High fat diet helps you lose weight?

christabel6

I was watching this fascinating programme about diet and food and it included an interview with Prof Tim Noakes. This is a highly thought of nutrition scientist who completely changed his position on diet, from advocating a high-carb low fat diet to a high fat low carb diet. (This is the man who invented carb loading for all those sports people out there.)

For those who want to watch, the programme is here: http://aje.me/WFPwS5 It's only 25 min long and the interview with him is the first item.

What he basically says is that some people are particularly sensitive to sugar so they shouldn't be eating a high carb diet, it's actually unhealthy for them. His approach is low and only natural sugar, minimum carb and lots of protein and fat, a bit like Atkins.

He's said that he was tested and found he was one of the people who couldn't tolerate a high carb diet because his body couldn't regulate his GI properly. As a vegetarian I would really struggle to get a high protein diet and I really love carbs in any case :-) How do you get tested for this? Has anyone used it, and what do you think?

craigineson

Sounds to me that when he's talking about people who can't tolerate a high-carb diet, he is referring to the level of insulin resistance which each person has.

I might be wrong, but insulin resistance does determine whether you can do well on a high-carb diet. In fact, if you're insulin resistant and carry on a high-carb diet, you will eventually develop diabetes.

One of the tell-tale signs of a person who is insulin resistant is a fatty midsection. By the time you start to gain weight in your centre, most of your body's tissue is resistant to insulin's storage call, and your midsection is the last bastion that your body has to store all the excess sugar as triglyceride.

In order to assess insulin resistance, you could request a Quantitative insulin sensitivity check index. I believe it's done via a calculation based on fasting insulin and fasting glucose and you get a score that a medical practitioner will be able to assess with you.

If I'm wrong, then my apologies. I can't watch the programme right now. But those who are insulin resistant would do best, for their long term health, to restrict carbohydrates.

christabel6

Really interesting - thank you.

Gallowmere1984

High fat, mid-high protein, low-carb? Sounds like pretty much every keto diet I've come across.