Optimal Diet

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Kriegsspiel
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:19 pm

vnatale wrote:
Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:08 pm

I'm not following. It is paradoxical because the results do not follow the reasons given for the advice? Isn't it only paradoxical if the advice is actually being followed, which I strongly doubt that it is?
It's nonsensical. It seems Taubes is just observing that things that make people lose weight also make them hungry. Likely because they're losing weight.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Cortopassi » Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:53 pm

I'm still reading...

It makes sense to me. You have 50 years of being told to eat less and exercise more... Yet we have increasing obesity.

Something else is the cause.

50 years and no conclusive proof that eating less and exercising more makes you lose weight, for other than short periods of time.

Look at it another way. A twenty year old, gaining 10 pounds a decade could be obese by 50.

That is literally storing like 10 extra calories a day as fat vs someone else.

You cannot possibly regulate that small of a number.

It is the type of food you are eating that promotes or screws up that regulation.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by vnatale » Mon Mar 22, 2021 8:33 pm

Cortopassi wrote:
Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:53 pm

I'm still reading...

It makes sense to me. You have 50 years of being told to eat less and exercise more... Yet we have increasing obesity.

Something else is the cause.

50 years and no conclusive proof that eating less and exercising more makes you lose weight, for other than short periods of time.

Look at it another way. A twenty year old, gaining 10 pounds a decade could be obese by 50.

That is literally storing like 10 extra calories a day as fat vs someone else.

You cannot possibly regulate that small of a number.

It is the type of food you are eating that promotes or screws up that regulation.


The simple fact is that while people are being told to eat less and exercise more.....the population is most likely NOT eating less...but eating wrong. And, eating more of the wrong thing.

My personal story is that several years ago...Fall of 2014 it was...I had some sort of injury that caused me to have to stop all exercise for two, three, or four months. Instead of gaining weight...I LOST 10 pounds! The reason was that ceasing the exercise drastically reduced my hunger and I was eating way less than prior. Hence far less calories in and a loss of weight. I did not change my diet...just the quantities.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Benko » Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:30 pm

Jason Fung, MD is a physician big into fasting/intermittent fasting and one of his videos points out that the number of times one eats per day is an important (but not emphasized) factor. Each time you eat, there is elevation of insulin, and one can't burn fat while insulin is elevated. So eating e.g. 2000 calories per day in 6 meals (divided over the day) is very different from eating 2000 calories per day in one meal. Over the years people have gone from eating 3 times a day to eating 6 or more times a day.

Fung has at least one book, and many YouTube videos. I think this is video with relevant info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXXGxoNFag4&t=2208s
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Cortopassi » Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:05 am

Benko wrote:
Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:30 pm
Each time you eat, there is elevation of insulin, and one can't burn fat while insulin is elevated.
And when some people's bodies are geared just a tiny little bit (or a lot) toward wanting to store vs. wanting to burn, over decades, coupled with the high carb food we usually eat, that's why so many put on pounds as they get older.

At least that's Taubes position, which I do agree with.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by WiseOne » Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:43 am

Actually, I'd say that the onus isn't on the general public to prove that vegetable oils produced using industrial techniques are safe. The burden of proof is on those who promote and sell these products. And the data that do exist (largely animal studies) indicate that these oils are very damaging to health.

The oils in question (canola, soybean, sunflower, safflower, corn) cannot be extracted in the same way as olive and coconut oil, and thus were never part of the human diet for the millions of years preceding the oils' introduction in the mid twentieth century. Why are we supposed to consider these to be healthy, or even safe, by default?

Gary Taubes goes through these things in great detail in his books - definitely look those up. He also painstakingly explains the link between hunger and "overfeeding". What the data do tell us is the antithesis of what Kriegspiel said in his email. We're hungry because there's a "set point" that the body maintains, and as starving yourself won't change the set point, it does nothing to help you lose weight and keep it off in the long term. The goal of a diet should be to change the set point. There's a good bit of evidence that industrially produced vegetable oils monkey with the set point, and in not a good direction.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Xan » Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:25 am

IIRC, he has made an analogy with body temperature. If you're running a fever you don't say "oh, I spent a few minutes too long in slightly too hot of a room the past few days", you instead recognize that your body is aiming for a higher temperature and is making it happen.

You don't painstakingly track your heat intake vs output to maintain your temperature. That just isn't how it works. Yet we think that we can apply calories-in, calories-out and get our weight.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Cortopassi » Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:58 am

Xan wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:25 am
IIRC, he has made an analogy with body temperature. If you're running a fever you don't say "oh, I spent a few minutes too long in slightly too hot of a room the past few days", you instead recognize that your body is aiming for a higher temperature and is making it happen.

You don't painstakingly track your heat intake vs output to maintain your temperature. That just isn't how it works. Yet we think that we can apply calories-in, calories-out and get our weight.
Another good point.

Not like cavemen counted calories!
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Cortopassi » Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:31 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:17 pm
Cortopassi wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:58 am
Xan wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:25 am
IIRC, he has made an analogy with body temperature. If you're running a fever you don't say "oh, I spent a few minutes too long in slightly too hot of a room the past few days", you instead recognize that your body is aiming for a higher temperature and is making it happen.

You don't painstakingly track your heat intake vs output to maintain your temperature. That just isn't how it works. Yet we think that we can apply calories-in, calories-out and get our weight.
Another good point.

Not like cavemen counted calories!
Cavemen didn't sit on their asses in front of a screen for 12 hours/day.
Go back to my earlier post and Vinny's observation, and Taubes makes it a lot as well.

Not saying you need to believe it, but exercise is mostly a 1970s and on thing. And most/many people who exercise get hungry from it.

So while I am not dissing exercise; as a method to shed pounds it is sketchy. As a method to make you feel good and gain some muscle mass and general health, sure. But if you need to lose 25 or 50 or 100 pounds, it has not at all been proven to be helpful, according to Taubes.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by glennds » Tue Mar 23, 2021 1:27 pm

Cortopassi wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:31 pm


So while I am not dissing exercise; as a method to shed pounds it is sketchy. As a method to make you feel good and gain some muscle mass and general health, sure. But if you need to lose 25 or 50 or 100 pounds, it has not at all been proven to be helpful, according to Taubes.
Maybe exercise is not the silver bullet all by itself, but even a fool like me can notice the low obesity rates among athletes. Surely exercise and physical activity is at least a factor.
The Primal Blueprint model proposes a 80/20 split between diet and exercise as the basis for optimal health. It also promotes the idea that increased lean mass will further enhance the whole metabolic pathway. So yes, even PB will say that diet can get you most of the way, but would totally disagree that exercise and physical activity is not helpful.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by flyingpylon » Tue Mar 23, 2021 2:24 pm

Cardio makes people hungry, so they overeat... so they do more cardio... which makes them hungry... and so on, and so on...

Don't overdo the cardio.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by WiseOne » Tue Mar 23, 2021 5:22 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:17 pm
Cortopassi wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:58 am
Xan wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:25 am
IIRC, he has made an analogy with body temperature. If you're running a fever you don't say "oh, I spent a few minutes too long in slightly too hot of a room the past few days", you instead recognize that your body is aiming for a higher temperature and is making it happen.

You don't painstakingly track your heat intake vs output to maintain your temperature. That just isn't how it works. Yet we think that we can apply calories-in, calories-out and get our weight.
Another good point.

Not like cavemen counted calories!
Cavemen didn't sit on their asses in front of a screen for 12 hours/day.
I hate to say it but you're more or less describing me.

Exercise is great and I wish I had time to do more of it, but it's nothing to do with weight control. It was changing my diet that took care of that problem - and lots more problems besides. I feel like I found the secret decoder ring to human health, and here is the secret: whatever the USDA tells you to do, do the exact opposite. Turn the food pyramid upside down, avoid the foods they tell you to seek out like the plague, and voraciously eat the foods they tell you to avoid. Admittedly they now tell you to avoid added sugar which is the one thing they've managed to get right.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Kriegsspiel » Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:37 pm

Cortopassi wrote:
Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:53 pm
I'm still reading...

It makes sense to me. You have 50 years of being told to eat less and exercise more... Yet we have increasing obesity.

Something else is the cause.

50 years and no conclusive proof that eating less and exercising more makes you lose weight, for other than short periods of time.
We have increasing obesity because people aren't eating less and exercising more. That's what I meant.
It is the type of food you are eating that promotes or screws up that regulation.
Yea, can't argue with that.
Cortopassi wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:05 am
And when some people's bodies are geared just a tiny little bit (or a lot) toward wanting to store vs. wanting to burn, over decades, coupled with the high carb food we usually eat, that's why so many put on pounds as they get older.

At least that's Taubes position, which I do agree with.
Yup.
WiseOne wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:43 am
Gary Taubes goes through these things in great detail in his books - definitely look those up. He also painstakingly explains the link between hunger and "overfeeding". What the data do tell us is the antithesis of what Kriegspiel said in his email
LOL, that WFH is scrambling your brain ;D
We're hungry because there's a "set point" that the body maintains, and as starving yourself won't change the set point, it does nothing to help you lose weight and keep it off in the long term. The goal of a diet should be to change the set point.
My point was that Taubes saying that weight loss methods are weight gain methods (eating less and exercising more) is nonsense. If people actually ate less and exercised more, they would lose weight. AFAIK there is no metabolic chamber data that antithesizes that.

I doubt a specific diet can change the set point. I think the only way is to drop weight and stay at a new weight for a while for your body to recalibrate. If you eat boring foods (like the dude talks about in The Hungry Brain) then it makes it "easier."
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Maddy » Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:42 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 5:22 pm
Turn the food pyramid upside down, avoid the foods they tell you to seek out like the plague, and voraciously eat the foods they tell you to avoid. Admittedly they now tell you to avoid added sugar which is the one thing they've managed to get right.
Now that we know they're trying to kill us, it all makes a lot more sense.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by vnatale » Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:21 pm

glennds wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 1:27 pm

Cortopassi wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:31 pm



So while I am not dissing exercise; as a method to shed pounds it is sketchy. As a method to make you feel good and gain some muscle mass and general health, sure. But if you need to lose 25 or 50 or 100 pounds, it has not at all been proven to be helpful, according to Taubes.


Maybe exercise is not the silver bullet all by itself, but even a fool like me can notice the low obesity rates among athletes. Surely exercise and physical activity is at least a factor.
The Primal Blueprint model proposes a 80/20 split between diet and exercise as the basis for optimal health. It also promotes the idea that increased lean mass will further enhance the whole metabolic pathway. So yes, even PB will say that diet can get you most of the way, but would totally disagree that exercise and physical activity is not helpful.


I could perhaps go as high as 80 / 20....80% of the weight loss due to food choice (both what you eat and how much of it) and 20% exercise. But I'm having a difficult time thinking I really could go as high as 20%.

It takes an incredible amount of exercise to use one pound of calories. And, it really needs to be an extra pound of calories consumed above the amount of calories you are using while basically doing nothing.

One of the reasons why there is low obesity rates among athletes is because they were blessed with bodies to be athletes. That means a lot comes naturally to them due to their blessed genetics. But if they are serious athletes they are going to be watching what they eat.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Benko » Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:32 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:37 pm
If people actually ate less and exercised more, they would lose weight.
In 2021, a large number of people no longer believe that things are even remotely that simple. E.g. see my post above about Dr. Fung and calorie timing.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Cortopassi » Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:58 pm

Benko wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:32 pm
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:37 pm
If people actually ate less and exercised more, they would lose weight.
In 2021, a large number of people no longer believe that things are even remotely that simple. E.g. see my post above about Dr. Fung and calorie timing.
I got a lot of videos to watch. Great stuff.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:22 am

In the first few seconds of the Fung video, he says when your insulin is low, you can burn fat. Ok. Metabolic rate goes up when you're fasting? This is known.

But when he says that intermittent fasting is better (esp for retention of lean mass) than "cutting 500 cals a day." That's not comparing the same thing. He's saying a behavioral tactic is "better" than the underlying thing that it causes (eating less). It might be a good tactic in that it could improve partitioning, but if you're eating too much then you won't lose fat. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm guessing you wouldn't argue that if you locked someone in a room for 4 weeks and gave them 2 lbs of chicken breast to eat throughout the day, versus giving them ad libitum food for 1 hour in the evening, the chicken breast person would be leaner at the end. The chicken breast person would be hungry as fuck, no doubt, but they'd have gotten leaner than the IF one.

I think that more research is needed, especially in replicating earlier studies. For instance, the claim that IF retains more LBM is pretty old. I remember reading a study back in the early 2000s or thereabouts, where people eating 75% of their calories in one meal at night lost significantly less LBM than people who at 75% in the morning. Can that be replicated? It would be cool to see.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:38 am

Xan wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 10:25 am
IIRC, he has made an analogy with body temperature. If you're running a fever you don't say "oh, I spent a few minutes too long in slightly too hot of a room the past few days", you instead recognize that your body is aiming for a higher temperature and is making it happen.

You don't painstakingly track your heat intake vs output to maintain your temperature. That just isn't how it works. Yet we think that we can apply calories-in, calories-out and get our weight.
I would bet that if we reverted back to a less-technological agrarian lifestyle where we're all farmers and pastoralists, obesity would disappear. Even though everyone might be eating a ton of food. And if they aren't eating a ton of food (but still doing a lot of physical labor), they would be even smaller.

For instance, at the time of the Revolutionary War, Americans had a much higher standard of living and calorie consumption than the British/Europeans. The average American male stood 2.6 inches taller than the average European male. However, the younger (16 year old) males towered 4.7 inches over than their poor London counterparts. link
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by WiseOne » Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:24 am

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:37 pm
If people actually ate less and exercised more, they would lose weight. AFAIK there is no metabolic chamber data that antithesizes that.
None at all, as long as you don't mind the documented failure rate of > 95% for weight loss plans following that model. Good luck to you if you wish to try it.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Mar 24, 2021 10:20 am

WiseOne wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 9:24 am
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Tue Mar 23, 2021 6:37 pm
If people actually ate less and exercised more, they would lose weight. AFAIK there is no metabolic chamber data that antithesizes that.
None at all, as long as you don't mind the documented failure rate of > 95% for weight loss plans following that model.
On the other side of the coin, 100% of people who successfully lose weight (fat, really) have eaten less calories than they expended. I kinda lost sight of the idea that this thread is about an "optimal" way to accomplish that. Taubes probably has guided a lot of people towards an optimal fat-loss diet for them, so I probably shouldn't rag on him too much about semantics.
Good luck to you if you wish to try it.
Thanks, it's nice of you to say that.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by glennds » Wed Mar 24, 2021 4:29 pm

Weight and body composition are not the same.
It would not be a bad thing at all for weight to stay the same, or even go up, if body composition is improving i.e. increasing lean mass, decreasing fat.

I can accept diet alone (or mostly) affecting fat%. I have trouble accepting that diet alone could be nearly as influential as exercise at building lean mass. But I don't have a source, this is just my intuition.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by vnatale » Wed Mar 24, 2021 4:38 pm

glennds wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 4:29 pm

Weight and body composition are not the same.
It would not be a bad thing at all for weight to stay the same, or even go up, if body composition is improving i.e. increasing lean mass, decreasing fat.

I can accept diet alone (or mostly) affecting fat%. I have trouble accepting that diet alone could be nearly as influential as exercise at building lean mass. But I don't have a source, this is just my intuition.


I'd agree with your intuition.

Exercise is definitely the key to building lean mass.

Your food consumption is going to determine your overall weight (more or less) while exercise is going to dramatically improve your body, and, consequently, your quality of life in many ways.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Benko » Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:18 pm

Kriegsspiel,

Eat less, exercise more.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. I think both 1. It is not that simple and 2. doing it in practice is very difficult (notice, in your post you locked someone in a room).

Example: fixed hypocaloric diets: a. result in body adaptations making continued weight loss more difficult and b. are unpleasant and difficult to follow long term.

Instead of cutting calories by a fixed amount each day e.g. fast twice a week e.g. don't eat anything every Monday and Thursday. This gives one a weekly caloric deficit, makes it difficult for the body to "adapt", and is much easier to follow long term.
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Re: Optimal Diet

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:33 pm

Benko wrote:
Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:18 pm
Kriegsspiel,

Eat less, exercise more.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. I think both 1. It is not that simple and 2. doing it in practice is very difficult (notice, in your post you locked someone in a room).

Example: fixed hypocaloric diets: a. result in body adaptations making continued weight loss more difficult and b. are unpleasant and difficult to follow long term.

Instead of cutting calories by a fixed amount each day e.g. fast twice a week e.g. don't eat anything every Monday and Thursday. This gives one a weekly caloric deficit, makes it difficult for the body to "adapt", and is much easier to follow long term.
I think you guys are reading something into my words that I'm not saying. I'm not saying it's best to cut calories by a fixed amount each day. Fasting twice a week results in eating less over the course of the week. Any method of eating less that works for you is fair game.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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