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I really did enjoy this article. I don't think there is anything new here, but it's presented in a very "mass media friendly" way, which is important for finall
by jasallen 12y ago
I really did enjoy this article. I don't think there is anything new here, but it's presented in a very "mass media friendly" way, which is important for finally defeating the "just eat less" mentality.
Of course, it is still calorie in, calorie out, but we need to understand what effects metabolic changes in our body if we want to understand what calories are going out. Furthermore, quality of life generally indicates most people don't want to shut their metabolism down even if it did mean weight loss -- we want to be energy using machines that are motivated to "get up and do stuff", so just blindly reducing calories is not the path to that.
Calorie counting is an important part, but knowing what macro-nutrients ratio is just as important. More protein, more fat, more fiber, less carbs will help that a lot. Why is calorie tracking still so important? because fat takes forever to metabolize and is denser than carbs, so (a) You will need to break the psychological programming of expecting food to provide instant fuel, fat will take an hour(ish) to energize you; if you just are "still hungry" and eat more in 30 minutes you're losing the battle. (b) Most of us are used to eating a volume of food that equates to the calories we want from carbs. Eating that much in fat will obviously not help weight loss goals, so when eating fat dense foods we must eat much smaller portions.
There are really two separate feedback loops we use to feel sated. Fat is good
- danbruc 12y ago[...] psychological programming of expecting food to provide instant fuel [...] Is this a real thing? Eating makes me less hungry but not more energetic no matter what I eat.
- jasallen 12y agoI think maybe I wasn't clear. Normally when you eat, you expect to not feel hungry any more. In particular, if you are targeting a calorie deficit or weight loss you look forward to that "joy of food" sensation, a big part of which is the glucose that absorbs almost instantly and raises your blood sugar, and more of which absorbs over time beginning immediately. If you are on a low carb meal you will miss that feeling entirely. You won't feel from fat (though you will if you have plenty of protein and fibe) and you won't have the blood pressure spike that most of us associate with "food good" (note I don't mean the extreme spike you would get from eating pure sugar necessarily, just any higher than baseline peaking). So the psychological programming is getting used to not expecting that spike (and possibly that 'full' feeling), and still feeling you sated your self.
- josephjrobison 12y agoWhat if you eat a clean salad loaded with raw veggies? - that always does it for me. Or a fruit/greens smoothie.
- jasallen 12y agoThe fiber in the salad will of course help you with the full feeling. Many vegetables are chock full of carbohydrates, so it depends on your goals. If that's the only source of carbohydrates you are probably doing great, if it adds on top of bread and breakfast cereal and some noodles, etc, then the veggies are just adding more carbs.
- mjblack 12y agoIts not the type of food really thats the problem, it's processed foods and "low fat" diets. Processed carbs are easily digest and throw up your blood sugar levels. Insulin is released to counter this, which converts it into body fat. Raw "veggies" are better than smoothies because typically sugar is thrown in with it. Eating an apple is much healthier for you then drinking concentrated apple juice. The "low fat" diets are also a problem because to substitute the fat they add carbs, usually processed carbs. Keto diets limit the carb intake to about 80g per day and typically people on that diet feel more energy because the body is burning fat for fuel but importantly they are not in energy saving mode.