Weight loss

[googily]

The authors of this study and the other studies cited within it are quite clear about this being 'association'. The cohort used in their paper was not originally meant to look for the effects of diet soda so this is what is called 'data dredging' part of publish or perish but also useful for forming hypotheses which then can be further evaluated. The media loves to trumpet these. Life, it turns out is a fatal condition. The authors also state that there are few rationale for why diet soda would cause these effects and that the most plausible are behavioral rather than metabolic so it still comes down to not over eating.

I am certainly biased having drunk swimming pools of Diet Coke since the 80s. Still have the same normal BMI as ever did. Frankly, I am more concerned about the phosphorous content than the two amino acids that make up the sweetener.

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Yeah, as the previous Diet Coke commenter, I am mainly worried about my teeth. My last A1C, after three months of lowish carb, was 4.9, most definitely undiabetic.

 

[kimcdougc]

You are correct. The healthy people are paying for the chronically sick and with the obesity epidemic in full throttle, the insurance premiums will continue to rise. I have no issues with people with pre-existing conditions, but not those who eat their way into chronic health issues are killing the health system. On our way to our doctor in Santa Monica yesterday, we saw a big sign at the Burger King that read "Now Accepting EBT Payments". What a great way to keep the poorest people fat.

By the way, 5'7" and 147 lbs is not even close to overweight. But 121 lbs is really lean. Good work! My wife is about 5'7" and around 130 lbs.

My view is that you can eat most foods in moderation. There is nothing wrong with pasta. It won't make you fat unless you gorge on the endless pasta from Olive Garden. Potatoes are good for you also but not deep fried or the supersized ones stuffed with bacon, sour cream, cheese, and the sprinkles of chives (it makes people feel like they are eating their greens). There is nothing wrong with coffee or alcohol in moderation. Our espresso machine runs every morning.

For me, you are quite right. I have been overweight for over 20 years. I had to make a trip to Atlanta in March to take care of my DS after knee surgery. Her doctor was so upset with how much weight she gained and said when the time came he wouldn't be able to do a knee replacement when she needed it (sooner than later). I felt like he was talking to me too, so I started doing 1500 calories a day. I walk at least 10,000 steps everyday.

3 months later, 23 pounds down and about 58 more to go. This is the first "diet" I can really do. I eat what I want but just count the calories. If I want to go out to a nice dinner I eat light for breakfast and lunch and do dinner.

I am loosing it slower but am keeping it off and don't feel like I am punishing myself. Works for me.

At 1500 calories you really do eat healthier because you eat smaller portions but still get full.

Each person has to find what works for them.

 

[haha]

I agree with this- a friend ended up with some sort of lasting problems when he went on a low-carb diet and apparently ate too much animal protein- now he has to be very careful about not eating too much meat.

What sort of lasting problems does he have, and is he doing well at dealing with them?

Ha

 

[O2Bfree]

The eating behavior I've had the greatest long-term success with is eating more slowly and chewing and savoring my food more. This behavior naturally makes me eat much less without the challenge of having to limit my food choices.

 

[athena53]

What sort of lasting problems does he have, and is he doing well at dealing with them?

I wish I could remember the details. I think he developed kidney issues because he ate too much meat, and can't eat large quantities of it now or it makes him sick. He's 80 years old, active, and thin as a rail (don't know why he went on a low-carb diet, anyway), so he seems to be managing it well.

 

[Freedom56]

We have been in Europe for the past month (most of the time in the French part of Switzerland) my observation so far is that the overweight and obesity epidemic seems to be contained here. Although the incidence of overweight adults has increased to about 14%, it is far lower than most countries. The rates are higher in the German Cantons. I have been to many family gatherings and dinner parties over the past month and have rarely seen anyone that's overweight. My wife's friends are in their late 40's to early 50's and they all look really good. They drink wine, bear, diet sodas, sugar loaded sodas, eat a lot of bread, processed meats, cheese, chips and other snacks, cakes and pastries. and other evil foods yet they stay slim. It really comes down to portion control and exercise. Starting at the supermarket, meats are packaged and sold in very small portion. When they eat salami and other cold cuts, the slices are extremely thin and they seem to be content with small meals. Bread is always served with meals. Coke Zero and Orangina seem to be the preferred soft drinks. In fact, breakfast is for a lot of people here is bread or croissant, butter, and jam, some fruits, and sometimes yogurt. So carbs and processed foods aren't making people fat here. So it must be a combination of portion control and exercise. Just my observations.

 

[athena53]

We have been in Europe for the past month (most of the time in the French part of Switzerland) my observation so far is that the overweight and obesity epidemic seems to be contained here.

I've puzzled over the lower rates of obesity in Europe, too. Some of my thoughts:

Less snacking between meals. "Real" food. Pastries are made with butter and cream, not partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil and "creme" filling. No high-fructose corn syrup. I think food made with real ingredients is more satisfying so you eat less. Meals are leisurely- not wolfed down in front of the computer or while walking down the street. Restaurant portions are not Cheesecake Factory-sized.

I do see unfortunate signs of some of our eating habits being exported- the Reykjavik Dunkin' Donuts had a line of people waiting outside one Saturday in August. (Maybe it was all the American tourists?)

 

[Rianne]

The ingredients/portion size in foods are key. One can look at salad dressing. Most have very high sodium, sugar and 200+ calories and 2TBS is the portion this is based on.



Ice cream portions, calories, fat sugar are based on !/4 - 1/2 cup servings. Meat, 4 oz.

One has to realize not only are the sugar, fat, carb content of food, the portion size listed. I look back on my ice cream portions and a nice sized bowl seemed like a portion to me when in reality in was 4-5 portions. Carbs, good fat and some sugar is not the problem, it is paying attention to the true portion you are eating.

 

[MRG]

The ingredients/portion size in foods are key. One can look at salad dressing. Most have very high sodium, sugar and 200+ calories and 2TBS is the portion this is based on.



Ice cream portions, calories, fat sugar are based on !/4 - 1/2 cup servings. Meat, 4 oz.

One has to realize not only are the sugar, fat, carb content of food, the portion size listed. I look back on my ice cream portions and a nice sized bowl seemed like a portion to me when in reality in was 4-5 portions. Carbs, good fat and some sugar is not the problem, it is paying attention to the true portion you are eating.

+1

I didn't know a pound of pasta had more than 2 servings. Haha it's 100 calories per ounce. I'd eat 800 calories of pasta add my sauce with meatballs, cheese, bread and butter. A meal was an easy 1500 calories.

I haven't eaten bottled salad dressing in 3 years. I'll put some blue cheese and a few drops of olive oil on a salad. Sometimes I'll eat it dry, amazingly salads can be awesome with the right veggies.

Done with ketchup too. Look at it's ingredients, you might stop too.

Probably the best investment I made was a $15 food scale. Nothing gets eaten without being weighed..

 

[Chuckanut]

A while back I heard a guy make a few recommendations for weight control. I like them because they work for me. Maybe they will help some others.

1. Don't eat anything you don't make yourself or is made by a loved one you live with. IOW, if you want french fries for lunch, get out the potatoes, cut them up, fry them, do all the cleanup, and then eat the fries. Personally, I find it a lost easier to cut up some cucumber and tomato, add some olive oil and salt, and add that to my lunch menu.

2. If your food contains added sugar, make sure you add it yourself. At first this sounds silly - Add sugar to your food!!! But, this made perfect sense when I thought about it. IOW, don't buy foods that have added sugar in them that you can't account for. When you add it yourself, you know how much you are adding and often will add less or not add it at all.

OK, they are both hard to do all the time, especially when enjoying a meal out with friends, but I try to use the 80% rule and let the other 20% of my meals slip a little. No point being a fanatic about it.

 

[madsquopper]

Heck, if you want to lose weight then just go on the salmonella diet I started that last Wednesday night and had lost 12 pounds by Sunday morning.

All joking aside, I'm doing OK (finally) after doing the usual "treat the symptoms" with rest, lots of fluids, and eventually a bland diet to start. I was surprised at how much weight I lost given how much fluid I've been drinking.

Larry

 

[Rianne]

Heck, if you want to lose weight then just go on the salmonella diet I started that last Wednesday night and had lost 12 pounds by Sunday morning.

All joking aside, I'm doing OK (finally) after doing the usual "treat the symptoms" with rest, lots of fluids, and eventually a bland diet to start. I was surprised at how much weight I lost given how much fluid I've been drinking.

Larry

That is awful, I hope all is ok. At least you were drinking fluids. When I had food poisoning, I could not keep anything down including water. Very dangerous for kidneys. I was told, after I recovered, I should have gone to Emerg Room for IV solution. It took a long time to enjoy food again. Would not wish that on anyone.

 

[MRG]

Heck, if you want to lose weight then just go on the salmonella diet I started that last Wednesday night and had lost 12 pounds by Sunday morning.

All joking aside, I'm doing OK (finally) after doing the usual "treat the symptoms" with rest, lots of fluids, and eventually a bland diet to start. I was surprised at how much weight I lost given how much fluid I've been drinking.

Larry

Oh yea I've been there, done that. Three days in my bathroom and my trusty bucket buddy. After that, I was admitted to a gastrointestinal unit of a local hospital for another 3 days. They captured, weighed, cultured and had fun with all that stuff. If you've never stayed in a gastrointestinal unit it's a great time.

They performed a CT and then needed to do a sigmoidoscopy to check something else out. When the gastroenterologist told me I needed to prep, the look I gave him was special! All of this because a restaurant in KCMO(The Phoenix) fed me poison homemade mayo.

 

[flintnational]

I read the recent carbohydrate study published in the Lancet. Clearly, I do not have enough to do!

So, what is the key finding? Diets with an intake of 50%-55% carbohydrates lead to longer life than diets with lower carb percentiles. Keep in mind this is only an observational study and requires participants to fill out food questionaires indicating what they ate over the prior several years. This is not a randomized controlled trial. It cannot show cause and effect, only associations. Additionally, this study conflicts with several short term randomized controlled trials that show low carb diets reduce weight and improve medobolic markers for heart disease and diabetes. Here is my N=1 example of the implications of this study compared to my low carb diet.

My lunch (low carb)
Broiled hamburger patty only (4 ounce)
1/2 avocado
1 cup sauted kale
2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (for kale and avocado)

Nutrition - Calories 736 - 14% Carbohydrate

Comparison lunch (McDonald's)
Quarter Pounder with Cheese
Small fries

Nutrition - Calories 737 - 49% Carbohydrate

Per this study, the McDonald's, meal at 49% carbohydrate, will lead to a longer life compared to my lunch, at 14% carbohydrate. And the McDonald's meal falls at the study finding optimal carb intake of 50%-55%. Common sense and several randomized controlled trials say this study is flawed. Anybody want to check your blood glucose after each of these meals?

 

[6miths]

The findings aren't inconsistent in my mind as they are apples and oranges. Carbohydrates per se are not bad and are likely the bodies preferred fuel. They are just very difficult to store in their native state. It is ingesting an excess of carbohydrates (and perhaps an excess of simple and atypical carbohydrates) that is likely problematic. Everything in moderation and like a departed poster's advice 'just eat real food' (JERF)

As you point out, association and definitely not suggestion of causation. Food for thought!

 

[LOL!]

A careful reading of the study is in order. Don't trust journalists to tease out the important details.

Our findings suggest a negative long-term association between life expectancy and both low carbohydrate and high carbohydrate diets when food sources are not taken into account. These data also provide further evidence that animal-based low carbohydrate diets should be discouraged. Alternatively, when restricting carbohydrate intake, replacement of carbohydrates with predominantly plant-based fats and proteins could be considered as a long-term approach to promote healthy ageing.

 

[flintnational]

^^I agree that food quality is very important (IMO, probably the most important factor in diet.). That was one of the flaws with the study. They did not look at food quality only macro nutrient make-up. In the comments they indicated whole carbs would be better than refined. But once again, they did not look at this. So, sort of a useless analysis. That was my point showing the MCD meal met their study findings. And my meal full of whole veggies did not.

Edit to add: Following on 6miths post.

 

[Freedom56]

Forget McDonald's, if you are going to eat a burger, go all the way. Try the Dead Hippie burger from MeatLiquor (Brighton UK also in London). The world's best burger by far.
Once in a while it's okay to eat this. Our daily exercise easily covered the calories. I washed mine down with a beer. What you see in the picture cost about 30 pounds or $43 USD. A lower cost option burger would be the In-N-Out double double at about 30% of the cost for the same meal minus the beer.

 

[RAE]

Chris Kresser took a look at the Lancet study, and pretty much shredded it:

Here is a link to his analysis, and a couple of excerpts from it:

https://chriskresser.com/will-a-low-carb-diet-shorten-your-life/

"Decades of nutrition research have myopically focused on the quantity of protein, fat, and carbohydrate we eat, without considering the quality. In my mind, this is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the bulk of nutrition research."


"I’m going to give you seven reasons why you should take the recent Lancet study with a huge grain of salt:

• Using observational data to draw conclusions about causality
• Relying on inaccurate food frequency questionnaires (FFQs)
• Failing to adjust for confounding factors
• Focusing exclusively on diet quantity and ignoring quality
• Meta-analyzing data from multiple sources

Unfortunately, this study has already been widely misinterpreted by the mainstream media, and that will continue because:

1. Most media outlets don’t have science journalists on staff anymore
2. Even so-called “science journalists” today seem to lack basic scientific literacy"

 

[flintnational]

Chris Kresser took a look at the Lancet study, and pretty much shredded it:

Here is a link to his analysis, and a couple of excerpts from it:

https://chriskresser.com/will-a-low-carb-diet-shorten-your-life/

"Decades of nutrition research have myopically focused on the quantity of protein, fat, and carbohydrate we eat, without considering the quality. In my mind, this is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the bulk of nutrition research."
[/LIST]

Nice analysis. IMO, once we went down the "a calorie is a calorie" path, we have ignored food quality. The two meals I posted, post #164, had the same calorie count but the quality of the meals was vastly different. Food quality matters.

 

[6miths]

Chris Kresser took a look at the Lancet study, and pretty much shredded it:

Here is a link to his analysis, and a couple of excerpts from it:

https://chriskresser.com/will-a-low-carb-diet-shorten-your-life/

"Decades of nutrition research have myopically focused on the quantity of protein, fat, and carbohydrate we eat, without considering the quality. In my mind, this is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the bulk of nutrition research."


"I’m going to give you seven reasons why you should take the recent Lancet study with a huge grain of salt:

• Using observational data to draw conclusions about causality
• Relying on inaccurate food frequency questionnaires (FFQs)
• Failing to adjust for confounding factors
• Focusing exclusively on diet quantity and ignoring quality
• Meta-analyzing data from multiple sources

Unfortunately, this study has already been widely misinterpreted by the mainstream media, and that will continue because:

1. Most media outlets don’t have science journalists on staff anymore
2. Even so-called “science journalists” today seem to lack basic scientific literacy"

The media does what it wants which is mainly to try to generate clicks or views. Point one is the key one. This is observational data. Association not causation and I didn't get the impression that the authors were saying that there was causation. This type of study is meant to raise questions and avenues for future research not to answer questions definitively.

Meta-analysis IS taking data from multiple sources. That's the point.

One should always be skeptical.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

So I thought I would give an update on my progress. If you remember last July I weighed 190 lbs. I was in the hospital because of high blood pressure at that time. A week later I weighed 180 lbs. My progress was slow for a while. I was stuck in the high 170's. I finally bought a scale so I could check my progress. It was slow going.


Fast forward to today. I am consistently weighing 170lbs. So 20 lbs I have lost since July. My ideal weight is from 129 to 173. I would like to get down to 165 lbs. I think I can do it. Three months ago I would have said no way. I drink more water, and my portion sizes for my meals are smaller. I quit drinking beer for good. So all that has helped me.



My BP is now under control and I feel really good. So I am on the right track.

 

[MRG]

So I thought I would give an update on my progress. If you remember last July I weighed 190 lbs. I was in the hospital because of high blood pressure at that time. A week later I weighed 180 lbs. My progress was slow for a while. I was stuck in the high 170's. I finally bought a scale so I could check my progress. It was slow going.


Fast forward to today. I am consistently weighing 170lbs. So 20 lbs I have lost since July. My ideal weight is from 129 to 173. I would like to get down to 165 lbs. I think I can do it. Three months ago I would have said no way. I drink more water, and my portion sizes for my meals are smaller. I quit drinking beer for good. So all that has helped me.



My BP is now under control and I feel really good. So I am on the right track.

Nice.

 

[ugeauxgirl]

So I thought I would give an update on my progress. If you remember last July I weighed 190 lbs. I was in the hospital because of high blood pressure at that time. A week later I weighed 180 lbs. My progress was slow for a while. I was stuck in the high 170's. I finally bought a scale so I could check my progress. It was slow going.


Fast forward to today. I am consistently weighing 170lbs. So 20 lbs I have lost since July. My ideal weight is from 129 to 173. I would like to get down to 165 lbs. I think I can do it. Three months ago I would have said no way. I drink more water, and my portion sizes for my meals are smaller. I quit drinking beer for good. So all that has helped me.



My BP is now under control and I feel really good. So I am on the right track.

Congratulations- that's an impressive amount of weight you've lost, and sounds like your overall health is much better. Good for you!