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So I could eat 10,000 calories of fat per day and lose weight if I cut out the carbs? I doubt it. There seems to be a zero-sum mentality that will (maybe) neve

by zdean 13y ago

So I could eat 10,000 calories of fat per day and lose weight if I cut out the carbs? I doubt it. There seems to be a zero-sum mentality that will (maybe) never die off that if one food group is good others must be bad. As for me, I'll listen to Michael Pollan's advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

dmm 13y ago
10,000 calories of fat would be extremely filling.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  3 pounds of butter. A liter of olive oil.
truthlaidbear 13y ago
Obviously that's not what they're saying. > Meat and fish rich in fat, along with nuts and olive oils, should form a large part of a healthy diet, while the consumption of pasta, potatoes, and white bread should be reduced. Key word: reduced.
jonmb 13y ago
To be fair, the article never says you can eat 10,000 calories and lose weight. I know a lot of people think low-fat = healthy, and that fat makes you fat, which isn't really the case. This article just seems to be confirming that "simple carbs" should be moderated, which is commonly suggested in health and fitness books.
- zdean 13y ago
  Here are a couple of things the article says: An influential Swedish health organisation has recommended a diet that is low in carbohydrates but not low in fat for people who are overweight or obese or have diabetes. ... “...When all recent scientific studies are lined up, the result is indisputable: our deep seated fear of fat is completely unfounded. You don’t get fat from fatty foods,” Nyström said. Those are both pretty solid endorsements for eating A LOT of fat/fatty foods. If they meant "A diet consisting of a calorie count appropriate for your body size should have a higher proportion of fats to carbs to make your target weight loss more efficient." But they didn't. They simply said/implied 'don't eat carbs but don't worry about how much fat you take in'.
Flowsion 13y ago
This is silly, you are using an extreme exaggeration and saying that the article is wrong. Those who cut carbs and and continue to eat a moderate amount of carbs while keeping their calories in check will lose weight. They will lose weight faster than those who continue to eat carbs. I don't think it's even an argument anymore that cutting carbs helps to lose weight. By saying "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" you are agreeing with less carbs..?
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  Zero fat diets work just as well. People lose weight if you force them to get most of their calories from sugar syrup, or potatoes, or bananas. The mechanism is the same: food reward, as explained in the whole health source link. People stop overeating because monotonous food is less rewarding. There's no magical obesogenic property of "carbs."
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Those who cut carbs and and continue to eat a moderate amount of carbs while keeping their calories in check will lose weight. Those who do anything while keeping their caloric intake in check relative to their caloric expenditure will lose weight. Controlling carbs may be particularly effective for some people in acheiving this, particularly because some people are relatively resistant to the satiating effect of carbohydrates, and thus have a higher tendency to overeat when eating carbs.
xwowsersx 13y ago
Your statement betrays a complete ignorance of the complexity of metabolic pathways and exactly how, on a biochemical level, the process of lipogenesis is initiated. Even if you don't plan on doing the high fat, low carb thing, I highly recommend reading The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Drs Phinney and Volek - you'll learn about how carbohydrates in any form are a major metabolic challenge for most people and how fatty acid metabolism works. If you want science, read that book.
enra 13y ago
Pollens advice is good and common sense. However seems people are really bad understanding what's healthy and following common sense when it comes to eating. Many people have grown up with that butter is unhealthy and vegetable oils or cereal are healthy. Also if you eat lots of carbohydrates you're more likely to feel hunger and loss of blood sugar every two hours, and you eat more. When you eat mostly plants, meat and fat, you feel satisfied longer and don't eat extra snacks, calories or other things, which makes eating sane amounts of food and calories easier. I don't think the obesity or health problems are completely going away by changing the macronutrient ratio but probably anything is better than high-carb & low-fat advice. In the end people need to learn moderate and balance their diet.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  > if you eat lots of carbohydrates you're more likely to feel hunger and loss of blood sugar every two hours You are describing symptoms of metabolic syndrome, typically caused by being fat, not an affect of carbohydrate. I am thin, and therefore not insulin resistant. I can and do add sugar to OJ sometimes for a quick meal. I don't get hungry again for hours.
jerf 13y ago
"So I could eat 10,000 calories of fat per day..." Try it. No carbs, just fat & protein, 10,000 calories. Seriously, try it. Just one day. Won't hurt you. It is possible to consume 10,000 calories of carbs in a day. Short of physically stuffing it in, you will find it effectively impossible to eat 10,000 calories of fat and protein. You'll probably find it a challenge to go beyond 3,000. (Though if you switch to a high-fat, high-protein diet you might manage in the first couple of days before your body adjusts fully. And I'm assuming you're average; a large man might get 4K, but again, that'll be a challenge.) Calories are not fungible. And once you accept that, it's frankly hard to look at the evidence, the biochemistry and how the hormones work, and not end up fingering carbs as the source of the obesity epidemic, not fat. You may find it interesting to note that carbs all come from plants. (But not all plants, of course.)
- mason55 13y ago
  The issue people take is that when people talk about this they frequently make it sound like carbs are what make cause obesity (eg the title of this post). However it's not that carbs cause obesity it's that carbs allow you to easily consume lots of calories and excess calories cause obesity. It's funny because most of the "carbs are bad" and "carbs are fine" people agree that in reality it's calories that make you fat. For some reason when they talk to each other that point gets lost and it turns into two people talking past each other who agree in actuality.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Carbs also trigger an insulin response, which commands the body to store excess glucose not currently being burned as fat: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbohydrates+insulin+fat+storage http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbohydrates+insulin+fa...
  - jerf 13y ago
    That's because "calories make you fat" is effectively a tautology. "You are fat" and "you are over consuming calories" may be two different English sentences, but they say the same thing. People get confused because of the English and think they can use one sentence to explain the other, but it doesn't make any sense. The correct question is, why do people over consume calories? And for that you get two very different answers. One is an external answer about how food has been made very available and appealing and is manufactured to be overconsumed (and often more than a faint whiff of Puritan moralism, indeed, often a great deal more than a faint whiff), and the other is about the biochemistry of consuming food and what happens to the satiety mechanisms and your blood sugar and where the blood sugar goes and why and how it comes back out again. There's a real difference at that level.
jdminhbg 13y ago
> Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Ah yes, the Tautology Diet.

by zdean 13y ago

dmm 13y ago

10,000 calories of fat would be extremely filling.

maxerickson 13y ago
3 pounds of butter. A liter of olive oil.

truthlaidbear 13y ago

Obviously that's not what they're saying. > Meat and fish rich in fat, along with nuts and olive oils, should form a large part of a healthy diet, while the consumption of pasta, potatoes, and white bread should be reduced. Key word: reduced.

jonmb 13y ago

To be fair, the article never says you can eat 10,000 calories and lose weight. I know a lot of people think low-fat = healthy, and that fat makes you fat, which isn't really the case. This article just seems to be confirming that "simple carbs" should be moderated, which is commonly suggested in health and fitness books.

zdean 13y ago
Here are a couple of things the article says: An influential Swedish health organisation has recommended a diet that is low in carbohydrates but not low in fat for people who are overweight or obese or have diabetes. ... “...When all recent scientific studies are lined up, the result is indisputable: our deep seated fear of fat is completely unfounded. You don’t get fat from fatty foods,” Nyström said. Those are both pretty solid endorsements for eating A LOT of fat/fatty foods. If they meant "A diet consisting of a calorie count appropriate for your body size should have a higher proportion of fats to carbs to make your target weight loss more efficient." But they didn't. They simply said/implied 'don't eat carbs but don't worry about how much fat you take in'.

Flowsion 13y ago

This is silly, you are using an extreme exaggeration and saying that the article is wrong. Those who cut carbs and and continue to eat a moderate amount of carbs while keeping their calories in check will lose weight. They will lose weight faster than those who continue to eat carbs. I don't think it's even an argument anymore that cutting carbs helps to lose weight. By saying "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" you are agreeing with less carbs..?

a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
Zero fat diets work just as well. People lose weight if you force them to get most of their calories from sugar syrup, or potatoes, or bananas. The mechanism is the same: food reward, as explained in the whole health source link. People stop overeating because monotonous food is less rewarding. There's no magical obesogenic property of "carbs."
dragonwriter 13y ago
> Those who cut carbs and and continue to eat a moderate amount of carbs while keeping their calories in check will lose weight. Those who do anything while keeping their caloric intake in check relative to their caloric expenditure will lose weight. Controlling carbs may be particularly effective for some people in acheiving this, particularly because some people are relatively resistant to the satiating effect of carbohydrates, and thus have a higher tendency to overeat when eating carbs.

xwowsersx 13y ago

Your statement betrays a complete ignorance of the complexity of metabolic pathways and exactly how, on a biochemical level, the process of lipogenesis is initiated. Even if you don't plan on doing the high fat, low carb thing, I highly recommend reading The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Drs Phinney and Volek - you'll learn about how carbohydrates in any form are a major metabolic challenge for most people and how fatty acid metabolism works. If you want science, read that book.

enra 13y ago

Pollens advice is good and common sense. However seems people are really bad understanding what's healthy and following common sense when it comes to eating. Many people have grown up with that butter is unhealthy and vegetable oils or cereal are healthy. Also if you eat lots of carbohydrates you're more likely to feel hunger and loss of blood sugar every two hours, and you eat more. When you eat mostly plants, meat and fat, you feel satisfied longer and don't eat extra snacks, calories or other things, which makes eating sane amounts of food and calories easier. I don't think the obesity or health problems are completely going away by changing the macronutrient ratio but probably anything is better than high-carb & low-fat advice. In the end people need to learn moderate and balance their diet.

a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
> if you eat lots of carbohydrates you're more likely to feel hunger and loss of blood sugar every two hours You are describing symptoms of metabolic syndrome, typically caused by being fat, not an affect of carbohydrate. I am thin, and therefore not insulin resistant. I can and do add sugar to OJ sometimes for a quick meal. I don't get hungry again for hours.

jerf 13y ago

"So I could eat 10,000 calories of fat per day..." Try it. No carbs, just fat & protein, 10,000 calories. Seriously, try it. Just one day. Won't hurt you. It is possible to consume 10,000 calories of carbs in a day. Short of physically stuffing it in, you will find it effectively impossible to eat 10,000 calories of fat and protein. You'll probably find it a challenge to go beyond 3,000. (Though if you switch to a high-fat, high-protein diet you might manage in the first couple of days before your body adjusts fully. And I'm assuming you're average; a large man might get 4K, but again, that'll be a challenge.) Calories are not fungible. And once you accept that, it's frankly hard to look at the evidence, the biochemistry and how the hormones work, and not end up fingering carbs as the source of the obesity epidemic, not fat. You may find it interesting to note that carbs all come from plants. (But not all plants, of course.)

mason55 13y ago
The issue people take is that when people talk about this they frequently make it sound like carbs are what make cause obesity (eg the title of this post). However it's not that carbs cause obesity it's that carbs allow you to easily consume lots of calories and excess calories cause obesity. It's funny because most of the "carbs are bad" and "carbs are fine" people agree that in reality it's calories that make you fat. For some reason when they talk to each other that point gets lost and it turns into two people talking past each other who agree in actuality.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Carbs also trigger an insulin response, which commands the body to store excess glucose not currently being burned as fat: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbohydrates+insulin+fat+storage http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbohydrates+insulin+fa...
- jerf 13y ago
  That's because "calories make you fat" is effectively a tautology. "You are fat" and "you are over consuming calories" may be two different English sentences, but they say the same thing. People get confused because of the English and think they can use one sentence to explain the other, but it doesn't make any sense. The correct question is, why do people over consume calories? And for that you get two very different answers. One is an external answer about how food has been made very available and appealing and is manufactured to be overconsumed (and often more than a faint whiff of Puritan moralism, indeed, often a great deal more than a faint whiff), and the other is about the biochemistry of consuming food and what happens to the satiety mechanisms and your blood sugar and where the blood sugar goes and why and how it comes back out again. There's a real difference at that level.

jdminhbg 13y ago

> Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Ah yes, the Tautology Diet.