Interesting article in the Times today
Zomoniac
Posts: 1,169 Member
Apologies if this has been posted, and apologies for all the text but it's behind a paywall so thought I'd best paste it.
Make of it what you will, I'm not claiming it to be fact, just has some interesting points (particularly regarding the end point of an experiment suggesting that short term 'starvation mode' actually caused BMR to go up, not down).
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On my first day at medical school a hundred of us gathered in a lecture theatre to be greeted by the dean. He talked for an hour but there are only two things he said that I still remember. The first was that, based on previous experience, four of us in that room would marry each other.
He was right; I met my future wife that day. The other thing he said was that while we would learn an enormous amount over the next five years, within ten years of graduating much of what we had learnt would be out of date.
Medicine is constantly changing and unless you keep up you are doomed to cling to outmoded ideas. This is particularly true in the field of human nutrition and dieting. So what are some of the most common and firmly held dieting myths?
Myth 1 Always eat breakfast
We are often told that eating a good breakfast is a simple way to control your weight. If you skip breakfast then you will get hungry later in the day and snack on high-calorie junk food. Eating breakfast revs up your metabolism, preparing you for the day.
There have certainly been plenty of studies that have compared people who skip breakfast with people who don’t and the breakfast-eaters are often found to be slimmer and healthier. This could be for the reasons stated above, or it could be that breakfast-skippers are generally less healthy individuals.
In a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition — “The effectiveness of breakfast recommendations on weight loss: a randomised controlled trial” — researchers tested the merits of the two claims by taking breakfast-skippers and breakfast-eaters, and making them swap habits. They got 300 overweight volunteers and asked the skippers to eat breakfast, while those who routinely ate breakfast were asked to skip the meal for the duration of the trial.
They weighed the volunteers beforehand and then at the end of 16 weeks. The skippers who had made themselves eat breakfast lost an average of 0.76kg. The eaters, who had spent 16 weeks skipping breakfast, lost an almost identical amount, an average of 0.71kg.
The researchers concluded that, contrary to what is widely believed, a recommendation to eat breakfast “had no discernable effect on weight loss in free-living adults who were attempting to lose weight”.
A similar randomised study done years ago, but with smaller numbers, came to a similar conclusion. The researchers thought that making people change their habits was what made the difference, and got better results.
I certainly think that children should eat breakfast, however — and if you want to keep fuller for longer then the evidence is clear that you should eat a breakfast that is rich in protein, like eggs, ham or fish, rather than sugary cereals or toast, as protein is more satiating than carbohydrates.
If you are one of those people who don’t like eating breakfast and who, perhaps, find that eating breakfast first thing makes you hungrier, then there seem to be no compelling scientific reasons to eat it.
Myth 2 Set moderate weight goals
This seems like a reasonable assumption. But is it right? A review article — “Myths, Presumptions and Facts about Obesity” in the prestigious medical journalThe New England Journal of Medicine — put this claim firmly into the “myths” category.
As they point out, “several studies have shown that more ambitious goals are sometimes associated with better weight-loss outcomes”. In one of those studies — “Weight loss goals and treatment outcomes among overweight men and women” — nearly 2,000 overweight men and women were asked about their goals before they started on a weight-loss programme. They followed them for two years and found that, with women, “less realistic goals were associated with greater weight loss at 24 months”. For men there was no link, one way or the other, between how realistic their goals were and whether they succeeded.
Myth 3 Crash diets are less successful than steady weight loss
This is another of those claims that seems to be self-evidently true but which the obesity researchers behind “Myths, Presumptions and Facts about Obesity” describe as a myth. Or as they put it, “Within weight-loss trials, more rapid and greater initial weight loss has been associated with lower body weight at the end of long-term follow-up.”
Very-low-calorie diets (VLCDs), based on consuming less than 800 calories a day, have been used since the 1970s to induce rapid weight loss, but the assumption is that once you stop you will simply put it all back on. In a thorough meta-analysis, “The evolution of very-low-calorie diets: an update ” (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine), reviewers looked at the results of six randomised trials that had run for at least a year comparing very-low-calorie diets with standard
low-calorie diets.
They found that the VLCDs led, not surprisingly, to much bigger weight loss in the short term and though the dieters did, on average, later put back on much of the weight they had lost, so did those on the standard diet. In the long term there didn’t seem to be any significant difference between these approaches. The researchers confirmed that “cycles of weight loss and regain do not seem to have the adverse health and metabolic consequences once feared”.
Myth 4 It is better to eat several small meals a day for weight loss
A common belief is that if you spread out your food into lots of small meals this will increase your metabolic rate, keep you less hungry and help you lose weight. In a recent study researchers at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague decided to test this idea by feeding two groups of type 2 diabetics meals with the same number of calories but taken as either two or six meals a day. Each group ate about 1,700 calories a day.
The group eating two meals a day ate their first meal between 6am and 10am and their next meal between noon and 4pm. The others ate at regular intervals throughout the day.
Despite eating the same number of calories, the two-meals-a-day group lost, on average, 1.4kg more than the snackers and about 1.5in more from around their waists. The six-meals-a-day group felt less satisfied and hungrier than those on two meals.
Myth 5 Very low calorie eating swiftly slows your metabolism down
Fear of going into “starvation mode” is common and yet, at least from an evolutionary perspective, it makes little sense. Our remote ancestors often had to go without food for a while and if, every time this happened, they had simply curled up on the floor of their cave and waited for pizza to be delivered they would have become extinct. Only during periods of prolonged famine would it make sense to slow the metabolism down and wait for better times to come.
The myth seems to be based, in part, on the Minnesota starvation experiment, a study carried out during the Second World War in which young volunteers lived on extremely low-calorie diets for up to six months. After prolonged starvation there was a drop in body temperature and heart rate, suggesting that their basal metabolic rate (the energy burnt by your body when you are at rest) had fallen. This, however, was an extreme situation.
A more recent experiment carried out by the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Vienna, on the effects of short-term calorie restriction, “Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvation”, produced very different results. In this experiment they took 11 healthy volunteers and asked them to live on nothing but water for 84 hours.
The researchers found that the volunteers’ basal metabolic rate went up while they were fasting. By day three it had risen, on average, by 14 per cent.
One reason for this may have been the significant rise that they detected in a catecholamine, called noradrenaline, which is known to burn fat.
If they had continued then, I’m sure, the volunteers’ metabolic rates would eventually have fallen. Yet, in the short term, there is no evidence that starvation mode is anything other than a myth.
Make of it what you will, I'm not claiming it to be fact, just has some interesting points (particularly regarding the end point of an experiment suggesting that short term 'starvation mode' actually caused BMR to go up, not down).
--
On my first day at medical school a hundred of us gathered in a lecture theatre to be greeted by the dean. He talked for an hour but there are only two things he said that I still remember. The first was that, based on previous experience, four of us in that room would marry each other.
He was right; I met my future wife that day. The other thing he said was that while we would learn an enormous amount over the next five years, within ten years of graduating much of what we had learnt would be out of date.
Medicine is constantly changing and unless you keep up you are doomed to cling to outmoded ideas. This is particularly true in the field of human nutrition and dieting. So what are some of the most common and firmly held dieting myths?
Myth 1 Always eat breakfast
We are often told that eating a good breakfast is a simple way to control your weight. If you skip breakfast then you will get hungry later in the day and snack on high-calorie junk food. Eating breakfast revs up your metabolism, preparing you for the day.
There have certainly been plenty of studies that have compared people who skip breakfast with people who don’t and the breakfast-eaters are often found to be slimmer and healthier. This could be for the reasons stated above, or it could be that breakfast-skippers are generally less healthy individuals.
In a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition — “The effectiveness of breakfast recommendations on weight loss: a randomised controlled trial” — researchers tested the merits of the two claims by taking breakfast-skippers and breakfast-eaters, and making them swap habits. They got 300 overweight volunteers and asked the skippers to eat breakfast, while those who routinely ate breakfast were asked to skip the meal for the duration of the trial.
They weighed the volunteers beforehand and then at the end of 16 weeks. The skippers who had made themselves eat breakfast lost an average of 0.76kg. The eaters, who had spent 16 weeks skipping breakfast, lost an almost identical amount, an average of 0.71kg.
The researchers concluded that, contrary to what is widely believed, a recommendation to eat breakfast “had no discernable effect on weight loss in free-living adults who were attempting to lose weight”.
A similar randomised study done years ago, but with smaller numbers, came to a similar conclusion. The researchers thought that making people change their habits was what made the difference, and got better results.
I certainly think that children should eat breakfast, however — and if you want to keep fuller for longer then the evidence is clear that you should eat a breakfast that is rich in protein, like eggs, ham or fish, rather than sugary cereals or toast, as protein is more satiating than carbohydrates.
If you are one of those people who don’t like eating breakfast and who, perhaps, find that eating breakfast first thing makes you hungrier, then there seem to be no compelling scientific reasons to eat it.
Myth 2 Set moderate weight goals
This seems like a reasonable assumption. But is it right? A review article — “Myths, Presumptions and Facts about Obesity” in the prestigious medical journalThe New England Journal of Medicine — put this claim firmly into the “myths” category.
As they point out, “several studies have shown that more ambitious goals are sometimes associated with better weight-loss outcomes”. In one of those studies — “Weight loss goals and treatment outcomes among overweight men and women” — nearly 2,000 overweight men and women were asked about their goals before they started on a weight-loss programme. They followed them for two years and found that, with women, “less realistic goals were associated with greater weight loss at 24 months”. For men there was no link, one way or the other, between how realistic their goals were and whether they succeeded.
Myth 3 Crash diets are less successful than steady weight loss
This is another of those claims that seems to be self-evidently true but which the obesity researchers behind “Myths, Presumptions and Facts about Obesity” describe as a myth. Or as they put it, “Within weight-loss trials, more rapid and greater initial weight loss has been associated with lower body weight at the end of long-term follow-up.”
Very-low-calorie diets (VLCDs), based on consuming less than 800 calories a day, have been used since the 1970s to induce rapid weight loss, but the assumption is that once you stop you will simply put it all back on. In a thorough meta-analysis, “The evolution of very-low-calorie diets: an update ” (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine), reviewers looked at the results of six randomised trials that had run for at least a year comparing very-low-calorie diets with standard
low-calorie diets.
They found that the VLCDs led, not surprisingly, to much bigger weight loss in the short term and though the dieters did, on average, later put back on much of the weight they had lost, so did those on the standard diet. In the long term there didn’t seem to be any significant difference between these approaches. The researchers confirmed that “cycles of weight loss and regain do not seem to have the adverse health and metabolic consequences once feared”.
Myth 4 It is better to eat several small meals a day for weight loss
A common belief is that if you spread out your food into lots of small meals this will increase your metabolic rate, keep you less hungry and help you lose weight. In a recent study researchers at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague decided to test this idea by feeding two groups of type 2 diabetics meals with the same number of calories but taken as either two or six meals a day. Each group ate about 1,700 calories a day.
The group eating two meals a day ate their first meal between 6am and 10am and their next meal between noon and 4pm. The others ate at regular intervals throughout the day.
Despite eating the same number of calories, the two-meals-a-day group lost, on average, 1.4kg more than the snackers and about 1.5in more from around their waists. The six-meals-a-day group felt less satisfied and hungrier than those on two meals.
Myth 5 Very low calorie eating swiftly slows your metabolism down
Fear of going into “starvation mode” is common and yet, at least from an evolutionary perspective, it makes little sense. Our remote ancestors often had to go without food for a while and if, every time this happened, they had simply curled up on the floor of their cave and waited for pizza to be delivered they would have become extinct. Only during periods of prolonged famine would it make sense to slow the metabolism down and wait for better times to come.
The myth seems to be based, in part, on the Minnesota starvation experiment, a study carried out during the Second World War in which young volunteers lived on extremely low-calorie diets for up to six months. After prolonged starvation there was a drop in body temperature and heart rate, suggesting that their basal metabolic rate (the energy burnt by your body when you are at rest) had fallen. This, however, was an extreme situation.
A more recent experiment carried out by the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Vienna, on the effects of short-term calorie restriction, “Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvation”, produced very different results. In this experiment they took 11 healthy volunteers and asked them to live on nothing but water for 84 hours.
The researchers found that the volunteers’ basal metabolic rate went up while they were fasting. By day three it had risen, on average, by 14 per cent.
One reason for this may have been the significant rise that they detected in a catecholamine, called noradrenaline, which is known to burn fat.
If they had continued then, I’m sure, the volunteers’ metabolic rates would eventually have fallen. Yet, in the short term, there is no evidence that starvation mode is anything other than a myth.
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Replies
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bump0
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Very interesting! Definitely some good info there.0
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A lot of facts about dieting are myths. Dieting cannot be a one fits all. Just take the minimum amount of calories set at 1200, I m sorry but if you are a shorter and older woman it makes no sense. Not eating in the morning does not necessarily leads to over eating. Six small meals a day will not make your metabolism burn a large amount of calories. Starvation mode now is another subject that again is overrated. Yoyo dieting that leads to weight gain, it is not the diet doing it, it is the individual reverting to his old habits or dropping physical activities. Eating whatever you want as long as eating at a deficit of course you lose weight but promoting unhealthy diets filled with saturated fat and sugar is not wise either.
Whatever you do, if you are losing weight and your general health is fine it works for you.
The earth was flat until they proved it was not so and the same applies to everything surrounding us, true until proven wrong.0 -
Bump0
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Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing it.
Myth 1 Always eat breakfast - "The researchers thought that making people change their habits was what made the difference, and got better results." I think that statement is important. I have often thought that fad diets and extreme diets are actually not a bad idea for the first two weeks just to help people shrug off old habits. After that they should start switching back towards sustainable habits.
Myth 2 Set moderate weight goals - Hmmm. Whose to say that the differences in goals people set for themselves weren't due to accurate assessments of their situation? It's easier to lose weight if your stress levels are recently reduced or you have extra time to exercise and prepare meals for instance.
Myth 3 Crash diets are less successful than steady weight loss - I think the appropriateness of VLCD's may vary depending on whether you are obese or not. Not appropriate to lose those last 10 or 15 lbs.
Myth 4 It is better to eat several small meals a day for weight loss - Fascinating results. I may play with less frequent meals myself.
Myth 5 Very low calorie eating swiftly slows your metabolism down - Strange treatment of this topic. Looking at metabolism after fasting for three days makes less sense than the six month Minnesota experiment.0 -
Just curious...was this article editorialized by you or was it written that way?0
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Really interesting, thanks for sharing. I'm a breakfast skipper so the fact it makes no difference to weight loss is good to know.0
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A more recent experiment carried out by the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Vienna, on the effects of short-term calorie restriction, “Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvation”, produced very different results. In this experiment they took 11 healthy volunteers and asked them to live on nothing but water for 84 hours.
The researchers found that the volunteers’ basal metabolic rate went up while they were fasting. By day three it had risen, on average, by 14 per cent.
One reason for this may have been the significant rise that they detected in a catecholamine, called noradrenaline, which is known to burn fat.
If they had continued then, I’m sure, the volunteers’ metabolic rates would eventually have fallen. Yet, in the short term, there is no evidence that starvation mode is anything other than a myth.
One reason I stick w/ Intermittent Fasting.
I have found it to work the best for me at getting into the stubborn body fat areas....
Like lower abs, lower back and love handles.
Since going this route, I have been able to get to my leanest point ever.
I know a lot of people look at IF (LeanGains protocol is what I do) with a scant eye....which is fine.
But if a person can do it, then I think it is worth their effort.0 -
Myth 2 Set moderate weight goals
This seems like a reasonable assumption. But is it right? A review article — “Myths, Presumptions and Facts about Obesity” in the prestigious medical journalThe New England Journal of Medicine — put this claim firmly into the “myths” category.
As they point out, “several studies have shown that more ambitious goals are sometimes associated with better weight-loss outcomes”. In one of those studies — “Weight loss goals and treatment outcomes among overweight men and women” — nearly 2,000 overweight men and women were asked about their goals before they started on a weight-loss programme. They followed them for two years and found that, with women, “less realistic goals were associated with greater weight loss at 24 months”. For men there was no link, one way or the other, between how realistic their goals were and whether they succeeded.
Makes perfect sense because to me it's simply not worth the massive effort to achieve and maintain 'chubby' over 'obese'. It's not that much difference. Not for someone who doesn't have any active hobbies she enjoys or an active job. To make this whole experience worthwhile, I have to achieve much loftier goals.
Myth 3 Crash diets are less successful than steady weight loss
This is another of those claims that seems to be self-evidently true but which the obesity researchers behind “Myths, Presumptions and Facts about Obesity” describe as a myth. Or as they put it, “Within weight-loss trials, more rapid and greater initial weight loss has been associated with lower body weight at the end of long-term follow-up.”
Very-low-calorie diets (VLCDs), based on consuming less than 800 calories a day, have been used since the 1970s to induce rapid weight loss, but the assumption is that once you stop you will simply put it all back on. In a thorough meta-analysis, “The evolution of very-low-calorie diets: an update ” (University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine), reviewers looked at the results of six randomised trials that had run for at least a year comparing very-low-calorie diets with standard
low-calorie diets.
They found that the VLCDs led, not surprisingly, to much bigger weight loss in the short term and though the dieters did, on average, later put back on much of the weight they had lost, so did those on the standard diet. In the long term there didn’t seem to be any significant difference between these approaches. The researchers confirmed that “cycles of weight loss and regain do not seem to have the adverse health and metabolic consequences once feared”.
Yeah, but please do it with a doctor's supervision. And preferably a dietitian as well, plus possibly a psychiatrist. There's nothing like a crash diet to make you weak, sick, and absolutely foam at the mouth insane.Myth 5 Very low calorie eating swiftly slows your metabolism down
...Our remote ancestors often had to go without food for a while and if, every time this happened, they had simply curled up on the floor of their cave and waited for pizza to be delivered they would have become extinct.
:laugh:0 -
This is great! Thanks for posting!
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Just curious...was this article editorialized by you or was it written that way?
No edits from me, just a straight copy and paste.0 -
Just curious...was this article editorialized by you or was it written that way?
No edits from me, just a straight copy and paste.
Got it
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It's almost like it was written for MFP.
I wish that someone would post a link to it every time someone here posts that silly table- "If you're more than 75 pounds overweight, a goal of 2 lbs/week is ideal..."0 -
Thanks for sharing!
I like this article.0 -
Great article! Thanks for going to the effort to copy and paste! I am bookmarking it for later reference. I particularly like the part about breakfast (which I normally eat- but not until close to 3 hours after I get up) and the part about the number of meals. I have never been much of a "snack" person.0
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All very interesting, thanks for sharing!
Myth 1 Always eat breakfast - This, like #4 is one of those things that is just very individual. It's more about what makes you feel fuller (or less hungry). Do what works.
Myth 2 Set moderate weight goals - Never really understood this one myself. I think realistic goals (preferably with a bit of advice from a doctor) are the best.
Myth 3 Crash diets are less successful than steady weight loss - The thing with this one is it seems the study looked at people who reached a goal (either with a normal diet or a "crash" diet) -- and since both groups regained about the same they declared it a toss up. However there doesn't seem to be any data on how successful people are at crash diets in general -- meaning how many people can actually maintain one long enough to get to goal? I guess my point is, there doesn't seem to be enough data one way or the other, and I would much prefer a real, more sustainable diet than one that restricts a lot of what I can eat just to drop quickly.
Myth 4 It is better to eat several small meals a day for weight loss - Same as #1. I can't stand eating smaller meals. It makes me ravenously hungry all day. I find I do much better with 2-3 bigger meals. I love when I can fit in a large lunch so that I'm not even hungry for dinner. I've never actually tried it, but I could probably lose weight eating a single 1200-1500 calorie meal a day. As it is, I tend to eat a small breakfast, medium to large lunch, and small to medium dinner.
Myth 5 Very low calorie eating swiftly slows your metabolism down - This sounds more supportive of a IF approach and not true extended low-calorie eating since the study was only for a few days. Again I think this is something that is very individual based, since I have first hand experience with maintaining on low calories but losing when I increased my intake.
Overall I think much of it is so individual, which is why medicine is always evolving and trying to place people into buckets where they just don't fit. Sadly a lot of dieting is trial and error and finding what works for YOU and YOUR body. If you like exercise but hate diet restrictions, then eat what you're used to and exercise more. If you hate exercise but can manage something like a VLCD with no exercise then do that. Nothing on here is necessarily right or wrong. There are guidelines of course... but overall it is not a one size fits all answer.0 -
Thanks for sharing!
I used to be under the whole "you must eat breakfast" following; pre-MFP days. It's usually nice to see an article that takes on myths.0 -
Great article!0
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