new dieter, just read Taubes' book; questions

berninicaco3

btw, I've been fluctuating between 240 and 245# depending on water weight mainly, for at least the past month if not two.
Today the scale read 238#! Been a while. I've eaten 3400 calories in the past 2 days that I've been counting legitimately closely.

I'm realistic enough to know that it may not be real weight loss in only 2 days... but I'll take it as a sign of encouragement nonetheless.

Acg67

I'm 240# and 5'6", and starting to get (genuinely) serious about weight loss. I dabbled in it for the past year and got diddly for results, surprise.

So there's obviously a lot of literature on nutrition, and I've read almost none of it relatively.
Directed by a recent (5 mo old) ny times article, I read Taubes' 'why we get fat' book. Now Atkins was big when I was still in middle school and I never read any books on it, but the gist of it was low, low carbs, high protein instead-- and high fat if you like, correct?
It sounds like Taubes is giving similar advice.

So I wanted to clarify some things as I approach my own diet.

Taubes gave some good evidence that calories in/ calories out isn't by itself helpful. There was the interesting matter of Zucker mice, who when fed deficit diets, simply became sedentary to make up the difference (and stayed fat), and then when fed STARVATION diets, simply lost muscle mass and even organ mass, and became extremely sedentary (and stayed fat) even all the way to the point that they died of malnutrition with atrophied vitals and, still fat.
That's probably a genetic extreme, and my family, while we're all heavy, doesn't have a multigenerational genetic predisposition to extreme obesity like Zucker mice were bred to have. My own weight ought to be reparable.

He did provide some other studies where again, strict calorie counting wasn't effective, even the ones that were rigidly controlled (many were compromised, and one could imagine the subjects ate more than was reported to researchers).

Next point Taubes really repeated was his 'carbs -> insulin -> fat' mantra. He wrote that high insulin both stores fat and robs muscles of energy, creating fatigue and initiating hunger: that high insulin simultaneously made you fat, tire, and hungrier.
So he really argues against carbs, especially the simple ones that spike your insulin.

Now, it makes it more believable that he DOES say that simple carbs create a greater appetite. He doesn't actually say that a calorie deficit is ineffective, rather, he writes that a calories deficit with a diet very high in starches and simple carbs is ineffective by raising insulin and prompting the body to store even its reduced calories all as fat, and robbing the individual of energy to be active with.
Instead he says that a low-carb diet, or at least low simple carb (he's not perfectly clear there), will keep insulin from spiking and storing everything as fat, and secondly, will keep insulin from spiking and prompting a greater appetite-- so that low carbs makes more nutrition available for muscles to burn and lowers the appetite, so that if you do maintain a calorie deficit it can be an effective one (unlike for the poor zucker mice).

As a bit of a sugar addict (and it's only 15 calories a tsp, so it doesn't have to be high calorie if you control yourself), I want to be clear on this point-- should I simply count sugar calories and maintain a numerical deficit, or is it really quite important to virtually eliminated simple sugars and starches?)

Much less clear is another passage where he starts talking about less simple carbs-- yams, bananas, oatmeal, even broccoli. Are these nearly as harmful as sucrose and fructose and starchy white potatoes? Do I have to be careful how much broccoli I eat, even?
So I can give up venti pumpkin spice frappuccinos, and frappes and fries at the burger joint-- those are obvious simple carb sources. But is a bowl of oatmeal with 2 tsp of honey on top still as problematic a carb as a small shake or a large fries (probably similar in calories to the oatmeal)?

Taubes is anti science. With all the supposed years of research he put into this book and all the references, how did he pass over the fact that protein is highly insulinogenic? No mention at all of ASP? Oh that's right, since that destroys his insulin hypothesis of obesity. He also conveniently ignores the numerous metabolic ward studies and other tightly controlled studies that hold protein and cals constant and found no significant difference in fat loss between the diets. And what about overfeeding trials? What macro actually makes you fatter? Hint:not carbs

To sum it up, Taubes is a joke and that book is more fiction besides his part on the lipid hypothesis