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Haha Henk I almost made that pun but stopped myself! I guess somebody had to  ;D

Abbey I'm lucky to have an organic health store nearby. Yes it's hard to source nutritional parts too isn't it? NOS veggies don't taste very good, and they are carbon Comp too... :p
 
micaddict said:
Yes, well, I'm not advocating to eat loads of meat and dairy. That's not good for you, or the animals or the planet.
Just saying that saturated fats (animal or vegetable) are not the problem, as long as they're in their natural state. Preferably unheated too, although saturated fats take heating better than unsaturated ones.
And indeed, vegetable oils or fats (depending on room temperature) can be saturated, as well. Coconut oil is one example as is cocoa butter.

It's the oils and fats that are "refined" and modified by the food industry that are the problem.  Even the bulk of unsaturated oils in bottles is processed. Only the first, "cold" pressings of seeds and olives will give good quality (virgin) oil. But a lot more oil can be pressed out with added heat and chemicals. The latter have to be removed with yet other chemicals. The end product is fuel, not food (even if a small amount of the real thing is added back for flavor).
It gets much worse when these industrial oils are hardened or hydrogenated to make them saturated. The procedure does close the molecule structure, but it's not quite the same as natural saturated fat. Also, transfats  will be created in the procedure. (These artificial transfats are not quite the same as their natural counterparts, either BTW.)  The result is tasteless, terrible looking grease. This can be used for the manufacturing of other "foods".  And yes, it has prolonged shelf life (but it will do the opposite to your life). For it to turn into wrapped margarine (ersatz butter) a lot more has to be added, such as color, flavor, vitamines etc.
The modern, soft margarines contain less saturated fat, but they are heavily processed, as well.

Hydrogenated vegetable oils were a "clever" manmade answer to replace luxury butter and such. And when whaling practically stopped (yes, fortunately) "vegetable oil" even more became the magic term.  "This product contains vegetable oil" or it's even "fully of vegetable origin. So it's good for you." Well yes, vegetable oils can be very healthy indeed. But in anything you'll find in supermarkets, it hardly ever is.
For a long time we have been misled by the food indusrtry.  And when heart diseases and strokes started to get related to saturated fat intake (half a century ago at least) rather than stopping the production of the artificial kind, they helped promoting the myth that all saturated fats (including natural, unprocessed ones) are not very healthy for you. Bad rep is unfortunate, but this way at least they kept their market share. And at the same time of course they started to promote equally heavily processed "foods" that contained unsaturated fats.

BTW, I've been hollering this for some thirty years now. It's good to finally see some world wide support.

We're drifting off topic. To get back to chocolate, if part of the cocoa butter is replaced to save a buck ...um... quid, guess what will come in its place.
+1 saturated fats are not bad,,, just avoid too much of anything.

It is the nature of humans to look for easy answers to complex issues... alternately they demonize fats, sugar, now gluten... when the real issue is energy balance.  At least the new candy bar has less calories, so a good thing for completely unrelated reasons.

They flip flop on coffee being good or bad for you like the seasons changing.

JR
 
Actually they have discovered that what drives weight gain is not calories - it's hormones. Lookup "Jason fung diabetes" on YouTube. Eye-opening.
 
Phrazemaster said:
Actually they have discovered that what drives weight gain is not calories - it's hormones. Lookup "Jason fung diabetes" on YouTube. Eye-opening.

I have to show this to my wife. Thanks.

Cheers

Ian
 
Phrazemaster said:
Actually they have discovered that what drives weight gain is not calories - it's hormones.
Wow! That's going from one extreme to the other. Weight gain is a combination of many factors, indeed hormonal history is one, but also the first 6 months of life determine the creation of fat-gathering tissues -fat babies become fat adults - diet, sedentarity,... Like cancer, each case of diabetes is a unique case; generic solutions are a recipe for getting it wrong.
  Lookup "Jason fung diabetes" on YouTube. Eye-opening.
You Tube, really?...what about Comedy Central?
 
abbey road d enfer said:
  You Tube, really?...what about Comedy Central?
Dr Fung is a qualified medical practitioner treating real patients in a hospital . It might be better if you watched the video before passing judgement on him or YouTube.

Cheers

Ian
 
abbey road d enfer said:
Wow! That's going from one extreme to the other. Weight gain is a combination of many factors, indeed hormonal history is one, but also the first 6 months of life determine the creation of fat-gathering tissues -fat babies become fat adults - diet, sedentarity,... Like cancer, each case of diabetes is a unique case; generic solutions are a recipe for getting it wrong.  You Tube, really?...what about Comedy Central?
He is a doctor, and he wrote a 350+ page book filled with scientific references and is getting amazing results with his patients. He's writing a second book too. There are 3-4 other books I've read personally by other authors on the subject corroborating this viewpoint.

YouTube is more useful to me than just watching funny cat videos, but ymmv.
 
Phrazemaster said:
Actually they have discovered that what drives weight gain is not calories - it's hormones. Lookup "Jason fung diabetes" on YouTube. Eye-opening.

Sorry I will try not to jump to conclusions, your comment that "what drives weight gain is not calories", sounds a little like what makes cars go is not gasoline. Perhaps your comment is over-simplified. 

Of course appetite is what drives us to consume too many calories, and work output affects energy balance.

It is the human condition to eat more than we need, because our fat cavemen ancestors were the ones who survived times of scarcity to pass along their "always hungry" genes down to us.

We just need to overcome our most basic genetic programming, and exercise pushing away from the dinner table while we are still hungry.

JR

PS As we reduce poverty around the world, and reduce the amount of hard manual labor needed to survive, they can now afford to eat enough food to make themselves sick with western lifestyle diseases, just like us.  :eek:
 
ruffrecords said:
Dr Fung is a qualified medical practitioner treating real patients in a hospital . It might be better if you watched the video before passing judgement on him or YouTube.
I have watched it; and I visited his website, which made me wonder if he's really different than many snake-oil merchants, although I don't doubt he's a real doctor. I'm not advocating the "academic view" either, but many doctors have proved to be sooo wrong, in all directions, I tend to be wary of those who come with certainties (fasting as the ultimate panacea!). And I must admit I'm prejudiced against You Tube for anything else than entertainment.
 
The statement is correct. Calories themselves do not DRIVE weight gain. Hormones do - specifically insulin and cortisol. If calories drove weight gain then we'd all be huge - and there are many who eat tons and never gain weight. There are many here on this board who can look at a muffin and gain weight.

The videos are pretty good; it's hard to explain in a simple post.

 
abbey road d enfer said:
I have watched it; and I visited his website, which made me wonder if he's really different than many snake-oil merchants, although I don't doubt he's a real doctor. I'm not advocating the "academic view" either, but many doctors have proved to be sooo wrong, in all directions, I tend to be wary of those who come with certainties (fasting as the ultimate panacea!). And I must admit I'm prejudiced against You Tube for anything else than entertainment.
Fair enough.
 
Phrazemaster said:
The statement is correct. Calories themselves do not DRIVE weight gain. Hormones do - specifically insulin and cortisol.
I will apologize in advance to the list for feeding this veer...

Insulin and cortisol hormones are the body's response to blood sugar (glucose) levels being elevated or depressed.  Too high blood sugar stimulates insulin release that in turn tells the muscles to convert sugar to glycogen (for storage of quick energy in the muscles for later use). Low blood sugar causes the release of cortisol that tells the liver to make glucose from proteins (glyconeogenisis)  stored there. 

The brain runs only on glucose and gets very cranky if the body does not keep it fed.  :eek: Besides getting blood glucose from carbohydrates , glyconeogenesis can make sugar from protein, and Ketosis (extreme carbohydrate deprivation) can make ketones (a glucose equivalent) from fat to fuel the brain. The brain always gets it's sugar or shuts down (a bad thing).   

Talking about insulin and cortisol are like looking at the fuel injection system using fuel already in the system (blood sugar or proteins or fat). Gaining  weight is about putting more gas in the gas tank than we burned.
If calories drove weight gain then we'd all be huge - and there are many who eat tons and never gain weight. There are many here on this board who can look at a muffin and gain weight.
Calories are literally the heat output from burning food, discovered as a reliable method to evaluate the energy content of different foods.

It really is as simple as calories in vs calories out.

I don't care about the hormones, eat too much and you will gain weight, eat too little and you will lose weight. Exercise matters, back when I was training for the Atlanta  marathon I lost weight eating the same... Since my knee went bad (arthritis) stopping me from my 15 miles a week running habit, I gained weight.

Hormones had nada to do with my weight gain (besides influencing appetite)... they do sound useful to understand for managing lifestyle induced type II diabetes which is a blood sugar syndrome (too high blood sugar can cause organ injury, too low blood sugar can cause lethargy or even passing out).  Last blood test a couple months ago my BG was perfect.  8)
The videos are pretty good; it's hard to explain in a simple post.

Pretty simple math (while there are more marginal secondary variables related to conversion rates, and leakage). The hormones you describe basically react to blood sugar present and increase storage (for too much) or conversion (from liver protein) as needed to make more to maintain stable blood sugar. 

Body weight gain is more about a different pathway where excess energy is converted to fat and stored all around our body. During long duration moderate output level exercise our muscles can burn fat directly (for short duration exercise the muscles prefer to burn glycogen already stored locally there). The body only stores a couple thousand kCal so not even enough stored sugar to finish a 26 mile marathon which will consume stored fat.

During severe carbohydrate restriction (like fasting) we can convert these saved body fats to ketones to fuel the brain.

JR
 
John,

It's actually not entirely as simple as calories in - calories out = net weight change. If it was entirely linear, or even close to it, over a lifetime, a lot of people wouldn't just be big or obese, but huge.

I think what Phrazemaster was getting at was that our bodies actually adapt to external factors, indirectly, due to the amount of calories we take in. A fairly recent study of participants in "The Biggest Loser" showed that the starvation and extreme exercise they subjected themselves to in order to lose weight changed metabolism. So once they were done losing the weight the problem was that they now had an even lower metabolism. If they ate X calories per day before they lost the weight, and that maintained their obesity at the same level, then after they lost the weight they'd actually have to cut down on their intake to compensate or they'd put weight back on. And most of them did.

So by "starving" ourselves we actually change the way the body functions. It adapts as if we were living in a place where there's no food and just starvation. And it doesn't appear easy for us to reset that metabolism. So anyway, it isn't actually as simple as calories in vs. calories out.

Also, it's not really duration that determines fuel source for exertion, but rather the effort level. ATP versus carbs versus fat; fast to slow, or high intensity to low, respectively. But that's probably what you meant anyway.
 
I apologize for making such a terse, unsubstantiated statement; I was on a break at work and should have waited until I had some more time.

Mattias is on the right track - they have done studies with rats wherein the ovaries were removed. This deprived the rats of estrogen. They gained weight like crazy. Even at near starvation-level amounts of food, their bodies converted available calories into fat and the rats literally were starving for nutrients , yet they were obese, and continued to gain weight even at the continued starvation levels. Calories in <> Calories out!

When they gave the rats estrogen supplements, they returned to normal weight quickly.

A lot of other research has shown that elevated insulin levels caused by eating too much sugar or refined carbs causes the body to gain weight - as does elevated stress, which raises cortisol, which also contributes to weight gain. As does lack of sleep.

I, too, have lost weight during periods of exercising, but could it be a different mechanism than we've been lead to believe?

They've done studies by putting calorie monitors on people to find out how many calories they burned during the day. Some participants went to the gym, and others didn't. What they found was surprising.

For those going to the gym, they certainly burned more calories while active. But they then burned far few calories than normal after they went to the gym. The net result was they didn't burn more calories than had they not gone to the gym. This turns the traditional concept of "burning it off" on its ear - you don't exercise to "burn" calories; rather you exercise to improve your body's ability to handle stress and become less insulin resistant.

In fact they've shown - surprise surprise - that you become hungrier after exercising and will naturally replace lost calories. The body isn't stupid; it's not a calculator but a living, adapting machine that regulates energy intelligently.

Also exercising reduces the glycogen (sugar) in the muscles, which gives excess dietary sugar someplace to "go" besides being turned into fat through insulin.

I've read quite a bit about it, but I'm not claiming my understanding is perfect, so forgive any discrepancies. A related concept is the ketogenic diet, which works by eliminating carbs (which are sugars). In the absence of carbs, the body burns ketones for fuel, including the brain as JR mentioned. People report eating large amounts of sat fats, moderate proteins, and losing weight - no calorie reduction involved.

The ketogenic diet is also reportedly very helpful for reducing or eliminating diabetes. Dr. Fung says the fundamental problem in diabetes is insulin resistance. When insulin is highly elevated for prolonged periods of time, the body reacts by decreasing sensitivity to it (as with any drug, even with our own hormones, a tolerance kicks in). Because the cells are insulin resistant, they stop accepting sugar and more insulin is often given to "force" the cells to take up the excess sugar. But this is a dangerous road - the more insulin you give, the more insulin resistant you become, and it's a death spiral - literally. The answer is not more insulin, because insulin itself is not the problem - the answer is to increase insulin sensitivity, which happens when we - exercise - fast - reduce our sugar intake - so that insulin is not raised constantly.

Dr. Fung says it's a little bit like giving alcohol to an alcoholic to treat their alcoholism. Giving insulin doesn't fix things, it makes it worse.

I'm not suggesting calories have nothing to do with it - but if they are coming from sugar they are trouble, because they are more likely to be stored as fat.

It's fairly complex, and I'm sorry to have hijacked the thread about it all.

Here's a small list of references I own and have read all (or some of) for those not so disgusted they have stopped reading this thread:

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C6D0LCK/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o04_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WUYOQ6/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o07_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A25FDUA/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o06_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to a Low Carb, High Fat Diet:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MEX9B4C/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, and Lose Weight:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q33ZRUQ/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o09_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In any case, as Abbey pointed out, a lot of people are selling a lot of things, so it's hard to know what to believe, and big Pharma has a pill to sell you at every turn.

But there's a lot of science now to support the concept that our bodies are intelligent, and metabolism slows down when we eat less, and speeds up when we eat more, and the old "calories in = calories out" model is actually deprecated and flat out false. The Gary Taub book is particularly well done, as is the Dr. Fung book.

I'll try to stop polluting this thread  :-[

Moderators if you want to delete this post or move it I'm OK with that.

This whole thing got started 'cause Toblerone got stingy due to BREXIT.

There, we are back on track, no?
 
Phrazemaster said:
I apologize for making such a terse, unsubstantiated statement; I was on a break at work and should have waited until I had some more time.

Mattias is on the right track - they have done studies with rats wherein the ovaries were removed. This deprived the rats of estrogen. They gained weight like crazy. Even at near starvation-level amounts of food, their bodies converted available calories into fat and the rats literally were starving for nutrients , yet they were obese, and continued to gain weight even at the continued starvation levels. Calories in <> Calories out!

When they gave the rats estrogen supplements, they returned to normal weight quickly.

A lot of other research has shown that elevated insulin levels caused by eating too much sugar or refined carbs causes the body to gain weight - as does elevated stress, which raises cortisol, which also contributes to weight gain. As does lack of sleep.
You will gain weight just from eating too much sugar.. the high insulin is a reaction to the too much sugar... the weight gain was because of too much sugar.
I, too, have lost weight during periods of exercising, but could it be a different mechanism than we've been lead to believe?
If we consume and burn a few thousand kCal per day, a small marginal difference plus or minus over time can accumulate to a measurable weight difference and appear like sudden weight gain or loss. In fact water retention can vary a couple pounds a day.

Years ago I was a member of a forum that followed a very rigorous calorie restriction discipline. CRON stood for calorie restriction with optimal nutrition. The members of this group were fanatic about managing calorie intake (me not so much but I was interested in the science.) The CRON society was pursuing this for life extension, experiments determined that literally starving yourself but with adequate nutrition would slow down aging. There have been numerous animal studies with some compelling decade long studies with primates.

Long story short , i knew some guys from that group who were so involved in managing calories that they checked themselves into hospitals to micro manage food intake and activity for weeks at a time. They even collected their bodily waste and burned that in a calorimeter to count the calories they did not absorb.

At the end of all that micro measurement it was simple calories in vs calories out, but the calories you poop out count too. (there were tricks associated with that too... bile acid sequestrates  were resins that would bind to the digestive bile so it couldn't dissolve the fat and allow it to pass through the intestine wall... Kind of like cheating mother nature... or you could just eat more fiber.  8)
They've done studies by putting calorie monitors on people to find out how many calories they burned during the day. Some participants went to the gym, and others didn't. What they found was surprising.

For those going to the gym, they certainly burned more calories while active. But they then burned far few calories than normal after they went to the gym. The net result was they didn't burn more calories than had they not gone to the gym. This turns the traditional concept of "burning it off" on its ear - you don't exercise to "burn" calories; rather you exercise to improve your body's ability to handle stress and become less insulin resistant.
That is inconsistent with my life experience as I already shared. I have paid close attention to this for decades. The daily calories budget involves different factors. The brain that I mentioned actually consumes a fair share of our calories. (some research has determined that the brain stores some sugar over night, but this was only researched with mice and since the test subjects were sacrificed to get results, you run out of mice pretty quickly.

Another factor for the human daily calorie budget is muscle mass... muscles burn calories even at rest and weigh more than fat so carrying around a bunch of muscles is more work.

Again more math with variables in the margin. 
In fact they've shown - surprise surprise - that you become hungrier after exercising and will naturally replace lost calories. The body isn't stupid; it's not a calculator but a living, adapting machine that regulates energy intelligently.
I can lend you my book about the physiology of appetite, probably a chapter or two on that specific subject. The body even responds to the energy content of foods. Over time it even learns if you are eating sawdust or real calories, and responds accordingly.

From sports physiology there are even studies about optimal times to carb load to restore muscle glycogen faster. The muscles are receptive to carb uptake shortly after working out, you may not be very hungry right then. But you are not talking about carbo loading for sports.


Also exercising reduces the glycogen (sugar) in the muscles, which gives excess dietary sugar someplace to "go" besides being turned into fat through insulin.
Depleting muscle glycogen can alter whether the excess calories are stored as glycogen or fat. The muscles and liver can only hold something like 3,000 kCal of glycogen (sugar) before shifting to fat storage.

An important thing about exercise (wrt type II diabetes) is that working the muscles can reduce the insulin resistance that builds up over time from too much sugar (actually too much insulin), and not enough sweating.  As the muscles become less sensitive to insulin, the pancreas pumps out even more, irritating them more and making them even less sensitive...  exercise is the miracle cure for people with type II.
I've read quite a bit about it, but I'm not claiming my understanding is perfect, so forgive any discrepancies. A related concept is the ketogenic diet, which works by eliminating carbs (which are sugars). In the absence of carbs, the body burns ketones for fuel, including the brain as JR mentioned. People report eating large amounts of sat fats, moderate proteins, and losing weight - no calorie reduction involved.
The Atkins diet was kind of a gimmick. You body has to generate bile (cholesterol) to dissolve fats so they can be absorbed through the intestine wall into the blood stream. For a dieter unaccustomed to eating that much fat it will not be reabsorbed an passed out as waste. Over time the body would adapt to make more bile and absorb more of the fat, but that would ultimately be very unhealthy. The later version of that diet only used the zero carb, high fat diet during an introductory phase where dieters would get positive reinforcement fro a quick several pound loss. After that first stage Atkins introduced more heathy carbs into a more zone like balanced diet.   
The ketogenic diet is also reportedly very helpful for reducing or eliminating diabetes. Dr. Fung says the fundamental problem in diabetes is insulin resistance.
Only type II or metabolic syndrome diabetes is the muscles ignoring the insulin. Type I diabetes is a caused by a damaged pancreas that can't make enough insulin for healthy muscles,  a different disease pathology.

Ketosis can rest the pancreas and insulin system. Ketosis is reportedly helpful for people with epilepsy too. Epilepsy is basically the brain misfiring.  Apparently the brain runs better on ketones for fuel than glucose.  But some people have trouble with carb elimination diets.  Atkins sold a lot of diet books based on carb elimination/reduction  (i tried it back in the '70s), 
When insulin is highly elevated for prolonged periods of time, the body reacts by decreasing sensitivity to it (as with any drug, even with our own hormones, a tolerance kicks in). Because the cells are insulin resistant,
muscles become insulin resistant
they stop accepting sugar and more insulin is often given to "force" the cells to take up the excess sugar. But this is a dangerous road - the more insulin you give, the more insulin resistant you become, and it's a death spiral - literally. The answer is not more insulin, because insulin itself is not the problem - the answer is to increase insulin sensitivity, which happens when we - exercise - fast - reduce our sugar intake - so that insulin is not raised constantly.
ding ding ding correct.....  I read a great lecture from a Dr Rosedale (?) back in the '70-80s with a lucid explanation about the insulin mechanism. Long before youtube existed.
Dr. Fung says it's a little bit like giving alcohol to an alcoholic to treat their alcoholism. Giving insulin doesn't fix things, it makes it worse.
For type I you have to inject insulin, for type II you need to work the muscles to reduce the insulin resistance.
I'm not suggesting calories have nothing to do with it - but if they are coming from sugar they are trouble, because they are more likely to be stored as fat.
Excess fat is even more efficiently stored as fat, no conversion cost, sugar and protein actually loses some energy from the conversion.
It's fairly complex, and I'm sorry to have hijacked the thread about it all.

Here's a small list of references I own and have read all (or some of) for those not so disgusted they have stopped reading this thread:

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C6D0LCK/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o04_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WUYOQ6/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o07_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A25FDUA/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o06_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Keto Clarity: Your Definitive Guide to a Low Carb, High Fat Diet:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MEX9B4C/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, and Lose Weight:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q33ZRUQ/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o09_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

In any case, as Abbey pointed out, a lot of people are selling a lot of things, so it's hard to know what to believe, and big Pharma has a pill to sell you at every turn.

But there's a lot of science now to support the concept that our bodies are intelligent, and metabolism slows down when we eat less, and speeds up when we eat more, and the old "calories in = calories out" model is actually deprecated and flat out false. The Gary Taub book is particularly well done, as is the Dr. Fung book.

I'll try to stop polluting this thread  :-[

Moderators if you want to delete this post or move it I'm OK with that.

This whole thing got started 'cause Toblerone got stingy due to BREXIT.

There, we are back on track, no?

It sounds like you are talking about blood sugar management not weight gain or loss.

Maybe tomorrow I'll dig out my book about appetite it was a good read.

[edit] The book about appetite is "The psychology of eating and drinking.. an introduction" by A.W. Logue.  C1991. This is NOT a diet advice book but kind of an inside the human machine, how the appetite works, perhaps for a pre-med course.  [/edit]


If you are suffering from type II good luck and exercise... lifting weights is probably better than jogging, since it increases muscle mass.  Jogging will lower blood sugar in the short term but longer term more muscle mass is better. 

JR

PS: I remain disappointed by a medical community that rather prescribe pills to lower blood sugar in pre-diabetic metabolic syndrome patients than just tell the patients to exercise.  8)
 
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