From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 12:13:39 MDT
On 9 Jul 2002 at 12:15, Stan Schwarz wrote:
> Questioning the dietary dogma. Since I was steeped in the prevailing
> four-legs-good-high-fat-bad thinking, this was an interesting article.
> I think it makes a good case.
I'm a type 2 diabetic, and my doctor and I have been fighting a recent upward
trend in my blood sugars after a couple years of pretty good control. What I'm
discovering in my own experience is that my blood sugar spikes get worse as the
proportion of carbs to fat/protein in a meal increases. I've been tempted to
switch to a high fat diet for glycemic control (there's a seamy underground of
diabetic specialists who recommend just such a diet), but I know that if I do
then my doctor will blow a gasket at my cholesterol levels (which have
historically been higher than average all my life). Maybe I should ask for a
referral to an endocrinologist.....
Best,
Len "expecting to be put on insulin soon" Cleavelin
--------------------
I read through the NY Times article. There was a similar report in Science
a few years ago. The standard high carb diet probably isn't the best thing
to use, but all of this misses the point.
Undergirding all the complications of the specifics of the body's energy
metabolism is simple physics. If you eat more than your body uses to
function, you will gain weight. If the two are equal, your weight will stay
the same. If you eat less than your body uses to function, you will lose
weight. That's all.
I think one hundred percent of the difficulties of dieting come from the
fact that people don't want to feel hungry. So all of these diets discussed
in these articles and tried by people are all attempts to lose weight
without feeling hungry while doing it. However, the way our bodies are
built we will feel hunger if we use more energy than we consume. If people
would just accept this and tolerate it, all the dieting problems would go away.
I'm six foot, two inches tall. In my youth, I used to weight 260 lbs. When
I moved to California from New York, I realized that nearly all the people
around me were not fat. I thought that being fat identified me as a New
Yorker, so I determined to lose weight. My obesity was also stopping me
from doing fun things like hiking.
The method that I used was to eat just one meal a day - supper, and to lose
weight it would just be a normal sized meal rather than an extra large one.
Well, I was hungry for most of the day. I knew that was necessary and I
learned to ignore it. I would concentrate on other things and put the
hunger to the back of my mind. I found that the worse hunger pangs are when
you start out, and as you continue on they feel less severe and are easier
to ignore. I also always remembered that it was necessary to achieve my
goals, and that whenever I did feel hungry that meant that right then I was
losing weight.
Nowadays I eat what I want and whenever I want, BUT if I eat an extra-large
meal, it MUST be paid for later by eating less than normal for a while.
(I'm 185 now.)
Diabetes is a life threatening disease. I'd put a question to Len and you
other list members with weight control problems. What is better to live
through, overweight and obesity with potential or actual diabetes, heart
disease, maybe cancer, and feeling low on energy all the time, or putting
up with a little inconvenience and uncomfort to eliminate all of these?
Feeling hunger isn't the worse thing to happen to you.
Ron Ebert
---------------------
Yes, but there are some points that complicate this. For example, your body
breaks down and stores carbohydrates more readily than it does proteins and
fats. If you reduce your carb intake and eat more protein and fat, your
body has to work harder to store it away. In addition, your body uses the
carbs you have in your system as a sort of ready supply of energy--it goes
to them before it goes to the stored fat in your body to keep things
running. However, it's easier for your body to convert your stored fat into
energy than to break down proteins and fats from food and use them, so you
tend to lose bodyfat while on such diets. At least, that's how I understand
it. You miss a lot if you are just saying "you burn 1800 calories a day, so
if you eat 1700 you'll lose weight."
> The method that I used was to eat just one meal a day - supper, and to lose
> weight it would just be a normal sized meal rather than an extra large one.
> Well, I was hungry for most of the day. I knew that was necessary and
I
> learned to ignore it. I would concentrate on other things and put the
> hunger to the back of my mind. I found that the worse hunger pangs are when
> you start out, and as you continue on they feel less severe and are easier
> to ignore. I also always remembered that it was necessary to achieve my
> goals, and that whenever I did feel hungry that meant that right then I was
> losing weight.
That's not a good way to lose weight. Aside from being uncomfortable and
possibly denying your body the nutrition it needs, it doesn't work as well
as other methods. When you're hungry all the time, your metabolism slows,
making you burn less calories during the day...it'll mean you're
uncomfortable AND slowing your weight loss.
> Nowadays I eat what I want and whenever I want, BUT if I eat an extra-large
> meal, it MUST be paid for later by eating less than normal for a while.
> (I'm 185 now.)
The best way to handle things, in my not-very-learned opinion, is to just
eat fairly sensibly and maintain a moderate amount of exercise.
Weight-lifting is good. You can spend 30-45 minutes in a gym, 2-3 days a
week, and get really good results. No, you won't end up looking like those
bodybuilders on ESPN--they follow very special diets and work out several
hours a day just about EVERY day.
Kevin P. France
------------------
There may be another small problem too. I need to look up my references,
but I read somewhere that they think there are metabolic differences in those
individuals with type 2 diabetes which impair their ability to lose weight.
IIRC, for example, type 2 diabetics in WW II POW camps who were on
near-starvation rations tended to maintain their weight and lose less weight
than normal individuals on the same rations. There was some speculation that
this may actually indicate some evolutionary origin of the problem; you can see
where such a metabolism might be useful in populations which live in
environments where there is not a lot of potential foodstuffs, or which are
subject to periodic famines.
Len Cleavelin
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, [Cochise County] Arizona (USA)
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