DailyDirt: Diets That Work…?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Some people think losing weight is simple: just eat less. But that formula isn’t as easy to put into practice as it sounds. There are also various arguments that overeating is triggered by the foods we eat or by hormonal changes that are not under conscious control. Researchers are studying a variety of variables that effect weight loss/gain and associated symptoms, and here are just a few interesting links on the research for fighting fat.
- The Nutritional Science Initiative (NuSI) is an organization dedicated to improving the quality of research for nutrition and obesity. NuSI is currently looking to clarify the root causes of obesity (and related conditions), determining what makes people obese: overeating itself or hormonal/biochemical triggers that cause overeating. [url]
- Consuming seaweed enriched toast seemed to get some people to subsequently eat 179 fewer calories for the rest of the day. The seaweed was ground up and added to the bread without affecting the taste, and it apparently acts as a bulking agent in the stomach to make people feel full. [url]
- Is snacking at night worse than eating the same thing in the morning? Possibly. It might not just be what you eat, but when you eat it. [url]
- Marijuana smokers tend to eat more than 600 extra calories in a day, but for some reason, they have slimmer waists, higher levels of HDL and lower insulin levels and insulin resistance. So if you needed another reason to smoke pot, it’s possibly a treatment for obesity and diabetes…. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: calories, diets, food, hdl, hunger, insulin, insulin resistance, marijuana, nusi, nutrition, obesity, seaweed, smokers, snacking
Comments on “DailyDirt: Diets That Work…?”
I have lost 80 pounds since November 1. I more or less ignore every bit of nutritional advice issued by the US government for the last 40 years. My diet is 60% fat, 35% protein and less than 5% carbohydrates. Take the food pyramid and turn it upside down. I just had a complete blood panel and every single test came back in the normal or better than normal category. I was high in almost everything before the diet. I feel great and I am not hungry on 1200 -1500 calories a day.
What is making us fat is the food industry’s regulatory capture of the FDA. Low fat/high carb diets are great for food industry profits but they lead to all sorts of health problems.
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Completely agree. I’ve lost 40 pounds since September on a very similar diet. Weigh less than I did in high school now. I also had better results on every single blood panel test just like you did.
I will say that people should try to eat grass fed natural beef, compassionate care pork, etc if they are going to eat meat.
I’ll add something to your advice… DO NOT EAT PROCESSED FOOD. IF your food comes in a box it’s very likely terrible for you. Shop only the edges of the supermarket… the aisles are 99% crap
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Totally agreed on the overabundance of carbs in our diet, and that they should be reduced before the other sources of energy.
However, I would add that you should periodically eat significant quantities of carbs. The reason is that if you go without carbs for extended periods of time, you can enter ketosis. Ketosis is very hard on your kidneys and will lead to a higher incidence of kidney stones. Periodic consumption of carbs will reduce that risk.
That’s basically the diet my s/o is on. Five days a week, as close to 0 carbs as she can get. Two days a week (the weekend), as many carbs as she wants (and a Pepcid AC to ward off heartburn the next day). It gives her something to look forward to, and she still gets to eat her favorite foods.
The diet industry is $50B+ … no way they want anyone to lose weight and keep it off.
I just weight the food and take less than I lose at night to morning, is just incredible how eating little actually makes you really lose weight.
Doesn’t matter what you eat, just eat less.
“Some people think losing weight is simple: just eat less. But that formula isn’t as easy to put into practice as it sounds”
Yeah it really is that simple, eat healthy and exercise – it really is just that simple. Now I’m not saying it’s easy, it can be bloody hard work but it is simple.
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“Eat Less, Exercise more” simply doesn’t work for a lot of people. In fact there’s pretty much no evidence that suggests cardiovascular exercise is at all helpful for long term weight loss and calorie restriction diets have almost no long term evidence of success. Many (if not most) overweight people have become overweight due to hormonal disfunction (which becomes type 2 diabetes when it gets extreme). I believe the root cause of this is the consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates (which is what NuSI is hoping to prove… read the books written by NuSis founder Gary Taubes, great stuff).
I went on a low carb/paleo type diet 8-9 months ago and have lost 40 pounds with very little effort (now I weight less at 36 than I did in high school). I’ve actually CUT BACK my cardio (I used to be religious about it 5-6 times a week.. now more like 3-4). I eat as much as I want, I just limit the types of foods I eat (including eating NO processed food). To make it viable long term I eat whatever I want on Saturday afternoon/evening.
Saying that people get fat because they eat too much is like saying a room is crowded because there are too many people in it. The larger question is WHY do people eat too much and WHY do they accumulate excess adipose tissue.
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No, it’s not just that simple. Allow me to demonstrate.
The metabolic pathway for extracting energy from carbohydrates is significantly different than the pathway for extracting energy from either fat or protein. The body will also have different preferences for different sources of energy. For instance, people who have diets high in fat will often pass the excess fat straight through without digesting it, which is why their stool smells awful. Excess protein gets excreted through urine, which is why ketogenic diets are so hard on kidneys. And excess sugar gets converted to adipose tissue – visceral fat!
All calories are NOT created equal.
Yeah, yeah, don’t feed the mogwai’s after midnight.
The nutritionists all fail to Mention one thing though: going to bed hungry (while slimming) lowers your quality of sleep, and is likely to not only make you tired and stupid during the days, but also makes psychological problems such as depressions a great deal worse.
You’d think at least ONE neutritionist would mention this; It’s after all common knowledge among therapists. If you value your body shape more than your sanity, then by all means stop eating at 6 pm.
Me, I’m gonna have a sandwich.
Don’t normally comment, but wanted to weigh in. I’ve lost 2.5 stone over 3 months by cutting carbs as much as I can – energy levels up, sleeping better, all that good stuff. Can’t recommend it enough. Drop the bread!
The problem here...
Is ancedotal evidence. Only one of our commenters actually brought up actual statistical evidence of their dieting opinions. 4 of 7 comments (as of the time of my commenting) are personal accounts of how they lost weight. That’s great for them, but how well does it work for the population at large?
On a side note, seaweed is also very high in iodine, a nutrient that seems to have fallen away from use in recent years. Some quacks are hawking it as a cure for cancer an obesity, but do we have good studies on ideal iodine levels, and if the average person is getting enough? I haven’t seen anyone walking around with goiter lately, but iodine is the key nutrient in the thyroid gland, and that gland is the major player in metabolism.
Re: The problem here...
Don’t we get most of our iodine from salt?
And I agree with you that we need some solid statistical evidence. But it really does seem to be the case that a dramatic cutback in carbohydrates has a profound and positive effect on every single person I’ve ever heard who has tried it. In my experience, no one has ever cut carbs drastically and failed to report success.
At what point does the accumulation of anecdotal data begin to approach statistical significance?