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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
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.
No, it isn't. Restricting calories leaves you hungry, which is utterly ruinous. Low carb, high fat decreases your appetite naturally. After being on low carb for a few months, I am completely satisfied by a small salad and a small steak, where I used to be and eat like a big tubby fat-ass.
"fried chicken, I've pretty much put back on"
It's the crap on the outside of the fried chicken causing the problem. If chicken places would use a good soy based flour the carb content of fried chicken would drop like a stone. Buddy of mine created a batter for his out of soy that tastes better than anything I have ever had at a chicken joint.
Restaurants sneak in carbs because carbs are cheap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.