I unhappily report that I am right about obesity and diet (Very long)

[wonky]

@MsWhatsit

Now wait a minute. If I do this silly diet for 10 days and the results are counter to what you expected, you’re not going to tell me to do it for 20 more days, are you? Because I’m willing to go on the all-bacon diet for 10 days just for kicks, but 30 is not happening. For one thing, I have shoulder surgery on the 24th and I will be having a milkshake afterward, come hell or high water.

I can tell you what would happen.

1. In the first couple of days, you would likely lose a great deal of weight. The amount depends a little on how much salt and fluids you take in because those first couple of days will be your body dumping water and glycogen. This weight is pretty much phantom weight because if you eat carbs, you will regain it extremely quickly. This is why a lot of people see huge stalls in weight loss if they “cheat” on their low-carb diets. Carbohydrates will cause glycogen stores to increase and will cause water retention.

2. The first couple of days you will likely feel pretty wretched. Hungry, restless, possibly nauseated, possibly headachey. You will probably be willing to kill your mother for a cookie.

3. By day 4 or 5, eating that many calories will gross you out. You won’t be very hungry and if you tracked what you were consuming willingly, it’d probably be closer to 1200 calories than 3000. You may still be having intense sugar cravings, though these should taper off soon. You may find that you are incredibly constipated and your breath stinks. You may feel irritable and without a ton of energy. You may feel great. This seems to be pretty individual.

And what happens next seems to depend on the person. I have never tried to force myself to overeat (eat past the point of satiation) on a low-carb plan, and I’m pretty sure that would have proved disastrous for me. If I went on this test-plan, I would gain weight since I wouldn’t have the initial water/glycogen drop (and I have and do count calories. I know exactly how much I’m eating and what it takes to lose, maintain, and gain weight).

[Larry_Borgia]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Big fat fake

For the record, Staubes is a journalist with no medical or scientific credentials.

I don’t care that much about Stoid’s weight or what she does or does not do to lose it.

I would point out though, that Taubes has replied to Fumento, that Fumento is no more a scientist than Taubes, but is also a journalist, and a very controversial one. FWIW, He’s a global warming skeptic.

[Stoid]

@Meyer6

Believe me, it’s not at all uncommon for journalists to cite papers that don’t actually say what the journalists think they say. Whether they are misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information, I don’t know. But it happens. Peer-review also tends to encourage the author to admit that there is controversy about the issue - it sounds like this book is cherry-picking only the science that you want to hear.

@MsWhatsit

whether it relies on peer-reviewed science or not.

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Big fat fake

For the record, Staubes is a journalist with no medical or scientific credentials.

@Meyer6

That’s him *reading *peer-reviewed papers and interpreting them himself. Has he written any peer-reviewed papers where his own thoughts are critiqued by those in the know?

@DiosaBellissima

What’s wrong with asking for someone providing medical advice to have their theories be peer reviewed? Wouldn’t it be foolish to not ask for these things?

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

this clown, Staubes (who goes much further than Atkins), and his total lack of scientific basis for his magical weight loss claims.

@Shot_From_Guns

Anyone who believes what this book is claiming is a credulous ignoramus grasping at straws to avoid personal responsibility for their own health.*

Let’s see… are the Dopers right? Is this guy some clueless clown twisting things for his own use, missing the point of the science he writes about, (or as Dio would have it, is he not even using science at all, just pulling stuff from his credential-free ass?)

Gary Taubes has won the Science in Society Award of the National Association of Science Writers three times and was awarded an MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship for 1996-97.

Taubes studied applied physics at Harvard and aerospace engineering at Stanford (MS, 1978). After receiving a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in 1981, Taubes joined Discover magazine as a staff reporter in 1982. Since then he has written numerous articles for Discover, Science and other magazines. Originally focusing on physics issues, his interests have more recently turned to medicine and nutrition.

Taubes’ books have all dealt with scientific controversies. Nobel Dreams takes a critical look at the politics and experimental techniques behind the Nobel Prize-winning work of physicist Carlo Rubbia. Bad Science is a chronicle of the short-lived media frenzy surrounding the Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion experiments of 1989.

So, do you think MIT awards science journalism fellowships to science journalists who cherry pick their data, rely on “common sense anecdotes” for their proofs, or misunderstand and misinterpret the research they read?

Knight Science Journalism Fellowships are for mid-career journalists who demonstrate a high level of journalistic excellence and accomplishment, as well as a long-term commitment to their craft.

Is the National Association of Science Writers just blind to the way he misinterprets and misunderstands things, all three times they gave him the Science in Society award?

The National Association of Science Writers (NASW) created the Science in Society Journalism Awards to honor and encourage “outstanding investigative and interpretive reporting about the sciences and their impact for good and ill.”

Maybe it’s silly of me, but I don’t find anything clownlike about a man who studied at Harvard and Stanford and got his Masters at Columbia, and I tend to think that he probably does a pretty good job of sifting through scientific writing to pull out the correct information.

I’m sure others will disagree, but that’s what makes life interesting, I suppose.

[DrDeth]

@jsgoddess

I can tell you what would happen.

1. In the first couple of days, you would likely lose a great deal of weight. The amount depends a little on how much salt and fluids you take in because those first couple of days will be your body dumping water and glycogen. This weight is pretty much phantom weight because if you eat carbs, you will regain it extremely quickly. This is why a lot of people see huge stalls in weight loss if they “cheat” on their low-carb diets. Carbohydrates will cause glycogen stores to increase and will cause water retention.

2. The first couple of days you will likely feel pretty wretched. Hungry, restless, possibly nauseated, possibly headachey. You will probably be willing to kill your mother for a cookie.

3. By day 4 or 5, eating that many calories will gross you out. You won’t be very hungry and if you tracked what you were consuming willingly, it’d probably be closer to 1200 calories than 3000. You may still be having intense sugar cravings, though these should taper off soon. You may find that you are incredibly constipated and your breath stinks. You may feel irritable and without a ton of energy. You may feel great. This seems to be pretty individual.

).

1. You do, but it’s not “phantom”. Yes, like any diet, it’s easy to binge and regain weight once you get off it, but getting off low-carb onto a balanced “Food” diet will make maintaining the wieght loss easy. I know this, as I just did it. One does have to resist the tempation to eat a dozen donuts, two bags of chips and a package of Oreos every day, sure.

2. Nope, nope and nope. Sugar cravings come in about month 3-6 or so.

3. It is true that eating all the bacon (steak, whatever- or anything) you want can pale. You aren’t hungry, true. There’s no reason to be constipated, that fiber powder stuff will handle that. However, note that a true low carb diet does contain plenty of leafy greens- just few carrots, tomatoes and other carb veggies.

[Stoid]

Taubes keeps a blog.

Over the past decade, as I’ve read more than a century’s worth of literature on obesity and nutrition and chronic disease, I’ve been consistently amazed at the ability of researchers, learned commentators (and the far greater ranks of unlearned commentators), physicians and public health authorities to accept some of the rote ideas about these excruciatingly important subjects without seemingly giving it any conscious thought whatsoever, or without wanting to ask the kinds of questions that a reasonably smart junior high school student should ask if given the opportunity. To this date, I don’t understand this failure of intellect, although I’ll almost assuredly be returning to it regularly in future blogs.
…

The underlying assumption of Lehrer’s column is that we get obese because we overeat, and evidence of the fact that Americans eat too much is that a third of us are obese. Okay, so let’s take a look at this concept from a less than conventional perspective and see what questions we might naturally ask.

First, obese people tend to be weight stable for long periods of their life, just like lean people. So when they’re weight stable, the obese and overweight are obviously in energy balance. They’re not overeating during these periods of stable weight. They’re eating to match their expenditure, doing exactly what the lean do (and get copious credit for). So one obvious question is why the overweight and obese are only in energy balance when they’re carrying 10, 20, 30 or maybe 100 pounds of excess fat, and lean people are in energy balance without the excess? What’s the culprit for that? Because the problem isn’t that the obese overeat when they’re obese, it’s that they overeat when they’re lean and they continue to overeat until they become obese.

That’s from his entry, The Inanity of Overeating. Give it a read.
(I’m not going to respond to anything that is focused on this quote alone. If you can’t read the book, you can read a blog post. If you can’t read a blog post, I can’t waste my time.)

[Zyada]

@Enderw24

I put gas in my car, but that’s not why it runs.

To respond to the most reasonable of these arguments, neither does you car store energy.

If humans only consumed and burned fuel, none of us would be fat. Fat is fuel storage, for when there is an inadequate amount of food.

What Stoid and Taubes are saying is this: our weight is not the result of the events (calories, exercise, and metabolism for starters) of today or yesterday. It is the result of these events happening day in and day out, every day since our birth.

[Malthus]

There are tons of references linked here: http://www.atkinsexposed.org/atkins/22/Opinions.htm

The website is an unabashedly anti-Atkins one (just look at the title), but the links look legit.

Examples:

United States Department of Agriculture

Popular Diets: A Scientific Review 1/2

Obesity Research 9(2001):1s
by Marjorie R. Freedman, Janet King, and Eileen Kennedy

Energy intake and energy expenditure are relevant when looking at weight gain and weight loss. Overweight and obesity results from an energy imbalance (e.g., excess caloric intake, decreased energy expenditure, or both) (54). Reduction of body weight and body fat can be achieved by creating an energy deficit (e.g., restricting energy intake, increasing energy expenditure, or a combination of the two) (6,18,54). Atkins (48) calls these basic thermodynamic principles “a millstone around the neck of dieters and a miserable and malign influence on their efforts to lose” (p. 6). Do followers of high-fat, low-CHO diets have a metabolic advantage that enables them to eat a greater number of calories, and still lose body weight and body fat?

No scientific evidence exists to suggest that low-CHO ketogenic diets have a metabolic advantage over more conventional diets for weight reduction (55). Studies consistently show that under conditions of negative energy balance, weight loss is a function of caloric intake, not diet composition (54). Table 4 indicates diet composition of individuals who self-select high-fat, low-CHO diets, and Tables 5a and 5b show weight change in obese individuals consuming high-fat, low-CHO diets. In all cases, individuals on high-fat, low-CHO diets lose weight because they consume fewer calories.

http://www.atkinsexposed.org/atkins/107/United_States_Department_of_Agriculture.htm

[Submerged]

Apparently, Stoid, thou hast been pitted.

[wonky]

I begin to see why people read Taubes’s book and are reporting lots of goofy things from it. They, I suspect, don’t understand what he’s saying. Why? Because he’s a lazy writer.

Let’s compare Stoid’s translation to Taubes’s words in his blog:

@Stoid

Read the book: Taubes explains that fat people overeat because they are fat. They are not fat because they overeat.

[

If we got fat, we had to overeat. That’s always true; it’s obvious, and it tells us nothing about why we got fat, or why one person got fat and another didn’t.

](http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/)

Actually, it tells us precisely “why we got fat.” What it doesn’t tell is why we overeat. Because he keeps eliding the middles, people seem to be thinking that he’s claiming the middles (the overeating) don’t exist and don’t cause the later events in the chain.

[Stoid]

**UPDATE ON MY WEIGHT AND DIET:
**

I started this thread Feb 15, after about a month of severe calorie restriction with no loss. Between Feb 15 and March 1, when I got the book and started reading it, I was restricting calories even more severely, trying to move my weight. I maybe lost a pound. Hard to say, it kept bouncing back and forth. Pound down day one, back up day two.

It’s the 9th. I started reading the book 9 days ago, finished it 8 days ago. I had just gone to the market before that and I had a lot of carby food in the house that I didn’t want to simply throw away…but after reading the book it was hard to make it ok to eat it. So I’ve been very carb-restricted anyway. But I stopped worrying about butter and fat and quantity.

For example, counting calories I would make a burger by carefully measuring 80/20 ground beef, 4 oz before cooking. Fry, squeeze in paper towels until no fat left. No cheese, no mayo. Two slices of whole grain bread, mustard, pickle, lettuce. 486 calories (probably less because I squeeze the meat over and over to get the fat out.)

Same burger carb-restricted, calorie indifferent: Double the meat, no drain or squeeze. 2 oz cheese. A shmear of mayo on big lettuce leaves (not a lot, ew. ) onion, pickles. 933 calories.

Calorie restricted: 1 whole egg, two whites, fried in a bare teaspoon of butter with two slices whole grain with another teaspoon of butter. Calories 373

Carb restricted: 3 eggs with cheese and sausage 701

And like that.

But I’ve still been having my sweet morning coffee and a couple of pieces of fruit. On Sunday I gave myself a “freebie” and made cornbread, which I ate quite a bit of.

I’ve lost 5 pounds.

We’ll see what the future brings. Hopefully some affordable corned beef now that it’s near St. Pattys, because I love it. (A package that’s $15 today might be $5 next week. I plan to stock up and freeze it.) And it’s not as satisfying without potatoes or bread, but it’s still damn tasty with cabbage and horseradish.

Next thing to do is start measuring my BP regularly.

So y’all stick with starving yourselves if you like. So far this looks like a much better idea to me.

[ladyfoxfyre]

@Stoid

**UPDATE ON MY WEIGHT AND DIET:
**But I’ve still been having my sweet morning coffee and a couple of pieces of fruit. On Sunday I gave myself a “freebie” and made cornbread, which I ate quite a bit of.

Look, this is exactly what I tried to tell you was happening in your “people who exercise compensate with increased calories” cite which failed at showing how irrelevant calories were. You are doing exactly what so many people who misunderstand diets and exercise do. Thirty minutes on the elliptical does not mean you can eat 5 cupcakes. Going “low carb” does not mean eating “quite a bit of cornbread”. At least if you’re going to try and abide by what he says in the book, try and stick with it and not pick and choose what you want to believe out of it. Because I read the book too, and you are wildly misrepresenting its claims.

[Amasia]

@ladyfoxfyre

Look, this is exactly what I tried to tell you was happening in your “people who exercise compensate with increased calories” cite which failed at showing how irrelevant calories were. You are doing exactly what so many people who misunderstand diets and exercise do. Thirty minutes on the elliptical does not mean you can eat 5 cupcakes. Going “low carb” does not mean eating “quite a bit of cornbread”. At least if you’re going to try and abide by what he says in the book, try and stick with it and not pick and choose what you want to believe out of it. Because I read the book too, and you are wildly misrepresenting its claims.

I hesitate to pile on, but I completely agree with ladyfoxfyre. The whole point of eating low carb as articulated by Taubes is to push your body into ketosis (which clearly, eating cornbread is about the worst thing you can do if ketosis is your goal). I can understand an occasional slip up, but cooking something is a very intentional, planned consumption. I think you need to ask yourself, how serious are you about applying Taubes’ book and not just advocating for it in an online forum.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Just out of curiosity, if obesity is genetic and has nothing to do with calories, then why did I never see any obese people in Liberia?

[ladyfoxfyre]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Just out of curiosity, if obesity is genetic and has nothing to do with calories, then why did I never see any obese people in Liberia?

Because the gene pool in Liberia is intolerant to starches.

[DiosaBellissima]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Just out of curiosity, if obesity is genetic and has nothing to do with calories, then why did I never see any obese people in Liberia?

Have you watched that Vice Guide to Liberia thing? The answer is because everyone else probably ate them.

[ladyfoxfyre]

And let’s be clear here, I don’t think she’s advocating that obesity is only genetic. What she is incorrectly advocating is that calories don’t matter. The book she touts doesn’t even advocate that. It says that certain calories do more for your insulin resistance than others, so avoiding high carbs and sugars is a good way to prevent spikes in insulin that cause you to store the carbs and calories that you can’t immediately burn. But she’s fucked it all up in her head by focusing like an angry dog on the whole “calories-in-calories-out doesn’t work!”.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

@ladyfoxfyre

Look, this is exactly what I tried to tell you was happening in your “people who exercise compensate with increased calories” cite which failed at showing how irrelevant calories were. You are doing exactly what so many people who misunderstand diets and exercise do. Thirty minutes on the elliptical does not mean you can eat 5 cupcakes. Going “low carb” does not mean eating “quite a bit of cornbread”. At least if you’re going to try and abide by what he says in the book, try and stick with it and not pick and choose what you want to believe out of it. Because I read the book too, and you are wildly misrepresenting its claims.

Going low carb means restricting carbohydrates. Indulging on a high-carb food once a week does not negate the fact that she is on a low carb diet.

[Stoid]

@jsgoddess

I begin to see why people read Taubes’s book and are reporting lots of goofy things from it. They, I suspect, don’t understand what he’s saying. Why? Because he’s a lazy writer.

Let’s compare Stoid’s translation to Taubes’s words in his blog:

[URL=“http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/inanity-of-overeating/”]

Actually, it tells us precisely “why we got fat.” What it doesn’t tell is why we overeat. Because he keeps eliding the middles, people seem to be thinking that he’s claiming the middles (the overeating) don’t exist and don’t cause the later events in the chain.

You are missing his point, which is the more mass you have, the more you will need to eat to maintain it, not, as you assume, you overate, therefore you had more mass.

[Amasia]

@Labrador_Deceiver

Going low carb means restricting carbohydrates. Indulging on a high-carb food once a week does not negate the fact that she is on a low carb diet.

If the purpose of eating low-carb is to induce ketosis, then yes, it does negate it.

There is also a difference between an indulgence and literally one of the worst food options possible, and what sounds like a lot of it.

Finally, based on the Taubes book, people who have sensitivity should not eat carbs for the various reasons that have been mentioned. So if she’s following that book, her actions make 0 sense.

[ladyfoxfyre]

@Labrador_Deceiver

Going low carb means restricting carbohydrates. Indulging on a high-carb food once a week does not negate the fact that she is on a low carb diet.

If you mean in terms of percentage of her total calorie intake, you may be technically correct. But if you look at say, the most popular low-carb diet of all time, Atkins requires 2 weeks of sub-20g carbs a day in order to put your body into ketosis. Absolutely no cheating is allowed on the 2 week induction period, and even then it’s another several weeks until you can start testing your carb tolerance to determine when you start to gain weight again. The bottom line is that she read a book, and is going at it like a 3 year old playing with blocks. Smashing around some big ideas on the floor and thinking everyone else is a poopyhead for telling her she’s a little off about her interpretation.