A lot of these articles ignore bodybuilders.<p>Bodybuilders are experts at loosing fat getting in to single digit body fat percentages consistently and methodically.<p>Most follow the same rough diet and manipulate calories in the same way, it’s kind of cookie cutter, do this you’ll loose fat.<p>Most of it is learnt over years of professional bodybuilders keeping meticulous diaries of every training session, every calorie eat, every small change made and every result seen.<p>Bodybuilders take it to the extreme to be the best, still I think if you are interested in loosing fat there’s a lot that can be learnt from bodybuilders without going to the extreme.
People are talking about thermodynamics here as if your body is a fire and every single thing put in is consumed entirely and exactly for each and every person. Can you gaurantee a 100 calories equivalent food will produce 100 calories worth of energy conversation and gaurantee this for every single individual.<p>I think this is the opposite of physics envy. People try to dumb down a whole science by waving hands and saying "physics, bitches!"
I'm not sure I understand what he's getting at.<p>> The conventional approaches don’t work because while we can sustain eating less for a while, eventually the hunger gets us because we’re semi-starving ourselves.<p>So it's all about calories then but people just have a hard time consuming less calories and he wants to make it easier for them? Well okay but it's still absolutely about calories just like it's always been and always will be.
His answer to "what do we know so far?" is that "the most impressive research" was an experiment with no control, conducted by a start-up, which then published the results on their company blog. OK, next.
> By restricting carbohydrate, the ketogenic diet minimises insulin, and so instead of accumulating fat, your body starts mobilising it.<p>By restricting carbohydrate to minimise insulin and start mobilising fat rather than accumulating it you are of course reducing the calories too.<p>Obesity is helped by many different things - hormones, gut biome, overly processed food etc - but mainly by too much food in relation too little exercise.
Realistically obesity is going to be solved by the re-engineering of food to be healthier while still being tasty and cheap.<p>Anything other than that requires behavioral changes which are difficult to implement and extremely difficult to maintain.
The entirety of the comments seem to be either saying "This guy is a genius and is 100% right" or "This guy is talking out of his backside".<p>The scientific consensus on weight loss is pretty clear: all forms of diets are similarly effective when you control for calorie intake. Low carb diets work, low fat diet work, intermittent fasting works, plain old fasting works, McDonald's diet and Twinkie diets work. This is nothing new and calorie deficit is always the best predictor regardless of the diet type.<p>He seems to make the argument that high insulin causes fat to accumulate and as such reducing carbohydrate lowers insulin and increases weight loss, but I have yet to see any evidence that a high-calorie keto diet will result in weight loss.<p>The general consensus as to why keto works for some people is that it makes hunger management easier, although AFAIK there is no mechanism that has been clearly identified as being the main responsible, people who succeed on keto report higher levels of satiety after meals, but the same can be said of many other diets for people on which they work.<p>There's a paragraph in there about keto being restrictive and he's basically dismissing the claim with "it feels less restrictive for people who feel less hungry on keto", which, fair enough but I don't think that enough evidence to say "promoting the keto diet will address the obesity problem". There may well be tons of people for whom keto <i>is</i> too restrictive, because they <i>won't</i> feel less hungry after meals.<p>In the end, the best diet is the one you can stick to. For some people that's keto, for most people it's portion control, for others it may be intermittent fasting, for others it may be offsetting their food intake with exercise. In the end, I think it's harmful to promote any specific diet as "the cure to obesity", and it's far better to encourage people to try out different diets rather than giving them the idea that "if this diet won't work, nothing will". Try different things out and see what works for you.
So, we are finally dismissing "low fat-low weight" because the evidence was always weak and the few actually relevant studies had very questionable backers (sugar industry) and very widely misrepresented to benefit nutrition gurus to sell their books? Good!<p>Aaaand we are replacing that immediately with a similarly reductionist view (see title) with questionable backed evidence (one study by a start-up, not randomized) easily misrepresented by nutrition gurus (title image of the blog is the author) to sell his two books? Incredible!<p>We still don't even really understand where the "hungry" feeling comes from, entirely. Nutrition is <i>incredibly</i> complex. It is a function of culture, genetics, neurology, society, healthcare system, medical education, funding, corporate culture, advertising, cognition, organ function, sports, mental health, environment, climate, industry regulations and probably fifty more. It would be nice if at least the scientific community move away from the idea that we just have to find <i>the</i> "10 diet rules to change your life" and then we win - that's as embarrassing as it is prevalent.
I just skimmed the article, but it doesn't seem to mention how chemicals commonly found in our lived environment act as endocrine disruptors and which studies are showing lead to obesity.<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28205155/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28205155/</a> &c.
Reminder: Taubes is the well known author of “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and “Why we get fat”. Which is to say, he isn’t just a journalist, but also someone who has authorized bestselling books on this set of topics.
well..then obesity should be easily solved. if its a hormone problem, then why are we looking at diets rather than administering hormone therapies?<p>testosterone could be an umbrella weight loss strategy. except there is the aggression part.<p>ok. now what? the only logical solution is calorie restriction. rather than diets or hormones. and its easy. dont eat too much. we didnt evolve to where we are by eating three square meals a day. we ate little and often starved in between while hunting and foraging. and likely had a lot of adrenaline coursing through our bodies.<p>never has there been an obese caveman. but they didnt have butter either. we likely subsisted on berries and fruits and wild edible. i want to throw in mushrooms or hallucinogens and some version of the good herb..and a small amount of meat and fish.
The science is pretty clear and supports what is said in this article.
I changed my diet from "normal" to carnivour (which basically is a form of low carb) and had lots of improvements in my health even thought I had normal weight. I had ulcerative colitis for 20 years and all symptoms was gone within 6 months, also verified with a rectoscopy.
I also had great improvements in mood and motivation by taking vitamin-d and for cramps/sleep by taking ZMA (Zinc for testosterone, Magnesium for cramps).
Can recommend the books Deep Nutrition and Genius Foods, the latter is probably more accessible.
Also recommend following @Mangan150 on twitter.