131–140 of 218 posts
I lost about 70lbs in about 10 months by cutting out processed foods, cutting out foods with added sugar, eating foods having a low glycemic index, eating a lot of chicken, whole vegetables, whole fruit. And by not juicing, and not drinking smoothies. I also did a lot of strength training so as to lose fat and not muscle. I didn't try to reduce the amount of calories I was eating, just change where those calories wer…
I lost about 70lbs in about 10 months by cutting out processed foods, cutting out foods with added sugar, eating foods having a low glycemic index, eating a lot of chicken, whole vegetables, whole fruit. And by not juicing, and not drinking smoothies. I also did a lot of strength training so as to lose fat and not muscle. I didn't try to reduce the amount of calories I was eating, just change where those calories wer…
> cutting out foods with added sugar, eating foods having a low glycemic index, eating a lot of chicken, whole vegetables, whole fruit This is great advice for most people, depending on what "whole" means. Am I allowed to cut and cook my vegetables? Stick them in a food processor? Are they still "whole" then? I've never understood why people even bother to throw this word "whole" into anything. You just mean you didn…
Food optimized for mass market scale and profitability is practically never optimized for nutritional value, except as a hollow gimmick, e.g. Vitamin Water.
> We have shown that changing diet affects mood and happiness, that greater fat and carbohydrate intake is directly associated with anxiety and depression
What?
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> processed foods > whole ingredients These are utterly meaningless terms. You "process" food by cutting and cooking it. Everything is processed. Everything is GMO -- have you seen what corn looked like before humans bred it? Everything is organic. Everything is "whole". Nutrition is too complicated and too individualized for these nonsense labels. > I'm getting the maximum amount of nutrients from my food This is ut…
The UN has a well defined categorization of foods according to the amount and type of processing [1]. You can identify the processing level of many food item by using this search engine [2]. [1] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/CA5644EN.pdf [2] https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/3017620422003/nutell...
It's not until you get to Tier 4 (ultra-processed foods) that you start to see anything legitimately concerning. And indeed if the advice everyone was parroting was "avoid ultra-processed foods as defined by the FAO", then I'd care a lot less about it. Even still, the FAO says that ingredients added to ultra-processed foods include:
> varieties of sugars (fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, ‘fruit juice concentrates’, invert sugar, maltodextrin, dextrose, lactose), modified oils (hydrogenated or interesterified oils) and sources of protein (hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein, and ‘mechanically separated meat’).
Avoid sugars and foods with high glycemic indices. Absolutely avoid high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid hydrogenated fats; there is clear evidence they are harmful. Those sources of protein? Health nuts add that stuff to their soy milk all the time! Details matter!
My point is that there are specific processing steps that affect specific foods. Advice on how to identify and avoid those foods is fine. But that's not what anyone is saying: they're saying "avoid processed foods" and "eat whole foods". Those terms are meaningless as they use them. It's non-advice. It's water-muddying bordering on misinformation.
"After the diet change, we observed significant changes in measures of anxiety, well-being and happiness, and without changes in gut microbiome diversity. We found strong correlations between greater consumption of fat and protein to lower anxiety and depression, while consuming higher percentages of carbohydrates was associated with increased stress, anxiety, and depression." I think most of us would agree that make…
> I think most of us would agree that makes sense? Eat like crap, feel like crap? I’m just an average joe trying to figure out how to improve a diet, but I haven’t found much of a consensus regarding fats vs proteins vs carbohydrates.
There's a Stanford professor who did a study comparing low-carb vs. low-fat diets. The surprising result: both groups lost weight.
My take (speculative): both groups cut out a lot of processed food. It's the processed food that's making us fat.
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Minimize saturated fat (by replacing it with unsaturated fat). Get enough protein. Eat healthy carbs*. * On HN and other social media, "carbs" is a euphemism for sugar and cake rather than beans and vegetables, so people will talk about how carbs made them fat when you know they're not talking about slamming back-to-back cans of garbanzos. And don't take any nutrition advice seriously that doesn't break fat apart int…
Did you confuse saturated and unsaturated fat? Saturated fat isn't bad for you and unsaturated fats have some serious issues in how your body uses them. This comment feels like it was posted by someone in 1997
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> processed foods > whole ingredients These are utterly meaningless terms. You "process" food by cutting and cooking it. Everything is processed. Everything is GMO -- have you seen what corn looked like before humans bred it? Everything is organic. Everything is "whole". Nutrition is too complicated and too individualized for these nonsense labels. > I'm getting the maximum amount of nutrients from my food This is ut…
"Stop spreading this bullshit." Looking at the entirety of your comment, you should really apply this advice to yourself. Highly processed or ultra-processed food is absolutely a meaningful term. The United Nations published so-called NOVA food classification which divides food into four categories by the amount of processing it received. Category 4 is what OP was talking about. Industrially processed stuff full of p…
And yet nobody said "avoid ultra-processed food as defined by NOVA". They said "avoid processed foods" and "eat whole foods". It's extremely generous to assume everyone reading the former translates that in their head to "avoid ultra-processed food as defined by NOVA". And the latter is meaningless.
Even if that is what they really mean, that's really surface-level advice. There are foods in Tier 4 that are just fine. There are foods in Tier 4 that are more nutritious than "whole foods" are. Note that if you add whey protein to your soy milk, you have just created an ultra-processed food!
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I haven't heard of any such thing, except made by people who are selling something.
Did you talk to anyone who successfully lost weight and kept it off? I have, and from my own experience and talking to others who did the same _every_ single person succeeded via low card high protein/fat. Would be super interested in meeting someone who lost weight with a high carb diet and how they pulled it off. It's really hard for a lot of psychological and hunger based reasons which is why basically nobody can…
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I improved mine significantly by just cutting out processed foods. Almost everything I eat is made from whole ingredients, and no artificial or "diet" anything. I'm in much better shape, both mentally and physically, because of it. It also helps with portion control, since I'm getting the maximum amount of nutrients from my food, so I don't "feel hungry later".
> processed foods > whole ingredients These are utterly meaningless terms. You "process" food by cutting and cooking it. Everything is processed. Everything is GMO -- have you seen what corn looked like before humans bred it? Everything is organic. Everything is "whole". Nutrition is too complicated and too individualized for these nonsense labels. > I'm getting the maximum amount of nutrients from my food This is ut…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think most of us would agree that makes sense? Eat like crap, feel like crap? I’m just an average joe trying to figure out how to improve a diet, but I haven’t found much of a consensus regarding fats vs proteins vs carbohydrates.
> fats vs proteins vs carbohydrates There's a Stanford professor who did a study comparing low-carb vs. low-fat diets. The surprising result: both groups lost weight. My take (speculative): both groups cut out a lot of processed food. It's the processed food that's making us fat.