A Call for a Low-Carb Diet

Apart from the usual caveats about each person being different, do you really think that weighing/measuring your food is easier than remembering not to eat a certain class of foods?

Thanks for the advice, though. I've gone and gained a lot of weight post-university and it'll help. All that activity disappeared and I kept eating the same. That's got to change.

The same arguments about dietary composition have been going on for at least 150 years. There may be many opinions but for my part, I'd rather listen to the scientific evidence.

I was medical director of an obesity treatment clinic for many years. The low carbohydrate (CHO), optimal protein intake diet was often effective for weight loss and was not associated with bad effects. We felt compelled to closely track indicators of potential adverse effects but none were apparent.

There were good effects, e.g., type 2 diabetics had reduced insulin requirements, in some it was decreased to none. Other metabolic conditions, hypertension, dyslipidemias, etc., improved as well.

The science surrounding diet, metabolic disease, obesity and related things is indeed very complex. However as I see it, research into human evolution sheds light on what the optimum diet would be.

There's evidence that human hunter-gatherers were taller, stronger, healthier than their agricultural descendants. The idea is consuming a diet closer to that of pre-agricultural humans would better meet our physiological requirements.

Pre-agriculture diet had more high-quality protein (animal sources), less fat, with an omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids ratio approximating 1:1, and low in saturated fat. Importantly, the intake of simple sugars was much lower that it is today.

On average, in the ancient human diet it's estimated that protein intake accounted for about 35% of calories, fat ~20%, and the rest ~45% from CHO. Of course, diets varied widely. These averages suggest a direction to take to improve health rather than absolute prescriptions to be followed rigidly.

So I guess everyone is partly right. Ideally, get more protein, less saturated fat, more omega-3, less omega-6 (seed oils), and moderate the CHO intake, especially sugar in all forms.

Sorry to say this, but our remote ancestors were conspicuous meat eaters, never natural vegetarians, though vegetables (leaves, stems, roots) were an important part of the human diet.

And BTW exercise was a constant component of primordial human lifestyle; we might do well to emulate that as well.

Carb intake needs to match activity level. And of course, a varied diet is key (including fats).

Eat carbs in the morning, protein later in the day, eat a varied diet with a good amount of vegetables, eat high quality fats (olive and other seed oils, nut oils, and even moderate amounts of butter), and exercise a decent amount (even just being active, not going to the gym, though that's good too), and you'll be fine.