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It's All Sugar's Fault
Replies
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I can eat my way to obesity on cheese from grass-fed cows. It wouldn't even be hard. It doesn't matter where the calories come from; if you eat too many of them, you'll get fat.
I believe that you might be over-simplifying the effects of different kinds of 'food' on the human body, as calories are just one attribute of food. Even if you could eat to obesity on cheese (I recommend you don't try :-) ), it doesn't address the initial question as sugar as a single culprit in obesity; cheese (grass-fed or not) isn't the equivalent of sugar in the metabolic effects on the typical 'Western' human.31 -
People are eating more processed, boxed, packaged foods, not to mention eating out more than ever. Yes, sugar and grains are super calorie dense in comparison to the nutrition they provide. Cut out sugar and grains and I wonder how hard it would be to stick to staying under your deficit (or maintenance if you are at that stage)....I know I have a really hard time eating even 1300 calories a day since I stopped eating sugar and grains.10
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cwolfman13 wrote: »
First off, I highly doubt people now are eating the same calories as our partents and grandparent.
This can't possibly be true. Surely there's some science that's tracked that by now, right? Although I can't immediately point to it, I feel sure it's there. That really floored me when he said that.
My parents and grandparents also ate 3 squares per day...I don't recall much, if any snacking...it seems now days people have to have some kind of snack every couple hours or they think they're going to keel over and die.
Snacking is definitely my Achilles heel. I figured that out when I started tracking. If I don't snack I do much better overall.
I don't recall a time when my grandma or mom didn't have fresh baked cookies or other sweets and deserts readily available.
I didn't really think about that, but it's true. My mom and grandmother loved to baked and did it all the time. I intentionally chose not to learn to bake things because I love to eat baked goods.0 -
PrimalForLife wrote: »
I believe that you might be over-simplifying the effects of different kinds of 'food' on the human body, as calories are just one attribute of food. Even if you could eat to obesity on cheese (I recommend you don't try :-) ), it doesn't address the initial question as sugar as a single culprit in obesity; cheese (grass-fed or not) isn't the equivalent of sugar in the metabolic effects on the typical 'Western' human.
Exactly what metabolic effects are you talking about?6 -
I know I can gain weight mostly from cheese (I ate way more cheese when gaining weight than sugary things or grains, in certainty, since I don't have a huge sweet tooth, I eat more sweets now than when I was getting fat, and don't care about bread (and hate cereal) -- my issues with excess calories lean much more to the savory and higher fat items). Would that make my obesity harmless? Pretty sure not -- being overfat is bad for you and causes metabolic problems, no matter how you got fat.6
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PrimalForLife wrote: »
I believe that you might be over-simplifying the effects of different kinds of 'food' on the human body, as calories are just one attribute of food. Even if you could eat to obesity on cheese (I recommend you don't try :-) ), it doesn't address the initial question as sugar as a single culprit in obesity; cheese (grass-fed or not) isn't the equivalent of sugar in the metabolic effects on the typical 'Western' human.
Are you proposing that someone can eat X amount of calories of 'foods grown in the earth, or from something that eats those things' and lose or maintain weight and eat those same amount of calories and gain weight?
Or are you suggesting that you can't have a nutrient-rich diet on traditionally 'Western' foods?
Or that increase carb consumption leads to increased obesity?
Because none of those are true.9 -
If you sit me in front of the TV with a big bag of pretzels, I would eat maybe 1.5 or 2 servings worth and roll up the bag.
If you sit me in front of the TV with a whole roast chicken and a canister of nuts, I would easily eat my way through half the poor chicken and 3 or 4 servings of nuts before even realizing what I was doing.
Processed carbs are easier to overeat for "some" people, not everyone. It's not a universal rule.
And while I think it's clear we're eating more of everything nowadays, we are for sure moving a lot less through the course of our day.12 -
People are eating more processed, boxed, packaged foods, not to mention eating out more than ever. Yes, sugar and grains are super calorie dense in comparison to the nutrition they provide. Cut out sugar and grains and I wonder how hard it would be to stick to staying under your deficit (or maintenance if you are at that stage)....I know I have a really hard time eating even 1300 calories a day since I stopped eating sugar and grains.
I do not think most anyone can gain weight if one truly cuts out sugar and grains. With them I was able to be obese because of the carb cravings that I had. Now without sugar or any form of any grain I eat until I am stuffed and after three years still am losing about 1/2 pound per month on average with out counting anything calorie wise. Just last night I ate at McDonald's and for the heck of it counted up the calories in my double hamburger, salad and coffee and it came to 435 calories so I had another cup of coffee to bump the meal up to 535 calories since it was free.
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Sure you can Gale. Also don't you claim that you never eat processed food?10
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GaleHawkins wrote: »
I do not think most anyone can gain weight if one truly cuts out sugar and grains. With them I was able to be obese because of the carb cravings that I had. Now without sugar or any form of any grain I eat until I am stuffed and after three years still am losing about 1/2 pound per month on average with out counting anything calorie wise. Just last night I ate at McDonald's and for the heck of it counted up the calories in my double hamburger, salad and coffee and it came to 435 calories so I had another cup of coffee to bump the meal up to 535 calories since it was free.
You couldn't possibly be more wrong.15 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »
I do not think most anyone can gain weight if one truly cuts out sugar and grains. With them I was able to be obese because of the carb cravings that I had. Now without sugar or any form of any grain I eat until I am stuffed and after three years still am losing about 1/2 pound per month on average with out counting anything calorie wise. Just last night I ate at McDonald's and for the heck of it counted up the calories in my double hamburger, salad and coffee and it came to 435 calories so I had another cup of coffee to bump the meal up to 535 calories since it was free.
So you don't reckon someone could pack on the pounds eating a crapton of cheese and nuts? Seems legit.12 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »
So you don't reckon someone could pack on the pounds eating a crapton of cheese and nuts? Seems legit.
I expect they could if cutting out the sugar and grains had not yet corrected their disordered eating. In my case my cravings dropped off greatly after two weeks of getting off sugar and all form of all grains (or mainly highly processed food) so my eating disorder (carb cravings) got fixed very fast when I when LCHF in my case at the age of 63.
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GaleHawkins wrote: »
I expect they could if cutting out the sugar and grains had not yet corrected their disordered eating. In my case my cravings dropped off greatly after two weeks of getting off sugar and all form of all grains (or mainly highly processed food) so my eating disorder (carb cravings) got fixed very fast when I when LCHF in my case at the age of 63.
Way to change the goalposts and make it all about you, and not your original statement that you don't think "most anyone" can gain weight without sugar or grains.
What about someone whose underweight and needs to gain? Will they have to eat sugar and grains or stay forever underweight?12 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »
Way to change the goalposts and make it all about you, and not your original statement that you don't think "most anyone" can gain weight without sugar or grains.
What about someone whose underweight and needs to gain? Will they have to eat sugar and grains or stay forever underweight?
We fed our pigs boat loads of carbs to fatten them up for the market so perhaps the answer to your question is yes but I have not read a medical paper on that subject in humans.15 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »
I expect they could if cutting out the sugar and grains had not yet corrected their disordered eating. In my case my cravings dropped off greatly after two weeks of getting off sugar and all form of all grains (or mainly highly processed food) so my eating disorder (carb cravings) got fixed very fast when I when LCHF in my case at the age of 63.
What disordered eating are you referring to? Carb Cravings? That's not an eating disorder and for you to label it as such is offensive to people who suffer from legitimate, clinically diagnosed eating disorders.20 -
Whenever cravings come up I'll mention that after giving up meat for Lent I'm usually really craving Easter lamb by around Palm Sunday. Is lamb craving also an eating disorder?11
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bingeeatingtherapy.com/tag/sugar-addiction-and-eating-disorders/
"When I was 22, I went into rehab for my eating disorder where all sugar was off limits."24 -
It's just physics. The laws of physics don't change with the generations.
In terms of basic fatness, it's simply CICO: today's average person is simply taking in more calories and burning off fewer calories than his/her ancestors. Therefore, the average person is fatter.
When it comes to good health and well-being, though, it's more complicated than that. More nutritious fuel (and less crap) in your system is ideal.4 -
People are eating more processed, boxed, packaged foods, not to mention eating out more than ever. Yes, sugar and grains are super calorie dense in comparison to the nutrition they provide. Cut out sugar and grains and I wonder how hard it would be to stick to staying under your deficit (or maintenance if you are at that stage)....I know I have a really hard time eating even 1300 calories a day since I stopped eating sugar and grains.
One word: nuts. Before dieting I ate an entire person's calorie allowance in nuts, seeds, and olive oil alone, and about 90% of my cooked food was cooked from scratch (and still mostly is, except I've introduced more packaged portion controlled foods for calorie control purposes when lazy). To lose weight I cut down on the items I used to grossly overeat to reduce calories and my sugar/grain consumption stayed roughly the same and saw a much smaller reduction. This doesn't mean that everyone who gets fat does so because they overeat fat, it simply means that what foods people overeat are personal and irrelevant to anything but their personal progress, the only relevant fact on a grand scale is that they overeat. I could agree that packaging and convenience make things easier to overeat and that the variety available to us may trigger the "buffet effect", but that's a different topic and has little to do with macros or the type of food.10 -
GaleHawkins wrote: »
I do not think most anyone can gain weight if one truly cuts out sugar and grains. With them I was able to be obese because of the carb cravings that I had. Now without sugar or any form of any grain I eat until I am stuffed and after three years still am losing about 1/2 pound per month on average with out counting anything calorie wise. Just last night I ate at McDonald's and for the heck of it counted up the calories in my double hamburger, salad and coffee and it came to 435 calories so I had another cup of coffee to bump the meal up to 535 calories since it was free.
Don't be so naive. I know people who are Ketogenic who have gotten fat.15 -
People are eating more processed, boxed, packaged foods, not to mention eating out more than ever. Yes, sugar and grains are super calorie dense in comparison to the nutrition they provide. Cut out sugar and grains and I wonder how hard it would be to stick to staying under your deficit (or maintenance if you are at that stage)....I know I have a really hard time eating even 1300 calories a day since I stopped eating sugar and grains.
Carbs are not calorie dense... they are 4 calories per gram. Fats are calorie dense. The issue is when it comes to satiate. Some aren't satiated by carbs which can lead to over consumption. Similarly, I could eat fats all day long without being satiated. I have literally eaten blocks of cheese, which is why I don't keep a lot of fats in my house when I am working on losing weight. And I only consume fats when I eat proteins.5 -
I think it has some merit but is obviously not true of everyone and to suggest there is one single cause of rising obesity seems ridiculous to me. So much has changed since our grandparents time. Even using grandparents as an example becomes more and more silly as time passes. I'm a grandmother. I lived on white flour and sugar as a child. Except when my mother forced milk on me I drank sugar-sweetened Kool-aid almost exclusively. We had dessert after dinner every single day. I had sugary cereals for breakfast almost every day. We never had anything other than white bread in the house. I'd never even heard of whole grains as a child. And you know what? My grandparents lived the same way. Maybe not when they were children, but from as early as I can remember.
IMO the biggest difference is how much we eat and how little we move. What I or my grandparents didn't do is sit around stuffing our faces while binge watching TV or playing video games. There were no video games and only 3 TV channels, and those went off the air at night (except for New Year's Eve).8 -
I gave up sugars, yes sugars there's lots of them. Did it more as an experiment then anything. I felt better lost my love handles which I've never done before (guess that's where that sugar was going, *this is a joke*) but in seriousness my love handles shrunk drastically. I can breathe better always had a stuffy nose. This was just me experimenting with my body, kept the rest of my diet the same calories, macros, etc. Will this work for everyone heck NO!, will they get the same results NOPE. I just don't eat it because I personally feel better not. If i didn't notice a difference I would probably be Fasting all day to get some cake in to my calories.17
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I got too fat because I ate too much. I ate a lot of sugar, but most of the foods I ate that were high in sugar were also high in fat. I also ate a *lot* of pasta and bread, foods that don't have any (or much) added sugar at all.
My dad was obese from childhood as well, he didn't eat that much sugar. Especially not in the 40s and 50s, they were quite poor growing up, and sodas and candy were treats. He just ate too much food.
It's rarely, if ever, strictly sugar's fault.2 -
pjbarclay55 wrote: »I gave up sugars, yes sugars there's lots of them. Did it more as an experiment then anything. I felt better lost my love handles which I've never done before (guess that's where that sugar was going, *this is a joke*) but in seriousness my love handles shrunk drastically. I can breathe better always had a stuffy nose. This was just me experimenting with my body, kept the rest of my diet the same calories, macros, etc. Will this work for everyone heck NO!, will they get the same results NOPE. I just don't eat it because I personally feel better not. If i didn't notice a difference I would probably be Fasting all day to get some cake in to my calories.
In another thread you said stopping coke zero made you lose your love handles....16 -
How did you keep your carb intake the same while cutting out all sugars? Carbs are sugar?6
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To anyone who is curious, most the graphs that were posted from National Health and Examination Survey (NHANES) which from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It's a survey that is sent out and collected every ten years. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm)
Yes, the data is self reported. Yes, people likely underreport. That is what is so frightening. The self reported data shows an increase in how much food people are eating. Since we know people frequently under report, how much are we really eating?3 -
singingflutelady wrote: »
In another thread you said stopping coke zero made you lose your love handles....
Begs the question...which story (if either) is true?5 -
VintageFeline wrote: »
Exactly what metabolic effects are you talking about?
Mysterious ones.2
This discussion has been closed.
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