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Nutritional Guidelines, Fake Science, and My Decreasing Waist
In the spring of 2015, my doctor diagnosed me as clinically obese, with a Latin term that roughly translates to “fat in the belly.” As Rodney Dangerfield joked, “and when I asked for a second opinion, he said I’m ugly.” Anyhow, I’ve long struggled with clinical obesity. I’ve also held, since the 1980s, the habit of daily exercise, alternating between weights and cardio, as well as carefully cataloging my dietary intake, most recently adding MyFitnessPal to my daily habits. My obesity isn’t the fruit of sloth, or lack of self-control, as is the favorite diagnosis.
After months of stewing over the sting of my diagnosis, I decided to launch, yet again, diet #2454. This time it would be a high protein, medium carb, and low fat, a la South Beach. Watch my calories in, calories out, I’ve done this before, I’ve got this.
And yet … after an initial weight loss of about 20 pounds, Thanksgiving and Christmas snacking soon laid waste to my waist, reversing my losses. Just like every other stinkin’ time.
At my next yearly checkout, with nothing to show but my ever-present belly, I asked my general doctor for a referral to a well-known doctor in the “low carb, high fat” way of eating (or WoE). That was eight months ago, and, today, I’m at my lowest weight in three decades.
So, yeah, I might be popping the cork of success too soon, but there’s something else that I’m bringing attention to here. My WoE is rich in saturated fats and meat. The American Heart Association tells us that such things are the leading cause of heart disease. The AHA assures me that by dramatically increasing my saturated fat intake, I’ve issued my own death sentence. Notice how when reason fails, authorities turn to scare tactics? Yet,¹ my fellow WoE-ers and I have never had such good blood lab work, i.e., heart-healthy results. Though being hypertensive prior to the diet, my blood pressure has been consistently 75 over 115 since two months into the diet. I’m far from alone in seeing and experiencing this.
My WoE is very similar to the Atkins Diet. Gary Taubes famously wrote a highly-visible and highly-provocative article, “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” back in 2002 in the NY Times. It made the then-scandalous assertion that fat was healthy. There continues to be a growing mound of evidence that the advice we regularly receive is flat-out wrong and is contributing to the obesity epidemic. Like the red-handed infidelitous spouse who asks, “are you going to believe me or your lying eyes,” my experience isn’t matching what I’m richly and authoritatively assured.
Why is this so? Why are we being asked to follow the same old misleading and unhealthy guidance?
I speculate that some of this pushback is politically driven. For example, remember Jimmy Carter’s push for “environmental sustainability?” That “Meat is unsustainable.” Sure, if we earth-destroying humans would simply eat rice and grass, we can save the planet. Umm … no thanks. There’s also the “Meat is Murder” crowd who tsk-tsks we carnivores. Yet, our bodies respond better to high-fat, saturated fat, and low carb. It’s healthier. You don’t have to like the incongruity of this with your preferred agenda, but deny this at the risk to your own credibility.²
For the AHA, and others, to acknowledge as much is to run counter to those who pretend their science-based way to saving the planet is the only way. There are financial incentives to keep things the way they are as well. I’m sure there are other factors as well. As I researched for this post, I found this post by @drrich from two-plus years ago making similar observations.
It seems Lysenkoism continues his march. Meanwhile, here’s to my pad of butter on my sirloin so that I may comfortably fit into clothes I haven’t worn in decades.
¹ Not everyone. Suffice it to say that this is empirical, not magical. There are always outliers.
² I’m being pith for many reasons, but, sure, we don’t know beyond reasonable doubt. We currently lack significant studies to know with certainty. The LCHF/Keto community cries out for more studies to better understand what we anecdotally are experiencing.
Published in Science & Technology
Thanks for the book suggestion. It looks very good in the descriptions and comments.
@fredhoustan, thank you for this post! You motivated me to rethink my WoE after the holidays. I read Taubes’ book. That started me eating LCHF. No surprise, I’m down 9 pounds in 3 weeks while feeling full and importantly to my wife, in good spirits. I’m an avid cyclist and am feeling strong and energetic. A leaner physique will pay big dividends while riding a bike.
CICO is, to me, miserable and ineffective. Only in the long days of summer can my weekly miles on a bike begin to offset carb intake. The rest of the year constraining calories is torturous.
As I discussed with my wise bride this morning, I have to look longer term at maintaining low carb diet. I love beer. But it ain’t worth the trade off in health and vitality. I’m 58 years old with a family history of relative longevity. Maintaining a leaner body will impact my ability to enjoy the years I might belessed to have.
Please pass the bacon!
While a large number of people do well on LCHF, it’s not another template to stamp down on humanity, as we have in the past with global FDA recommendations. Our bodies exhibit a great diversity, and I fully expect there are people who do well on high carb diets. I know a few, myself.
While a large number of people do well on LCHF, it’s not another template to stamp down on all of humanity, as we have in the past with globally-applied FDA recommendations. Our bodies exhibit a great diversity, and I fully expect there are people who do well on high carb diets. I know a few, myself. I’d say I envy them, but I’m looking forward to that half-pound beef patty for lunch.
Gary Taubes is very much taking the same slings and arrows that Bjørn Lomborg takes on for not following the crowd. He’s also articulate and makes for pleasant reading.
Yes, and I was just in India — lots of carbs but lots of dairy, too.
I understand India has developed quite the obesity epidemic? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India Did you anecdotally notice this?
Not just obesity, they have a huge problem with Type II diabetes. They also have much less Alzheimer’s Disease than you would expect with that much T2DM, and it is likely that lifelong consumption of turmeric plays a role in that.
Whether beginning consumption of turmeric later in life works as well, and what the dose requirements might be, is still up in the air though we know enough to suggest at the minimum regular consumption of turmeric (whole plant or a mix of hydroethanolic and supercritical extracts – a way of getting an approximation of the whole plant in a pill or two, as opposed to spoonfuls of powdered root.)
We know that a fair amount of the epigenetic regulation of metabolism is determined early in life if not before birth.* That led me to wonder whether the above phenomenon involving turmeric was due to prenatal influence. However, as near as I could tell, we have no data on whether curcumin (let alone other turmeric phytochemicals) crosses the placenta or is present in breast milk.
Considering how much trouble our bodies go to to limit the absorption of curcumin (this is referred to as “difficult to absorb” on product labels touting tweaked forms of curcumin,) I wouldn’t be surprised if not much gets past the placenta (though turmeric may well benefit placental health.) My guess is that any pathologist in India or Pakistan who has seen a lot of fetal and infant brains might be able to answer this one – or that the answer does exist but it’s in the widely read scientific literature in Urdu or Hindi.
Of course, there are a lot of other things in turmeric besides curcumin, many of which are known to have biological activity at levels typical of consumption in food. Indian subcontinent food, anyway. One such group of phytochemicals is known as turmerones; they are getting hot in supplement land.
*There’s seriously weird stuff that came out of public health data in places like Netherlands where maternal nutrition data was kept during the German occupation and lifelong health data as well. For example: If your paternal grandfather† was severely underfed before puberty, you are less likely to become diabetic. But if your maternal grandmother was severely underfed before puberty, your chances are higher than average.
Having been breast fed and having consumed colostrum in your first feeding increases the number of leptin receptors in your cell membranes… which makes you less prone to leptin resistance… which makes you less prone to being obese.
†In other words, nutritional epigenetic influences on the expression of a prepubertal male genome appear, in some circumstances, to be heritable. You can’t wave your hands and say “unknown influences on prenatal environment” on this kind of thing. How do you like them apples?
Very interesting. I did notice more fat people but still most of the people in South India (where I was in Kerala State) are slim, indeed many are skinny and it makes one wonder how they do all the hard physical labor that the lower classes do every day.
Village life is going along pretty normally except that there is more and more sugar showing up there as they can afford more now than ever before. The little bit of village life I observed showed skinny and healthy people there.
Very interesting — all of it. Thanks.
I’ve been taking a dry ginger and curcumin supplement (1300 mg of ginger and 1300 mg of curcumin) for years — mostly for my stomach acidity. I used to take Zantak and this ginger formula solved the pain and improved my digestion significantly. Zantak always made me feel sluggish. I learned about the benefits of this combination from an Ayurvedic (traditional Indian doctors) book on diet.