The Clean Eating Myth
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kshama2001 wrote: »How do you imagine this article is relevant to the OP?
I really am curious.
The thread is titled "The Clean Eating Myth." The article's point is that losing weight from clean eating is not a myth.
Did you read beyond the title? Like maybe the scenario in the first post?
It seems only polite to actually read the first post before responding.
Also, I've managed to lose AND gain weight while eating in a way that is usually classified as "clean." Most recently I've lost weight while relaxing and eating rather like person B.
Maybe read the first post in the thread and then respond? Because your comments here don't seem all that relevant.
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asflatasapancake wrote: »This thread is like the Energizer bunny. It just keeps going, and going, and going. I really don't understand how in this scenario, the amount of weight loss would be much different. I don't think either example would be "healthier". As long as they are eating a balanced diet, meeting their macros and micros, same result.
Because that's the magical thinking of the special dieter. Please note that I am NOT talking about someone with an already diagnosed medical condition who needs to eat a certain way because of it.
I'm talking about the crowd who thinks they'll stave off every disease known to man if they just eat all the right foods.
That's why the health card keeps getting played so much in this discussion.
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We are going to the Dominican Republic in August. I really don't want to go there but Dora does so I guess it's happening. like 3 minutes ago she sent me the info on the resort it appears we finally narrowed it down to.kshama2001 wrote: »Ok - run an experiment on yourself. Eat in a caloric surplus of 500 calories of the "right" calories. Do this for three months and report back with the results. I 100% guarantee you will gain weight.
When I lived in the wilds of Costa Rica for two months and had no access to processed or otherwise junk foods, I lost 20 pounds effortlessly. I didn't log calories, but had three meals and one or two snacks per day and was never hungry. Food cravings were not really an issue, as pizza, ice cream, etc. simply were not available. I did eat a lot of mango, bananas, and pineapple. Supermarket bananas are like a completely different food from these bananas, which were like ambrosia from the gods.
(When I say "wilds," I mean that literally. We were in the last town before the jungle separating Costa Rica from Panana. Farmers delivered rice and beans to us on horseback. A veggie truck was scheduled to come twice a week, but sometimes the road was washed out and it couldn't make it, in which case we had more green papaya salad and otherwise foraged.)
So, yeah, I'm in the clean food camp. My challenge is doing it amidst a plethora of unhealthy choices, and while cooking for people who don't want to be super-clean.
So your evidence is that when you lived in a 3rd world country, in a remote area, you lost weight? I mean I guess you have to be correct because even though you didn't have processed foods you must have had an incredibly abundant range of foods to eat all day. Because we know in those areas people have so much excess food around to eat. There were buffets of clean food everywhere right?
I went to the Dominican Republic and gained weight eating all the clean foods, fresh seafood, fruits and veggies. It might have been the unlimited drinks at the All Inclusive resort though...
why don't you run off into the jungle and live off bananas and see if you drop 20 pounds or not.??0 -
The question I'd most like to know, of the people who have claimed this: why is person B unhealthy?0
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Another hilarious thing is that the opinion piece that is being cited seems not to push hyper clean eating and the idea that one MUST ELIMINATE whatever non-clean foods are (we still don't really know, since so far the self-proclaimed "clean" eaters seem to eat lots of processed foods), but to be speaking about sensible changes that someone on the SAD might make. Person B is not described as eating the SAD, as it's usually defined (and even the SAD isn't the strawman 100% cake diet):So what’s Ludwig’s overall advice? “It’s time to reacquaint ourselves with minimally processed carbs. If you take three servings of refined carbohydrates and substitute one of fruit, one of beans and one of nuts, you could eliminate 50 percent of diet-related disease in the United States. These relatively modest changes can provide great benefit.”
Based on how Person B is described, I think he's eating fruit, beans, and nuts, so again I ask what the article has to do with anything.
Personally, I eat lots and lots of veggies. I'm not really sure why the fact that I've not eliminated ice cream is supposed to mean that I eat an unhealthy diet and never eat veggies (or fruit, beans, or nuts) or whatever bizarre scenario the self-proclaimed "clean" eaters have constructed.
It's ridiculous all or nothing stuff and like deaniac said, I seriously doubt the "clean" eaters actually live by it either in reality. (In other words, you too are a person B, so be happy that person B is going to be okay.)0 -
So your evidence is that when you lived in a 3rd world country, in a remote area, you lost weight? I mean I guess you have to be correct because even though you didn't have processed foods you must have had an incredibly abundant range of foods to eat all day. Because we know in those areas people have so much excess food around to eat. There were buffets of clean food everywhere right?
I did some shopping, cooked lunch, and had access to all the food in the kitchen. Fruits, veggies, starches, and eggs were abundant. We had chicken about once per week. There was no beef, although Guaymi Indians would bring us "jungle meat" from time to time. There was cheese in town but it was nasty, and I only had a bite once. The eggs were delivered by Tico girls from a nearby farm. I could hear them giggling as they walked up the mountain. Other farmers would deliver whatever they were harvesting. We had a wide variety of fruit on the property, and were starting to grow vegetables.
Of course I got more exercise than now, when I have a desk job. I also said I was never hungry. Well, except for that normal, right before a meal hungry. I guess I meant I was not "deprived hungry."
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yopeeps025 wrote: »I can't believe you guys are still entertaining this crowd. I can't wait for the day when this whole crowd cruelly puts up progress pictures to show the application of all their awesome beliefs.
Stay tune for July when I have another physical with bod pod. I will gladly post my results. I want to see how much more I can naturally increase my testosterone.
I think for my next thread, I am going to post my lab results and watch all the clean eaters heads explode.
In your picture it seems you are basically a young healthy guy..why would you lab results be bad? Your young and often times the result of our bad behavior shows up in the later years of our life...where is your habits leading you...to age well or deteriorate...for the most part we all can go without sleep...drink to much, eat lousy food when we are young...that is not the barometer we use to measure our healthy behaviors and habits.
Okay, I'll bite. I'm 52. I still have 50 pounds to lose. I've already lost 38. (It's really almost 40, but there's this whole business with getting a new scale that weighs me heavier and not logging that loss yada yada...)
I HAD high cholesterol when I joined MFP.
I don't any more.
Simply by losing weight and exercising, I have improved my health.
I still enjoy treats in moderation.
Am I old enough for you?
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I went to the Dominican Republic and gained weight eating all the clean foods, fresh seafood, fruits and veggies. It might have been the unlimited drinks at the All Inclusive resort though...
Ya, we had a little rum that we very occasionally used in cooking, but other than that, I didn't have alcohol. Or chocolate. /sobs/0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »The question I'd most like to know, of the people who have claimed this: why is person B unhealthy?
Bc moderation = cake and donuts all day0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »Oh, here's the article I wanted:
Which Diet Works?
One of the challenges of arguing that hyperprocessed carbohydrates are largely responsible for the obesity pandemic (“epidemic” is no longer a strong enough word, say many experts) is the notion that “a calorie is a calorie.”
Accept that, and you buy into the contention that consuming 100 calories’ worth of sugar water (like Coke or Gatorade), white bread or French fries is the same as eating 100 calories of broccoli or beans. And Big Food — which has little interest in selling broccoli or beans — would have you believe that if you expend enough energy to work off those 100 calories, it simply doesn’t matter.
There’s an increasing body of evidence, however, that calories from highly processed carbohydrates like white flour (and of course sugar) provide calories that the body treats differently, spiking both blood sugar and insulin and causing us to retain fat instead of burning it off.
In other words, all calories are not alike.
Read more: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/which-diet-works/
You are taking this thread off topic... the topic presumed a caloric deficit for both A and B.
Sugar consumed either in a caloric deficit or at energy balance won't be stored as extra body fat any more than anything else will.
This is junk science to think anything else.
The "documentary" you posted links to is a farce.
You need to overeat beyond your body's energy needs to store excess fat.
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If you eat 1500 calories of clean food, and are in a calorie deficit, then you will lose more weight than the person that is eating 1500 calories of say a moderate diet that includes processed food, nutrient dense foods, and some ice cream and/or other treats, and is also in a calorie deficit < It is usually phrased as a question, but sometimes as a statement.
So anyway, the ridiculous premise is that if Person A (Lets says a 35 year old 200 pound 5'10 male) eats clean food and is in a calorie deficit; they will lose more than Person B (also a 35 year old 200 pound 5-10 male). For the purpose of this discussion Person A and B have no medical condition; both Person A & B engage in strength training four times a week for an hour a session; both person A & B are in a 500 calorie daily deficit.
Understanding that 100 calories of carrots = 100 calories of donuts from an energy perspective. However, they are not nutritionally the same. What matters is the context of ones diet and that you are hitting micros and macros.
so anyway, who will lose more weigh Person A, or Person B?
My answer is C they will both lose relatively the save weight within about +/- five pounds of one another.
discuss….
The article is on point because it is essentially saying person A will lose more weight.
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But you lost weight due to lack of availability to many foods and probably you were more active. So it wasn't the fact that your foods were more natural, but rather more limited and unavailable, so you were forced to eat lower calorie foods.kshama2001 wrote: »Ok - run an experiment on yourself. Eat in a caloric surplus of 500 calories of the "right" calories. Do this for three months and report back with the results. I 100% guarantee you will gain weight.
When I lived in the wilds of Costa Rica for two months and had no access to processed or otherwise junk foods, I lost 20 pounds effortlessly. I didn't log calories, but had three meals and one or two snacks per day and was never hungry. Food cravings were not really an issue, as pizza, ice cream, etc. simply were not available. I did eat a lot of mango, bananas, and pineapple. Supermarket bananas are like a completely different food from these bananas, which were like ambrosia from the gods.
(When I say "wilds," I mean that literally. We were in the last town before the jungle separating Costa Rica from Panana. Farmers delivered rice and beans to us on horseback. A veggie truck was scheduled to come twice a week, but sometimes the road was washed out and it couldn't make it, in which case we had more green papaya salad and otherwise foraged.)
So, yeah, I'm in the clean food camp. My challenge is doing it amidst a plethora of unhealthy choices, and while cooking for people who don't want to be super-clean.
Logic. So happy to see logic. See also: less calorically dense food sources.
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I would like to know why people automatically assume the person eats nothing but processed foods or what some people might not "clean" foods when the person says they eat them? Why is it all or nothing?
because the clean eater tried to eat 100% so then don't know what moderation means.
*shrugs* I don't get it either.
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FunkyTobias wrote: »
As you just admitted, the people whose claims you are going by to create the 100% "clean" dieter example exist on the Internet with closed diaries. You don't actually know anyone in real life who eats 100% "clean", do you? I don't. When you do find someone who claims to, I guarantee you a little pushing and prodding will reveal occasional departures from the strictest protocols 9 time out of 10.
Yes. McDonald's. The only difference between 100% McDonald's "dieters" and "clean" dieters is that the clean dieters do so consciously while most people eating McDonald's for all or most of their meals aren't conscious about their choice (or their caloric intake).
With the assumptions exactly as they are stated in your question, of course they would both lose at roughly the same rate.I have been asked this a few times over the past days, or it has been posed in a general sense in some threads, so I am going to put it out here to discuss in this thread.
The question goes something like this. If you eat 1500 calories of clean food, and are in a calorie deficit, then you will lose more weight than the person that is eating 1500 calories of say a moderate diet that includes processed food, nutrient dense foods, and some ice cream and/or other treats, and is also in a calorie deficit < It is usually phrased as a question, but sometimes as a statement.
So anyway, the ridiculous premise is that if Person A (Lets says a 35 year old 200 pound 5'10 male) eats clean food and is in a calorie deficit; they will lose more than Person B (also a 35 year old 200 pound 5-10 male). For the purpose of this discussion Person A and B have no medical condition; both Person A & B engage in strength training four times a week for an hour a session; both person A & B are in a 500 calorie daily deficit.
Understanding that 100 calories of carrots = 100 calories of donuts from an energy perspective. However, they are not nutritionally the same. What matters is the context of ones diet and that you are hitting micros and macros.
so anyway, who will lose more weigh Person A, or Person B?
My answer is C they will both lose relatively the save weight within about +/- five pounds of one another.
discuss….
The question, though, is whether those assumptions are reasonable. It is far easier to maintain a balanced diet than any kind of a fad diet; be that fad diet all junk food or all "clean" food. Over time, if one doesn't balance one's own likings and cravings with health and nutrition, one is less likely to be able to maintain either the caloric intake or the "cleanliness" of the diet. If you love ice cream but your "clean" diet requires you to shun it, your body will most likely find a way to beat you and make you binge eat that ice cream. If on the other hand you have something to prove and just eat McDonald's all the time, over the long run it is also likely that you will increase your intake of that food, adding calories. It will also make you feel stressed, less energetic, and and thus make you less likely to keep up with your workout regimen. A "clean" dieter who is actively denying themselves things they like may experience stress and depression to give up as well.
So the right answer, I think, is that while a caloric deficit is the only relevant question in terms of weight loss, certain diets, given the individual, may make it more likely they would stick to such deficit while others may make it more likely they won't.
can you please name the fad diet that calls for eating 100% mcdonalds?
While your point is valid that I intentionally picked an extreme example that isn't true in the real world, so did you. Most people who eat "clean" only do so for only a majority of their diet. They allow treats now and then, and they will satisfy their cravings with moderate amounts of junk food now and then too. I'm actually agreeing with you that it's a balanced diet that incorporates our individual choices of pleasure foods is important in order to stick to a habit long term.
hmmm I don't know anyone that eats 100% mcdonalds….
however, according to the clean eaters on here they eat 100% clean all the time, of course most of them have private diaries so there is now way to to know…
how was my example extreme? i said one person was clean (this is a real world example) and one person is moderation (another real world example)
I agree that two people would probably not have the same exact macros and workout routine, but I don't think it was an extreme example.
So between us, we can't find real data on the prevalence on 100% adherence to either a strict clean-only diet or a strict junkfood only diet. Hence, both examples are extreme.
so the moderate eater is an extreme example too?
i dont agree with your premise, so we can just agree to disagree….
No, the moderate eater is not an extreme example. But the example of a person who strictly adheres to 100% "clean" diet IS an extreme example. My point partly is that you are comparing an extreme case to a balanced case, and that is no less a strawman than people who say "ok you eat 1500 calories of cake a day then."
So clean eating is a straw man argument, really??
That's what I said, yes.
interesting, given the amount of people that advocate for it….
yet, I can't find anyone that advocates for your mcdonalds diet….
Deciding whether an example is extreme/straw man is not related to the existence of the practice's advocates, it's related to the practice's actual adherents. And I don't think anyone seriously disputes that there are actually more people who eat a primarily fast food diet in the US than there are people who eat a primarily clean diet.
Just because a practice has advocates doesn't mean it's a prevalent practice, and just because a practice lacks advocates doesn't mean it isn't prevalent. In fact, the more ubiquitous a practice is, the fewer advocates it needs, since it's a generally accepted practice. I don't know a lot of smoking advocates, but I do know a lot of smokers.
Methinks you don't understand what a straw man is.
A straw man is an intentional misrepresentation of an opponent's position, often used in debates with unsophisticated audiences to make it appear that the opponent's arguments are more easily defeated than they are.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Straw_man
It has everything to do with the claims made, and nothing to do with actual practices.
Alright, my bad. It's not a strawman. But the example is still extreme as it rarely actually occurs.0 -
Come on, Lustig? Try again.kshama2001 wrote: »How do you imagine this article is relevant to the OP?
I really am curious.
The thread is titled "The Clean Eating Myth." The article's point is that losing weight from clean eating is not a myth.
Here's more:
...Almost every diet, from the radical no-carb-at-all notions to the tame (and sane) “Healthy Eating Plate” from Harvard, agrees on at least this notion: reduce, or even come close to eliminating, the amount of hyper-processed carbohydrates in your diet, because, quite simply, they’re bad for you. And if you look at statistics, at least a quarter of our calories come from added sugars (seven percent from beverages alone), white flour, white rice, white pasta … are you seeing a pattern here? (Oh, and white potatoes. And beer.)
So what’s Ludwig’s overall advice? “It’s time to reacquaint ourselves with minimally processed carbs. If you take three servings of refined carbohydrates and substitute one of fruit, one of beans and one of nuts, you could eliminate 50 percent of diet-related disease in the United States. These relatively modest changes can provide great benefit.”
The message is pretty simple: unprocessed foods give you a better chance of idealizing your weight — and your health. Because all calories are not created equal.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/which-diet-works/
It was Ludwig, but he's just as bad with his GI agenda.
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kshama2001 wrote: »If you eat 1500 calories of clean food, and are in a calorie deficit, then you will lose more weight than the person that is eating 1500 calories of say a moderate diet that includes processed food, nutrient dense foods, and some ice cream and/or other treats, and is also in a calorie deficit < It is usually phrased as a question, but sometimes as a statement.
So anyway, the ridiculous premise is that if Person A (Lets says a 35 year old 200 pound 5'10 male) eats clean food and is in a calorie deficit; they will lose more than Person B (also a 35 year old 200 pound 5-10 male). For the purpose of this discussion Person A and B have no medical condition; both Person A & B engage in strength training four times a week for an hour a session; both person A & B are in a 500 calorie daily deficit.
Understanding that 100 calories of carrots = 100 calories of donuts from an energy perspective. However, they are not nutritionally the same. What matters is the context of ones diet and that you are hitting micros and macros.
so anyway, who will lose more weigh Person A, or Person B?
My answer is C they will both lose relatively the save weight within about +/- five pounds of one another.
discuss….
The article is on point because it is essentially saying person A will lose more weight.
No, no it's not.
The OP said that caloric intake is the SAME in both instances. The article does not discuss holding calories consistent across a wide variety of diets or macro breakdowns.0
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