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I’ve been fascinated by the fact that I know several people who have become vegan, lost weight, and feel better. But I also know many people who have gone low c

by wincy 7y ago

I’ve been fascinated by the fact that I know several people who have become vegan, lost weight, and feel better. But I also know many people who have gone low carb, or even eat nothing but meat, and are also losing weight and report feeling much better. I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. It’s an interesting article, I hope to see more research on the subject.

maxharris 7y ago
Fructose. That's what's missing. It's much healthier when it's bound up in a lot of fiber, as you find it in unprocessed fruit. The soluble and insoluble fiber form a protective barrier that reduces the total amount and rate at which it is absorbed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yda8RtOcVFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yda8RtOcVFU
- deleted 7y ago
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- on_and_off 7y ago
  I wonder why all the allusions to sugar are downvoted in these comments ? Anecdotal, but moving to the US, the insane amount of sugar that is put in every form of food is very scary.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    Bread in the USA tastes like cake in the rest of the world!
    - mingabunga 7y ago
      I agree, was in the US recently and so many foods are much sweeter than in other countries. USA is really good at sugar. Even the ice cream was much sweeter - looking at you Ben and Jerry's. I bought some organic almond butter, and it had sugar in it! Why?!
      - vonmoltke 7y ago
        > I agree, was in the US recently and so many foods are much sweeter than in other countries. I wish there was an easy way to compare foodstuffs across countries. Too many of these discussions turn into anecdote battles with little hard data. > I bought some organic almond butter, and it had sugar in it! Why?! What brand? I know sugar is fairly common in peanut butter, but I don't know much about almond butter. I did a cursory search, and the three brands I checked (Justin's, Barney's, and 365 Organics) do not use any kind of sweetener. That said, I can barely stand sweetened peanut butter now that I have switched to Smucker's Naturals (which is just ground peanuts and salt). I can only guess that the sugar is added to increase appeal.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        Cause they'll sell more units if they put sugar in it. Economics 101: Step 1) take healthy food Step 2) add sugar Step 3) Profit
      - chefe 7y ago
        It was the "war on fat" that sweetened the cake. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...
    - nitwit005 7y ago
      Supposedly, in the 20s and 30s, some of the immigrants thought the white bread they were given in immigration was cake, as they'd only eaten black bread. I believe that considerably predated the fluffy wonderbread style of white bread.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I'd guess it's because the sugar comments all seem to be going "nah, it's sugar" and dismissing the rest of the points the article is considering.
  - arbitrary_name 7y ago
    I've been here (in the US) 3 months now, working in a near identical environment. 1) Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet to me in comparison to what I expect in similar products in other countries (Australia, EU) 2) The cultural integration of the consumption of these foods appears to be higher in the USA; donuts at morning meetings, krullers and bearclaws on desks and tables for all-hands, quarterly meetings, etc - feels very high given that I am working in a culturally and socio-economically comparable environment relative to my home countries. Of course, commonwealth and european countries have their own culture-driven consumption patterns (cakes for birthdays, croissants, scones for morning teas in Australia/NZ/UK) - but it doesn't appear to reach a similar level of 'saturation' as in the US. Just another limited anecdote, of course.
    - nitwit005 7y ago
      > Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet I have that problem eating some items here even as a native. For some items you risk buying something lethally sweet I don't want to eat. Things like lemon cake seem basically guaranteed to be inedible (I assume making even sweeter to offset lemon). That said, the bigger issue just seems to be serving size. A traditional British cookie/biscuit is fairly small. American cookies have grown larger and larger.
    - technothrasher 7y ago
      > Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet It didn't used to be like this. Back forty years ago, muffins and cupcakes were pretty different things. Now it's just a matter of how much frosting is on the top.
    - chipperyman573 7y ago
      >Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet to me Seriously!! Sometimes I go to the bakery of my local grocery store and check out the muffins, they tend to have more sugar than I'd expect cupcakes to have.
    - photojosh 7y ago
      I think that's changed here in Australia too; in that a lot of the recipes you find online are much sweeter than they used to be back 20-30 years. When we bake at home we regularly only use 1/4-1/3 of the sugar recommended, and sometimes that still ends up too sweet for our palates.
  - d1zzy 7y ago
    Agreed! After moving to the US I particularly remember how hard it was to find sausages that do not contain any sugar (I can't stand the taste of sweet grilled meat, yuck!). We looked at what must have been 30+ different types of _packaged_ sausages until we found some "kosher" product that indeed didn't list any sugary ingredient. It was eye opening!
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      What brand would you buy at home?
    - PeterStuer 7y ago
      That is not just the US. Over here in the EU if you go through the ingredient list of prepared meat products, you will discover that 98% of those have some sugar added. That is not to say there is no difference. When I travel to the US I find most if the food really unbearably sweet. Strange exception is fresh fruit, which seems to be a lot less flavorful in the US than over here.
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    because the article is specifically about it not being just any one food type.
  - neves 7y ago
    Sometimes I make an oatmeal cookie that is traditional in my family. It can be considered a healthy cookie, not very sweet, but I'm always impressed with the amount of sugar that goes with it. I wonder how much goes in the really sweet ones.
  - meowface 7y ago
    As an American raised on typical things you find at an average grocery store, I had to kick sugar like an addict as an adult. Now I can't bear pretty much any kind of soda or processed food without tasting an overwhelmingly gross level of sweetness. I can't believe I liked this stuff as a kid, but I just was never exposed to anything else. As a kid you grow very tolerant to high sugar intake, to the point that even a Coke or Pepsi tastes only very mildly sweet. You don't really realize just how much sugar you're consuming. Most of the cheap food is loaded with sugar (to hide the fact it otherwise tastes bad, maybe? I don't know why), and many families avoid paying for anything more natural because they can't afford it; or even if they can, they feel it's a rip-off compared to the plentiful, cheap food at their local grocery store. Generations are being raised on that garbage. It certainly beats malnutrition for families who would otherwise just go hungry, but it ingrains such awful tastes and habits.
- dnhz 7y ago
  In the US, sugar consumption is down but obesity is still trending upward. If anything, it's the added oils and fats that have gone up. https://www.cato-unbound.org/sites/cato-unbound.org/files/images/essays/ussugarintake.jpg https://www.cato-unbound.org/sites/cato-unbound.org/files/im...
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
It also makes sense why stringent reading caloric information and then calorie counting (not just guessing, but weight scale & knowing the calories) would lead to weight loss as well - if you are cognizant of the hyper palatable foods it'll be harder (you'll want to), but it's not due to the food being magic, it's due to the disconnect between sensation and calories.
- rconti 7y ago
  Counting calories/meal tracking has been the best thing to ever happen to me. When you just "try to eat better" or "don't drink this month", or whatever, there's a disconnect between the input and the result. When I was able to see, in realtime, for example, I had a 500 calorie deficit today, and should hence lose 1lb in 1 week at this rate, and see it actually HAPPEN, it created a positive feedback loop. For the first time in my life, over many types of eating, some vague diet attempts, some periods working out more, some periods working out less, I could FINALLY see a direct result from my activities. I had avoided it for a long time because I thought it would be miserable and tedious to track what I eat, but it's actually made it much easier to be disciplined, and see which foods are 'worth it' and which aren't.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Absolutely. Calorie counting was hard for the first bit, but pretty soon you determine your "regulars" and just go off those. I also found that it was nice to know "ok, I went light today, so I can have some extra dessert" and know that was an option because I had the calories, instead of experiencing guilt with the assumption that dessert and losing weight couldn't exist together.
ThrustVectoring 7y ago
You can't neglect reversion to the mean here. People with below-average diet end up with below-average results. If you stop eating your below-average diet and replace most foods in it with anything else, it'll probably be a closer-to-average diet and give you better results.
pas 7y ago
Meat only diets are exceptionally good at weight loss, because your body gets into ketosis (it takes anywhere from 1-2 days to weeks, usually with hangover-like symptoms to adapt fully, but it takes no time to snap out of it), and naturally you cut out most of the calorie sources from your diet.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
  Keto also means no Insulin spikes. Easy to skip a meal and not go insane.
- ska 7y ago
  > because your body gets into ketosis For what it's worth, this mostly doesn't actually happen. There is some good science behind maintaining ketosis in children under careful monitoring by a physician. Most of the empirical evidence in adults is that it's hard to achieve and harder to maintain. The weight loss some people achieve on "keto" diets is mostly just due to caloric restriction when it's been measured carefully. The upside is you don't really want to have your body in ketosis anyway.
  - Frondo 7y ago
    I haven't heard this before, that it doesn't actually happen. Are those ketosis test strips you pee on not accurate? I've ketoed before for weight loss (and am starting again soon) and when I was quite strict with it I'd be well into the ketosis range on those pee strips. If it's not a sign the body's in ketosis, what is it a sign of? Also, fwiw, I lose significant weight on keto without moderating my calorie intake at all; fatty meats, cheeses, butter, oil, etc., plus a lot of vegetables. If it's not ketosis, what is it?
    - balfirevic 7y ago
      > Also, fwiw, I lose significant weight on keto without moderating my calorie intake at all; fatty meats, cheeses, butter, oil, etc., plus a lot of vegetables. If it's not ketosis, what is it? Unless you were very carefully tracking calorie intake before and on the keto diet, it is not justifiable to assume same caloric intake, even if keto food seems very calorie rich.
benj111 7y ago
Ever since Taylors time and motion studies (if not earlier) we've known that if people are being observed they tend to behave differently. I don't see why that wouldn't also apply to diets also. That could involve avoiding ultraprocessed foods, or it could involve having a healthy drink with your meal, having a salad or whatever.
Pxtl 7y ago
Except going vegan often involves massive increases in ultraprocessed foods. Realistically, vegan food prep takes a long time, so meat substitutes end up in the diet for convenience if nothing else - and meat substitutes are pure processed food. I mean we have one group handwriting about gluten and meanwhile one of the tastiest vegan foods is pure gluten.
- pstuart 7y ago
  > tastiest vegan foods Not by itself, but when properly seasoned. Hail Seitan!
- yubiox 7y ago
  10 weeks vegan here. Easiest diet ever, no cravings. I'm down 19 lbs (193-174, 6' tall). Dropping the chips and oreos took a few weeks, I just thought anything vegan was ok until I realized junk food is junk food. I cook twice a week and make enough to last a few days. It takes about an hour to cook. I sautee vegetables and put them on rice and quinoa or pasta. For breakfast I have a banana and a Larabar. For dessert I have grapes or watermelon. Before this I rarely ate healthy food. Chipotle is decent fast food when you aren't cooking.
  - moate 7y ago
    Oreos are vegan fwiw.
    - Djvacto 7y ago
      I think they were saying that, despite being vegan, they took a bit to cut them out after realizing they wouldn't help with weight loss, since they are still junk food.
      - moate 7y ago
        Rereading that again, I see how that could be the take-away now. My first go through was how some people switching to a vegetarian diet say things like 'quitting bacon was the hardest, I kept going back to it for the first month".
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common It's pretty simple really: they're paying more attention to what they eat, meaning they take in more reasonable amounts of calories as a side effect. Ultimately it is all about calories. Source: lost and kept off 150lbs, no thanks to fad diets.
- badfrog 7y ago
  > they're paying more attention to what they eat, meaning they take in more reasonable amounts of calories as a side effect. That doesn't necessarily follow. The vegans could end up eating huge amounts of soda and potato chips, and the low-carb people could go crazy on bacon.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    The difference is that if all you ate was 4,000 calories of bacon a day, you’d lose weight. That many calories of soda and chips and you’d get ill fast.
    - drdrey 7y ago
      In what world do you lose weight by eating 4000 calories a day?
      - ska 7y ago
        One where your at stable weight and your regular diet is 4500 ?
        drdrey 7y ago
        I assume OP did not choose 4000 randomly, it is meant to be a _high_ number (about 2x what an average person needs). Implying that you could eat twice as much calories and stay lean _if the calories came from bacon_.
      - hx87 7y ago
jl6 7y ago
I’ve followed a vegan diet for 6 weeks now, and it’s really obvious why I’m losing weight: because I’m no longer eating all the junk that is on offer everywhere - cakes, biscuits, chocolates... I would previously have eaten these things mindlessly, but now I have a simple rule that cuts them out. To reinforce the overeating-junk-food theory, my weight loss has slowed as I have discovered alternative vegan treats and snacks.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  as the free market starts to leverage more and more vegans in the world, they will start offering more vegan garbage too. so stay vigilant!
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Some treats are already pretty much vegan, like Oreos, which are so artificial they're vegan. (Oreos are not truly vegan because they are processed in a factory with dairy products, but outside of allergies this shouldn't be that concerning.)
  - wpietri 7y ago
    I am eternally fascinated by this. A couple years back paleo diets were all the rage and I started hearing people talk about things like "paleo waffles" and "paleo brownies". I never said anything, but I could not believe how much work people would put into "eating healthy" only to reconstruct the same unhealthy things that made them say, "man, I really need to start eating healthy!"
    - 80386 7y ago
      Most of the paleo junk food I've seen has been variations on a theme of dark chocolate and coconuts. I don't have any nutrition labels to hand (paleo junk food is expensive), but I wouldn't write it off as unhealthy without seeing what's in it. Then again, the reason I can't stick to paleo is the slippery slope from 95% dark chocolate to Toblerones, so maybe it's better to cut chocolate out altogether.
    - 7y ago
RandallBrown 7y ago
Paying attention to what you eat really goes a long way. I remember watching a video of two women, one skinny, one overweight, who were good friends. They said that the skinny one always eats way more food, but doesn't gain any weight. They had a camera crew follow them both around and it was true that the skinny woman ate larger meals. The difference was all the time in between. The skinny woman didn't eat anything, while the overweight woman was snacking regularly. The total calorie counts for the day were much larger for the overweight woman.
- iamkroot 7y ago
  My pet theory-without-evidence is that diets like keto or vegan succeed largely because they force people to radically reconsider every single thing they're eating. When you impose harsh restrictions like "no animal products" you have to pay very close attention to everything you consume, which likely leads to more mindful eating and less passive consumption/overeating.
  - mumblemumble 7y ago
    It's plenty easy to find vegan junk food. Pretty much any potato chip that doesn't have the name of a dairy product featured prominently on the label is going to be vegan. Go to most natural food stores, including Whole Foods, and you'll find far more shelf space being devoted to processed and junk foods than food that's actually healthy. Most of it with labels that work very hard to imply that sugar only has calories if it's made from something other than sugar cane. That said, you're not likely to find the vegan equivalent of Twinkies at your local bodega, and that is worth something. But I'm guessing that a bigger factor is that choosing to go vegan or low-carb or whatever is tantamount to deciding to join a food culture that places a much higher value on making better food choices, and there's nothing quite like peer pressure for changing one's behavior.
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - 80386 7y ago
evv555 7y ago
>I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. It can also be combination of the two food categories that causes issues. Insulin spikes from carb intake and dietary fat are not a good combination. At least according to diets like "Keto". Both of those diets tend to have lopsided intake of fats and carbs.
bena 7y ago
All the diets of exclusion manage to exclude the most calorie dense foods.
dominotw 7y ago
> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common confirmation bias about "feeling better"?
gameswithgo 7y ago
The answer is always that someone has found some sort of program to follow that helps them eat less calories. I've not seem anyone ever try the approach of "avoid foods that taste good" but its not a bad idea probably. Just never ever bring good tasting, easy to prep food into the house. Now you gotta work for food you don't really want.
- dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
  > I've not seem anyone ever try the approach of "avoid foods that taste good" This is what I do, or try to do. This seems high on the self-denial scale but in my case I noticed that simple foods taste better than you think they as you learn to appreciate them, especially if you let yourself get hungry first. I tend to not over-eat such food as much.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  This is also related to replacing simple sugars with more complex metabolites. Having your blood sugar go way up and down leads to metabolic stress and feeling hungry all the time. On the other side are fats and fibers which have a comparatively high capacity to sate hunger per calorie. Eating 2000 calories of donuts every morning may be correct from an energy balance perspective (and indeed you won't get fat doing it), but that's clearly a very painful way to live. Insulin and blood glucose drive obesity and metabolic damage, but they don't make it hard to stay on diets. The difficulty of staying on a diet is due to a separate system in your brain that takes other factors in to account to decide if you should eat. Every successful diet boils down to finding foods that make your brain happy while keeping excessive levels (and durations) of sugar and insulin out of your blood[0]. If you had access to unlimited candy, you might eat too much and damage your body - and indeed many people do just that. If you had access to unlimited non-starchy vegtables your stomach capacity probably wouldn't be enough to maintain obesity. If you had access to unlimited sticks of butter, you would probably get sick of the very concept of butter before you ate an unhealthy number of sticks. Vegan and carnivorous diets largely rely on the last two facts. [0] There are other things involved in your body's metabolic signaling system, but blood glucose and insulin are especially well-researched and easy to measure.
- 7y ago
colechristensen 7y ago
Some ideas about what might be going on: Confirmation bias: people who try new diets and hate them probably talk about it a lot less. Placebo: people getting caught up hearing about how everyone with their diet feels so much better are convinced they feel better too Gut fauna: any change, regardless of what it was, causing a population shuffling inside the gut Avoiding "something": any change, regardless of what it was, involved exclusion of one specific thing which was a sensitivity/allergy/poorly digested/feeding a particular gut bacteria Thoughtfulness: any change required people to be much more conscientious about what they ate which led to different habits, one of which was critical to feeling better Lies and exaggerations: diet and nutrition has become a kind of religion replacing God in an increasingly atheist society, some people act with strange quasi-religious zeal for their personal health belief set I tend to not believe anything anybody says about nutrition. Evidence for anything fits into three categories: guessing, anecdotes, extremely specific cause-and-effect studies without real-world conclusions. The fourth category of believable, properly blinded, controlled, long term human studies does exist but the volume is very low.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  There's a simpler explanation: processed foods are more caloric per weight and/or they tend to increase portion size as well.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    What exactly is a processed food? That's a name thrown around like a bad word by nutrition fans everywhere but it seems to mean "food we don't like".
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      You can argue that processing food doesn't change anything about it, but it seems a ridiculous position to take that "processed food" might not exist. Do you really see no possible difference between a potato, and Pringles, because "picking potatoes is a process"?
tempsy 7y ago
I would be surprised if those who go vegan and lost weight did not go low(ish) carb (whether intentionally or not) e.g. mostly nuts/plants/fruits and not filling up with a lot of chips or bread.
cj 7y ago
Another anecdote: I went completely vegan ~3 months ago. I don't really "feel better". It's always the first thing someone asks when I say I went vegan.. "Do you feel better?" - I feel basically the same. Although my weight has been trending downward, slowly, which is great since that's happening without trying to limit the amount I eat at all. That's very different from when I wasn't vegan, my weight would always trend slowly upward unless I was making a deliberate effort to cut back on calories. BUT: I think the real reason I'm slowly losing weight on a vegan diet is the simple fact that eating a restricted diet (ANY restricted diet) requires you to think about and analyze absolutely everything that enters your mouth. It introduces a level of mindfulness that just wasn't there when eating an unrestricted diet. For me, this has had the side effect of also cutting out most processed food (read: junk food) from my diet, even though most junk food is vegan. I'm convinced this is the biggest value of being vegan.. it just makes you think about everything you buy at the grocery store, everything you order when out to eat, etc. Another commenter calls this "paying attention to what you eat" - I think that's right on target, however cliche it may sound.
- avinium 7y ago
  I consider myself a seasoned dieter (meaning I can manipulate my weight +/-10kg fairly easily). Over at least a dozen weight cuts/bulks, the most effective practice I've found is writing a meal plan, and writing down everything you put in your mouth. Many people have started losing weight just by doing this - without actively changing their diet. It has a really profound subconscious impact on what/how much you put in your mouth. The psychological/hormonal aspect of food is fascinating.
  - 11235813213455 7y ago
    my weight is probably going +/-6kg, on a semi-week basis. When I eat, I eat a lot (fruits at will, legumes, fish vapor-cooked, honey, Camargues rice living in France, lentils). I think it's useless to weight yourself, it's easy to feel how much fat you've built, you then need to consume it first before re-eating (I'm around 60-62kg, 1.83m, with a thin morphology so it's not underweight) I feel really well with that "lower-frequency" diet cycle, it's of course easier when working remote.
toephu2 7y ago
Doesn't matter what you eat. As long as you follow a simple formula you will lose weight: Calories In < Calories Out. I can eat McDonalds everyday for a month and still lose weight.. how? Order a small fries and a double patty cheeseburger. Eat nothing else during the entire day, drink plenty of water, and exercise for at least 30 minutes.
- avinium 7y ago
  It does matter what you eat. Not in the sense of "calories in, calories out" - which, as you mentioned, is simple biology. But it is important in the sense of "which diet is easiest to follow?". That will vary person to person. But for many people, the answer is low-carb/intermittent-fasting. It eliminates the blood sugar/hormonal response, requires less effort than regular eating, and still lets you eat palatable food.
  - wetpaws 7y ago
    High carbs high protein works just fine for me. Hell, there was the time (in college) where my diet consisted of ramen and chocolate and it still worked. I am with the op, as long as your weight dynamic is acceptable, you can eat whatever you want.
    - avinium 7y ago
      That's not really the point. Your diet works for you - great! Noone's saying it's biologically impossible. But most people won't find it easy to regulate their caloric intake eating ramen and chocolate. They will find it much easier with vegetables, lean protein and high fat.
biomcgary 7y ago
Recent studies (citations not handy) have shown that high-carb or high-fat diets don't lead to weight gain, but high-carb AND high-fat diets do (at least in mice, a big caveat). One thing to consider is that fructose is a metabolic poison that is poorly regulated by metabolism. Fructose bypasses all of the controls that glucose is subject to and forces lipid biogenesis in the liver (by mass action for the chemists). Consuming fat and fructose is large amounts is nearly guaranteed to give you a fatty liver. On the other hand, anyone choosing to follow an "extreme" diet is likely to be more aware of their food intake than the average person and adjust behavior in various ways.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  > Recent studies (citations not handy) have shown that high-carb or high-fat diets don't lead to weight gain, but high-carb AND high-fat diets do (at least in mice, a big caveat). I thought it was agreed upon that if you consume more calories than you burn regardless of their fat/protein/carbohydrate profile, you were going to gain weight?
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    On their own fat or sugar aren't very palatable. Imagine trying to eat a pot of cream or a bowl of sugar with nothing else. Mix them together to make ice cream and it's the complete opposite.
asveikau 7y ago
Personally I went on a diet of mostly pasta and eggs, lost weight and feel better. (Lots of processed meat like pancetta, guanciale, or speck in those pasta dishes.) I think you need to look at people on an individual basis. I start to get skeptical that what turned out to worked for me can work for everybody else. For me I think portion size and increased physical activity were big.
- wincy 7y ago
  For me if I eat pasta I’ll feel kinda foggy and tired. Happens every single time. I’ll generally take a nap for an hour or two, even if I just woke up. Same if I eat biscuits and gravy. I can eat a big 2 pound ribeye and not feel like that at all. I definitely am starting to think that the only way to lose weight is to figure it out yourself. I lost 75 lbs eating sauerkraut and Johnsonville brats for 5 months, kept at that weight for several months, then went back to eating “normally” and gained back 50 over the course of the next year.
  - top_kekeroni_m8 7y ago
    Try and get some whole-wheat pasta, it's much healthier than plain old white pasta, and it does not make you feel so tired after. You'll probably eat much less of it too since it's much more filling.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    I never eat more than 2 oz of dried noodle. Even Italian recipes call for more than that. But here in the US, when people eat pasta, they tend to do much more of that.
technothrasher 7y ago
> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. I'm back on the weight loss train (lost 60 pounds about ten years ago, and have to take 40 off again that I put back on slowly) and like last time, I mostly avoid these ultraprocessed foods simply because they're all way over my calorie budget.
Lazare 7y ago
> I’ve been fascinated by the fact that I know several people who have become vegan, lost weight, and feel better. But I also know many people who have gone low carb, or even eat nothing but meat, and are also losing weight and report feeling much better. I have had a similar experience, but I've also known several people who have tried various diets and quickly dropped off them because it wasn't working for them. So while it's true that if you ask all your vegan friends if they enjoy being vegan, they'll probably mostly say yes, there's a huge possibility for selection bias/survivor bias. The lesson I've drawn is not "pick a restrictive diet and you'll feel better", but more "some things work for some people but not others, and we have no idea why". :-/
taneq 7y ago
> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common Both groups cut a significant fraction of their intake calories and lost weight as a result?
dawzy1 7y ago
I've been thinking the same thing from those around me who have started diets and "felt better" or lost weight. From my observation, it seems that people go on a diet because they know what they're eating isn't good for them or its too high in calories or it goes against their beliefs or something. So people are already suspicious of what they're eating but aren't overly thinking about what they're eating. By going on a diet you now need to think about what you're eating in order to meet the requirements of the proposed diet and therefore you are being more conscious about what you will and won't eat. By doing this you are already a step ahead of people who might eat whatever they feel like which may include lots of highly processed high fat and/or high carbohydrate foods every now and then or more than they realise. So when people say they went keto, or went paleo, or cut out sugar, or cut out fat and lost weight and/or felt better. I always ask them was it actually the diet, or was it because you were simply conscious and considerate about what you were eating due to the fact that you were trying to fit to a particular diet.
Semaphor 7y ago
Just another anecdote, but I lost a lot of weight and felt a lot better after switching to low-carb, without ever eating a lot of processed food before. My pet theory is that all these diets make you way more conscious of what you are eating and all you need to do is find one you are happy with.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Most the vegans I know are overweight if not obese, and not at all models of healthy lives. They tend to eat a lot of bread.
Mikeb85 7y ago
In general restrictive diets simply end up restricting calories vs. previous eating habits. Hence losing weight.
dcolkitt 7y ago
I wouldn't discount the impact of the variety of food. I think it has just as much to do with its palatability. We know that people will consume substantially more calories when served multiple types of food, rather than just one dish[1]. I suspect this also works across meals as well. For example traditional Thai, Mexican or Italian food tends to be very caloric and palatable. Yet traditional societies in Thailand, Mexico and Italy tend to be much thinner than their counterparts that start consuming a typical American diet. I think the explanation is that if you have lasagna on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, and curry on Wednesday, each meal is novel and delicious. In contrast if you eat tacos on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, and tacos on Wednesday, well tacos start to lose some of their appeal. This suggests a diet, that I've yet to hear of. First cut out side dishes in favor of one-pot meals. You can still have a lot of variety of ingredients, but they're blended together in a homogenous, so that every spoonful is nearly identical. That eliminates the buffet effect. Second, do something like meal-prep Sunday. Give yourself fairly wide latitude when picking out your meals. However, whatever you pick out, you're going to eat that same dish for pretty much every meal for a week straight. Even with your favorite your dish, my guess is that by the end of the week you'll find it barely appetizing. A less drastic approach might be using variety as a pump to shift consumption across food groups. Strictly restrict variety in the least healthy food groups, while allowing it for healthy food. People who love desert can still eat their favorite desert, but you pick one single desert dish and that's the only desert you can have for a month. In contrast give yourself unlimited freedom to enjoy whatever green vegetable strikes your fancy. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376392/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376392/
john_moscow 7y ago
>I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. I would suggest that it's rather about setting a goal, working hard towards achieving it, and seeing measurable results of your work.
_the_inflator 7y ago
There are important differences. Losing weight is almost always a good thing, however you also have to look on the inside of the body. What makes ateries clog? And here comes meat and diary into play. Ppl tend to look on a lean muscular body but do not consider what makes the body work. Pls have a look into Michael Greger's How not to die, or Colin Campbell China Study. Vegan is not always healthy. Plant based, unprocessed food does the trick. Fatty and salty french fries are technically vegan. There is a lot of junk food on the vegan side, which is also highly processed and features lots of sugar. It is not enough to stop eating dead animals, drinking milk or eggs. However dismissing meat is inevitable for a healthy diet.
- bscphil 7y ago
  You're 100% right. > Vegan is not always healthy. Plant based, unprocessed food does the trick. Fatty and salty french fries are technically vegan. There is a lot of junk food on the vegan side, which is also highly processed and features lots of sugar. It is not enough to stop eating dead animals, drinking milk or eggs. I've been a junk food vegan for long enough (in a city that makes it easy) to prove to just about anyone that being vegan won't automatically make you healthier. It's way too easy to scarf half a bag of oreos in a day.
- DLwdTxdU6smHQA 7y ago
  > However dismissing meat is inevitable for a healthy diet. I dont think this is true. There seem to be many people that have (in some cases greatly) benefitted from a carnivore diet. Take Mikhaila Peterson as an example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znGkfrl_F5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znGkfrl_F5s).
- Hitton 7y ago
  >However dismissing meat is inevitable for a healthy diet. On what do you base this bold claim?
limomium 7y ago
It annoys me to no end that nearly all dietary advice boils down to "losing weight". I have this metabolism where I can eat literally anything, or nothing at all, and my weight maintains exactly the same. I've never gained any, I've never lost any. The way I've developed my diet is by observing energy level, mood, ethic, cost, convenience, and allergic-ish reactions, which my skin is prone to. But there is near zero actionable advice on diet available to me, because weight is never an issue.
- whenchamenia 7y ago
  Check out wellness, sports and bodybuilding forums for some insight on diet improvement not specifically concerning weight. Much will focus on optimum protein levels, glucose-influenced insulin levels, and hormone precursors. Many discussions can delve down in to the minutae of the actual metabolic processes that govern the conversion of interesting or problematic compounds. Your 'metabolism' is actully just a very smart management of cravings, coupled with an ability to regularly break down many things in the body. Curious what foods seem to boost or depress mood and reactions that you have discovered.
  - limomium 7y ago
    Thanks, will look into that. Expanding on my findings: Grains -- Wheat, barley, oats, rye and spelt cause mild depression and psychosis. Yeast causes skin infection. These combined, rule out all bread. Maize, rice and maybe teff seem ok so far. Meats, red and white, feel like falling into a coma for hours after consumption, simply for being so tough to digest. In contrast, plant foods give an energetic feeling -- there's no immobilizing digestion period. Milk and cream products cause a kind of.. tension in my head. Like a silent headache. I feel much clearer not consuming these. Includes organic and lactose-free varieties. Experiments on cheese still ongoing. Sugar appears harmless, but I've noticed it eats a significant portion of my food budget if I permit myself to buy any. Super addictive. Hard pass all food that contain any added sugar whatsoever. It's a food industry dark pattern designed to make you crave their product. Can get rid of sugar addiction by substituting it entirely for honey. Similar to sugar, I vehemently avoid all food products containing any artificial flavorings and additives whatsoever. These are designed to fool your body into thinking you're eating something you're not. Some of them are downright dangerous -- sodium laureth sulfate, an additive to toothpaste that makes it foam, causes lacerations in the mouth. After I switched to a toothpaste without it, all spontaneous wounds of the mouth stopped appearing completely. Of course, the effects of diet is very sensitive to your gut microbial environment. If you're used to eating certain things, their effects are... hidden, at least, if not lessened. And it takes time to adjust, time to experiment. How I perform my food experiments: I eat the same thing for a month, almost to exclusion of everything else, to see how it makes me feel. I stop eating something completely for months, to see how going without it makes me feel; then see what happens when I do eat it again periodically.
blue_devil 7y ago
I recently took it upon myself to research the origins of calories, macros, and all those things from nutrition science. https://blog.jumpycatapp.com/calorie-counting-weight-loss-history/ https://blog.jumpycatapp.com/calorie-counting-weight-loss-hi... In truth, science seems to be still very far from understanding the complexity of how our bodies process food.(One recurring constraint seems to be the difficulty in controlling for "real life eating"). Learning from "traditional" diets and cuisine might be the best practical way to go about eating healthy. A bit of a black hole approach, but practical for most people.

by wincy 7y ago

maxharris 7y ago

Fructose. That's what's missing. It's much healthier when it's bound up in a lot of fiber, as you find it in unprocessed fruit. The soluble and insoluble fiber form a protective barrier that reduces the total amount and rate at which it is absorbed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yda8RtOcVFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yda8RtOcVFU

deleted 7y ago
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on_and_off 7y ago
I wonder why all the allusions to sugar are downvoted in these comments ? Anecdotal, but moving to the US, the insane amount of sugar that is put in every form of food is very scary.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  Bread in the USA tastes like cake in the rest of the world!
  - mingabunga 7y ago
    I agree, was in the US recently and so many foods are much sweeter than in other countries. USA is really good at sugar. Even the ice cream was much sweeter - looking at you Ben and Jerry's. I bought some organic almond butter, and it had sugar in it! Why?!
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      > I agree, was in the US recently and so many foods are much sweeter than in other countries. I wish there was an easy way to compare foodstuffs across countries. Too many of these discussions turn into anecdote battles with little hard data. > I bought some organic almond butter, and it had sugar in it! Why?! What brand? I know sugar is fairly common in peanut butter, but I don't know much about almond butter. I did a cursory search, and the three brands I checked (Justin's, Barney's, and 365 Organics) do not use any kind of sweetener. That said, I can barely stand sweetened peanut butter now that I have switched to Smucker's Naturals (which is just ground peanuts and salt). I can only guess that the sugar is added to increase appeal.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      Cause they'll sell more units if they put sugar in it. Economics 101: Step 1) take healthy food Step 2) add sugar Step 3) Profit
    - chefe 7y ago
      It was the "war on fat" that sweetened the cake. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-shifted-blame-to-fat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...
  - nitwit005 7y ago
    Supposedly, in the 20s and 30s, some of the immigrants thought the white bread they were given in immigration was cake, as they'd only eaten black bread. I believe that considerably predated the fluffy wonderbread style of white bread.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  I'd guess it's because the sugar comments all seem to be going "nah, it's sugar" and dismissing the rest of the points the article is considering.
- arbitrary_name 7y ago
  I've been here (in the US) 3 months now, working in a near identical environment. 1) Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet to me in comparison to what I expect in similar products in other countries (Australia, EU) 2) The cultural integration of the consumption of these foods appears to be higher in the USA; donuts at morning meetings, krullers and bearclaws on desks and tables for all-hands, quarterly meetings, etc - feels very high given that I am working in a culturally and socio-economically comparable environment relative to my home countries. Of course, commonwealth and european countries have their own culture-driven consumption patterns (cakes for birthdays, croissants, scones for morning teas in Australia/NZ/UK) - but it doesn't appear to reach a similar level of 'saturation' as in the US. Just another limited anecdote, of course.
  - nitwit005 7y ago
    > Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet I have that problem eating some items here even as a native. For some items you risk buying something lethally sweet I don't want to eat. Things like lemon cake seem basically guaranteed to be inedible (I assume making even sweeter to offset lemon). That said, the bigger issue just seems to be serving size. A traditional British cookie/biscuit is fairly small. American cookies have grown larger and larger.
  - technothrasher 7y ago
    > Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet It didn't used to be like this. Back forty years ago, muffins and cupcakes were pretty different things. Now it's just a matter of how much frosting is on the top.
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    >Sweet things like muffins or cakes are generally unbearably sweet to me Seriously!! Sometimes I go to the bakery of my local grocery store and check out the muffins, they tend to have more sugar than I'd expect cupcakes to have.
  - photojosh 7y ago
    I think that's changed here in Australia too; in that a lot of the recipes you find online are much sweeter than they used to be back 20-30 years. When we bake at home we regularly only use 1/4-1/3 of the sugar recommended, and sometimes that still ends up too sweet for our palates.
- d1zzy 7y ago
  Agreed! After moving to the US I particularly remember how hard it was to find sausages that do not contain any sugar (I can't stand the taste of sweet grilled meat, yuck!). We looked at what must have been 30+ different types of _packaged_ sausages until we found some "kosher" product that indeed didn't list any sugary ingredient. It was eye opening!
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    What brand would you buy at home?
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    That is not just the US. Over here in the EU if you go through the ingredient list of prepared meat products, you will discover that 98% of those have some sugar added. That is not to say there is no difference. When I travel to the US I find most if the food really unbearably sweet. Strange exception is fresh fruit, which seems to be a lot less flavorful in the US than over here.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  because the article is specifically about it not being just any one food type.
- neves 7y ago
  Sometimes I make an oatmeal cookie that is traditional in my family. It can be considered a healthy cookie, not very sweet, but I'm always impressed with the amount of sugar that goes with it. I wonder how much goes in the really sweet ones.
- meowface 7y ago
  As an American raised on typical things you find at an average grocery store, I had to kick sugar like an addict as an adult. Now I can't bear pretty much any kind of soda or processed food without tasting an overwhelmingly gross level of sweetness. I can't believe I liked this stuff as a kid, but I just was never exposed to anything else. As a kid you grow very tolerant to high sugar intake, to the point that even a Coke or Pepsi tastes only very mildly sweet. You don't really realize just how much sugar you're consuming. Most of the cheap food is loaded with sugar (to hide the fact it otherwise tastes bad, maybe? I don't know why), and many families avoid paying for anything more natural because they can't afford it; or even if they can, they feel it's a rip-off compared to the plentiful, cheap food at their local grocery store. Generations are being raised on that garbage. It certainly beats malnutrition for families who would otherwise just go hungry, but it ingrains such awful tastes and habits.
dnhz 7y ago
In the US, sugar consumption is down but obesity is still trending upward. If anything, it's the added oils and fats that have gone up. https://www.cato-unbound.org/sites/cato-unbound.org/files/images/essays/ussugarintake.jpg https://www.cato-unbound.org/sites/cato-unbound.org/files/im...

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

It also makes sense why stringent reading caloric information and then calorie counting (not just guessing, but weight scale & knowing the calories) would lead to weight loss as well - if you are cognizant of the hyper palatable foods it'll be harder (you'll want to), but it's not due to the food being magic, it's due to the disconnect between sensation and calories.

rconti 7y ago
Counting calories/meal tracking has been the best thing to ever happen to me. When you just "try to eat better" or "don't drink this month", or whatever, there's a disconnect between the input and the result. When I was able to see, in realtime, for example, I had a 500 calorie deficit today, and should hence lose 1lb in 1 week at this rate, and see it actually HAPPEN, it created a positive feedback loop. For the first time in my life, over many types of eating, some vague diet attempts, some periods working out more, some periods working out less, I could FINALLY see a direct result from my activities. I had avoided it for a long time because I thought it would be miserable and tedious to track what I eat, but it's actually made it much easier to be disciplined, and see which foods are 'worth it' and which aren't.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Absolutely. Calorie counting was hard for the first bit, but pretty soon you determine your "regulars" and just go off those. I also found that it was nice to know "ok, I went light today, so I can have some extra dessert" and know that was an option because I had the calories, instead of experiencing guilt with the assumption that dessert and losing weight couldn't exist together.

ThrustVectoring 7y ago

You can't neglect reversion to the mean here. People with below-average diet end up with below-average results. If you stop eating your below-average diet and replace most foods in it with anything else, it'll probably be a closer-to-average diet and give you better results.

pas 7y ago

Meat only diets are exceptionally good at weight loss, because your body gets into ketosis (it takes anywhere from 1-2 days to weeks, usually with hangover-like symptoms to adapt fully, but it takes no time to snap out of it), and naturally you cut out most of the calorie sources from your diet.

MrBuddyCasino 7y ago
Keto also means no Insulin spikes. Easy to skip a meal and not go insane.
ska 7y ago
> because your body gets into ketosis For what it's worth, this mostly doesn't actually happen. There is some good science behind maintaining ketosis in children under careful monitoring by a physician. Most of the empirical evidence in adults is that it's hard to achieve and harder to maintain. The weight loss some people achieve on "keto" diets is mostly just due to caloric restriction when it's been measured carefully. The upside is you don't really want to have your body in ketosis anyway.
- Frondo 7y ago
  I haven't heard this before, that it doesn't actually happen. Are those ketosis test strips you pee on not accurate? I've ketoed before for weight loss (and am starting again soon) and when I was quite strict with it I'd be well into the ketosis range on those pee strips. If it's not a sign the body's in ketosis, what is it a sign of? Also, fwiw, I lose significant weight on keto without moderating my calorie intake at all; fatty meats, cheeses, butter, oil, etc., plus a lot of vegetables. If it's not ketosis, what is it?
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    > Also, fwiw, I lose significant weight on keto without moderating my calorie intake at all; fatty meats, cheeses, butter, oil, etc., plus a lot of vegetables. If it's not ketosis, what is it? Unless you were very carefully tracking calorie intake before and on the keto diet, it is not justifiable to assume same caloric intake, even if keto food seems very calorie rich.

benj111 7y ago

Ever since Taylors time and motion studies (if not earlier) we've known that if people are being observed they tend to behave differently. I don't see why that wouldn't also apply to diets also. That could involve avoiding ultraprocessed foods, or it could involve having a healthy drink with your meal, having a salad or whatever.

Pxtl 7y ago

Except going vegan often involves massive increases in ultraprocessed foods. Realistically, vegan food prep takes a long time, so meat substitutes end up in the diet for convenience if nothing else - and meat substitutes are pure processed food. I mean we have one group handwriting about gluten and meanwhile one of the tastiest vegan foods is pure gluten.

pstuart 7y ago
> tastiest vegan foods Not by itself, but when properly seasoned. Hail Seitan!
yubiox 7y ago
10 weeks vegan here. Easiest diet ever, no cravings. I'm down 19 lbs (193-174, 6' tall). Dropping the chips and oreos took a few weeks, I just thought anything vegan was ok until I realized junk food is junk food. I cook twice a week and make enough to last a few days. It takes about an hour to cook. I sautee vegetables and put them on rice and quinoa or pasta. For breakfast I have a banana and a Larabar. For dessert I have grapes or watermelon. Before this I rarely ate healthy food. Chipotle is decent fast food when you aren't cooking.
- moate 7y ago
  Oreos are vegan fwiw.
  - Djvacto 7y ago
    I think they were saying that, despite being vegan, they took a bit to cut them out after realizing they wouldn't help with weight loss, since they are still junk food.
    - moate 7y ago
      Rereading that again, I see how that could be the take-away now. My first go through was how some people switching to a vegetarian diet say things like 'quitting bacon was the hardest, I kept going back to it for the first month".

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common It's pretty simple really: they're paying more attention to what they eat, meaning they take in more reasonable amounts of calories as a side effect. Ultimately it is all about calories. Source: lost and kept off 150lbs, no thanks to fad diets.

badfrog 7y ago
> they're paying more attention to what they eat, meaning they take in more reasonable amounts of calories as a side effect. That doesn't necessarily follow. The vegans could end up eating huge amounts of soda and potato chips, and the low-carb people could go crazy on bacon.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  The difference is that if all you ate was 4,000 calories of bacon a day, you’d lose weight. That many calories of soda and chips and you’d get ill fast.
  - drdrey 7y ago
    In what world do you lose weight by eating 4000 calories a day?
    - ska 7y ago
      One where your at stable weight and your regular diet is 4500 ?
      - drdrey 7y ago
        I assume OP did not choose 4000 randomly, it is meant to be a _high_ number (about 2x what an average person needs). Implying that you could eat twice as much calories and stay lean _if the calories came from bacon_.
    - hx87 7y ago

jl6 7y ago

I’ve followed a vegan diet for 6 weeks now, and it’s really obvious why I’m losing weight: because I’m no longer eating all the junk that is on offer everywhere - cakes, biscuits, chocolates... I would previously have eaten these things mindlessly, but now I have a simple rule that cuts them out. To reinforce the overeating-junk-food theory, my weight loss has slowed as I have discovered alternative vegan treats and snacks.

gameswithgo 7y ago
as the free market starts to leverage more and more vegans in the world, they will start offering more vegan garbage too. so stay vigilant!
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Some treats are already pretty much vegan, like Oreos, which are so artificial they're vegan. (Oreos are not truly vegan because they are processed in a factory with dairy products, but outside of allergies this shouldn't be that concerning.)
- wpietri 7y ago
  I am eternally fascinated by this. A couple years back paleo diets were all the rage and I started hearing people talk about things like "paleo waffles" and "paleo brownies". I never said anything, but I could not believe how much work people would put into "eating healthy" only to reconstruct the same unhealthy things that made them say, "man, I really need to start eating healthy!"
  - 80386 7y ago
    Most of the paleo junk food I've seen has been variations on a theme of dark chocolate and coconuts. I don't have any nutrition labels to hand (paleo junk food is expensive), but I wouldn't write it off as unhealthy without seeing what's in it. Then again, the reason I can't stick to paleo is the slippery slope from 95% dark chocolate to Toblerones, so maybe it's better to cut chocolate out altogether.
  - 7y ago

RandallBrown 7y ago

Paying attention to what you eat really goes a long way. I remember watching a video of two women, one skinny, one overweight, who were good friends. They said that the skinny one always eats way more food, but doesn't gain any weight. They had a camera crew follow them both around and it was true that the skinny woman ate larger meals. The difference was all the time in between. The skinny woman didn't eat anything, while the overweight woman was snacking regularly. The total calorie counts for the day were much larger for the overweight woman.

iamkroot 7y ago
My pet theory-without-evidence is that diets like keto or vegan succeed largely because they force people to radically reconsider every single thing they're eating. When you impose harsh restrictions like "no animal products" you have to pay very close attention to everything you consume, which likely leads to more mindful eating and less passive consumption/overeating.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  It's plenty easy to find vegan junk food. Pretty much any potato chip that doesn't have the name of a dairy product featured prominently on the label is going to be vegan. Go to most natural food stores, including Whole Foods, and you'll find far more shelf space being devoted to processed and junk foods than food that's actually healthy. Most of it with labels that work very hard to imply that sugar only has calories if it's made from something other than sugar cane. That said, you're not likely to find the vegan equivalent of Twinkies at your local bodega, and that is worth something. But I'm guessing that a bigger factor is that choosing to go vegan or low-carb or whatever is tantamount to deciding to join a food culture that places a much higher value on making better food choices, and there's nothing quite like peer pressure for changing one's behavior.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - 80386 7y ago

evv555 7y ago

>I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. It can also be combination of the two food categories that causes issues. Insulin spikes from carb intake and dietary fat are not a good combination. At least according to diets like "Keto". Both of those diets tend to have lopsided intake of fats and carbs.

bena 7y ago

All the diets of exclusion manage to exclude the most calorie dense foods.

dominotw 7y ago

> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common confirmation bias about "feeling better"?

gameswithgo 7y ago

The answer is always that someone has found some sort of program to follow that helps them eat less calories. I've not seem anyone ever try the approach of "avoid foods that taste good" but its not a bad idea probably. Just never ever bring good tasting, easy to prep food into the house. Now you gotta work for food you don't really want.

dmitryminkovsky 7y ago
> I've not seem anyone ever try the approach of "avoid foods that taste good" This is what I do, or try to do. This seems high on the self-denial scale but in my case I noticed that simple foods taste better than you think they as you learn to appreciate them, especially if you let yourself get hungry first. I tend to not over-eat such food as much.
whatshisface 7y ago
This is also related to replacing simple sugars with more complex metabolites. Having your blood sugar go way up and down leads to metabolic stress and feeling hungry all the time. On the other side are fats and fibers which have a comparatively high capacity to sate hunger per calorie. Eating 2000 calories of donuts every morning may be correct from an energy balance perspective (and indeed you won't get fat doing it), but that's clearly a very painful way to live. Insulin and blood glucose drive obesity and metabolic damage, but they don't make it hard to stay on diets. The difficulty of staying on a diet is due to a separate system in your brain that takes other factors in to account to decide if you should eat. Every successful diet boils down to finding foods that make your brain happy while keeping excessive levels (and durations) of sugar and insulin out of your blood[0]. If you had access to unlimited candy, you might eat too much and damage your body - and indeed many people do just that. If you had access to unlimited non-starchy vegtables your stomach capacity probably wouldn't be enough to maintain obesity. If you had access to unlimited sticks of butter, you would probably get sick of the very concept of butter before you ate an unhealthy number of sticks. Vegan and carnivorous diets largely rely on the last two facts. [0] There are other things involved in your body's metabolic signaling system, but blood glucose and insulin are especially well-researched and easy to measure.
7y ago

colechristensen 7y ago

Some ideas about what might be going on: Confirmation bias: people who try new diets and hate them probably talk about it a lot less. Placebo: people getting caught up hearing about how everyone with their diet feels so much better are convinced they feel better too Gut fauna: any change, regardless of what it was, causing a population shuffling inside the gut Avoiding "something": any change, regardless of what it was, involved exclusion of one specific thing which was a sensitivity/allergy/poorly digested/feeding a particular gut bacteria Thoughtfulness: any change required people to be much more conscientious about what they ate which led to different habits, one of which was critical to feeling better Lies and exaggerations: diet and nutrition has become a kind of religion replacing God in an increasingly atheist society, some people act with strange quasi-religious zeal for their personal health belief set I tend to not believe anything anybody says about nutrition. Evidence for anything fits into three categories: guessing, anecdotes, extremely specific cause-and-effect studies without real-world conclusions. The fourth category of believable, properly blinded, controlled, long term human studies does exist but the volume is very low.

raverbashing 7y ago
There's a simpler explanation: processed foods are more caloric per weight and/or they tend to increase portion size as well.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  What exactly is a processed food? That's a name thrown around like a bad word by nutrition fans everywhere but it seems to mean "food we don't like".
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    You can argue that processing food doesn't change anything about it, but it seems a ridiculous position to take that "processed food" might not exist. Do you really see no possible difference between a potato, and Pringles, because "picking potatoes is a process"?

tempsy 7y ago

I would be surprised if those who go vegan and lost weight did not go low(ish) carb (whether intentionally or not) e.g. mostly nuts/plants/fruits and not filling up with a lot of chips or bread.

cj 7y ago

Another anecdote: I went completely vegan ~3 months ago. I don't really "feel better". It's always the first thing someone asks when I say I went vegan.. "Do you feel better?" - I feel basically the same. Although my weight has been trending downward, slowly, which is great since that's happening without trying to limit the amount I eat at all. That's very different from when I wasn't vegan, my weight would always trend slowly upward unless I was making a deliberate effort to cut back on calories. BUT: I think the real reason I'm slowly losing weight on a vegan diet is the simple fact that eating a restricted diet (ANY restricted diet) requires you to think about and analyze absolutely everything that enters your mouth. It introduces a level of mindfulness that just wasn't there when eating an unrestricted diet. For me, this has had the side effect of also cutting out most processed food (read: junk food) from my diet, even though most junk food is vegan. I'm convinced this is the biggest value of being vegan.. it just makes you think about everything you buy at the grocery store, everything you order when out to eat, etc. Another commenter calls this "paying attention to what you eat" - I think that's right on target, however cliche it may sound.

avinium 7y ago
I consider myself a seasoned dieter (meaning I can manipulate my weight +/-10kg fairly easily). Over at least a dozen weight cuts/bulks, the most effective practice I've found is writing a meal plan, and writing down everything you put in your mouth. Many people have started losing weight just by doing this - without actively changing their diet. It has a really profound subconscious impact on what/how much you put in your mouth. The psychological/hormonal aspect of food is fascinating.
- 11235813213455 7y ago
  my weight is probably going +/-6kg, on a semi-week basis. When I eat, I eat a lot (fruits at will, legumes, fish vapor-cooked, honey, Camargues rice living in France, lentils). I think it's useless to weight yourself, it's easy to feel how much fat you've built, you then need to consume it first before re-eating (I'm around 60-62kg, 1.83m, with a thin morphology so it's not underweight) I feel really well with that "lower-frequency" diet cycle, it's of course easier when working remote.

toephu2 7y ago

Doesn't matter what you eat. As long as you follow a simple formula you will lose weight: Calories In < Calories Out. I can eat McDonalds everyday for a month and still lose weight.. how? Order a small fries and a double patty cheeseburger. Eat nothing else during the entire day, drink plenty of water, and exercise for at least 30 minutes.

avinium 7y ago
It does matter what you eat. Not in the sense of "calories in, calories out" - which, as you mentioned, is simple biology. But it is important in the sense of "which diet is easiest to follow?". That will vary person to person. But for many people, the answer is low-carb/intermittent-fasting. It eliminates the blood sugar/hormonal response, requires less effort than regular eating, and still lets you eat palatable food.
- wetpaws 7y ago
  High carbs high protein works just fine for me. Hell, there was the time (in college) where my diet consisted of ramen and chocolate and it still worked. I am with the op, as long as your weight dynamic is acceptable, you can eat whatever you want.
  - avinium 7y ago
    That's not really the point. Your diet works for you - great! Noone's saying it's biologically impossible. But most people won't find it easy to regulate their caloric intake eating ramen and chocolate. They will find it much easier with vegetables, lean protein and high fat.

biomcgary 7y ago

Recent studies (citations not handy) have shown that high-carb or high-fat diets don't lead to weight gain, but high-carb AND high-fat diets do (at least in mice, a big caveat). One thing to consider is that fructose is a metabolic poison that is poorly regulated by metabolism. Fructose bypasses all of the controls that glucose is subject to and forces lipid biogenesis in the liver (by mass action for the chemists). Consuming fat and fructose is large amounts is nearly guaranteed to give you a fatty liver. On the other hand, anyone choosing to follow an "extreme" diet is likely to be more aware of their food intake than the average person and adjust behavior in various ways.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
> Recent studies (citations not handy) have shown that high-carb or high-fat diets don't lead to weight gain, but high-carb AND high-fat diets do (at least in mice, a big caveat). I thought it was agreed upon that if you consume more calories than you burn regardless of their fat/protein/carbohydrate profile, you were going to gain weight?
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  On their own fat or sugar aren't very palatable. Imagine trying to eat a pot of cream or a bowl of sugar with nothing else. Mix them together to make ice cream and it's the complete opposite.

asveikau 7y ago

Personally I went on a diet of mostly pasta and eggs, lost weight and feel better. (Lots of processed meat like pancetta, guanciale, or speck in those pasta dishes.) I think you need to look at people on an individual basis. I start to get skeptical that what turned out to worked for me can work for everybody else. For me I think portion size and increased physical activity were big.

wincy 7y ago
For me if I eat pasta I’ll feel kinda foggy and tired. Happens every single time. I’ll generally take a nap for an hour or two, even if I just woke up. Same if I eat biscuits and gravy. I can eat a big 2 pound ribeye and not feel like that at all. I definitely am starting to think that the only way to lose weight is to figure it out yourself. I lost 75 lbs eating sauerkraut and Johnsonville brats for 5 months, kept at that weight for several months, then went back to eating “normally” and gained back 50 over the course of the next year.
- top_kekeroni_m8 7y ago
  Try and get some whole-wheat pasta, it's much healthier than plain old white pasta, and it does not make you feel so tired after. You'll probably eat much less of it too since it's much more filling.
- asveikau 7y ago
  I never eat more than 2 oz of dried noodle. Even Italian recipes call for more than that. But here in the US, when people eat pasta, they tend to do much more of that.

technothrasher 7y ago

> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. I'm back on the weight loss train (lost 60 pounds about ten years ago, and have to take 40 off again that I put back on slowly) and like last time, I mostly avoid these ultraprocessed foods simply because they're all way over my calorie budget.

Lazare 7y ago

> I’ve been fascinated by the fact that I know several people who have become vegan, lost weight, and feel better. But I also know many people who have gone low carb, or even eat nothing but meat, and are also losing weight and report feeling much better. I have had a similar experience, but I've also known several people who have tried various diets and quickly dropped off them because it wasn't working for them. So while it's true that if you ask all your vegan friends if they enjoy being vegan, they'll probably mostly say yes, there's a huge possibility for selection bias/survivor bias. The lesson I've drawn is not "pick a restrictive diet and you'll feel better", but more "some things work for some people but not others, and we have no idea why". :-/

taneq 7y ago

> I’ve been wondering what they both share in common Both groups cut a significant fraction of their intake calories and lost weight as a result?

dawzy1 7y ago

I've been thinking the same thing from those around me who have started diets and "felt better" or lost weight. From my observation, it seems that people go on a diet because they know what they're eating isn't good for them or its too high in calories or it goes against their beliefs or something. So people are already suspicious of what they're eating but aren't overly thinking about what they're eating. By going on a diet you now need to think about what you're eating in order to meet the requirements of the proposed diet and therefore you are being more conscious about what you will and won't eat. By doing this you are already a step ahead of people who might eat whatever they feel like which may include lots of highly processed high fat and/or high carbohydrate foods every now and then or more than they realise. So when people say they went keto, or went paleo, or cut out sugar, or cut out fat and lost weight and/or felt better. I always ask them was it actually the diet, or was it because you were simply conscious and considerate about what you were eating due to the fact that you were trying to fit to a particular diet.

Semaphor 7y ago

Just another anecdote, but I lost a lot of weight and felt a lot better after switching to low-carb, without ever eating a lot of processed food before. My pet theory is that all these diets make you way more conscious of what you are eating and all you need to do is find one you are happy with.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Most the vegans I know are overweight if not obese, and not at all models of healthy lives. They tend to eat a lot of bread.

Mikeb85 7y ago

In general restrictive diets simply end up restricting calories vs. previous eating habits. Hence losing weight.

dcolkitt 7y ago

I wouldn't discount the impact of the variety of food. I think it has just as much to do with its palatability. We know that people will consume substantially more calories when served multiple types of food, rather than just one dish[1]. I suspect this also works across meals as well. For example traditional Thai, Mexican or Italian food tends to be very caloric and palatable. Yet traditional societies in Thailand, Mexico and Italy tend to be much thinner than their counterparts that start consuming a typical American diet. I think the explanation is that if you have lasagna on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, and curry on Wednesday, each meal is novel and delicious. In contrast if you eat tacos on Monday, tacos on Tuesday, and tacos on Wednesday, well tacos start to lose some of their appeal. This suggests a diet, that I've yet to hear of. First cut out side dishes in favor of one-pot meals. You can still have a lot of variety of ingredients, but they're blended together in a homogenous, so that every spoonful is nearly identical. That eliminates the buffet effect. Second, do something like meal-prep Sunday. Give yourself fairly wide latitude when picking out your meals. However, whatever you pick out, you're going to eat that same dish for pretty much every meal for a week straight. Even with your favorite your dish, my guess is that by the end of the week you'll find it barely appetizing. A less drastic approach might be using variety as a pump to shift consumption across food groups. Strictly restrict variety in the least healthy food groups, while allowing it for healthy food. People who love desert can still eat their favorite desert, but you pick one single desert dish and that's the only desert you can have for a month. In contrast give yourself unlimited freedom to enjoy whatever green vegetable strikes your fancy. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376392/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376392/

john_moscow 7y ago

>I’ve been wondering what they both share in common, and suspected that both forms of dietary restriction mean cutting out most hyper palatable ultraprocessed foods. I would suggest that it's rather about setting a goal, working hard towards achieving it, and seeing measurable results of your work.

_the_inflator 7y ago

There are important differences. Losing weight is almost always a good thing, however you also have to look on the inside of the body. What makes ateries clog? And here comes meat and diary into play. Ppl tend to look on a lean muscular body but do not consider what makes the body work. Pls have a look into Michael Greger's How not to die, or Colin Campbell China Study. Vegan is not always healthy. Plant based, unprocessed food does the trick. Fatty and salty french fries are technically vegan. There is a lot of junk food on the vegan side, which is also highly processed and features lots of sugar. It is not enough to stop eating dead animals, drinking milk or eggs. However dismissing meat is inevitable for a healthy diet.

bscphil 7y ago
You're 100% right. > Vegan is not always healthy. Plant based, unprocessed food does the trick. Fatty and salty french fries are technically vegan. There is a lot of junk food on the vegan side, which is also highly processed and features lots of sugar. It is not enough to stop eating dead animals, drinking milk or eggs. I've been a junk food vegan for long enough (in a city that makes it easy) to prove to just about anyone that being vegan won't automatically make you healthier. It's way too easy to scarf half a bag of oreos in a day.
DLwdTxdU6smHQA 7y ago
> However dismissing meat is inevitable for a healthy diet. I dont think this is true. There seem to be many people that have (in some cases greatly) benefitted from a carnivore diet. Take Mikhaila Peterson as an example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znGkfrl_F5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znGkfrl_F5s).
Hitton 7y ago
>However dismissing meat is inevitable for a healthy diet. On what do you base this bold claim?

limomium 7y ago

It annoys me to no end that nearly all dietary advice boils down to "losing weight". I have this metabolism where I can eat literally anything, or nothing at all, and my weight maintains exactly the same. I've never gained any, I've never lost any. The way I've developed my diet is by observing energy level, mood, ethic, cost, convenience, and allergic-ish reactions, which my skin is prone to. But there is near zero actionable advice on diet available to me, because weight is never an issue.

whenchamenia 7y ago
Check out wellness, sports and bodybuilding forums for some insight on diet improvement not specifically concerning weight. Much will focus on optimum protein levels, glucose-influenced insulin levels, and hormone precursors. Many discussions can delve down in to the minutae of the actual metabolic processes that govern the conversion of interesting or problematic compounds. Your 'metabolism' is actully just a very smart management of cravings, coupled with an ability to regularly break down many things in the body. Curious what foods seem to boost or depress mood and reactions that you have discovered.
- limomium 7y ago
  Thanks, will look into that. Expanding on my findings: Grains -- Wheat, barley, oats, rye and spelt cause mild depression and psychosis. Yeast causes skin infection. These combined, rule out all bread. Maize, rice and maybe teff seem ok so far. Meats, red and white, feel like falling into a coma for hours after consumption, simply for being so tough to digest. In contrast, plant foods give an energetic feeling -- there's no immobilizing digestion period. Milk and cream products cause a kind of.. tension in my head. Like a silent headache. I feel much clearer not consuming these. Includes organic and lactose-free varieties. Experiments on cheese still ongoing. Sugar appears harmless, but I've noticed it eats a significant portion of my food budget if I permit myself to buy any. Super addictive. Hard pass all food that contain any added sugar whatsoever. It's a food industry dark pattern designed to make you crave their product. Can get rid of sugar addiction by substituting it entirely for honey. Similar to sugar, I vehemently avoid all food products containing any artificial flavorings and additives whatsoever. These are designed to fool your body into thinking you're eating something you're not. Some of them are downright dangerous -- sodium laureth sulfate, an additive to toothpaste that makes it foam, causes lacerations in the mouth. After I switched to a toothpaste without it, all spontaneous wounds of the mouth stopped appearing completely. Of course, the effects of diet is very sensitive to your gut microbial environment. If you're used to eating certain things, their effects are... hidden, at least, if not lessened. And it takes time to adjust, time to experiment. How I perform my food experiments: I eat the same thing for a month, almost to exclusion of everything else, to see how it makes me feel. I stop eating something completely for months, to see how going without it makes me feel; then see what happens when I do eat it again periodically.

blue_devil 7y ago

I recently took it upon myself to research the origins of calories, macros, and all those things from nutrition science. https://blog.jumpycatapp.com/calorie-counting-weight-loss-history/ https://blog.jumpycatapp.com/calorie-counting-weight-loss-hi... In truth, science seems to be still very far from understanding the complexity of how our bodies process food.(One recurring constraint seems to be the difficulty in controlling for "real life eating"). Learning from "traditional" diets and cuisine might be the best practical way to go about eating healthy. A bit of a black hole approach, but practical for most people.