasting effects of illness, accidents and age. Some people are lucky, some are not and telling the unlucky ones that they just need more "will power" is both insulting and unhelpful.
Careful selection of foods can have a huge impact of many people. I suffer from CFS and a diet that specifically supports the parts of my body that don't work very well any more really helps. The CFS developed as the result of an infection, it was nothing to do with my "will power" and no amount of will can snap me out of it.
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You will be an unhealthy, lean couch potato. Exercise builds blood vessel networks, breaks down old body mass, and allows your body to remain healthy. Physical activity causes consolidated fat cells to deflate and get replaced; it causes muscle cells to rework and replace; and it moves fat storage from fat cells to highly-active muscle cells, allowing burning of fat for energy via oxidization rather than lipolysis. The physical movement of blood helps wear down arterial plaque; the heart becomes stronger with increased load; and the metabolism of more fat during increased load cycles out the blood-borne cholesterol (necessary for life!) and corrects the balance of HDLs and LDLs of various types.
I'm not gonna say it removes toxins from the body, but it does free some up if they're absorbed into cells which get deflated or replaced. Urination removes toxins from the body--that's what the renal system is for; otherwise you'd just sweat and conserve water by not pissing. Putting load on the body does tend to free float things, though: your body will engage in demolition as well as building, restructuring things instead of just adding more dense muscle mass on top of less-dense muscle mass.
The only thing you particularly emit from the process is salt (magnesium, sodium, etc.), which is not toxic; but some soluble compounds constricted within cell membranes will become free-floating, either being re-absorbed or filtered by the renal system. Most of the toxic compounds are heavy metals (chelation required), which don't move around readily, and gases (CO2, chlorine, NOx), which move around quite easily anyway--you'll accelerate the removal of everything but CO2, which is scaled, simply by accelerating respiration and blood movement.
In short: exercise has structural effects which greatly enhance health. It also accelerates the removal of some free-floating toxic compounds that your body eliminates anyway, and can temporarily make bound toxic compounds free-floating; but the removal of "toxins" isn't a major effect. Nevertheless, the slight increase in motility of nitrous oxides, the more rapid oxidization of free radical oxidizers, the more rapid elimination of excess salts and other compounds normally removed by the lymph and renal systems, and the replacement of overprovisioned forms of cholesterol with a more correct blood stream balance are, in combination and across decades, an important enough effect to warrant consideration.
The major and minor effects of physical activity are interesting to me.
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Anyone that has tried to exercise and eat what they want can tell you that it doesn't work.
THIS. Some people just have better regulating systems in their bodies -- either they have better genes, or they good about recognizing when they are full and stopping eating, or they have strong willpower, or they naturally gravitate toward eating things that their bodies will regulate well... or some sort of combination.
But the simple fact is that -- unless you're a professional athlete or a manual laborer who does REALLY hard work for many hours per day -- chances are dietary inputs have a MUCH greater impact on weight than exercise.
I know there are people here who will chime in and say "all calories are not the same" and that's true. But we can at least use calories as an approximation. It takes VERY little imbalance for your body to get way out of whack. Say you eat enough that your body stores an extra 100 calories per day. Roughly speaking, about 3500 calories will equal a pound of fat. If you maintain this, you'll gain about a pound per month. Do this for a few years, and you could end up 50 pounds overweight... all because of an extra 100 calories per day.
Now, think about what it would take to correct that extra 100 calories per day. In terms of exercise, that's roughly running a mile, or doing some other sort of less vigorous workout for a longer period.
But in terms of eating, 100 calories can be pretty small. That's less than a typical can of soda. Or a SMALL cookie. Or a tablespoon of butter or mayo. Did you squeeze an extra packet of mayo on your sandwich today? That could be your 100 calories.
So, roughly speaking, which is easier to correct? Refrain from squeezing that extra packet of mayo, or running a mile every day? If you start talking in terms of real desserts -- like a large cookie or a piece of cake or a bowl of ice cream, you can easily get to 300-700 calories. If you eat dessert most days, you'd have to run 3-7 miles to correct for that.
Of course -- it's not quite that simple. Different types of calories will produce greater or lesser feelings of fullness. Protein and fats seem to be better at reducing hunger than carbs are (in general -- again, this is speaking very roughly), which is probably the reason for the results seen in this study. So, chances are if you have the right balance of foods in your diet, you'll be less likely to accumulate that 100 calorie/day excess or whatever, because you'll feel more full without eating more.
Anyhow, that's all in the details. My general point is: it takes a lot more work to offset extra caloric input through exercise than it does to just eat a little less. If you stop and buy the giant cinnamon bun in the mornings with a large latte, you may have already consumed more calories than a typical large steak dinner. And when a single cinnamon bun or a large dessert might be 800 calories or more, offsetting that with exercise would be just insane.