Posted on 01/27/2008 1:31:31 PM PST by shrinkermd
FOR the past century, the advice to the overweight and obese has remained remarkably consistent: consume fewer calories than you expend and you will lose weight. This prescription seems eminently reasonable. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to work. Neither eating less nor moving more reverses the course of obesity in any but the rarest cases.
...There is considerable evidence that the obesity epidemic is caused by a hormonal phenomenon, specifically by the consumption of refined carbohydrates, starches and sugars, all of which prompt (sooner or later) excessive insulin secretion. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated, fat accumulates in our body tissue; when they fall, fat is released and we use it for fuel. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat; by driving us to accumulate fat, they increase hunger and decrease the energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity. In short, obesity is caused not by overeating or sedentary behaviour, but by hormonal malfunctioning triggered by the consumption of particular types of carbohydrate-containing foods.
Obesity researchers, nutritionists and health authorities have refused to contemplate this scenario, partly because it would imply that diet-book doctors advocating carbohydrate-restricted diets - Robert Atkins et al - were right all along. Instead, these alleged experts and guardians of our health have wasted a good part of a century on research based on a high-school misconception, watching their compatriots grow ever fatter while blaming everyone but themselves. In the process, they have created a field of clinical medicine that functions more like a religion than a science. It is time to put science back in charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
It would be egg all over the faces of the high carb/low fat people.
They even revised the food pyramid to reflect that.
Never trust anything the government tells you.
Thank you so much for posting this, but could you tell us what the rest of it said?
You have to pay to read it.
I’ve been on the Slim 4 Life diet for 8 weeks. I’ve lost 20 pounds and over 4 inches around the waist. In my opinion, it’s not what I don’t eat, it’s what I do eat. I have to eat four servings of veggies, two of fruit, two of carbs and two proteins a day. I also fill in with two of their supplements. I have to really work at it to get all that food into me. I feel pretty good. I can feel my metabolism shifting. At first I had headaches. That’s gotten better. I have to drink 80 oz of water a day which used to be a challenge but is getting easier. I’m pretty happy with it all around.
So is Atkins right again? He's right..he's wrong..he's right...I give up.
It said very little of substance other than what I excerpted. It is a puff for a book of the same name and the same author coming out soon.
Thank you!
I don’t trust the Adkins diet, but I do think that maybe all those refined products may be a problem. I don’t eat refined sugar any more (honey in my tea and maple syrup in my coffee), I eat mainly natural breads, and not too much of it. And although maybe it’s not fashionable among conservatives, I eat granola for breakfast.
I don’t know if it does any good, but it seems to me that it makes sense, and it all tastes better than that pale, dusty, refined stuff.
Of course when you lose a lot of weight, you tend to move around a lot more - because you can, and you tend to eat less because you spend less time sitting around. Actually, I find that exercise decreases my appetite. But you need to lose the weight first before you can find the energy to exercise and that's where the "normal carb" diet comes in.
Notice how I avoid the term "low carb" diet. I don't believe in the Atkins method where you cut your carb intake to some ridiculous number (something like 25 carbs a day during induction phase - give me a break.)
The problem isn't the carbs, it's too many carbs. I estimate that during my fat days, I would consume 300-500 carbs a day on average. I have that down to about 100 without even thinking about it. That's because I avoid all processed foods that are loaded with high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils (also known as "trans-fats").
I just stick to fresh foods that are pretty much in their natural form. Eggs, meats, fish, olive oil, cheese wine, vegetables, fruits, beer, nuts, rice, etc. I focus on the perimeters of the supermarket and avoid most of what is in the aisles.
My typical day goes like this:
Breakfast - Cup of Stonyfield natural yogurt (active cultures, no HFCS). Toasted sunflower bread or a couple hard-boiled eggs.
Lunch - Usually some kind of chicken teriyaki wrap or sandwich on whole wheat bread (no condiments). If I'm home, I'll have a tin or sardines or a bowl of vegetable soup with wheat pasta.
Dinner - Meat and a vegetable or two. Maybe some rice or cous-cous (not the bleached white rice) with olive oil. At the dinner table, I always add olive oil to what I am eating.
I do very little snacking at all but when I do, it's almost always a handful or two of raisins, nuts or dried fruit like blueberries or cranberries.
Liquids. Pretty simple here. Coffee, beer or wine. That's all I ever drink. I can't think of the last time I had a glass of regular water, but on hot days, when I need my thirst quenched, I'll usually have some iced tea or maybe a Propel if iced tea isn't available. I know a lot of people preach water, water, water. But I just don't like drinking plain water.
During 2003, I went from 304 to 197 pounds (I'm 6' 3"). I have a bunch of threads on Free Republic from that time if you want details on how I did it.
Since then, my weight gradually increased despite constant exercise (I walk at least 5 miles a day - usually more). This is because I started increasing my carbs (what can I say, I love to eat.) Last summer, I was back up to 230 pounds. Still a far cry from when I was 304 and I still felt very healthy. But I didn't like the fact that my gut was coming back again so I have since then reduced the carbs and I've been losing 3-5 pound a month since September. By summer, I expect to be back in the 195-200 range.
Small, frequent meals throughout the day, that’s the key. It keeps your BMR higher and helps metabolize the body fat better.
Humans were meant to be grazers, not have several huge meals throughout the day. The body can only process so many calories in a period of time.
It is more a matter of the right kind of carbs. If your carb consumption is primarily Hershey bars, mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese that provokes a very different insulin reaction than eating carbs in the form of whole wheat bread, brown rice or fresh fruit.
Thank you too!
You have to pay to read it.
I’ll bet his book is well worth the investment...
Which is what us ‘evil nutritionists’ have been telling folks for 25 plus years.
And yes, even now, with Juvie Type I diabetic, we still give them 50% or more of their Kcal from CHO’s....I mean, it feeds your brain ;)
The epidemic began when they attacked tobacco and introduced fat-free snacks and sugar-free cola.
That is true. Some carbs are definitely worse than others.
Again, a nice, sane post.
Thank you!!
The book *The Zone* describes it very well. You have to pay for that, too, but you get to keep the copy and it’s very useful.
I read your whole post and congratulate you on your weight loss. I’ve passed into middle age and am constantly up and down 15 pounds. I’ve learned that eating the South Beach way seems to be best for me but it’s hard to stick with it all the time.
America is in a diabetes crisis caused by improper eating. People want an easy fix and there isn’t one. Processed foods and refined sugar are poison.
This method seems to work very well for me.
That’s what I do for a living, so I know. The issue, as I’ve observed it over the last upteen years is the combination of more calorie dense foods (that includes refined sugars and fats), drops in overall fiber intake in the forms of whole grains, fruits and veges, dehydration and.....
TA DA! major decrease in activity.
I don’t call anything poison, it’s when the foods you want bump out the foods you need.
What you say is true. Refined foods have crowded out healthier foods in our diet. We are all about convenience as we go about our busy days and often don’t make good choices. I find that with a little weekly planning and brown bagging I make good choices more often than not and try not to beat myself up too much about the occasional treat. I work in a hospital and am friendly with our facility’s diabetes educator and a dietician who works with patients on my admit service. They are a wealth of information. Is that the sort of work you do?
I’m an RD in long term and psychiatric care. So a huge chunk of my job is menu planning and writing for ‘captive’ populations. It’s a bugger, when you’re dealing populations who want what they want and not what they should eat ;)
If you think about it your patients aren’t so different than the rest of us in wanting what they want not what they need. Many of our patients have PEG tubes where choice isn’t an option.
Suzanne Somers was right, all along.
I do understand PEG tubes.... the irony isn’t lost when I calculate the the feeding for perfect nutrition in gms CHO, PRO, Fat, V&M, Fiber and H20....to keep their weight up.
A lot of my issues is dealing with those who can get violent if they don’t get what they want (again, how different are they from us??) and metabolic syndrome.
Well put.
This brings to mind a book I once saw at Wal-Mart,
“Dr. Gott’s No Flour, No Sugar Diet”
by Peter H. Gott and Robin Donovan
And, I will highlight from the original post of this thread,
‘In short, obesity is caused not by overeating or sedentary behaviour, but by hormonal malfunctioning triggered by the consumption of particular types of carbohydrate-containing foods.’
Re-think and re-train your dietary habits.
Thanks.
Weren’t you discussing a diet and nutrition ping list?
I think it’s that refined carbohydrate bit that is the key. All that soft, smooshy WonderBread may not have been so wonderful after all. We’ve even switched to a pasta that is made with lentil and chick pea flour, rather than regular pasta or whole wheat.
And for the record, it cooks and TASTES like regular pasta, but really fills you up better.
That said, I think it's both - obese people are eating really crappy carbs AND they're eating too much AND not moving enough. This "fat acceptance" and "it's not their fault" nonsense is aggravating. The fat people you see in the restaurants are not those eating the salads.
bttt
Low carb is the only thing that has ever worked for me. Its hard to stay on, but (for me) it works.
You are right...that is the basis of the Glycemic Index. I am a casual Atkins follower...I could never do induction, but I found that by cutting out white sugar, flour, empty calories (candy, sweets) and making a conscious effort to ‘think’ what am I eating (a carb, a protein, etc.) and why am I eating (am I hungry, or stressed) that Atkins theory works for me (I try to stay around 70 carbs or so per day—and I try to make them ‘good carbs’).
To a large degree I think any diet that isn’t sheer quackery (like the grapefruit diet, or the apple diet, or other shining examples in stupidity) when applied intelligently will cause you to lose weight. A large part of any diet is paying attention to what you eat, and really when you get down to it we know, sure we might not be nutritionalists but you don’t need to be to know Doritos bad salad good stop eating when you’re not hungry go get some exercise. I burned off 65 pounds in the summers of 04 and 05 (I’m not as dedicated as you) and that was really what it all boiled down to.
And then there’s the other punchline: there’s no going back. Probably the biggest source of diet failure is that people think of it as temporary. They think “I’ll do it until I hit X and then go back to normal”, that’s wrong. They need to realize that if they need to lose weight then “normal” is not their friend, after hitting the goal they go to somewhere between the diet and normal, some nice neutral ground, which can be a hard balance to find. I decided to not care for a few months, stepped on the scale again and found 17 pounds had come back, so then it’s back to burn mode.
The Sugarbusters doctors (and Atkins) are still right, with their focus on healthy carbs and moderating insulin secretion. Even Weight Watchers has its own Sugarbusters-like plan now, Core - although at last week’s meeting, some members who religiously count points said they were scared of the idea of Core - it gave them too much freedom. Give me Core/Sugarbusters any day!
I’ve found a great treat to satisfy a sweet tooth (although I don’t have a large sweet tooth) which is very low in carbs.
Lindt’s 85% cacao dark chocolate bars. A whole 3.5 oz. bar has only 12.5 net carbs (that’s 10 squares). If you only eat a couple of squarea at a time, that’s plenty as it’s very rich and it’s only about 3 net carbs. It’s bitter and takes some getting used to, but after eating that, everything else seems super sweet and not as satisfying.
If you crave ice cream, the Breyer’s Carb Smart is also very good and creamy.
No diet plan seems to be perfect — they all seem to work for some people, but not for others.
As an example, I do great on Atkins, whereas some people don’t respond well to it, but do just fine on Weight Watchers, which conversely never worked for me. Everyone should just try to find the diet that works for them.
We may have been kicking it around along with our Foodie Ping List. I, however, constantly harp on how people no longer know how to do something as simple as bake a loaf of bread in their $50K Designer Kitchens. That may be what you’re thinking of, LOL! (I’m also always b*tchin’ about the Diet Dictacrats, too.) ;)
We started a Gardening Ping List if you’re interested. Ping Gabz and she’ll add you. :)
..is the most sensible plan, IMO.
Certainly. I’ve got my seeds all set to go. Thanks.
Ping for later read.
The Paleo Diet:
Lose Weight and Get
Healthy by Eating the Food
You Were Designed to Eat
by Loren CordainNeanderThin:
Eat Like a Caveman
to Achieve a Lean,
Strong, Healthy Body
by Raymond V. Audette
with Troy Gilchrist
foreword by Michael R. EadesMetabolic Man:
Ten Thousand Years from Eden:
The Long Search for a
Personal Nutrition From
our Forest Origins to the
Supermarkets of Today
by Charles Heizer WhartonHealth Secrets of
the Stone Age
Second Edition
by Philip J. Goscienski
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