# Is eating healthy the best way to lose weight? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 15, 2014, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387 "2014-10-15T09:48:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/81 "2014-10-17T09:25:27Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > A lot of diet-type books/ebooks I’ve read lately insist that people should eat organic foods (and grass-fed beef, etc) if they want to lose fat most effectively. […] (less “toxins” reaching the liver, etc, allowing the liver more of a chance to break down body fat). You need to start reading better books. The liver doesn’t break down body fat\*; if anything, it creates fat. The liver can also walk and chew gum at the same time. (\* Except maybe a little for its own energy needs like any other organ, but the main place where fat is used is in muscles.) Your weight is a reflection of the _quantity_ of food you eat, not the _quality_ (generously assuming organic is better): [Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/) ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/82 "2014-10-17T11:16:38Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > I said “So you’re saying that eating healthy (nutritious foods **with the same calories** ) doesn’t cause people to lose weight any faster?” > > I mean that let’s assume that the “healthy” foods have the same calories… e.g. a lot of the person’s diet might include macadamia nuts (76% fat) and honey (82% sugar) and coconut butter/oil (pure fat) while the person that isn’t eating healthy foods might have a lot of artificially sweetened foods and drinks that are the same or lower in calories… Stay away from the nuts example because, as already gone over, all the calories there are not absorbed and they may have particular impact on the calories out side of the equation. If the question is **weight** (not caring about body composition or health) and the question does not include any consideration of how hungry one feels or actual success in real life, then the statement is roughly true. “Roughly true” because different same calorie (isocaloric) diet plans may have differing impacts on what body mass the energy deficit comes from, and there is a short term difference in mass change if the energy is coming out of glycogen stores or fat mass for example. (One major reason that low carb plans result in fairly rapid weight loss in the eariest stages). But true enough. Your books are stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/83 "2014-10-17T13:21:31Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > A lot of diet-type books/ebooks I’ve read lately insist that people should eat organic foods (and grass-fed beef, etc) if they want to lose fat most effectively. Perhaps organic foods would have less “toxins” and be more nutritious… though what I’m concerned about is the actual fat loss not how healthy the person would be. Those books say something like that organic foods allow the body to break down body fat more effectively (less “toxins” reaching the liver, etc, allowing the liver more of a chance to break down body fat). Also if the body gets the nutrition it craves it might not feel like it needs to hold on to its body fat (a “starvation” response). I’m just wondering why those books think organic foods are so important. Maybe it just makes intellectual sense to the authors. This is the premise of Kevin Trudeau’s “The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You To Know About.” "Nuff said. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. Eating 2,000 calories of organic, healthful food will keep you at the same weight as eating 2,000 calories of Ben & Jerry’s and Snickers bars. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/84 "2014-10-17T13:30:51Z")
The different is junk food provides no nutrition and doesn’t satisfy hunger so you end up eating more calories then when you eat better food. But even if you don’t take that into consideration, it is just not true to say 1500 calories of Doritos are exactly the same as a 1500 calories of say the average chicken dinner). You take two people and have them both eat those for a week or a month and see if they feel the same or weight the same after you are done. It’s true that it does boil down to math: eat less calories that you burn but it is not true, in reality, that all calories are created equal because there are more factors than that in play: specifically nutrition and satisfaction (i.e. feeling full). ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/85 "2014-10-17T15:49:08Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Thing is that would be 100 cups of raw kale. > What part of this is not being understood? As a general principle a diet full of “healthy” foods is going to end up with fewer calories in and a wide variety of other good stuff along with those calories, while a diet of junky food will result in more calories eaten.There are other impacts as well (on calories out for example) but that alone is the gist. It is possible to eat 100 cups of kale, for example, but one would need to work at it. You didn’t read my post- I was saying that there’s nothing inherently magical about “healthy” foods, only that they tend to be less calorie-dense and more nutrient-dense than the “unhealthy” equivalents. I even pointed it out with respect to the carrots and sugar example. But.. if you managed to somehow eat 3200 calories of healthy food, of whatever stripe, you’d gain just as much weight as if you ate it in straight corn syrup and lard. The thing is… like you say, 3200 calories of kale would be 100 cups worth, so kind of hard to do. And it is absolutely true that calories are equal. Satiation and nutrition don’t come into it. Saying that calories aren’t equal because of that is about like saying that paper money isn’t the same as coins because paper money is easier to spend because you don’t have to lug around pounds of coins to pay for something. The point some of us are trying to make is that $1.00 in quarters is worth $1.00 in paper money, pennies, nickels, etc… and nothing is going to change that. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/86 "2014-10-17T16:08:14Z")
> [@Weedy](#): > > There are environmental and social reasons to buy organic. No, there aren’t. There are good environmental and social reasons to eat \*local \*produce, but organic is overblown, misunderstood hype. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/87 "2014-10-17T16:10:03Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > The different is junk food provides no nutrition and doesn’t satisfy hunger … I found this to be the case when I was on the old Weight Watchers “points” system in the early aughts. The theory was you could eat your points value in crap, or in real food, or a mixture. Whichever. And always, when I had real food for most of the points, and saved a few for, say, a single perfect chocolate truffle, I was never hungry and felt great. But if I used the points to eat junk or fast food…hungry faster. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/88 "2014-10-17T16:15:14Z")
> [@2Bee](#): > > Bottom line: I lost 117 pounds and I weigh 120. It worked. Congratulations! I’ve been doing the cleverly-named “eat less crap” diet for a year. Lost 30# so far, with minor tweaks to my diet. As I go on, I make more adjustments. I think trying to do a huge overhaul (“I’m going to eat right and exercise every day!”) is where a lot of people fall down. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/89 "2014-10-17T17:29:50Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > There are good environmental and social reasons to eat \*local \*produce That depends. Here in Holland, it’s certainly better to eat locally grown apples than ones from Chile that journeyed halfway around the world. But what if people here decide that eating local is important, but they still want to eat bananas? Then those would have to be grown in greenhouses, which is much worse than simply shipping them from a place where they grow in the open air. ---
**Author:** ![jacksparrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@jacksparrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacksparrow)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/90 "2014-10-17T17:52:13Z")
yes; but it’s not the fastest way. I lose weight FAST by going no carb. No carb is not exactly “healthy”; but used for 60 days isn’t going to harm anything. No carb is the #1 fastest, most effective way to lose weight. Having said that…the healthiest way to lose weight (IMHO) is to: 1- not eat before noon 2- not eat after 6:00PM 3- eat a balance of carbs, protein and fat (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated), but only during your 6-hour eating window. 4- do as much cardio as you can, based on your schedule. It is best if you do the cardio in the morning, prior to eating that day. 5- be sure to include whole grains, tomato, avocado, olives, leafy greens and lean protein into your diet during this time. The grains are super important for health, but contain carbs which will slow down the weight loss process. This is still the HEALTHIEST way to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/91 "2014-10-17T18:22:54Z")
> [@jacksparrow](#): > > Having said that…the healthiest way to lose weight (IMHO) is to: > 1- not eat before noon > 2- not eat after 6:00PM Do you have any evidence that time of day factors into this at all? It seems like it’s just a trick to reduce the amount of food you eat by restricting the hours you can eat. Otherwise I can’t see it having any impact on weight loss. ---
**Author:** ![jacksparrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@jacksparrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacksparrow)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/92 "2014-10-17T19:45:55Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Do you have any evidence that time of day factors into this at all? It seems like it’s just a trick to reduce the amount of food you eat by restricting the hours you can eat. Otherwise I can’t see it having any impact on weight loss. It really does work. I’ve used this method for a while now. The “fasting cardio” (cardio before eating, after fasting for 8 hours or more) is particularly effective. Body builders (I’m not a body builder) use this method religiously these days. They swear by it. The metabolism is a complex thing, and it reacts to different conditions. \>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\>\> A 2014 study done by Longo and Mattson shed light on intermittent fasting’s role in adaptive cellular responses that reduce oxidative damage and inflammation, optimize energy metabolism, and bolster cellular production. The study showed how, in lower eukaryotes, chronic fasting extends longevity, in part, by reprogramming metabolic and stress resistance pathways. In rodents, intermittent fasting was shown to protect against diabetes, cancers, heart disease and neurodegeneration, while in humans it helps reduce obesity, hypertension, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis.[8] Studies in mice and rats A scientific study of intermittent fasting in rats conducted 1943 found that fasting rats one day out of two, three or four days prolonged the life span of rats (by 15-20% in the case of one day out of three), compared to rats that were allowed to eat whenever they wish. None of the intermittent fasting in the study had detrimental effects on growth.[9] In one study, intermittent fasting has been shown to extend lifespan and increase resistance to age-related diseases in rodents and monkeys, and improve the health of overweight humans. The study suggests that intermittent fasting may have benefits that are similar to the effects of caloric restriction (CR). Specifically, it has been proposed that intermittent fasting improves the cardiovascular and neurological systems.[10] One study on mice suggests that benefits from intermittent fasting seems to be unrelated to an overall reduction in caloric intake.[11] Another study on rats dealt with the benefits of dietary restriction, including intermittent fasting.[12] ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/93 "2014-10-17T20:09:52Z")
[http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2012/03/12/taking\_a\_break\_from\_eating/](http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/articles/2012/03/12/taking_a_break_from_eating/) > [@](#): > > “If someone’s looking for a diet for weight control, go somewhere else [than fasting],’’ said Dr. George L. Blackburn, chief of the Nutrition/Metabolism Laboratory, and director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. But he agrees that intermittent fasting might improve the body’s ability to process sugar, which would reduce the risk of diabetes and some cancers. They specifically say that this is not a weight loss approach. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2014, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/94 "2014-10-17T22:03:29Z")
Re “local” … IMHO the local economy reasons predominate … and that the products often taste better. But as **iljitsch** points out environmentally food miles traveled matter less than the GHG that occur during the _production_ of the food, e.g. beef compared to food lower on the chain. (Although if the products are otherwise exactly the less miles makes more sense.) The potential benefits of intermittent fasting aside (and while I am a skeptic there are better data out there than what is quoted in the unlinked quote **jacksparrow** provides) and the very real data that is out there about the [timing](http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v34/n12/full/ijo2010118a.html) [of](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/oby.2011.100/full) food intake (and light cycles) on obesity (and other health) risks, the not eating before 12 bit seems unattached to anything in the research world. The main point is about eating during active phases of the body clock, which for humans means daylight hours. Both eating and light exposure in what “should” be dark phases disrupts the orchestration of our various body clocks and causes both more fat gain and more insulin reistance. (See [this](http://www.pnas.org/content/107/43/18664.short) little study for a taste of the research.) No hard data to back this up, but if I was going to do intermittent fasting I would say bigger breakfast and lunch and skip dinner would be the way to go. The fasting cardio bit is a completely different subject that has to do with trying to increase the body’s ability to utilize fats as energy _during_ aerobic activity which may help performance … of course wthout as much glycogen on board one cannot have as quality of a work-out, so it may be a mixed bag - worth doing sometimes but not always. As for increasing fat loss - [no](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885974/). And again, to be _precise_, all energy calories are not stored with the same mass, so a diet that causes more loss out of carb stores will lead to more initial weight loss particular because it initially does _not_ result in as much initial fat loss. Which is not to diss low carb diets (there are other good reasons that they may work very well for many people) but to illustrate the silliness of focusing on “weight” per se, and the inaccuracy in a very literal precise sense of saying that all X calories in will result in Y weight gained or lost. Close enough for practical purposes but not really exactly true. ---
**Author:** ![2Bee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/5f8ce5/32.png) [@2Bee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2Bee)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2014, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387/95 "2014-10-20T10:30:17Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > Congratulations! > > I’ve been doing the cleverly-named “eat less crap” diet for a year. Lost 30# so far, with minor tweaks to my diet. As I go on, I make more adjustments. > > I think trying to do a huge overhaul (“I’m going to eat right and exercise every day!”) is where a lot of people fall down. Thank you, GrumpyBunny. I am still overhauling my diet, although it may be important, at this point, that I not loose any more weight. It would merely be a matter of pride if I lost another 1.5 pounds, because that would be exactly half of my original weight. I just think that if it’s accidental, fine – maybe. But to lose it purposely – not sure that would be wise. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-eating-healthy-the-best-way-to-lose-weight/701387.md?page=4)