8 ms·

Stop Eating Sugar (2020)

26 points by begueradj 3y ago

laweijfmvo 3y ago
What worked for them won't work for everyone. Try snacking on 2,000 calories worth of nuts a day (which isn't that hard) and see how much weight you lose! What this person likely did was, eliminate the foods that caused them to over-eat, and they lost weight, which happened to be sugar.
- robsh 3y ago
  I have eaten nuts for days and I can tell you it will get old quickly. It’s no coincidence that sugar leads to over-eating. The body sends a very strong signal to eat when the sugar is digested. The same signal does not happen when nuts are digested.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    its not just sugar. its the mixture of sugar and fat and other things that make food items more likely to cause over-eating. its called palatability. Theres a huge difference between chocolate, or ice cream, and chowing down on spoonfuls of pure sugar.
    - fy20 3y ago
      This is why 'low sugar' and 'low fat' foods aren't really any better for you. They usually make up for the reduction by increasing the other thing.
- leptons 3y ago
  I have a sweet tooth, but I'm also diabetic. I still snack on sweets but I replaced sugar with pure monk fruit extract. I've lost 40 pounds in the last year. I make all kinds of monk fruit sweetened deserts and buy all kinds of low/no-sugar snacks and eat plenty of them every day to the point where my sweet tooth is very well satiated. You can say it's coincidental or whatever you want, but I have no doubt my weight loss and improved health is from cutting out sugar from my diet.
  - sharadov 3y ago
    Congrats that's amazing! I know someone who has replaced regular sugar with date sugar, it tastes amazing, especially in deserts with none of the weird aftertaste.
    - leptons 3y ago
      That was the second time I reduced my sugar. The first time, about 20 years ago I was on the "candida diet", which eliminates all sugar intake, and it's extremely strict. It's done to reduce/remove candida from the gut. I lost 60 pounds. Reducing sugar isn't just about reducing calories. More sugar means more gut imbalance, and that can cause some serious problems. It's not always easy to connect the dots, and not many people really get to know or understand the messages their own bodies are sending them. And doctors DNGAF about nutrition or diet, not really at least - they just treat symptoms with pharmaceuticals but a real cure for some ailments means a serious change in eating habits, and one of the best changes to promote health is reducing sugar intake.
- coldtrait 3y ago
  Were you actually recommending that or being sarcastic? Nuts are calorie dense, since they're mostly made of fat and eating them makes it easy to gain weight.
  - chucksta 3y ago
    > snacking on 2,000 calories worth of nuts Density would not matter if its a hard limit
    - ajuc 3y ago
      You'd be far more hungry if you eat 350 g of nuts than ~1kg of regular dinner food.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  It's almost as if calories aren't relevant, but that the effect that different foods have on the body is. Also, I'm not sure what you're communicating with the point about nuts. Are you saying that a person will gain weight? Lose weight? Lose nothing? Depending on what you were implying, you might actually be proving the author's point. By the way, I actually have done many experiments eating various monodiets, including nuts. The worst was walnuts. I love walnuts, but the end result was horrendous. I almost certainly would have lost weight because so much of the fats were not being absorbed (ALA is poorly metabolized) and passing through. On the other hand, fresh raw peanut butter (with a little salt) was not only satiating but well tolerated. My experience reflects exactly why people object to CICO. Nobody is saying that two different substances can emit the same amount of heat measured in calories when burned in a bomb calorimeter. The root objection is that the body will treat different substances the same way. It's wildly untrue that you can just eat anything and predict a health outcome with 3rd grade arithmetic. CICO doesn't explain why I could sustain a diet solely of peanut butter (no sugar added) but couldn't eat a diet only of walnuts, to the point where the "calories" were coming out in my shit having not been oxidized.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    youve found an extremely bizarre edge case where CICO doesnt perfectly hold and you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle that if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat?
    - ravenstine 3y ago
      It may be an extreme case, but it's no more an edge case than the millions who drop weight eating a vegan diet or a high fat diet. By definition, there is no edge case for the human body because nobody designed it. It developed with pressures to encourage it to handle foreign substances in different ways. There's no programmer who made the human but left out the part of efficiently metabolizing walnuts as a form of oversight. > you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle Yes, it completely defeats the general principle, and if it didn't then those insisting on CICO would reply with more than "how can you actually believe what I don't believe?" > if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat? If it was simple as that, then we wouldn't have glycogen stores because... why bother when anything not immediately oxidized turns to fat! If it's as simple as that, protein wouldn't ever be used to maintain lean mass but would be all converted to glucose and then into fat by the liver (not at all efficient). If it's as simple as that, then we would never shit. Don't believe me? I challenge you to collect your stool, dry it out, and light it on fire. Look – calories!
- helij 3y ago
  Exactly this. I threw bread out of my diet and counted calories for a year. I ate plenty of chocolate and sweets but still lost a substantial amount of fat. 0.5-2kg a month, depending on a month. All together I lost 16kg in a year.
- vlod 3y ago
  I think 'snacking' is the general problem that people need to stop. I suspect most people don't snack on nuts, but carb rich sugary-salty snacks, which keeps your insulin levels high. High insulin levels means you can't burn fat.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brodouevencode 3y ago
> “Calorie is a calorie” is thermodynamically correct, but not true when it comes to diet. It’s like saying “it doesn’t matter if you drink booze or beer as long as you get the same amount of alcohol”. Alcohol intake is much easier to regulate with mild beverages. The same applies to energy intake with low-glycemic-index products. While I have serious concerns about most nutritional/exercise studies the underwhelming number that point to low carb/low fat/etc. as the end-all-be-all even controlled for calories is still mind-blowing. It's all calories at the end of the day, you should do whatever satisfies your micro and macro needs while helping you to stick to the diet.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  I think we would both agree that a theoretically imperfect diet that improves health is preferable to a perfect diet that doesn't maintain health in practice. However, it's not "all calories" at the end of the day. If all we cared about was losing or maintaining weight, then calories might approach being a tool for it. Yet it's not actually the weight we care about when we say we want to lose weight; it's the body fat we care about, and probably muscle maintenance, which is why CICO falls apart. Diets composed of different macro ratios can have drastically different outcomes, and what's funny about that is most camps ranging from vegans to carnivores implicitly agree on this, yet many still choose to elevate theoretical physics above physiology. A lump of coal has measurable "calories" when burned in a bomb calorimeter. That doesn't mean that a human will oxidize a lump of coal and produce calories. A human can eat carbs or fat, but they result in different outcomes because those things are fundamentally metabolized and utilized differently. Even different types of carbs and different types of fat have different effects from each other, regardless of caloric value. In terms of a person's health status, calories are hardly relevant. Also, most people don't even come close to measuring their "calories." When they lose weight counting calories, they are getting lucky by figuring out how much it takes to under eat, which can also mean unnecessary muscle loss when they don't take into account the composition of what they are eating. Many people who count calories either struggle to lose that weight or lose a ton of muscle because they believe that a calorie is a calorie and that therefore they can eat crap and "run it off." In either case, they're not really measuring what they think they're measuring because calorie counts on food are allowed to be as far off as 20%, and virtually nobody weighs their feces to estimate how many consumed "calories" didn't actually get used.
zedkaido 3y ago
delusional.
- zedkaido 3y ago
  carb the fuck up! the fat you eat is the fat you wear, simple as that.
  - brodouevencode 3y ago
    While I disagree with the article it's not this simple either.
iwsk 3y ago
okay
NoraCodes 3y ago
> If you’re struggling to lose weight, just remove sugar from your diet. I promise you: you’ll be thinner. ... > I’ve never been exactly fat, but I used to be nearly 10 kg heavier when I did energy drinks, sugary snacks and desserts. So in other words, not only is this opinion not supported by the scientific evidence, it's not even really supported by mmalmi's personal experience. Phenomenal.
- vlod 3y ago
  >it's not even really supported by mmalmi's personal experience. Phenomenal. Notwithstanding this correct observation, it's still probably still a good idea for the majority of the population who aren't as analytical as folks on HN to follow. Too much so called 'food' is laced with added sugar, salt, bad oils that is not healthy which should generally be avoided.
  - NoraCodes 3y ago
    I really dislike this kind of "we HackerNews users are smarter than everyone else" attitude. It's not justified to lie to people because you think they are stupid.
    - vlod 3y ago
      Sigh. Nowhere did I say that HN users are smarter, that people are stupid and should be lied to.
ericra 3y ago
I can tell you from experience that most overweight people know a lot about nutrition and proper ways to eat. Lack of knowledge and education is not the primary issue. Many people who struggle with food issues do so because they are self-medicating for various levels of depression/anxiety/other psychological issues. It is quite difficult to break these bad eating habits without having a replacement for the temporary positive effects they create. Articles like this are extremely annoying. Nearly every educated person knows everything this article says. It just comes across as condescending in a "I can do this, so anyone can" sort of way.
- spazx 3y ago
  This. Not to mention a lot of people are food-insecure and cannot access or afford healthier options.
  - Jhsto 3y ago
    I would not underestimate the how shortsighted people are -- most of my peers are PhD students and most of them skip meals. Anecdotally, none of my flatmates eat breakfast, and my office mates often skip lunch and/or dinner because they have a meeting. The food offered at the university is a steal for the price and how convenient it is. These people are not out of money, they are (work) sprinting.
    - appplication 3y ago
      Is skipping meals bad? Like let’s assume the worst case: someone ate like shit all 3 meals a day. Instant ramen, spam, potato chips, ice cream, whatever. And then they skip a meal and on their next one they are 1.5 meals worth of food. Is that worse?
      - spazx 3y ago
        Yes. Skipping meals can condition your body to store away more of it because it isn't sure when the next meal will come, eventually making you fatter even if you eat very little.
Kirby64 3y ago
These truthy articles seem to be only correct by accident. The reality is if you cut out sugar, you tautologically get more calories from fat and protein. You need protein to maintain muscles, and most folks get fat too little protein in their diet. Purely by making that shift, you likely will have some muscle building, which naturally burns more calories… It has nothing to do with the sugar itself, you could eat only sugar and lose weight… you’d just be miserable and feel like you’re starving constantly, most likely.
OtherShrezzing 3y ago
The best diet advice you'll ever receive is "don't put anecdotal dietary advice into action unless it came from a qualified dietician".
- Terr_ 3y ago
  Corollary: "Nutritionists are usually people without the qualifications/education to be Dieticians."
  - InSteady 3y ago
    In some places they may in fact be high school dropouts. Just like naturopaths, it's important to be aware of the laws and certifying bodies in your state / country when seeking health and medical advice. My state at least requires a 4 year education in an area approved by the state board of dieticians to call oneself a nutritionist... but that's a far cry from the 8 year education requirements plus board certification and testing required to become a registered dietician here. IIRC they are even developing something akin to residency requirements going forward. But in some states there are literally no legal protections on the title of nutritionist. I wonder if any aspiring dietary health bloggers (who perhaps became experts in nutrition via facebook posts) have moved residence to capitalize on this situation...
tbrake 3y ago
I think there's a positive knock-on effect in a lot of "I stopped eating X and everything got better" stories that usually go unsaid - once you decide to cut something out, it forces you to actually start _paying attention_ to what goes in. For a lot of us - myself and friends anecdotally included - that's possibly for the first time in a long time, or ever. And once you start paying attention, opportunities for other positive adjustments open up. Maybe you only intended to cut sugar, but now you realize through your tracking app you've been ridiculously deficient in potassium or way over target on saturated fats.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > it forces you to actually start _paying attention_ to what goes in. Anecdotally, merely recording calories had a big impact. I found myself treating calories as if I were frugally spending money: "Wait, X has a a terrible pleasure/satiety per calorie compared to Y, that's a bad deal, I'd be wasting calories."
  - el_memorioso 3y ago
    Actual research [1] says that just taking a photo of everything you eat helps awareness of food choices and portion sizes, which should contribute to healthier diets. Anecdotally, for me, just writing down everything I eat (without even counting calories) helps me avoid unnecessary eating.
ravenstine 3y ago
> “Calorie is a calorie” is thermodynamically correct, but not true when it comes to diet. [insert alcohol analogy here] In case this doesn't quite compute for some, I have a very simple thought experiment to apply to the CICO fallacy. If you fill your gasoline car with diesel, will the engine perform correctly? Of course we would not expect the engine to perform as well (or at all) on diesel. It doesn't matter if diesel contains more than enough energy per volume for the engine to run. It doesn't matter if the engine runs with some diesel mixed in with gasoline because it will not run as well and suffer other problems that can damage the engine. The car simply is not optimized to run on a fuel it wasn't designed for. If you run a human body solely on sugar, it will eventually crash and burn, figuratively speaking. The body can run on some exogenous sugar, but it's likely not optimal; in fact, it's not even indicated for when protein and fat are available. Likewise, the human body will fail solely on protein or solely fat, and it may suffer problems when eating fat and sugar simultaneously. However, it operates quite well on some mixture of protein and fat, and can tolerate a relatively small amount of carbs without much consequence. This is because the human body was designed by ~4 million years of evolution to move away from fruit-eating to hunting (and the occasional eating of tubers when game is scarce). It is hardly more "omnivorous" than a cow is, given that cows will eat meat (and may other things) when you put it in front of them. Most large mammals can tolerate eating a wide variety of things, but that doesn't mean their species didn't develop to specialize in a specific diet. CICO also encounters an issue when it comes to using exercise as a means of maintaining or losing body fat. When you engage in exercise, your glycogen stores are prioritized over fat because it can be oxidized more rapidly. Although you are always relying on some amount of fat and carbs, neither being absolutely exclusive, exercise prioritizes carb metabolism. What happens when someone relies heavily on exercise for weight loss is that they may lose some weight because they've expended a lot of glycogen from their muscles and liver, but that doesn't really equate to losing an appreciable amount of body fat, which is what most people are interested in when they want to lose weight. It's not that exercise doesn't work, but it's not as efficient as people realize – that is unless you exercise hard and long enough that your body is forced to start relying much more heavily on fat oxidation.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  only pea brained morons (the general public when it comes to diet and exercise) actually think "exercise burns fat." everyone knows that actually exercise will increase your TDEE which when combined with calorie restriction will force your body to use fat reserves to maintain itself.
xnx 3y ago
"Stop Eating [Added] Sugar" is good advice, but insufficient. The ease of overconsumption in the American food environment is to great to be overcome by a single pithy phrase. Couple it with a few other phrases: "don't drink your calories", "eat more fiber" and you're starting to get somewhere.
- vlod 3y ago
  Maybe learn to cook simple meals is another tip. Rice/beans/vegetables and protein is cheap and a lot of the world (outside of the US) live on that for decades.

26 points by begueradj 3y ago

What worked for them won't work for everyone. Try snacking on 2,000 calories worth of nuts a day (which isn't that hard) and see how much weight you lose! What this person likely did was, eliminate the foods that caused them to over-eat, and they lost weight, which happened to be sugar.

robsh 3y ago
I have eaten nuts for days and I can tell you it will get old quickly. It’s no coincidence that sugar leads to over-eating. The body sends a very strong signal to eat when the sugar is digested. The same signal does not happen when nuts are digested.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  its not just sugar. its the mixture of sugar and fat and other things that make food items more likely to cause over-eating. its called palatability. Theres a huge difference between chocolate, or ice cream, and chowing down on spoonfuls of pure sugar.
  - fy20 3y ago
    This is why 'low sugar' and 'low fat' foods aren't really any better for you. They usually make up for the reduction by increasing the other thing.
leptons 3y ago
I have a sweet tooth, but I'm also diabetic. I still snack on sweets but I replaced sugar with pure monk fruit extract. I've lost 40 pounds in the last year. I make all kinds of monk fruit sweetened deserts and buy all kinds of low/no-sugar snacks and eat plenty of them every day to the point where my sweet tooth is very well satiated. You can say it's coincidental or whatever you want, but I have no doubt my weight loss and improved health is from cutting out sugar from my diet.
- sharadov 3y ago
  Congrats that's amazing! I know someone who has replaced regular sugar with date sugar, it tastes amazing, especially in deserts with none of the weird aftertaste.
  - leptons 3y ago
    That was the second time I reduced my sugar. The first time, about 20 years ago I was on the "candida diet", which eliminates all sugar intake, and it's extremely strict. It's done to reduce/remove candida from the gut. I lost 60 pounds. Reducing sugar isn't just about reducing calories. More sugar means more gut imbalance, and that can cause some serious problems. It's not always easy to connect the dots, and not many people really get to know or understand the messages their own bodies are sending them. And doctors DNGAF about nutrition or diet, not really at least - they just treat symptoms with pharmaceuticals but a real cure for some ailments means a serious change in eating habits, and one of the best changes to promote health is reducing sugar intake.
coldtrait 3y ago
Were you actually recommending that or being sarcastic? Nuts are calorie dense, since they're mostly made of fat and eating them makes it easy to gain weight.
- chucksta 3y ago
  > snacking on 2,000 calories worth of nuts Density would not matter if its a hard limit
  - ajuc 3y ago
    You'd be far more hungry if you eat 350 g of nuts than ~1kg of regular dinner food.
ravenstine 3y ago
It's almost as if calories aren't relevant, but that the effect that different foods have on the body is. Also, I'm not sure what you're communicating with the point about nuts. Are you saying that a person will gain weight? Lose weight? Lose nothing? Depending on what you were implying, you might actually be proving the author's point. By the way, I actually have done many experiments eating various monodiets, including nuts. The worst was walnuts. I love walnuts, but the end result was horrendous. I almost certainly would have lost weight because so much of the fats were not being absorbed (ALA is poorly metabolized) and passing through. On the other hand, fresh raw peanut butter (with a little salt) was not only satiating but well tolerated. My experience reflects exactly why people object to CICO. Nobody is saying that two different substances can emit the same amount of heat measured in calories when burned in a bomb calorimeter. The root objection is that the body will treat different substances the same way. It's wildly untrue that you can just eat anything and predict a health outcome with 3rd grade arithmetic. CICO doesn't explain why I could sustain a diet solely of peanut butter (no sugar added) but couldn't eat a diet only of walnuts, to the point where the "calories" were coming out in my shit having not been oxidized.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  youve found an extremely bizarre edge case where CICO doesnt perfectly hold and you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle that if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat?
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    It may be an extreme case, but it's no more an edge case than the millions who drop weight eating a vegan diet or a high fat diet. By definition, there is no edge case for the human body because nobody designed it. It developed with pressures to encourage it to handle foreign substances in different ways. There's no programmer who made the human but left out the part of efficiently metabolizing walnuts as a form of oversight. > you think thats some sort of death knell to the general principle Yes, it completely defeats the general principle, and if it didn't then those insisting on CICO would reply with more than "how can you actually believe what I don't believe?" > if you eat more calories than you burn you will store it as fat? If it was simple as that, then we wouldn't have glycogen stores because... why bother when anything not immediately oxidized turns to fat! If it's as simple as that, protein wouldn't ever be used to maintain lean mass but would be all converted to glucose and then into fat by the liver (not at all efficient). If it's as simple as that, then we would never shit. Don't believe me? I challenge you to collect your stool, dry it out, and light it on fire. Look – calories!
helij 3y ago
Exactly this. I threw bread out of my diet and counted calories for a year. I ate plenty of chocolate and sweets but still lost a substantial amount of fat. 0.5-2kg a month, depending on a month. All together I lost 16kg in a year.
vlod 3y ago
I think 'snacking' is the general problem that people need to stop. I suspect most people don't snack on nuts, but carb rich sugary-salty snacks, which keeps your insulin levels high. High insulin levels means you can't burn fat.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

brodouevencode 3y ago

> “Calorie is a calorie” is thermodynamically correct, but not true when it comes to diet. It’s like saying “it doesn’t matter if you drink booze or beer as long as you get the same amount of alcohol”. Alcohol intake is much easier to regulate with mild beverages. The same applies to energy intake with low-glycemic-index products. While I have serious concerns about most nutritional/exercise studies the underwhelming number that point to low carb/low fat/etc. as the end-all-be-all even controlled for calories is still mind-blowing. It's all calories at the end of the day, you should do whatever satisfies your micro and macro needs while helping you to stick to the diet.

ravenstine 3y ago
I think we would both agree that a theoretically imperfect diet that improves health is preferable to a perfect diet that doesn't maintain health in practice. However, it's not "all calories" at the end of the day. If all we cared about was losing or maintaining weight, then calories might approach being a tool for it. Yet it's not actually the weight we care about when we say we want to lose weight; it's the body fat we care about, and probably muscle maintenance, which is why CICO falls apart. Diets composed of different macro ratios can have drastically different outcomes, and what's funny about that is most camps ranging from vegans to carnivores implicitly agree on this, yet many still choose to elevate theoretical physics above physiology. A lump of coal has measurable "calories" when burned in a bomb calorimeter. That doesn't mean that a human will oxidize a lump of coal and produce calories. A human can eat carbs or fat, but they result in different outcomes because those things are fundamentally metabolized and utilized differently. Even different types of carbs and different types of fat have different effects from each other, regardless of caloric value. In terms of a person's health status, calories are hardly relevant. Also, most people don't even come close to measuring their "calories." When they lose weight counting calories, they are getting lucky by figuring out how much it takes to under eat, which can also mean unnecessary muscle loss when they don't take into account the composition of what they are eating. Many people who count calories either struggle to lose that weight or lose a ton of muscle because they believe that a calorie is a calorie and that therefore they can eat crap and "run it off." In either case, they're not really measuring what they think they're measuring because calorie counts on food are allowed to be as far off as 20%, and virtually nobody weighs their feces to estimate how many consumed "calories" didn't actually get used.

zedkaido 3y ago

delusional.

zedkaido 3y ago
carb the fuck up! the fat you eat is the fat you wear, simple as that.
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  While I disagree with the article it's not this simple either.

iwsk 3y ago

okay

NoraCodes 3y ago

> If you’re struggling to lose weight, just remove sugar from your diet. I promise you: you’ll be thinner. ... > I’ve never been exactly fat, but I used to be nearly 10 kg heavier when I did energy drinks, sugary snacks and desserts. So in other words, not only is this opinion not supported by the scientific evidence, it's not even really supported by mmalmi's personal experience. Phenomenal.

vlod 3y ago
>it's not even really supported by mmalmi's personal experience. Phenomenal. Notwithstanding this correct observation, it's still probably still a good idea for the majority of the population who aren't as analytical as folks on HN to follow. Too much so called 'food' is laced with added sugar, salt, bad oils that is not healthy which should generally be avoided.
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  I really dislike this kind of "we HackerNews users are smarter than everyone else" attitude. It's not justified to lie to people because you think they are stupid.
  - vlod 3y ago
    Sigh. Nowhere did I say that HN users are smarter, that people are stupid and should be lied to.

ericra 3y ago

I can tell you from experience that most overweight people know a lot about nutrition and proper ways to eat. Lack of knowledge and education is not the primary issue. Many people who struggle with food issues do so because they are self-medicating for various levels of depression/anxiety/other psychological issues. It is quite difficult to break these bad eating habits without having a replacement for the temporary positive effects they create. Articles like this are extremely annoying. Nearly every educated person knows everything this article says. It just comes across as condescending in a "I can do this, so anyone can" sort of way.

spazx 3y ago
This. Not to mention a lot of people are food-insecure and cannot access or afford healthier options.
- Jhsto 3y ago
  I would not underestimate the how shortsighted people are -- most of my peers are PhD students and most of them skip meals. Anecdotally, none of my flatmates eat breakfast, and my office mates often skip lunch and/or dinner because they have a meeting. The food offered at the university is a steal for the price and how convenient it is. These people are not out of money, they are (work) sprinting.
  - appplication 3y ago
    Is skipping meals bad? Like let’s assume the worst case: someone ate like shit all 3 meals a day. Instant ramen, spam, potato chips, ice cream, whatever. And then they skip a meal and on their next one they are 1.5 meals worth of food. Is that worse?
    - spazx 3y ago
      Yes. Skipping meals can condition your body to store away more of it because it isn't sure when the next meal will come, eventually making you fatter even if you eat very little.

Kirby64 3y ago

These truthy articles seem to be only correct by accident. The reality is if you cut out sugar, you tautologically get more calories from fat and protein. You need protein to maintain muscles, and most folks get fat too little protein in their diet. Purely by making that shift, you likely will have some muscle building, which naturally burns more calories… It has nothing to do with the sugar itself, you could eat only sugar and lose weight… you’d just be miserable and feel like you’re starving constantly, most likely.

OtherShrezzing 3y ago

The best diet advice you'll ever receive is "don't put anecdotal dietary advice into action unless it came from a qualified dietician".

Terr_ 3y ago
Corollary: "Nutritionists are usually people without the qualifications/education to be Dieticians."
- InSteady 3y ago
  In some places they may in fact be high school dropouts. Just like naturopaths, it's important to be aware of the laws and certifying bodies in your state / country when seeking health and medical advice. My state at least requires a 4 year education in an area approved by the state board of dieticians to call oneself a nutritionist... but that's a far cry from the 8 year education requirements plus board certification and testing required to become a registered dietician here. IIRC they are even developing something akin to residency requirements going forward. But in some states there are literally no legal protections on the title of nutritionist. I wonder if any aspiring dietary health bloggers (who perhaps became experts in nutrition via facebook posts) have moved residence to capitalize on this situation...

tbrake 3y ago

I think there's a positive knock-on effect in a lot of "I stopped eating X and everything got better" stories that usually go unsaid - once you decide to cut something out, it forces you to actually start _paying attention_ to what goes in. For a lot of us - myself and friends anecdotally included - that's possibly for the first time in a long time, or ever. And once you start paying attention, opportunities for other positive adjustments open up. Maybe you only intended to cut sugar, but now you realize through your tracking app you've been ridiculously deficient in potassium or way over target on saturated fats.

Terr_ 3y ago
> it forces you to actually start _paying attention_ to what goes in. Anecdotally, merely recording calories had a big impact. I found myself treating calories as if I were frugally spending money: "Wait, X has a a terrible pleasure/satiety per calorie compared to Y, that's a bad deal, I'd be wasting calories."
- el_memorioso 3y ago
  Actual research [1] says that just taking a photo of everything you eat helps awareness of food choices and portion sizes, which should contribute to healthier diets. Anecdotally, for me, just writing down everything I eat (without even counting calories) helps me avoid unnecessary eating.

ravenstine 3y ago

> “Calorie is a calorie” is thermodynamically correct, but not true when it comes to diet. [insert alcohol analogy here] In case this doesn't quite compute for some, I have a very simple thought experiment to apply to the CICO fallacy. If you fill your gasoline car with diesel, will the engine perform correctly? Of course we would not expect the engine to perform as well (or at all) on diesel. It doesn't matter if diesel contains more than enough energy per volume for the engine to run. It doesn't matter if the engine runs with some diesel mixed in with gasoline because it will not run as well and suffer other problems that can damage the engine. The car simply is not optimized to run on a fuel it wasn't designed for. If you run a human body solely on sugar, it will eventually crash and burn, figuratively speaking. The body can run on some exogenous sugar, but it's likely not optimal; in fact, it's not even indicated for when protein and fat are available. Likewise, the human body will fail solely on protein or solely fat, and it may suffer problems when eating fat and sugar simultaneously. However, it operates quite well on some mixture of protein and fat, and can tolerate a relatively small amount of carbs without much consequence. This is because the human body was designed by ~4 million years of evolution to move away from fruit-eating to hunting (and the occasional eating of tubers when game is scarce). It is hardly more "omnivorous" than a cow is, given that cows will eat meat (and may other things) when you put it in front of them. Most large mammals can tolerate eating a wide variety of things, but that doesn't mean their species didn't develop to specialize in a specific diet. CICO also encounters an issue when it comes to using exercise as a means of maintaining or losing body fat. When you engage in exercise, your glycogen stores are prioritized over fat because it can be oxidized more rapidly. Although you are always relying on some amount of fat and carbs, neither being absolutely exclusive, exercise prioritizes carb metabolism. What happens when someone relies heavily on exercise for weight loss is that they may lose some weight because they've expended a lot of glycogen from their muscles and liver, but that doesn't really equate to losing an appreciable amount of body fat, which is what most people are interested in when they want to lose weight. It's not that exercise doesn't work, but it's not as efficient as people realize – that is unless you exercise hard and long enough that your body is forced to start relying much more heavily on fat oxidation.

anthonypasq 3y ago
only pea brained morons (the general public when it comes to diet and exercise) actually think "exercise burns fat." everyone knows that actually exercise will increase your TDEE which when combined with calorie restriction will force your body to use fat reserves to maintain itself.

xnx 3y ago

"Stop Eating [Added] Sugar" is good advice, but insufficient. The ease of overconsumption in the American food environment is to great to be overcome by a single pithy phrase. Couple it with a few other phrases: "don't drink your calories", "eat more fiber" and you're starting to get somewhere.

vlod 3y ago
Maybe learn to cook simple meals is another tip. Rice/beans/vegetables and protein is cheap and a lot of the world (outside of the US) live on that for decades.