It’s not your genetics

BitofaState

Another nail in the coffin for the excuses?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/21/weight-loss-linked-to-healthy-eating-not-genetics-study-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

janejellyroll

That summaries of this study persist in ignoring the role of calories in weight loss is perplexing (I guess it isn't as good of a story). This article leads with eating more vegetables and then includes this throwaway line: "Both groups reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of about 500 calories."

Hmm, maybe that was a key factor?

diannethegeek

They didn't link to the study itself. Is this the new JAMA low-carb/low-fat study trussed up with a new headline?

BitofaState

janejellyroll wrote: »

That summaries of this study persist in ignoring the role of calories in weight loss is perplexing (I guess it isn't as good of a story). This article leads with eating more vegetables and then includes this throwaway line: "Both groups reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of about 500 calories."

Hmm, maybe that was a key factor?

I think they were looking more at where the calories came from and if an intervention focused on healthy eating rather than calorie control made more of an impact. The issue highlighted is that it really didn't matter which diet approach was used, irrespective of genotype, as long as calories were reduced. That along with the use of healthy eating as the intervention vs. a specific calorie restriction, even though that was the resultant outcome.

grammagrape

They don't mention calories? It's more our evolution than anything, but the way our bodies have evolved to handle calories is 'genetic'. We've evolved over 2 million years as hominids to be extremely efficient at calorie handling for survival; for our metabolisms to slow down if we don't get enough, to store extra, to crave under stress or until we get enough nutrition, etc. Its only the last 40 years really that we've been trying to trick the results of our lengthy evolution into letting us lose weight instead of what it genetically does. Eating healthy is the base, sure, but managing calories within their narrow window that allow deficit (but not too much deficit that it makes our metabolism slower) is a bigger part of the answer.

janejellyroll

BitofaState wrote: »

janejellyroll wrote: »

That summaries of this study persist in ignoring the role of calories in weight loss is perplexing (I guess it isn't as good of a story). This article leads with eating more vegetables and then includes this throwaway line: "Both groups reduced their daily calorie intake by an average of about 500 calories."

Hmm, maybe that was a key factor?

I think they were looking more at where the calories came from and if an intervention focused on healthy eating rather than calorie control made more of an impact. The issue highlighted is that it really didn't matter which diet approach was used, irrespective of genotype, as long as calories were reduced. That along with the use of healthy eating as the intervention vs. a specific calorie restriction, even though that was the resultant outcome.

I guess I find the headline "Weight loss linked to healthy eating" to be inherently misleading. Is healthy eating a tool that some people can use to more easily create a deficit? Yes. But it's the deficit that is creating the weight loss.

And when you look at the actual rate of loss and total weight lost by participants, it's relatively modest (compared to the amount of weight many people want to lose or need to lose to be within a healthy weight range). What is yet to be explored is whether or not just "healthy eating" without focus on calories has a "ceiling" for many people and additional focus (in the form of counting calories or other tools to create a deficit) are needed for more significant weight loss.

BitofaState

diannethegeek wrote: »

They didn't link to the study itself. Is this the new JAMA low-carb/low-fat study trussed up with a new headline?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673150

Looking at the references for the study it seems to be a new data set, 600 participants is quite a large intervention group so hopefully there'll be a few more bits on analysis they can pull from it.

diannethegeek

BitofaState wrote: »

diannethegeek wrote: »

They didn't link to the study itself. Is this the new JAMA low-carb/low-fat study trussed up with a new headline?

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673150

Looking at the references for the study it seems to be a new data set, 600 participants is quite a large intervention group so hopefully there'll be a few more bits on analysis they can pull from it.

Yeah, it's the one I was thinking of. If you're curious, there are about 8 other threads with various headlines on this study already.