Posted: Mar 10, 2011 4:40 pm
Eduard wrote::coffee:
Nice topic. From what I know that if you aim to lose fat: reduce calories. If you want to build muscle, don't increase calories (or consume copious amounts of either one of the 3 macronutrient groups) just do a lot of resistance training that gets progressively more difficult. If you want to expedite the fat loss part then calories in - calories out is a pretty nice heuristic, but don't let it dominate your life.
I hate the health, fitness and diet industries sooooo much! Sooo much!
Me too. There is so much bullshit that it is overwhelming.
The medical studies are just as bad. Just a Theory posted some good leads in the other thread on Biological Sciences, and I looked at those and took it from there. I found a lot of abstracts to read, and lot of work done that adds up to about nothing!
As we said back in chem lab: garbage in, garbage out.
I found a lot of studies that really miss the point, in regards to the discussion above. A lot of work has been done on low fat vs low carb, but I haven't seen one yet that screened people beforehand for this difference in insulin resistance among the population. The ones that try to investigate insulin resistance are treating it as a disease, and waiting until it becomes a problem.
If you spend some time reading the peer reviewed medical studies, you get a shit load of "neutral language" weak conclusions that one can interpret in many ways.
Taubes work is intriguing because he spent 10 years investigating the investigators. I think it would be giving him too much credit to say he is right on every point, but he is changing the debate and "getting warmer."
I am in similar discussions on other sites. Every one of them has people that chime in with a short story about how low carb worked for them and nothing else ever did. Then others say it's bullshit. Then someone always says "just cut calories, that is SO obvious."
It is very clear to me that a significant percentage of people have not done well on the " cut calories and exercise" standard soundbite, and plenty of people who have. I'm not including obvious exceptions like eating disorders. I'm talking about the people Taubes is writing for, the ones who really do their best with the most common advice and it simply is not helping, they walk past a cookie and their hormones change. (exaggerating, of course)
The people who do well on cut calories and exercise are quite often skinny anyway. They read the same stuff everyone else does, and attribute their thinness to how well they are following the standard advice. Good for them, but they can piss me off too. The attitude is often "look at me. It works for me. If you can't be like me, then you are not following instructions and something is wrong with you, not the advice."
When I was huge (I'm normal weight now due to low carb), I used to say, "who do you want to believe? Someone who is thin anyway and thinks that their thinness makes them an expert? Or do you believe someone who was big and had to figure out how to get back to normal?"