41–50 of 72 posts
1) Psychological factors and satiation? 2) Calorific uptake and excretion? 3) The mechanisms by which the body converts excess energy to fat, why and when they're triggered?
I have always wondered why the Adkins diet seems to work. The article basically says it is both more successful and yet has no physiological reason for being more successful. So why? My first guess would be: carbs/bread is cheap and usually comes in large quantities, like unlimited bread baskets. Meat is expensive and comes in smaller quantities. So eating mostly meat just makes it easier to consume fewer calories by…
This is probably the most important statement in the entire thread. All of these fad diets basically trick the dieter into eating less calories. When Lustig, etc... cite various studies those studies never seem to account for overall caloric intake. Person A cut carbs, person B didn't, person A lost weight ergo carbs are bad. Yeah, it doesn't quite work that way. Saying that cutting calories will help a person lose weight doesn't sell books so authors have to pick something to demonize.
HFCS is a popular thing to demonize now. Is it surprising to anyone that if a person cuts out 4-6 sodas/day that had ~200 calories each that said person is going to lose weight? It had zero to do HFCS and everything to do with cutting out ~1000 calories/day. Again, that doesn't sell books or speaking engagements, but declaring X as evil does.
Since this is Hacker News, no discussion of diets can be complete without a reference to The Hacker's Diet " rel="nofollow">https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/> . Especially in this context, since it's basically calorie restriction designed to appeal to an engineer. Personally, I lost 50 pounds using this approach, and my diet consisted mainly of Hot Pockets, microwaved White Castle cheeseburgers, and frozen pizza. Be…
Really? That's an inflexible law of physics? Only if fat is the only source of energy the body has. But it isn't. Simple sugars are a huge source of energy for the body. This is the main reason why the Atkins diet works for quick fat loss- basically eliminates the alternate sources of energy your body would usually use and forces it to start burning fat.
What this articles says is any diet which says you can eat the same number of calories and lose weight is lying. Some diets may make you want to eat less calories, but you cannot eat the same number of calories and lose more weight without doing more exercise.
I have always wondered why the Adkins diet seems to work. The article basically says it is both more successful and yet has no physiological reason for being more successful. So why? My first guess would be: carbs/bread is cheap and usually comes in large quantities, like unlimited bread baskets. Meat is expensive and comes in smaller quantities. So eating mostly meat just makes it easier to consume fewer calories by…
So eating mostly meat just makes it easier to consume fewer calories by default. This is probably the most important statement in the entire thread. All of these fad diets basically trick the dieter into eating less calories. When Lustig, etc... cite various studies those studies never seem to account for overall caloric intake. Person A cut carbs, person B didn't, person A lost weight ergo carbs are bad. Yeah, it do…
The study seems to indicate that low carb diets actually do trigger more calories to be burned for the same level of activity, about 430 additional calories per day. It's too early to tell if this affect is real (larger study needed), but the results are interesting.
What this articles says is any diet which says you can eat the same number of calories and lose weight is lying. Some diets may make you want to eat less calories, but you cannot eat the same number of calories and lose more weight without doing more exercise.
Not true, some diets raise metabolism relative to others according to recent studies, low carb diets burn about 430 more calories on average per day for the same level of activity. So that's another way of burning calories without "exercise" unless you consider sitting still exercise.
Unless I misunderstood anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the snarky response would be that "in dieting unproven criticism of published scientific studies is no substitute for research." I think it's fine to come up with such criticism as long as it leads to looking at and questioning the result and defining further studies, but...... One of my hobbies is history and archaeology. It's what I studied mostly in college (computing was just a hobby). One of the fascinat…
Has anyone researched this and documented a correlation? I'm doubtful of your claims, and given your opening line, it's ironic that you go on to compare observations from your hobby against statements made by a doctor with 60 years of research behind him. His criticism is not unproven, there's no substantiation for that claim at all. But you also make an interesting observation, if it has a basis in fact. It would se…
1) Tooth decay rates are still the largest indications of eating a carb-based diet. These are often also used as markers for cereal agriculture, naturally enough.
2) Societies that consume excessive quantities of milk develop bone abnormalities associated with anemia, because cow's milk interferes with absorbtion of iron.
3) Societies that consume lots of fish have bones that show up as a few centuries older when run through carbon dates. This is true both for consumption of salt-water and fresh-water fish.
The doctor is right about some things. A calorie is a calorie when you are looking at weight loss. A calorie in or out s a calorie in or out. But a lot of things impact how much energy we burn, and when we are hungry and these range from when and how long we sleep[1] to what we eat.[2]
Overly simplistic/reductionist approaches don't work.[3] Chemistry is not applied quantum physics even though our understanding of chemistry is informed by quantum physics. If you are trying to help people diet, arguing that calories are what you directly control rather than the end-game is just a recipe for misery.
[1] http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/502825
[2] For example, the effects of what we eat on insulin production are well understood, but also there are effects of insulin production on appetite that are getting more attention now. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16933179 for example.
[3] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393.full.pdf or if you don't want to pay, read it at http://www.meso2012.com/pdfs/AndersonScience177,393,72.pdf
The human body is the most complex piece of machinery in the history of the known universe, and is highly variable from one person to the next, with all sorts of evolutionary cruft and random aberrations. I understand we all need actionable information to maximize our odds at life, but any attempt at science journalism that doesn't start from that premise and instead tries to tell you "X good, Y bad" can probably be…
Surely on that argument, the body of almost any animal that is bigger than us is actually a more complex piece of machinery. Blue whales are massive, for instance and are made of far more cells than we are.
E.g., the difference between a stick of RAM (relatively homogeneous and simple) vs a CPU (highly diverse).
In fact, when it comes to brains, larger cetaceans seem to have simpler structures when compared to human brains, even though they're larger in absolute terms.
Dr Hirsch seems to be rather oversimplifying, to me. I'm not an expert, but what about - 1) Psychological factors and satiation? 2) Calorific uptake and excretion? 3) The mechanisms by which the body converts excess energy to fat, why and when they're triggered?