It's NOT Just Calories In VS Calories Out!!!

I am beginning to suspect that you are a representative of the junk food industry, here to spread disinformation.

This is what the hippies who rely on their feelings before science always say. Because it's always a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy of facts.

If you don't think there is disinformation being spread about obesity, weight loss, and health, just tune your TV to any show/news report about weight loss. If there wasn't so much disinformation being spread, why would there be so many fat people in the US today? Why such high rates of diabetes? Heart disease? Cancer? So many are dying of these diseases, while others, who eat different foods, are not dying of these diseases, but there is no connection?

I appologize, I thought it said she lost weight. Reading too fast. What Acg was asking was do blood health markers improve in people who have lost weight, regardless of what they eat.

Read about Caldwell Esselstyn's 20 year study on nutrition's effect on heart disease.

Please provide primary sources. So far as I can tell, Esselstyn is basing his conclusions on the steaming pile of crap known as the China Study.

Read about Caldwell Esselstyn's OWN 20 year study on nutrition's effect on heart disease

Link?

Caldwell Esselstyn

Unlike many of his media-hungry vegan peers, cardiologist Caldwell Esselstyn tends to keep a relatively low profile. I don’t know much about the guy, but I get the impression he’s a sincere bloke who’s primary concern is helping his patients. But of course, that’s no guarantee his dietary claims are based on sound science.

In 1995, Esselstyn published a paper in which he reported his intervention program helped a number of his patients arrest or even reverse coronary artery disease progression. This study, discussed in Forks Over Knives, is repeatedly used by the vegan/vegetarian crowd to sing the praises of a plant-based diet and remind us all for the umpteenth time that animal foods will choke our arteries with sticky sludge and cause our disgusted cardiac muscles to call a permanent stop-work meeting.

The trouble is, using a study involving multiple interventions as ‘proof’ of the effectiveness of a single intervention is a sterling example of inappropriate extrapolation. Esselstyn’s intervention was multifactorial: each patient was assigned to a very low-fat lacto-vegetarian diet and cholesterol-lowering drugs, the most common protocol being cholestyramine, 4 g twice daily, and lovastatin, 40 mg to 60 mg daily (Esselstyn has since gone on to eschew the use of low-fat dairy). Esselstyn’s strict dietary instructions meant forsaking all the refined processed garbage the patients were previously eating. So in in addition to eschewing meat, the patients also had to forgo all the nutrient-depleted, sugar/vegetable fat/additive-drenched junk they were previously scoffing down.

So let’s take a look at the long list of potential confounders. As a result of the intervention, the patients lost weight. Weight loss itself, irrespective of the diet employed, can causes improvements in arterial function, regression of arterial thickness, and anti-platelet activity[2-5]. The one consistent theme is that the degree of IMT reduction is linked to the amount of weight lost, not the mode of diet followed.

Also, a regimen that involves a calorie reduction large enough to induce significant weight loss and that eliminates all the processed sugar-rich and vegetable fat-laden junk that typifies modern Western diets can be expected to have numerous cardiovascular benefits. As I explain at length in The Great Cholesterol Con, reducing the glycemic load of your diet and eliminating omega-6-rich vegetable oils can reduce the highly damaging process of glycation, reduce atherosclerotic plaque formation (and possibly rupture), reduce clotting tendencies, and improve arterial function.

But there is no law saying one must sentence themselves to a life of tofu and bean sprouts in order to achieve these effects, despite what Esselstyn and his fellow vegans in Forks Over Knives would have you believe.

And let’s not forget Esselstyn’s use of statin drugs. While I personally think statins are a garbage drug for reasons I have already elucidated several million times before (long time readers will know that was not an exaggeration), the fact remains they too have been shown to favorably affect the kind of IMT measurements employed in Esselstyn’s study[6-8].

Let’s also not forget that, similar to Ornish’s Lifestyle trial, Esselstyn’s study was a very small project with no randomized comparison group, and no mortality data. So we have no way of knowing how a comparison group receiving a similarly calorie- and crap-restricted omnivorous diet and the same medication regimen would have fared, and to what degree (if any) reductions in IMT and other risk factors would have eventually translated into actual mortality reductions. I’m not having a go at Ornish or Esselstyn here, as they at least made some effort to systematically tackle CVD in their patients and publish the findings. While the low-carb crowd loves to dump on these guys, the fact remains that folks like Dr. Robert Atkins and Dr. Michael Eades – both former practicing physicians who have publicly boasted about having had “thousands of patients” – never published so much as a single case study, despite having several decades to do so. What I do strongly oppose about the Ornish and Esselstyn studies is the way the results from these multifaceted interventions are disingenuously used to hype the alleged value of a single intervention. Which, of course, invariably happens to be a very low-fat, plant-based diet.

I agree with everything here as long as we are talking about overall health and well-being. When it comes to JUST weight loss, which is SIMPLE MATH, then its all irrelevent. I want to be healthy, but I can't go from eating all the stuff I am used to.. to eating grass... so I learned portion control. When you work off more calories than you take in, you lose weight. SIMPLE!

At very least, please research the toxicity issue. Not all calories are the same. It is harder to burn off calories when you are consuming food chemicals. Don't trust me, research it for yourself. Try it for yourself. Look back at all the responses in this thread and find the ones where people said "I tried eating higher quality calories, and my weight loss accelerated" or something to that effect. Listen to the people who have had success. I'm not saying to completely forget the "calories in/calories out" equation, because that IS the weight loss/maintenance/gain formula, but as you continue your journey, please continue your research, and learn of the MANY OTHER FACTORS that influence your weight loss/overall health/energy level/fitness.

And i don't eat grass, and i don't know anyone who does. Eat more fruit.