Breaking news!!!!!

Gator · February 26th, 2009, 05:35 AM

Low-carb? Low-fat? Study finds calories count more on Yahoo! Health

A new study came out saying it doesn’t matter what kind of calories you take in (basically atkins vs south beach vs the zone etc) as long as you cut calories and are consistent. It supports the old “calories in vs calories out” adage. Participants lost between 6 and 22 pounds over 2 years. So you don’t have to waste your time worrying how much fat/carbs/protein you take, just overall content. Without getting into the details he basically dispels all the atkins, south beach, zone, etc BS.

BUT – basically this report came out and said if you eat healthy and start exercising you will lose weight. Well, no shit Dr Frank – what an awesome use of your Harvard doctorate. I’ve never been a fan of the fad diets (south beach, atkins, etc) … they work, but you can’t maintain that lifestyle… and I still question some of the long term health effects. As far as macronutrient composition is concerned, unless you’re an elite athlete, it probably doesn’t matter as long as you eat well and keep it proportioned (which is a nebulous way of saying don’t sit down and drink a bottle of canola oil).

I think a good study would be to put people on my “1900 diet.” It’s an unlimited diet as long as they adhered to good, whole foods…. Meaning you could eat 12,000 cals/day if you wanted to as long as those cals didn’t come from fast food, preservatives, etc … nothing but fresh fruit, meat and whole grains. I’d call it the “1900 diet” because you could only eat stuff that was around in 1900. As for exercising, I’d have people working out at least 30 mins/day – even if it was only walking. Preferably they would be moving bales of hay and shaving sheep.

I guarantee people would lose weight because when you eat nothing but whole foods, it is physically impossible to eat 10,000 calories… and really tough to even get 4,000.

Anyone want to participate in my study?

maleficent · February 26th, 2009, 05:47 AM

GMTA I was just going to post the story from CNN
Low-fat? Low-carbs? Answering best diet question

Quote:

(CNN) -- The dieting world screams with contradictory advice: Carbs are evil; carbs are good for you. "Good fat" is healthy; "good fat" has tons of calories.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center put four popular diets -- high carb, high fat, low-fat and high protein -- to the test to see which of the regimens resulted in more weight-loss success.

After two years of monitoring the participants, "all the diets were winners," said study co-author Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. "All produced weight loss and improvements in lipids, reduction in insulin.

"The key really is that it's calories. It's not the content of fat or carbohydrates, it's just calories," said Sacks. The findings are published in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, 811 overweight adults in Boston, Massachusetts, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were assigned to one of four diets.

A quarter went on a carbohydrate-heavy diet, some on high-fat, others on low-fat and the remaining on high-protein diet. The four diets were not based on popular diets, Sacks said.

Regardless of diet, most participants had dramatic weight loss after six months, losing an average of 13 pounds.

According to Sacks' research, many of the 800-plus participants regained weight after a year, but about 80 percent of them lost at least eight pounds after two years. And 15 percent of the participants lost at least 10 percent of their body weight.

The study, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, showed little difference in users' satiety, hunger or satisfaction with their diets.

Participants could attend individual sessions where dieticians educated them and group sessions where they discussed their experiences with one another.

Those who had better attendance in the sessions had stronger weight-loss results. "These findings together point to behavioral factors rather than macronutrient metabolism as the main influences on weight loss," according to the study. Macronutrients are the three main nutrients the body uses in relatively large amounts: proteins, carbohydrates and fats.

"No one of those diets are necessarily better than any other diet," Sacks said.

In an accompanying editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, Martijin B. Katan wrote the researchers' hypothesis is "plausible," but said the "differences in macronutrient intake were too small."

There was an underlying similarity between the four diets.

On average, the overweight participants had a 750-calorie reduction per day. An average-sized male who consumed 2,800 calories a day was prescribed just over 2,000 calories and a woman who ate 2000 calories a day was prescribed 1,250 calories.

All diets were compatible with American Heart Association guidelines, Sack said. The study did not give the participants food. For the first 10 days, participants received menus, then were assigned to create their own using the healthy food options.

Depending on their prescribed diet, participants ate a wide range of carbohydrates, fat and protein, derived from healthy foods, such as olive oil, pasta and nut butter.

From these results, Sacks recommends going with "the diet you feel most comfortable that is healthy, that appeals to you in terms of what foods are in it, that isn't a drastic crash diet. Whatever allows you to keep the calories down and not feel really deprived."

Calorie restriction can be done without feeling deprived, said Dr. Luigi Fontana, an associate professor of medicine at the Washington University who studies the effects of calorie restriction on longevity. But he warns against just halving a person's current diet.

"A lot of people think of calorie restriction like eating half a hamburger, half a pack of French fries -- that you can obtain by reducing in half your portions," Fontana said. "That's calorie restriction with malnutrition."

Dr. Melina Jampolis, the diet and fitness expert for CNNhealth warned against drastic measures like completely focusing on one macronutrient. "People want to be extreme," she said. "You say cut back on sugar, they cut it completely. The take-home would be that there is no markedly superior diet. If there was, people wouldn't stick with it anyway."

Cindy Moore, the director of nutrition therapy at Cleveland Clinic and a registered dietician agreed.

"People gravitate to the latest fads or trends, because they may have known someone who was successful in losing weight. That friend may have been in that early grace period of losing weight. The other thing is people think they need that magic bullet."

But a significant change in eating habits -- like cutting out an entire nutrient group like carbohydrates, proteins or fats, often can't be sustained.

Weight loss tends to be dramatic during the first few months. Brenda Driver, of Springfield, Missouri, was not involved in the study but says she lost 10 pounds in 10 days on the Atkins diet by eschewing all carbohydrates.

The 26-year-old and her fiance said they were "not looking at a crash diet, but want to jump start weight loss." The former vegetarians began eating meat again because of the high protein demands of the diet.

Driver said she's aware the Atkins diet is not an ideal long-term plan. Six years ago, she tried the diet for seven months and lost 45 pounds. She finally quit the diet because of her chocolate cravings.

This month, Driver and her fiancedecided to give the Atkins another try. "I want to rebel against the whole, 'you're-engaged-now-you-have-to-lose-weight,' " she said. But it would be nice to look slimmer in those wedding photos, she said.

"I'm approaching it as a temporary thing. Vegetarianism is where I want to be the rest of my life."

Moore said the basics of losing weight boil down to this: Limit the calories consumed so a person is taking in less than the body needs or increase activity to burn more energy.

The problem, she said is that, "People get discouraged if weight loss is really, really slow."

Quote:

The Diets Studied

Diet 1: 20% fat;15% protein; 65% carbs

Diet 2: 20% fat; 25% protein;55% carbs

Diet 3: 40% fat; 15% protein;45% carbs

Diet 4: 40% fat; 25% protein;35% carbs

Quote:

# Story Highlights
# Researchers test four diets for weight-loss effectiveness
# Dieting theories emphasize carbohydrates, proteins or fats
# No huge differences seen between diets, key is calorie reduction

and the sad fact is - someone actually paid money for a study for this...

PaperAirPlanes · February 26th, 2009, 06:53 AM

Why are we paying for scientific study of things that are common sense?
Can't they use their time and work a little harder on something like say, cancer research.
I mean, the articles, gahhh! It's common sense! You learn by trial and error. All of us around here seem to have gotten it, without scientific mumbo jumbo.
I want news articles explaining why people get cancer, how brain tumors form, and what happens to your bodily system when you gain weight. Not information better suited for a blinking banner ad. Actually, they should turn those articles into banner ads, long as media america wants to clutter our computer screens, may as well do it with REAL information.

I wanna go on the 1900 diet Gator!

lol.

maleficent · February 26th, 2009, 08:24 AM

you'd think it would be common sense but look at the people out there who swear by the Zone andthink food combining is the answer -or those who swear by low carb thnking that carbs are the bad part... i

Tichia · February 26th, 2009, 09:29 AM

Is it common sense? I'm on another site where people are constantly advising those having troubles to eat more, change up their ratios and lift weights. Anyone eating less than 1800 calories or so tends to get lectured about ruining their metabolism unless they're a very small woman. Even people who've had RMR tests done that come back with figures lower than the ones online BMR calculators will spit out are told to question their doctors/dieticians recommendations to eat only 1200 or 1300 calories or whatever.

maleficent · February 26th, 2009, 09:54 AM

12-1300 calories is entirely too low for the majority of people... 1800 might be high for some it might be low... it's really a case by case basis...

the point of the article though -there's no magic in the food a person eats -it's 100000 percent about the calories they are eating...

LowFatMilk · February 26th, 2009, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maleficent

12-1300 calories is entirely too low for the majority of people... 1800 might be high for some it might be low... it's really a case by case basis...

the point of the article though -there's no magic in the food a person eats -it's 100000 percent about the calories they are eating...

Is this breaking news from 1876?

maleficent · February 26th, 2009, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gator

I guarantee people would lose weight because when you eat nothing but whole foods, it is physically impossible to eat 10,000 calories… and really tough to even get 4,000.

Anyone want to participate in my study?

You'd lose that bet actually...

in the 20,000+ posts I have on this forum - i have said more than once I got to almost 400lbs by eating nothing but whole foods - I hadn't had fast food in decades - I rarely are in casual dining places... I didn't like processed foods... The food in my fridge was what anyone would have considered healthy -

I probably eat more crap now than i did at m y heaviest weight

Portion sizes and calories matter... and whole foods do have calories...

fatguy23 · February 26th, 2009, 11:44 AM

my question that is sort of related to this, is it true that simple carbohydrates, i.e. white bread, white tortilla, white anything, break down easier than complex ones and turn into fat easier? As opposed to complex carbs which are said to be beneficial because they break down different...wouldn't that kind of be the type of calories that you were taking in versus just numbers alone?

LowFatMilk · February 26th, 2009, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatguy23

my question that is sort of related to this, is it true that simple carbohydrates, i.e. white bread, white tortilla, white anything, break down easier than complex ones and turn into fat easier? As opposed to complex carbs which are said to be beneficial because they break down different...wouldn't that kind of be the type of calories that you were taking in versus just numbers alone?

I think that refers more to blood sugar levels doesn't it?

ChefChiTown · February 26th, 2009, 12:04 PM

I wonder if they monitored each participant's exercise and/or daily activities. I mean, that makes a HUGE difference in weight loss too.

Fat Lazy Guy · February 27th, 2009, 04:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gator

I’d call it the “1900 diet” because you could only eat stuff that was around in 1900.

Lard sandwiches FTW! Mmm, and yummy tripe! Don't forget those sweet breads and sheeps brain.

txsqlchick · February 27th, 2009, 04:36 AM

I'm glad this study came out because now I can point to it to back up my argument that it really is just restricting calories, not food combining or cutting carbs.

I've lost almost 78 pounds by simply cutting calories and exercising, and people still argue with me about carbs, and these are people who are on low-carb diets and haven't lost a single pound!!!! WTH!