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The Diet Fix

sciencebasedmedicine.org

11–20 of 63 posts

Re: The Diet Fix

#11
post #5

After reading some of sites' other posts I think it's just not a reliable source of information. The 'science' is hand picked to support the author's arguments. This is no different them the candida, sugar or vitamin proponents. They all have scientific explanations and plans of action.

His post about Taubes still being wrong does that http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-we-get-fat/

I'd like Taubes to be wrong on some points, but the author would rather argue against his misunderstanding of Taubes, which doesn't help.

Re: The Diet Fix

#12

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

Where does he claim that exercise doesn't matter? "Exercise: You can’t out-exercise a bad diet, but regular exercise helps keep weight off, and changes your attitude for the better. And exercise has enormous health benefits beyond any impact on weight. What exercise? Something. Anything. “Some is good, more is better, everything counts” Freedhoff suggests."

"Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss."

Re: The Diet Fix

#13
post #9

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

Exercise can stimulate profoundly positive physiological changes, and that alone is a good enough reason to do it. But people forget that they burn more calories during a single night of sleep than they do doing 3 hours of cardio a week. Balance is important, but shedding nutrition & health mythology is even more so.

The Gluten Free nonsense drives me the most crazy. Of course they don't have Celiac disease, but they are "Sensitive" to it, which there is no way to refute. There is so much pseudoscience crap floating around I'm glad there's one book out there refuting it, I just wish he was a nutrition researcher doctor or something instead of a pharmacist, which doesn't sound very impressive for a diet book.

Re: The Diet Fix

#14
post #2

Sounds promising. Calories in, calories out - the rest is just noise.

I dunno. I know people who've lost 100lbs and kept it off doing keto.

I lost 50 pounds eating ~500 calories more on keto than I did before.

Unfortunately I wasn't completely comfortable with the types of meals I ate with that lifestyle.

But it did make me feel as though the whole calories in - calories out was nonsense. Especially after trying (and failing) diets based around that (weight watchers) multiple times.

Re: The Diet Fix

#15

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

The first line sort of agrees with what you are saying, but the second line paints a more clear picture:

>Sweating is the next myth, with The Biggest Loser epitomizing the belief that exercise can contribute to significant weight loss. You can’t outrun your fork- not in the long run.

Re: The Diet Fix

#16

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

In my experience, it really is down to lifestyle choices. I've never been really overweight; the closest I've come is about 200lb (90kg), but I also had a 40in (100cm) waist. What helped is I did diet, then I got a septoplasty for borderline sleep apnea, then I joined a volunteer search and rescue organization in which I hiked every weekend. No special diets (just calorie restriction), no special workouts (just hiking in the mountains regularly).

I inherit high cholesterol (above 220 at one point), but I've managed to lower it through diet alone by drinking a lot of fruit juice (but I also have to watch out for diabetes . . . ), and I've also got it lower through very heavy exercise alone (but I also have to watch out for skeletal/joint injuries . . . ).

As I've gotten older, I've noticed more and more that what I eat has a noticeable effect on my mood, alertness and just physical feeling of well-being. I've also noticed that every time I exercise now, I feel really good afterwords.

I don't think that diet and exercise are a panacea, but they could at least go a very long way to alleviating symptoms and preventing illness. I also think there is way too much pseudoscience and BS going on around exercise and diet that it makes it that much harder, and a lot of programs (high intensity workouts like CrossFit and exclusionary diets like Paleo) are completely irresponsible and very likely worse for people in the long run. It also doesn't help that most of these programs are faddish and very dogmatic, with no tests to back them up.

Re: The Diet Fix

#17

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

Science is a silver bullet or at least a bullet or at least a way of getting at the truth, but so far this field of science seems like a joke. How nice for them to use thermodynamics.

Re: The Diet Fix

#18
post #2

Sounds promising. Calories in, calories out - the rest is just noise.

Thanks for posting a meaningless aphorism. Might as well have said "A penny saved is a penny earned" in a thread discussing poverty.

Re: The Diet Fix

#19
This is a great article. I'm always in favor of flexible and scientific approaches to dieting. Lyle McDonald wrote a great series of articles on why diets fail (hint: it's a hormone called leptin) [1]. Caloric deficits lead to decreasing leptin, which explains why you feel like crap when dieting because this leads to metabolic slowdown by downregulating things like your immune system (why you get sick more when you diet) and reproductive system (why you lose your sex drive). Leptin's effects on the hunger-controlling hypothalamus explain why you may obsess over calorie-dense junk foods when you diet. It's your body's protection against starvation, but it goes all haywire in our obesogenic (obesity-causing) environment.

So what's the best way to acutely raise leptin levels when they're depressed from caloric restriction? Flexible diet solutions like the ones talked about in the article. High-carb "refeeds" - some people call them cheat days - are particularly helpful [2]. The trick is to binge on carbs (not fat!!!) while remaining at a caloric deficit, which is where a calorie journal definitely comes in handy. Things like sweet potatoes and pasta will fill you up and replete your leptin levels.

As an aside, while we're talking about leptin and flexible dieting, intermittent fasting is wonderful for flexible dieting. I'm working on a website right now that's based on the leangains method [3], which is great for folks in the moderately overweight category. For severely overweight or obese folks, Dr. Krista Varady (who I had the pleasure of speaking with on the phone recently), has published a ton of research on intermittent fasting over the past decade and just wrote a book called the Every Other Day Diet [4], which I highly recommend for anyone trying to lose a lot of weight quickly and safely and keep it off.

[1] http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-hormones-of-bo...

[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11126336

[3] http://www.leangains.com/2010/03/intermittent-fasting-set-po...

[4] http://www.amazon.com/The-Every-Other-Day-Diet-That-Weight/d...

Re: The Diet Fix

#20

There is claim that exercise contributing to significant weight loss is a myth. I beg to disagree, while exercise itself might not be significant contributor to weight loss, no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health. As always there is no silver bullet, you need to have a balanced lifestyle to be healthy.

>no exercise means lower metabolism and overall health

For those who have a controlled weight already, is a higher metabolism actually something to aim for?

People who practice calorie restriction for life extension do seem to exercise but not to raise the metabolism, they view that as a tradeoff.

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