I got to thinking about what are some of the common beliefs that sabotage your weight loss efforts. So I thought I'd discuss a few:
1. You must balance calories in and calories out. This is a biggie and is the hardest one to debate but let me try. First off, and easiest, this belief makes people think they just need to eat less than they expend to lose weight but there is a problem. How do you know how much you expend? Sure, there are calculators out there on the web that will tell you but those are based on statistical models and generalizations. You are how old, how tall, how active... boom you burn this much. But how do you know with any level of certainty. Also, if you eat less, ie. take in less calories, your body can react with slowing down metabolism. So that at one rate of intake, say 2800 calories a day, your body may be burning 2200 calories a day. BUT, if you drop your intake down to 2200 calories, your body may respond by slowing down to 1700 calories a day. You can chase this number all you want.
Anecdotally, I once went on a diet where I was eating 1000 calories a day and exercising. I ended up plateauing for a few weeks and broke it by INCREASING my intake by 500 calories a day. So you don't really know what you are expending so it really is quite pointless to say you are trying to balance this.
Now, I'm a low carber, so my views on calories in - calories out is a bit different from 'normal' people. I do believe there is some value in knowing what you are taking in (both in terms of calories as well as macro nutrient amounts) but mostly from the standpoint of seeing how your body reacts to that. If your body loses weight at 2000 calories a day with 20 g of carbs but stays weight stable at 2800 calories a day and 100 g of carbs, that's a good thing to know. It's also important to note your energy levels as low energy levels could be the result of your body overcompensating for a lack of available energy.
2. Exercise will help you lose weight - I started some blog posts as a result of this question. Exercise will not significantly affect weight loss. Why? Because you expend incrementally not much energy and it will result in your body wanting more energy intake. For example, if I run on the treadmill for a half hour, I burn about 250 calories. But if I just sat down for that half hour, I'd probably burn about 75 or so calories. So my net result is about 175 extra calories burned. However, if as a result of that I feel hungry, I will most likely eat up that 175 calories (it's not hard).
I am not saying don't exercise, I'm just saying that don't expect it to result in weight loss. There are benefits. Resistance training can help with muscle insulin sensitivity (at least I've heard it can). It can help with mood. it can change your body composition. It can have other health benefits. But killing yourself in the gym will not make you lose significant amounts of weight.
To those who say 'I know a guy who went to the gym 6 days a week an hour and a half a day and got slim', I'd ask, what else did he do? Did he change his diet? Did he quit smoking? Most likely, he did so we really don't know what caused weight loss.
3. Becoming fat is a result of lack of will power - To this I say, read my 'Let's make Grok Fat' post. Grok 'overate', not because he couldn't resist that donut, but because his body was telling him he needed more energy and he listened. I've been obese. I was close to 300 pounds. The drive to eat appears to be emotional and psychological and yes there is some of that element, but the hormonal aspect is much stronger and contributes much more to the equation. Hormones will affect behavior. If you've been around a pregnant lady who is going through cravings or hormonal changes, you probably have noticed this. I may get comments about that last sentence calling me a chauvinist but I've known women who have gone through pregnancy and they talk about it too.
If I think of more I'll do a part two to this post. That's all I have for now.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Let's make Grok Fat
So a while ago, my buddy D2 Primal posed to me a challenge. If exercise does not make you lose weight, how do you explain to someone looking at the before after pictures at our gym (we go to a gym that is a part of a large chain I'll call Silver's to hide the real identity) that it was not the exercise that made them lose weight (and specifically fat).
So I got to thinking about this and decided to write a series of posts to explain, first how we get fat, then how conventional wisdom fails us in the advice it gives us on how we get rid of the fat, and finally how the low carb/primal lifestyle can help us to get rid of the fat and get back to being healthy.
I will say now that I will not be as eloquent as Gary Taubes or as technical as Hyperlipid. These guys are very deep thinkers who have a lot of knowledge and experience behind what they say. This will be more of my attempt to organize what I believe is happening within our bodies.
I have decided to use Mark Sisson's character Grok to illustrate the process of getting fat and getting back to health. For those of you who don't know about Grok, I'll give a small introduction but I highly recommend Mr. Sisson's excellent book Primal Blueprint as a more complete picture.
Grok is the personification of what humans evolved into during the majority of our existence on Earth up to about 10,000 years ago when agriculture was introduced into the equation. He eats what we evolved to eat, which is largely animal products with some fruits and vegetables. He does not avoid grains and sugars because, they didn't exist. He didn't go to the gym for the same reason. The exercise he did get was from walking a lot, doing intense work for brief periods of time to bring down prey or escape becoming prey (not the equivalent of an hour of cardio but more like wind sprints or tabatas), and from play. His species (and therefore us) evolved through natural selection to thrive off of this type of lifestyle.
Now, I'm a computer guy so I tend to like numbers and equations. So let's say that Grok eats about 2000 calories a day (I don't know if that is realistic but it's round) and expends about 2000 calories a day. We know he expends this much because he is weight stable and therefore is burning and excreting what he brings in.
So how do we make Grok fat? Well, let's transport him from his life 10,000 years ago to the present day. This will give him access to grains, sugars and foods he never imagined eating. So Grok starts eating sugar and refined carbs (rice, white bread, etc). He replaces some of the animal products he used to eat (bison liver, etc) with this new tasty food. What happens in his body? Well, as a result of the sugar, two things happen since sugar is made up of two things: fructose and glucose. The fructose goes to his liver and is turned into fatty acids, the glucose goes into the blood stream and raises blood sugar levels. The pancreas responds to the higher levels of blood sugars by producing insulin. The insulin does a few things, first it chokes off the supply of fatty acids into the blood stream from the fat cells. It does this to get the body to burn off the blood sugar since high levels of blood sugar can be toxic. It also causes cells in the liver, muscles and fat tissue to take up the sugar in the blood to lower the blood sugar levels.
Now if the fructose dose Grok gets is high enough, the fructose puts such a load on the liver that it causes the liver to become insulin resistant which means the pancreas will have to produce even more insulin to get the blood sugars out of the system. As insulin levels consistently go up in reaction to the intake of sugar and refined carbohydrate , eventually muscle cells become insulin resistant. This leaves fat cells to take in the blood sugar. Fat cells can become insulin resistant too but they are usually the last ones that do. Eventually Grok's body has consistently high levels of insulin in his system which means the calories that he does takes in (plus the carbs that he takes in) gets partitioned more to fat storage than to burning. Why is this? Because the insulin enhances the process of fat storage and simultaneously chokes off the release of fatty acids from fat storage to be used as energy.
So what does this do to Grok at a macro level? Well, he is eating 2000 calories a day and his body still wants to burn 2000 calories a day but let's say, the result of the elevated insulin levels is that 500 calories of his intake is put into fat storage and blocked from being released (imagine putting a kink in a garden hose and slowing down the release of the fatty acids). So his body has only 1500 calories to burn. Two things can happen at this stage. His body can react by slowing down his metabolism (keeping him tired and listless, cooling his body temperature, etc) to match the 500 calorie deficit, or (and maybe as a result) his body will make him hungry to eat more. So Grok eats another 500 calories. And 100 calories go into storage and 400 more calories are available to burn. Still a deficit of 100 calories between what his body wants to burn and what he has available.
Keep in mind, at this stage Grok is not aware of his body changing, he is just reacting to hormonal signals that are telling him to eat or slow down his activity.
Let's say it now takes 2600 calories a day to allow Grok to keep his lifestyle going. 2000 calories must be available to burn, but because what he is eating is forcing more fat into storage and (maybe more correctly) slowing down or blocking the release of the fatty acids from storage, he is storing 600 calories a day. This would result (if nutritionists are to be believed) in about a pound of weight gain a week. Let's say that continues for a year and he gains 52 pounds. Eventually, the fat cells are going to get so full, insulin cannot choke off the supply completely and some fatty acids will overcome the effect and get into the blood stream to be used for energy. I'm sure this is overly simplistic, but what I'm getting to is that the body will eventually reach an equilibrium where the energy coming in equals the energy being expended and excreted and weight will become stable. This maybe at 52 pounds of extra weight, it could be at 200 or 300. It all depends on genetics, environment and other factors.
So this is how Grok got fat. Now one thing to notice here, it's not because he was eating that well marbled rib steak. It was because he ate that steak with a white potato and followed it up with that piece of cake. Yes, fat played a factor but only because it was accompanied by food that caused insulin resistance and blood sugar spikes and both resulted in elevated levels of insulin which signaled to Grok's fat stores that fatty acids should not be released because the body needed to get rid of blood sugar. Even after the blood sugar dropped down to a reasonable level, the level of insulin in Grok's system remained high (due to the insulin resistance) and since the fat stores would not release their fat, Grok felt hungry and tired. He, as a result, slowed down his activity and probably had a snack.
This is very simplistic and ignores a whole lot of other interactions that go on, but as far as I can tell, this is the primary reason we get fat. If I have made any errors, PLEASE comment with a correction. If you have a reference that will help my understanding, I'd like that too!
The next part will be what happens when Grok looks in a mirror and starts wondering how he let himself go.
So I got to thinking about this and decided to write a series of posts to explain, first how we get fat, then how conventional wisdom fails us in the advice it gives us on how we get rid of the fat, and finally how the low carb/primal lifestyle can help us to get rid of the fat and get back to being healthy.
I will say now that I will not be as eloquent as Gary Taubes or as technical as Hyperlipid. These guys are very deep thinkers who have a lot of knowledge and experience behind what they say. This will be more of my attempt to organize what I believe is happening within our bodies.
I have decided to use Mark Sisson's character Grok to illustrate the process of getting fat and getting back to health. For those of you who don't know about Grok, I'll give a small introduction but I highly recommend Mr. Sisson's excellent book Primal Blueprint as a more complete picture.
Grok is the personification of what humans evolved into during the majority of our existence on Earth up to about 10,000 years ago when agriculture was introduced into the equation. He eats what we evolved to eat, which is largely animal products with some fruits and vegetables. He does not avoid grains and sugars because, they didn't exist. He didn't go to the gym for the same reason. The exercise he did get was from walking a lot, doing intense work for brief periods of time to bring down prey or escape becoming prey (not the equivalent of an hour of cardio but more like wind sprints or tabatas), and from play. His species (and therefore us) evolved through natural selection to thrive off of this type of lifestyle.
Now, I'm a computer guy so I tend to like numbers and equations. So let's say that Grok eats about 2000 calories a day (I don't know if that is realistic but it's round) and expends about 2000 calories a day. We know he expends this much because he is weight stable and therefore is burning and excreting what he brings in.
So how do we make Grok fat? Well, let's transport him from his life 10,000 years ago to the present day. This will give him access to grains, sugars and foods he never imagined eating. So Grok starts eating sugar and refined carbs (rice, white bread, etc). He replaces some of the animal products he used to eat (bison liver, etc) with this new tasty food. What happens in his body? Well, as a result of the sugar, two things happen since sugar is made up of two things: fructose and glucose. The fructose goes to his liver and is turned into fatty acids, the glucose goes into the blood stream and raises blood sugar levels. The pancreas responds to the higher levels of blood sugars by producing insulin. The insulin does a few things, first it chokes off the supply of fatty acids into the blood stream from the fat cells. It does this to get the body to burn off the blood sugar since high levels of blood sugar can be toxic. It also causes cells in the liver, muscles and fat tissue to take up the sugar in the blood to lower the blood sugar levels.
Now if the fructose dose Grok gets is high enough, the fructose puts such a load on the liver that it causes the liver to become insulin resistant which means the pancreas will have to produce even more insulin to get the blood sugars out of the system. As insulin levels consistently go up in reaction to the intake of sugar and refined carbohydrate , eventually muscle cells become insulin resistant. This leaves fat cells to take in the blood sugar. Fat cells can become insulin resistant too but they are usually the last ones that do. Eventually Grok's body has consistently high levels of insulin in his system which means the calories that he does takes in (plus the carbs that he takes in) gets partitioned more to fat storage than to burning. Why is this? Because the insulin enhances the process of fat storage and simultaneously chokes off the release of fatty acids from fat storage to be used as energy.
So what does this do to Grok at a macro level? Well, he is eating 2000 calories a day and his body still wants to burn 2000 calories a day but let's say, the result of the elevated insulin levels is that 500 calories of his intake is put into fat storage and blocked from being released (imagine putting a kink in a garden hose and slowing down the release of the fatty acids). So his body has only 1500 calories to burn. Two things can happen at this stage. His body can react by slowing down his metabolism (keeping him tired and listless, cooling his body temperature, etc) to match the 500 calorie deficit, or (and maybe as a result) his body will make him hungry to eat more. So Grok eats another 500 calories. And 100 calories go into storage and 400 more calories are available to burn. Still a deficit of 100 calories between what his body wants to burn and what he has available.
Keep in mind, at this stage Grok is not aware of his body changing, he is just reacting to hormonal signals that are telling him to eat or slow down his activity.
Let's say it now takes 2600 calories a day to allow Grok to keep his lifestyle going. 2000 calories must be available to burn, but because what he is eating is forcing more fat into storage and (maybe more correctly) slowing down or blocking the release of the fatty acids from storage, he is storing 600 calories a day. This would result (if nutritionists are to be believed) in about a pound of weight gain a week. Let's say that continues for a year and he gains 52 pounds. Eventually, the fat cells are going to get so full, insulin cannot choke off the supply completely and some fatty acids will overcome the effect and get into the blood stream to be used for energy. I'm sure this is overly simplistic, but what I'm getting to is that the body will eventually reach an equilibrium where the energy coming in equals the energy being expended and excreted and weight will become stable. This maybe at 52 pounds of extra weight, it could be at 200 or 300. It all depends on genetics, environment and other factors.
So this is how Grok got fat. Now one thing to notice here, it's not because he was eating that well marbled rib steak. It was because he ate that steak with a white potato and followed it up with that piece of cake. Yes, fat played a factor but only because it was accompanied by food that caused insulin resistance and blood sugar spikes and both resulted in elevated levels of insulin which signaled to Grok's fat stores that fatty acids should not be released because the body needed to get rid of blood sugar. Even after the blood sugar dropped down to a reasonable level, the level of insulin in Grok's system remained high (due to the insulin resistance) and since the fat stores would not release their fat, Grok felt hungry and tired. He, as a result, slowed down his activity and probably had a snack.
This is very simplistic and ignores a whole lot of other interactions that go on, but as far as I can tell, this is the primary reason we get fat. If I have made any errors, PLEASE comment with a correction. If you have a reference that will help my understanding, I'd like that too!
The next part will be what happens when Grok looks in a mirror and starts wondering how he let himself go.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Bad Science
Ok, I was listening to one of my Paleo podcasts (Latest in Paleo) and heard Dr. Oz (shiver) saying that fat and sugar may be as addictive as cocaine. Ok, sugar I can see but what evidence is there that fat is? Well, I googled and found several articles like this:
http://healthmad.com/conditions-and-diseases/is-a-high-fat-diet-addictive/
They all referenced this study of rats. Three groups, one fed a normal diet, one fed a 'high fat high sugar' diet for one hour a day (sausages, cake, frosting, etc) for just one hour a day, and one fed the 'high fat high sugar' diet for 23 hours a day.
"Remarkably" the rats fed the high fat high sugar diet reacted like addicts. Hmmm... must be both the sugar and thttp://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/04/01/bacon-and-sausage-are-addicting-fat-chance/he fat right? No need to test each individually right? I mean that would be silly, it must be most because fat is bad right? Everyone knows that...
Geez, this stuff pisses me off. Don't bother to find out what specifically causes the problem. So if I run around in the middle of a busy highway with a black leather jacket on, it must be the combination of both that causes me to get hit by a car, right? No need to try it without the jacket, or with some other attire, the black leather jacket must be bad for me and have contributed a bit to me getting hit, right?
Anyway, Tom Naughton of Fat Head fame had a very good blog post on this too..
http://healthmad.com/conditions-and-diseases/is-a-high-fat-diet-addictive/
They all referenced this study of rats. Three groups, one fed a normal diet, one fed a 'high fat high sugar' diet for one hour a day (sausages, cake, frosting, etc) for just one hour a day, and one fed the 'high fat high sugar' diet for 23 hours a day.
"Remarkably" the rats fed the high fat high sugar diet reacted like addicts. Hmmm... must be both the sugar and thttp://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2010/04/01/bacon-and-sausage-are-addicting-fat-chance/he fat right? No need to test each individually right? I mean that would be silly, it must be most because fat is bad right? Everyone knows that...
Geez, this stuff pisses me off. Don't bother to find out what specifically causes the problem. So if I run around in the middle of a busy highway with a black leather jacket on, it must be the combination of both that causes me to get hit by a car, right? No need to try it without the jacket, or with some other attire, the black leather jacket must be bad for me and have contributed a bit to me getting hit, right?
Anyway, Tom Naughton of Fat Head fame had a very good blog post on this too..
My Primal Blueprint Experiment - Week 3
So week 3 is done and before I report the numbers I should mention that I was feeling under the weather all week so I only went to the gym on Thursday night (I am writing this Friday morning). Whether or not a week of the gym can skew the results is a bit debatable but there it is. Of course that means I was also less active in general because lying down felt a lot better than moving about.
First the weight. Yesterday I weighed in at 211 with 25.1% body fat, today 210.6 with 24.4% BF. So essentially, no change given the margin of error for my scale and BF device. The average 2 day weight dropped from 211.2 to 210.8 and BF went up from 24.4% to 24.8%.
Now the diet. I did not eat berries at all this week. No particular reason, just didn't feel like it. I also skipped lunch both Tuesday and Wednesday. These were particularly low calorie days (1014 and 1208 respectively). My highest calorie day was yesterday at 2258.
Here are the averages for the week:
Calories 1756.3
Fat 127 g or 65.1% of calories
Protein 107.8 g or 24.54% of calories
Carbs 32.9 g (8.3 fiber) or 7.49 % of calories
So, if calories in - calories out and a calorie is a calorie is to be believed, if what the nutritionists keep telling us is true, then my body needs roughly 1800 calories to remain weight stable. Does that seem low to you? It does to me. Why did my weight remain stable at this number of calories? I have a few possible explanations:
1. Too few calories - So my body decided to slow down it's metabolism to compensate.
2. Too little exercise - So my body was able to conserve energy more.
3. Too many carbs - It may be that 24.6 net carbs is more than I can handle and lose weight.
I am aware that this is just one week worth of data but if the 'you must eat less than you expend' crowd is to be believed, it shouldn't be possible to eat less and still maintain weight. You HAVE to admit that either my body does need only 1800 calories to maintain it's weight but I think that's hard to argue that a 211 pound man needs only this number of calories. A quick calculation of BMR from a web site puts my BMR (the rate where I am just sleeping) at 1718.55. If I use about.com's calculator with the lowest setting (sedentary), I get a value of 2280 calories a day. So given that, I should have burned roughly 500 calories a day more than I took in on average. That should result in a pound of weight lost. Nope.
Ok, so maybe I'm being too hard on the 'eat less than you expend' crowd. Let's see. This week I'm going to try to get the average calorie count up without changing the absolute number of carbs (still aiming for an average of 30ish grams of carbs). Let's say I'll aim for an average of 2000 calories a day. That might be challenging as I'm also planning an intermittent fast on Tuesday (skipping breakfast and lunch for a 24 hour fast) but I'll give it a try. I am going to exercise, but primally so I probably won't burn enough calories to make up a difference with exercise.
Let's see what happens...
Until next week!
First the weight. Yesterday I weighed in at 211 with 25.1% body fat, today 210.6 with 24.4% BF. So essentially, no change given the margin of error for my scale and BF device. The average 2 day weight dropped from 211.2 to 210.8 and BF went up from 24.4% to 24.8%.
Now the diet. I did not eat berries at all this week. No particular reason, just didn't feel like it. I also skipped lunch both Tuesday and Wednesday. These were particularly low calorie days (1014 and 1208 respectively). My highest calorie day was yesterday at 2258.
Here are the averages for the week:
Calories 1756.3
Fat 127 g or 65.1% of calories
Protein 107.8 g or 24.54% of calories
Carbs 32.9 g (8.3 fiber) or 7.49 % of calories
So, if calories in - calories out and a calorie is a calorie is to be believed, if what the nutritionists keep telling us is true, then my body needs roughly 1800 calories to remain weight stable. Does that seem low to you? It does to me. Why did my weight remain stable at this number of calories? I have a few possible explanations:
1. Too few calories - So my body decided to slow down it's metabolism to compensate.
2. Too little exercise - So my body was able to conserve energy more.
3. Too many carbs - It may be that 24.6 net carbs is more than I can handle and lose weight.
I am aware that this is just one week worth of data but if the 'you must eat less than you expend' crowd is to be believed, it shouldn't be possible to eat less and still maintain weight. You HAVE to admit that either my body does need only 1800 calories to maintain it's weight but I think that's hard to argue that a 211 pound man needs only this number of calories. A quick calculation of BMR from a web site puts my BMR (the rate where I am just sleeping) at 1718.55. If I use about.com's calculator with the lowest setting (sedentary), I get a value of 2280 calories a day. So given that, I should have burned roughly 500 calories a day more than I took in on average. That should result in a pound of weight lost. Nope.
Ok, so maybe I'm being too hard on the 'eat less than you expend' crowd. Let's see. This week I'm going to try to get the average calorie count up without changing the absolute number of carbs (still aiming for an average of 30ish grams of carbs). Let's say I'll aim for an average of 2000 calories a day. That might be challenging as I'm also planning an intermittent fast on Tuesday (skipping breakfast and lunch for a 24 hour fast) but I'll give it a try. I am going to exercise, but primally so I probably won't burn enough calories to make up a difference with exercise.
Let's see what happens...
Until next week!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Bad Advice
http://cholesterol.about.com/od/lipoproteins/a/smalldenseldl.htm
Wanted to share with you all this interesting example of the twisting and spinning that goes on with nutritionists giving advise. The above article is talking about the small dense LDL which appears to be the issue with cholesterol. She lists the things that cause small dense LDL as:
So what's the advice to reduce? Two of the items on
We are SO intrenched in this idea that fats are bad that even when the science shows that saturated fat is actually beneficial, we continue to advise low fat diets.
Weird.
Wanted to share with you all this interesting example of the twisting and spinning that goes on with nutritionists giving advise. The above article is talking about the small dense LDL which appears to be the issue with cholesterol. She lists the things that cause small dense LDL as:
- High Carb intake
- Trans fat intake
- Uncontrolled diabetes
- High Triglycerides, low HDL
- Metabolic syndrome
So what's the advice to reduce? Two of the items on
- 'Lower your carbohydrate intake in addition to your saturated fat and trans fat intake' Why saturated fat? It's been showed to increase HDL and lower triglycerides and raise the level of large fluffy LDL so that should reduce the small dense LDL according to her own list of causes.
- 'Lose weight... by following a diet low in fat and carbohydrates'? Why low fat? The causes would indicate yes, low trans fat, so avoiding vegetable based oils and hydrogenated oils, sure, but do you really need to avoid the other fats?
We are SO intrenched in this idea that fats are bad that even when the science shows that saturated fat is actually beneficial, we continue to advise low fat diets.
Weird.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
My Primal Blueprint Experiment - Week 2
Quick update today as I caught a cold and don't feel like writing too much. So I lost some weight. Weight is between 210.6 and 211.4. Body Fat between 24 and 24.7. I did stick to putting all of the food I ate into Daily Burn and while I did not go hungry at all, I'm sure I didn't eat as much this week as the week before. This is a psychological thing in that if I have to record it, I have that slightest bit of hesitation to eat anything. My average numbers for the week were:
Calories: 1885
Fat (g): 136.7 (65%)
Protein (g): 113.1 (24%)
Carbs (g): 37.07 (6%)
I'll keep track for another week and have more analysis then.
Calories: 1885
Fat (g): 136.7 (65%)
Protein (g): 113.1 (24%)
Carbs (g): 37.07 (6%)
I'll keep track for another week and have more analysis then.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Micro Vs Macro
Last blog post of the day and I'm hoping to keep this one short...
So I've been reading some objections to Gary Taubes' books from someone calling herself CarbSane and at first I was curious, wondering if somewhere in what she was saying in between the ad hominem attacks. She spells his name Taube$ to try to highlight that he is saying what he is saying for the money because God forbid someone who puts in the amount of effort he has for the last decade or so should get some remuneration for the effort. Anyway, there's a lot of complicated bio-chemistry on her site that looks impressive and makes it seem like she knows what she is talking about, although I have no background in the material so I cannot judge.
Gary Taubes appeared on the Living La Vida Low Carb podcast yesterday and answered some of her criticisms and, while I won't go into what he said, after hearing CarbSane on the same podcast going off on a rant that was very hard to follow and seemed quite emotional at times, I tend to buy into what Taubes is saying. I think his great advantage in a debate (this one as well as the La, rry King show he was on years ago with Dr. Oz and Jillian Michaels) is that he seems to be very good and remaining unemotional and is very good at conveying his thoughts in an organized and clear manner. That doesn't make his arguments correct and CarbSane wrong, but it does make it very hard to judge the opposition if they can't make you understand what they are saying.
Anyway, that's not what this 'short' blog was supposed to be about. I wanted to talk about the fact that CarbSane's objections, while science based, seem to cover the micro aspects of things. Does this hormone or that enzyme control fat storage and release? While this is probably important in understanding the 'how' of the fact that low carb diets work, does it really matter? Study after study comparing weight loss approaches show the safety and efficacy of low carb dieting and even the effectiveness as compared to the more traditional approaches. The mechanism behind that, whether it is ASP or insulin that controls fat storage and to what degree is less important to someone who want to lose weight, lower blood pressure, blah blah blah. The 'how' the diet works may be interesting to give someone clues as to how to tweak things but with that clue, you would have to study the macro. In other words, if understanding the biochemical reactions clue you in that a tweak 'may' work to get better results, it has to be actually tested to make sure there isn't a compensating mechanism that would override the benefit of the tweak.
A good example of this is the low fat diet. It seemed to make sense that lowering fat intake would cause weight loss. Either from the logic that 'fat makes you fat' or that fat contains more calories so removing fat should lower calories more than lowering the other macronutrients. However, the conventional wisdom never really tested that theory and as a result, people at low fat cheeses in moderation, lots of whole grains, lots of 'low fat' products and did not see the results. What happened? Well, eating few calories can cause compensating mechanisms in the body to slow down metabolism to maintain body weight and keep the body at the same weight. So we blame the dieter for eating too much and the cycle continues.
Anyway, because the debate has been bugging me for a while I wanted to get that out. I could go on for longer but I think I'll stop here.
So I've been reading some objections to Gary Taubes' books from someone calling herself CarbSane and at first I was curious, wondering if somewhere in what she was saying in between the ad hominem attacks. She spells his name Taube$ to try to highlight that he is saying what he is saying for the money because God forbid someone who puts in the amount of effort he has for the last decade or so should get some remuneration for the effort. Anyway, there's a lot of complicated bio-chemistry on her site that looks impressive and makes it seem like she knows what she is talking about, although I have no background in the material so I cannot judge.
Gary Taubes appeared on the Living La Vida Low Carb podcast yesterday and answered some of her criticisms and, while I won't go into what he said, after hearing CarbSane on the same podcast going off on a rant that was very hard to follow and seemed quite emotional at times, I tend to buy into what Taubes is saying. I think his great advantage in a debate (this one as well as the La, rry King show he was on years ago with Dr. Oz and Jillian Michaels) is that he seems to be very good and remaining unemotional and is very good at conveying his thoughts in an organized and clear manner. That doesn't make his arguments correct and CarbSane wrong, but it does make it very hard to judge the opposition if they can't make you understand what they are saying.
Anyway, that's not what this 'short' blog was supposed to be about. I wanted to talk about the fact that CarbSane's objections, while science based, seem to cover the micro aspects of things. Does this hormone or that enzyme control fat storage and release? While this is probably important in understanding the 'how' of the fact that low carb diets work, does it really matter? Study after study comparing weight loss approaches show the safety and efficacy of low carb dieting and even the effectiveness as compared to the more traditional approaches. The mechanism behind that, whether it is ASP or insulin that controls fat storage and to what degree is less important to someone who want to lose weight, lower blood pressure, blah blah blah. The 'how' the diet works may be interesting to give someone clues as to how to tweak things but with that clue, you would have to study the macro. In other words, if understanding the biochemical reactions clue you in that a tweak 'may' work to get better results, it has to be actually tested to make sure there isn't a compensating mechanism that would override the benefit of the tweak.
A good example of this is the low fat diet. It seemed to make sense that lowering fat intake would cause weight loss. Either from the logic that 'fat makes you fat' or that fat contains more calories so removing fat should lower calories more than lowering the other macronutrients. However, the conventional wisdom never really tested that theory and as a result, people at low fat cheeses in moderation, lots of whole grains, lots of 'low fat' products and did not see the results. What happened? Well, eating few calories can cause compensating mechanisms in the body to slow down metabolism to maintain body weight and keep the body at the same weight. So we blame the dieter for eating too much and the cycle continues.
Anyway, because the debate has been bugging me for a while I wanted to get that out. I could go on for longer but I think I'll stop here.
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