“[Governmental] dietary guidelines necessarily are political compromises between what science tells us about nutrition and health and what is good for the food industry.” – M. Nestle, New York University

As our knowledge of the human body becomes ever more exact, scientists have made remarkable leaps forward in many fields. We have completed the study of the human genome. We can combat horrible diseases such as childhood leukemia with terrific success rates. Yet for one question that many of us would like answered—what foods boost health and help burn fat long-term?—we find all sorts of confusing claims. Since we know so much about how our body works, can’t science tell us the answer?

As it turns out, science already has, and it is surprisingly simple:

1. Eat a lot of water, fiber, and protein rich (SANE) foods
2. Do a little safe, low-impact, and forceful (eccentric) exercise
3. Drink so much water (and green tea) that your urine is clear, you are never thirsty, and you are too “full” to drink sweetened beverages (soda, etc.)

The scientifically proven facts of fat loss are intuitive and simple. The confusion comes from bureaucrats acting like biologists and marketers imitating MDs.

Let’s clear up this unnecessary confusion by looking at the history of eating using a scale of one day. Say 12:00am last night was the dawn of our first ancestors, and right now it’s one second before midnight. For 23 hours and 57 minutes (up until 11:57pm) our ancestors stayed healthy and fit, eating vegetables, seafood, meat, eggs, fruit, nuts, and seeds. At 11:57pm, people started farming, became “civilized,” and began eating starch and a small amount of sweets. Two seconds ago, people started eating processed starches and sweets. Only right now—one second before midnight—did people start getting most of their calories from manufactured starch- and sweetener-based food products. That means the diet recommended by the government’s Dietary Guidelines was not possible for 99.8% of our history.

It is an unarguable anthropological fact that for the vast majority of their existence, our ancestors did not consume much starch and did not consume any added sweeteners. They did not eat whole grains. They ate no grains. They did not cut back on added sweeteners. They did not know what added sweeteners are. Emory University researcher S.B. Eaton tells us:

“During the late Paleolithic [the vast majority of human history], the great majority of carbohydrates was derived from vegetables and fruit, very little from cereal grains and none from refined flours.”

This idea is interesting to think about when it comes to our health. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cardiovascular disease are called “diseases of civilization.” They did not become issues until agriculture enabled production of starches and sweets about 12,000 years ago. And they did not reach epidemic status until starches and sweets made up 43% of our diet.

Some people might object: “Back then, people did not live as long as we do now.” That is an excellent point. I felt the same way until I read research revealing three facts about our hunter-gatherer ancestors:

• Fact: They are few and far between today, but hunter-gatherer tribes are still around, and scientists have studied them intensively. The studies show that they are free from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cardiovascular disease.

• Fact: While their average age of death is lower than ours, many ancient hunter-gatherers lived beyond the age of sixty. Emory University researcher S.B. Eaton tells us: “Occasionally one hears the claim that primitive people all died too young to get degenerative diseases. This claim is simply false—many lived well into and through the age of vulnerability for such disorders, yet didn’t get them.”

• Fact: Let’s take old age out of the equation entirely. Obese and type 2 diabetic “civilized” children are running around all over the place. The children of hunter-gatherers were obesity and diabetes free.

The lowering in the quality of our diet and the lowering in the quality of our health are not coincidences. Could it be possible that we are not designed to digest the food that makes up the majority of our diet?

The Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health states unequivocally: “The USDA Pyramid is wrong. It was built on shaky scientific ground…[and] has been steadily eroded by new research from all parts of the globe…. At best, [it] offers wishy-washy, scientifically unfounded advice.” Here’s what the Journal of the American College of Cardiovascular Exerciselogy has to say: “The low-fat-high-carbohydrate diet, promulgated [publicized] vigorously by the…food pyramid, may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity…diabetes, and metabolic syndromes.” The Co-Founder of the Center for Science in the Public Interest chimes in: “Good advice about nutrition conflicts with the interests of many big industries, each of which has more lobbying power than all the public-interest groups combined.”

We are not getting bigger and sicker because we are eating a lot of food. We are becoming hormonally “clogged” and losing our natural ability to burn fat from eating the wrong quality of food. The further the quality of our calories has gotten from the high-quality SANE food we ate for 99.8% of our evolutionary history, the bigger and sicker we have become.

Decades of advanced dietary research have taken place alongside spiking obesity and disease rates. This research recommends a diet much different than any version of the government’s Dietary Guidelines. For example, Dr. Marion Nestle at New York University notes how the scientific community has long criticized the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid’s failure to “recognize the biochemical equivalency of sugars and starches in the body.” More simply, starch has the same impact on our body as sugar. Why don’t the government’s guidelines reflect this research? Who needs science when a constant barrage of food, fitness, and pharmaceutical industry marketing bullies us into believing that the government’s recommendations are healthy?

“The USDA-sponsored Dietary Guidelines for Americans and its Food Guide Pyramid are nutritionally and biochemically unsound…They radically changed the food habits of tens of millions of Americans in a massive human experiment that has gone awry…. Today, there is little doubt that there is a clear temporal association between the ‘heart healthy’ diet and the current, growing epidemics of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type-2 diabetes.” – A. Ottoboni, in the Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons

A great deal of money is being made from our nutritional confusion. Even worse, the government created these guidelines in much the same way it creates laws: by listening to lobbyists and by making compromises. The history of the USDA guidelines and graphics is nothing short of shocking. We’ll dig into the details starting in the next post.

“Saying that obesity is caused by eating too much is like saying that allergies are caused by breathing too much.” – Jonathan Bailor

Commenting on his recent study at University of Colorado School of Medicine Dr. Guido Frank stated: “It is clear that in humans the brain’s reward system helps to regulate food intake…The specific role of these networks in eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and, conversely, obesity, remains unclear.” Dr. Frank’s commentary reminded me of an analogy between anorexia and obesity that I find useful in illustrating how calorie quantity is not the cause of obesity and should not be our focus when trying to cure it.

A couple of posts back we covered the hormonally horrible condition known as internal starvation.

Internal Starvation: When the metabolism is so clogged that it encourages us to overeat to compensate for all the calories it is leaking into our fat cells.

We then looked at an example that showed how inSANE food causes the hormonal clog that leads to overeating and then obesity. More simply, that inSANE food is the cause of obesity. Not overeating. Chronically eating an excessive quantity of calories is a symptom of the metabolic disaster caused by inSANE low-quality calories.

While it took me a while to wrap my head around thinking of overeating as a symptom rather than a cause, I found that the thought process became easier when I flipped the problem on its head. By thinking about under-eating. By examining anorexia.

Let’s look at an example. Say we have an anorexic individual named Ann who heads to the doctor to get help. The doctor sits Ann down, looks at her chart, and tells Ann, “The cause of your problem is that you are eating too few calories. The solution to your problem is eating more calories.” We would all agree that doctor was not helpful. Ann knows she is eating too few calories. What she does not know is why she keeps eating too few calories. What she needs help with is the cause of her chronic low calorie consumption. Taking in too few calories is a symptom, not a cause. Making Ann aware of the cause is the key to helping her long term.

Like eating too few calories is not the cause of anorexia and focusing on calorie quantity does not lead to the solution, eating too many calories is not the cause of obesity and focusing on calorie quantity does not lead to the solution. Telling overweight individuals that they are eating too many calories is useless. Telling overweight individuals about the cause of their chronic high-calorie consumption (a hormonal clog cured via high-quality food and exercise) is useful. But as long as we are told calorie quantity is all that matters, we will never get that far. Why? Because the government, food, fitness, and pharmaceutical industries already believe they “know” the answer and therefore ignore the last forty years of scientific research proving the importance of food and exercise quality.

Consider this incorrect and condescending three-step weight loss plan from the American Council on Science and Health:

“1. Don’t expect a government bureaucracy to solve your problems.
2. Don’t single out one substance and complain that addiction to it has caused your lack of overall self-control.
3. When you’re ready to start dealing rationally with your weight problem, if you have one: eat less and/or exercise more.”

Why Focusing On Calorie Quantity Is Bad

It is a scientific fact that cure for obesity is not 100 calorie snack packs. It’s also not low-fat food products. And it’s definitely not about starving yourself until the suffering becomes unbearable. It’s not about calorie quantity at all. Until we free ourselves from this scientifically disproven theory, we will continue to experience the 95.4% failure rate of eating less and exercising more. So why do we keep hearing about counting calories and exercising excessively? In short, our government started and keeps fueling this fat-loss fiction to fund the food, fitness, and pharmaceutical industries.

We’ll start digging into that data in the next couple of posts.

“What could be better than an industry whose products do not work, or work only as long as you use them, for as long as you live, but whose customers believe that they have no other choice?” – Geoffrey Cannon

Jonathan Bailor
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If left untreated, insulin resistance turns into type 2 diabetes. To quickly understand type 2 diabetes, let’s go back to the example of the clogged sink. Type 2 diabetes is like running water into a clogged sink for so long that water overflows all over the place and the faucet breaks down. Once so much insulin is produced that it is overflowing our bloodstream while our ability to produce insulin has broken down, we have type 2 diabetes.

This build-up and breakdown causes potentially lethal havoc on the body. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates people diagnosed with diabetes by the age of forty die twelve years sooner if they are male, and fourteen years sooner if they are female.

Estimated Cases of Diabetes (in Millions)

“Just twenty years ago, the best information available suggested that 30 million people had diabetes. A bleaker picture has now emerged. Diabetes is fast becoming the epidemic of the 21st century.” – President Pierre Lefèbvre, International Diabetes Federation

Diabetic vs. Non-Diabetic Death Rate (Per 1k People)

“In 2007, diabetes affected an estimated 246 million people worldwide, with that number estimated to grow by 7 million per year. The highest rate of growth is expected to occur in developing countries. Of people with diabetes, 9 out of 10 have Type 2 Diabetes…Worldwide 3.8 million deaths are directly attributable to diabetes.” – Linda Rowland, in the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine

Diabetic vs. Non-Diabetic Heart Attack Rate

Type 2 diabetes is terrible. What is even worse is its disturbing growth. In the late 1800s, one in every 4,000 people was diabetic; today one in every four people is diabetic or pre-diabetic. That is a 100,000% increase in one century, and researchers estimate that we are on our way to a third of men and nearly a half of women in the U.S. becoming type 2 diabetic. That is insane. That is caused by inSANE calories.

How do we avoid this?

Eat more. Exercise less. Smarter. Studies show 80% of type 2 diabetics can reduce or completely eliminate their need for medication by eating more SANEly, while reversing more than a third of a lifetime’s worth of insulin resistance after only a few months by exercising smarter.

Science has shown us the way…now it’s up to us to go SANE and get eccentric.

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Translation: Studies suggest that starving our way to a ~15% drop in body weight can cause a disproportionate ~25% drop in metabolic rate.

If we want to burn fat and keep it off, the last thing we want to do is disproportionately slow down our body. If we want to improve our health, the last thing we want to do is deprive our body of nutrition. Therefore, if we want to be slimmer and healthier for the rest of our life–very different from merely weighing less in the short term–the last thing we want to do is eat less of our existing diet. We will be better served by eating more–but higher-quality–food, and doing less–but higher-quality (more forceful)–exercise. This protects our metabolism, prevent overeating, provide abundant nutrition, and produce a hormonal environment perfect for burning body fat.

“[We] reviewed studies of the long-term outcomes of calorie-restricting diets to assess whether dieting is an effective treatment for obesity…In sum, there is little support for the notion that diets lead to lasting weight loss or health benefits.” – T. Mann, University of California

“In practically every instance the weight prior to the beginning of the (lose weight by eating less) experiment was reached almost immediately and was usually materially exceeded.” – F.G. Benedict,  Carnegie Institution of Washington

“A general public health recommendation for weight reduction through dieting cannot be supported strongly with existing data.” – D.S. Weigle, University of Washington

The science is clear. The confusion comes from diet and exercise industry funded marketing and myths. It is a scientific fact that lasting fat loss and improved health is not about eating less of the diet that caused the problem in the first place.  It’s about eating more, but of different types of foods. It’s about eating more–but smarter.

Jonathan Bailor
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1. Weigle DS. Human obesity. Exploding the myths. West J Med. 1990 Oct;153(4):421-8. Review. PubMed PMID: 2244378; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1002573.
2. Benedict, Francis Gano. Human Vitality and Efficiency under Prolonged Restricted Diet,. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1919. Print.
3. Keesey RE, Hirvonen MD. Body weight set-points: determination and adjustment. J Nutr. 1997 Sep;127(9):1875S-1883S. Review. PubMed PMID: 9278574.
4. Mann T, Tomiyama AJ, Westling E, Lew AM, Samuels B, Chatman J. Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer. Am Psychol. 2007 Apr;62(3):220-33. Review. PubMed PMID: 17469900.

Context

The research supporting The Smarter Science of Slim was brought up by a reader on the aforementioned discussion board. T. Colin Campell then wrote (http://amzn.to/JtSwt5): “But fortunately, science will prevail over ad hominem attacks.” When this was brought to my attention I was quite startled as thousands of pages of peer-reviewed academic research do not agree with Campell’s recommended “low-protein, low-fat” and therefore unnaturally high-carbohydrate diet. To ensure that a diverse set of research was represented within the discussion, I shared a set of studies showing that natural fats are not harmful (http://amzn.to/K3EHoj) along with the short editorial: “You were right. Science prevailed.”

The Discussion

Note: If you visit the discussion board, you will see that many others contributed to this conversation. I’ve included only my chat with Campell here as I’m frequently asked what I think about Forks Over Knives and The China Study and this provides a useful answer.

Campell’s reply (http://amzn.to/KsXFlW):

I previously said, “…science will prevail”. I said what I mean and mean what I said. But this can have meaning, I suspect, if only the would-be scientists and their minions in this discussion group would agree to really learn some science.

John Bailor’s post is a beautiful illustration of the problem. He certainly is clever in creating a list of studies, some quite well known, supporting the hypothesis that it is not total fat that has caused our high rates of heart disease, obesity and related ailments.

I agree that these studies, mostly all published in the peer-reviewed research literature, certainly support this hypothesis. Moreover, I not only support this hypothesis but said so, publicly, BEFORE any of these studies were conducted!!!!!!!

I suspect that this comment of mine may be surprising for those of you who post so many silly `storeys’ in this discussion group. I believe that this is because these individuals do not understand science, have not been trained in the field of nutrition and/or have inadequate access to the literature.

I personally know several of the investigators involved in these studies and spoke about their shortcomings on the dietary fat question even before they were organized. I lectured three times at Harvard when the Nurses’ Health Study was initially being organized and once at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center who organized the mammoth Women’s Health Initiative, each time offering that it would be a shortcoming to investigate the role of total fat in the etiology of these diseases with the cohorts and the protocols that they were using (all the other studies cited by Bailor also had the same shortcoming).

Namely, I have always been unwilling to assume that single nutrient adjustments in an exceedingly complex nutrient diet would show much of anything. It is unlikely to see a meaningful single nutrient effect within such complexity because of the interacting and compensatory effects of countless-and co-linear-nutrients (e.g., of fat) having similar disease producing effects. Even more importantly, in these studies cited by Bailor, these countless other factors will have already `maxed out’ their deleterious effects. Removing or decreasing one dietary item, e.g., total fat, has very little, if any, chance of working. This is similar to the use of nutrient supplements that we now know do not work, and in some studies actually do the opposite of what wa intended.

In short, in ALL these studies, trivial changes are being studied. This is NOT the way that nutrition works. For example, in NONE of these studies, were their subjects consuming a truly low fat, low protein, whole food, plant-based diet (never mind the superficial and really stupid characterization of `low fat’ as being something like 25-30% of total calories-read again my commentary on this book). This is where truly large and sustaining effects are observed.

As far as I am concerned, the evidence now available for a low fat, low protein whole food, plant-based diet is irrefutable. What these studies listed by Bailor prove-and this is the best of science!-is that adjustment of fat alone in Western type diets will have little or no effect. I have spent far too long (more than a half century) doing the experimental research, publishing the results in peer-reviewed literature, and helping to develop national food and health policy to believe otherwise. It simply works when people do it the right way. This is the future history!

My reply (http://amzn.to/IurkjH):

T. Colin Campbell says: “I have always been unwilling to assume that single nutrient adjustments in an exceedingly complex nutrient diet would show much of anything.”

Well stated. I appreciate all of your work in this field and your focus on whole foods. My research 100% agrees that eating dramatically more non-starchy vegetables, more nutrient dense fruits (ex. berries and citrus), and more nuts and seed is critical to health and fitness. You are 100% correct that eating a lot more of the *right* plants is critical to long-term health and fitness. Great work and thank you.

Given that you are “unwilling to assume that single nutrient adjustments in an exceedingly complex nutrient diet would show much of anything,” why the recommendation to adjust the single nutrients protein and fat down? Data unquestionably show there are healthy and unhealthy plants as well as healthy and unhealthy non-plants. Sugar is a plant. Wild caught salmon is not. The evidence now available does not irrefutably state that given the choice between sugar and salmon that the plant is preferable. Tombs of research, including your work in China, suggest that the consumption of seafood (a non-plant) dramatically improves health.

Why not find the best plants and best animals and focus on consuming those rather than making polarizing statements along the lines of plants are good and non-plants are bad? As you state so well, the answer in this exceedingly complex area is more nuanced than that.

The broader research community 100% agrees that consuming more non-starchy vegetables, more nutrient dense fruits (ex. berries and citrus), and more nuts and seed is critical to health and fitness, so why not focus on that rather than making scientifically-unsupported statements against the consumption of healthy non-plants such as seafood? The data is equally clear for those foodstuffs.

Thank you for dedicating your life to making the world a healthier and happier place. We share that goal.

- Jonathan Bailor

Campell’s reply (http://amzn.to/II0PXG):

Jonathan Bailor says:

Given that you are “unwilling to assume that single nutrient adjustments in an exceedingly complex nutrient diet would show much of anything,” why the recommendation to adjust the single nutrients protein and fat down?

When I did the experimental research on protein and fat (mostly protein), I was doing it in a way that was generally accepted (i.e., nutrient by nutrient)–keep also in mind that this is the way that we got funding from NIH to do research because this the way that we think. As I got into this research during a 27-year project doing hundreds of studies, I found the responses to be so provocative, almost unbelievable (both because of my personal and professional backgrounds). Gradually I was accumulating a series of what were regarded as heresies, at least for me.

It was then that I started asking about the properties of other nutrients, other disease endpoints and, most importantly, other explanatory mechanisms, as well as becoming concerned about the relevance of this information for humans instead of experimental animals. This is when I began 1) to realize and to demonstrate that nutrient compositions characteristic of WHOLE plants aggregated together, both in kind and in amount, had what clearly was the centuries old idea, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. It then became more of a question how and whether the effects seen individually could be accommodated within a whole diet framework.

There’s far more to this story that will be published in a new book that I am just now completing, “Whole”, due in January 2013.

By the way, sugar is not a plant, it is a fragment of a plant and, as such, it behaves very differently (in size and kind of effect). Yes, salmon is a whole food but it does not accommodate information showing in a rabbit experiment that its protein increases serum cholesterol more than any plant protein source. Also, salmon has very small amounts of the large group of antioxidants and none of the complex carbohydrates, both of which are the core of the benefits of whole plants.

When I draw generalizations between plants and animals, I do so partly on the totality of the evidence on nutrient composition, partly on the biological plausibility of the evidence and partly on the results that are obtained in human trials–and more.

My reply (http://amzn.to/JFnbYN):

T. Colin Campbell – The explanation of your focus on protein makes sense. Hopefully it also makes sense that your statement “I have always been unwilling to assume that single nutrient adjustments in an exceedingly complex nutrient diet would show much of anything,” and similar sentiment provided in your popular text, are contradictory with your message to essentially avoid protein, as doing so is a single nutrient adjustment.

I am aware that sugar is not a plant :) I hope my point was clear and reasonable. Tobacco is a plant, and I suspect that you would not recommend eating large quantities of it. If anything other than the importance of water consumption is close to unanimously agreed upon in the broader nutrition research community, it must be that there are healthy and unhealthy plants as well as healthy and unhealthy non-plants.

You are a very influential man and if I may be so bold, I would urge you to use that influence to encourage people to consume whole foods that help us avoid overeating (have high satiety), do not have a detrimental impact our blood sugar or hormones, provide an abundance of nutrients etc. per calorie, and do not promote the storage of excess fat, rather than trivializing what you rightly call an “exceedingly complex area” by suggesting that all plants are good and all non-plants are bad. I realize that some of the correlations found in your research may not agree, but I do hope you acknowledge that there are tombs of research from highly respected institutions demonstrating the health benefits of non-plants fitting the criteria I outlined above.

Best of luck with your upcoming work and I do hope that our paths cross in the future.

- Jonathan Bailor

Campbell concluded our discussion with (http://tinyurl.com/6pqecxj):

Jonathan,

I must emphasize the rationale for doing the research the way we did, not only because it was opportunistic and potentially rewarding but also, because of the funding, we focused on protein as researchers did and still do with focused hypotheses and study designs. As time passed, the very provocative findings with protein prompted me to go further to see the extent to which similar phenomena existed with other nutrients. This is where w discovered lots of interesting things that pointed to the benefits of a whole, plant-based foods diet. I then suggested that the “closer we get to a whole foods plant-based diet the greater the health benefits.” Ever since, I have pointed out that I do not know of scientific evidence showing that going 100% the whole way is better than, say 95% or so. Therefore, I have never said that 100% plant based is a proven scientific fact and that every last drop or crumble of the difficult foods need to be excluded. This is what others have said about my findings. However, I also have said many times that 100% nonetheless is, for me, advisable because it allows our taste preferences to adjust and within 1-3 months, sufficiently adjusted to a point where we do not want to return to our old ways. It is analogous to telling heavy smokers to stop smoking but letting them have a cigarette or two a day. It really doesn’t work because of the tenacity with which old preferences keep us hooked. On this point, I believe people have told more than a few times that I am some sort of inflexible activist.

I hope this was useful or at least interesting :)

I covered The China Study briefly a few months back and a quick web search will provide much more thorough China Study commentary if you’d like to read more.

Jonathan Bailor
http://www.facebook.com/TheSmarterScienceOfSlim
http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanbailor
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What do you think? Share. Get support. Learn simple science. Join us in the free Smarter Science of Slim Support Group today!

So Terri snacks on 250 extra calories to keep her cells from starving. But now only a fraction of the 250 make it to the cells needing it while the rest is stored as body fat. Again, she must overeat even more. This process of overeating to keep a hormonally clogged metabolism running repeats itself until Terri eats 1,000 calories to meet her need for 500 calories. Terri’s metabolism is leaking calories into her fat cells and has to compensate by taking in extra calories.

Continue this “overeat to compensate for the clog” cycle day after day and Terri gains body fat. And on the surface it looks like she is gaining body fat because she is eating too many calories. But eating too many calories is not the cause of her new body fat. It is a symptom of a deeper problem: her hormonal clog. Terri’s high consumption of calories is not the cause of her weight gain. It is a symptom of the hormonal clog caused by inSANE low-quality calories.

“What passes for knowledge is often no more than well-organized ignorance.” – J.R.A. Mitchell, Queen’s Medical Centre

Incorrect

“The common aim of all science [is] the gradual removal of prejudices.” – Niels Bohr, physicist

Correct

Even the American Heart Association, which champions eating less and exercising more, acknowledged that calorie quantity does not cause obesity when they remarked: “One can argue that people become obese because they consume more calories than they expend, but this doesn’t tell us why the imbalance exists or the best way to correct it.” Put differently: “People become obese because they overeat, but that doesn’t tell us the cause of their overeating or how to fix it.”

Obesity is not caused by eating too many calories, and it is not cured by eating fewer calories. Hilde Burch at Baylor University concludes:

“Though [overeating] is observed with great regularity, it is not the cause of obesity; it is a symptom of an underlying disturbance…. The changes in weight regulation and fat storage are the essential disturbances.”

Telling an adult struggling to lose fat to eat less and exercise more is like telling a child struggling to see the chalk board to sit closer and squint more. Both confuse dealing with symptoms and fixing causes.

Problems are not solved by treating symptoms. That is why the calorie-quantity-based approach to fat loss, eating less and exercising more, fails 95% of the time long-term. It is only treating symptoms. It is based on the myth that gaining body fat is caused by calorie quantity, and that is wrong.

Jonathan Bailor
http://www.facebook.com/TheSmarterScienceOfSlim
http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanbailor
(212) 465-3130
 

What do you think? Share. Get support. Learn simple science. Join us in the free Smarter Science of Slim Support Group today!

 
PS I like to think of the difference between “Eat Less. Exercise More. Harder.” and “Eat More. Exercise Less. Smarter.” like the difference between taking an expensive medication for the rest of our lives and curing a disease. Eating less and exercising more is one of the most expensive, time consuming, and painful “medications” around. And if we take it even more of it, forever, the symptoms of our clogged metabolism will be suppressed. But why not cure the underlying issue? Especially when eating SANE foods and doing smarter exercise takes less time and money, dramatically benefits our health, and never requires us to be hungry.
 

“…obesity is impossible in the absence of adequate tissue concentrations of insulin.” – M. Goldberg, in Journal of the American Medical Association

In the last post we touched on how hormones control the metabolic conversation that determines if we are storing or burning body fat. Let’s now dig into the hormone insulin’s role in this conversation as it is known in scientific circles as, “The most important hormonal factor influencing lipogenesis [body fat creation].”

Insulin’s job is to get energy into cells. For example, after we eat lunch, our body digests it and then releases insulin to carry those freshly digested calories into our cells. Since insulin is activated only when we need to get fuel into our cells, our metabolism “hears” insulin in the bloodstream “communicating” that we have energy on its way to our cells and therefore do not need to use any stored energy—aka burn body fat. So the hormone insulin—not the calories we ate—blocks the burning of body fat. That point is extremely important.

“[Insulin signals an] abundance of [external] energy, [and]…fat breakdown is suppressed and its synthesis promoted…” – researcher G. Wilcox, Mepoundourne Pathology

Our metabolism does not decide to burn or store body fat based on calories. It makes these decisions based on the hormones those calories trigger. That is why the quality of calories matters so much. As we have already seen, higher-quality calories trigger body-fat-burning hormones while low-quality calories trigger body-fat-storing hormones.

“Fat is mobilized [burned] when insulin secretion diminishes.” – The American Medical Association

We can cut calories all day and will not burn body fat effectively if we are eating low-quality calories which trigger excess body-fat-storing hormones such as insulin. Why? Hormones like insulin remove our ability to burn body fat regardless of whether or not we need to according to calorie quantity. That is why scientists refer to the hormone insulin as the “principal regulator of fat metabolism.”

Here is the sad part. Calories from inSANE starch and sweets trigger the release of ridiculous amounts of insulin. All that insulin gets those inSANE starch and sweets’ calories into our cells, but then we still have insulin left over in our bloodstream. That excess insulin clogs us up and removes our ability to burn body fat.

Where the Average American Gets Calories

(Insulin-spiking starch and sweeteners make up 43% of what we eat)

“…obesity [is characterized by] defects in insulin action, whole-body insulin resistance, and hyperinsulinemia” – researcher D.A. York, Pennington Biomedical Research Center

Things go from bad to worse if this inSANEity keeps up for too long. Not only does all the excess insulin destroy our ability to burn body fat, it makes the metabolism resistant to insulin. How does this process work? Compare becoming resistant to the effects of insulin with becoming resistant to the effects of alcohol. When people drink alcohol in moderation, everything is fine. It takes relatively little alcohol to generate the desired effect, so people don’t drink too much of it. However, if people drink too much alcohol, they become resistant to alcohol’s effects. Then they have to drink more alcohol to get the desired effect. This volume of alcohol eventually destroys their liver and makes them gain body fat. This leaves heavy drinkers in an unfortunate place where they have become resistant to alcohol and have to drink an unhealthy amount of it to get the desired effect.

Similarly, when people eat mostly SANE foods and just a little inSANE starch and sweets, everything is fine. It takes little insulin to get energy into cells, so the body doesn’t produce too much of it. However, if people eat mostly starch and sweets, their bodies become resistant to insulin’s effects. Then their body has to produce more insulin to get energy into cells. This volume of insulin eventually destroys their pancreas and makes them gain body fat.

“Foods made from wheat flour account for about 20% of the calories in the American diet…” –Marion Nestle, New York University

Even more unfortunate, at least one in four Americans are insulin resistant. All this excess insulin forms the backbone of the hormonal dysfunction causing us to gain fat. Not only does it crush our ability to burn body fat, it also increases the rate at which we store body fat because excess insulin preferentially puts calories into our fat tissue. This happens because no matter how resistant other tissues become to insulin, our fat tissue is always receptive. And while that is technically good because it keeps insulin resistance from killing us, it can crush any dreams of losing weight. We end up with more body fat and no ability to burn it. This sad state is know as internal starvation and will be the subject of the next post.

Jonathan Bailor
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4. Cordain, Loren, and Joe Friel. The Paleo Diet for Athletes: A Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Books, 2005. Print.
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13. Whitehead, Saffron A.; Nussey, Stephen (2001). Endocrinology: an integrated approach. Oxford: BIOS. pp. 122. ISBN 1-85996-252-1.
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“Short-term [hormonal] signals are primarily from the GI tract [digestive system]…and are involved in promoting sensations of satiety…. The long-term [hormonal] signals insulin and leptin are produced and circulate in proportion to recent energy intake and body adiposity [body fat]. Together, the short- and long-term [hormonal] signals interact to regulate energy balance…” – P.J. Havel, University of California

Translating Dr. Havel’s insightful technical commentary, our digestive system, muscle tissue, and fat tissue are constantly communicating with our nervous system and brain via hormones. Our body “speaks” hormones…not calories. It is discussing how much fuel it thinks we need to keep us at our set-point. If our body thinks we are at risk of rising above our set-point weight, it automatically decrease our calories in and increase our calories out, and vice versa.

When we eat SANE high-quality calories, this conversation goes well. The right amount of hormones are used and the right message gets across: “Burn surplus body fat.” When our hormones are able to do their job, we have the ability to burn body fat, and away our surplus body fat goes.

However, when we eat inSANE low-quality calories, communication breaks down. Our body doesn’t have a good idea of how much fuel we need, hormones go bonkers, and our body demands more food since it does not know what is going on and errs on the side of not starving. Thanks to this communication breakdown, we end up overeating, hormonally clogged, and heavier.

To gain a deeper understanding of this communication breakdown, and how we can prevent it, in the next post we’ll look at a specific hormone—insulin—and its role in this process. Insulin is a good choice because it is known in scientific circles as, “The most important hormonal factor influencing lipogenesis [body fat creation].”

Jonathan Bailor
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1. Carlson MG & Campbell PJ. Intensive insulin therapy and weight gain in IDDM. Diabetes 1993 42 1700–1707.
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4. Havel PJ. Peripheral signals conveying metabolic information to the brain: short-term and long-term regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis. Exp Biol Med (Maywood). 2001 Dec;226(11):963-77. Review. PubMed PMID: 11743131.
5. Havel PJ. Update on adipocyte hormones: regulation of energy balance and carbohydrate/lipid metabolism. Diabetes. 2004 Feb;53 Suppl 1:S143-51. Review. PubMed PMID: 14749280.
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“The ‘classical theory’ that fat is deposited in the adipose tissue [body fat] only when given in excess of the caloric requirement is finally disproved.”– E. Wertheimer, in Physiological Reviews

Calorie quality (SANEity) influences the hormones which control our set-point weight which controls the amount of fat we store. More simply, hormones play a critical role in our long-term body fat levels.

The critical effect hormones have on body fat has been well known in scientific circles for a long time. Especially the hormone insulin. Most of us know insulin only in reference to diabetics. They need insulin shots. Yet a true understanding of how hormones generally—and insulin specifically—work in relation to body fat reveals the cause of, and solution to, weight gain and related diseases such as diabetes.

At the risk of being gross, one way scientists discovered the important relationship between hormones and weight is through the procedure known as parabiosis. Parabiosis occurs when researchers cut two live animals open and then join them so they share the same blood supply and hormones. In other words, researchers create Siamese twins.

Before Parabiosis

After Parabiosis

Why would researchers create a Franken-rat with one set of hormones but twice as much of everything else? Because it allows them to conduct studies showing the impact hormones have on body fat. For example, when researchers join an obese rat to a lean rat, the lean rat gets leaner regardless of the quantity of calories it eats. How is that possible? Think back to how the set-point works.

The obese rat’s metabolism is producing a massive amount of body-fat-burning hormones in an effort to get the obese rat back to normal automatically. But because the obese rat is clogged and cannot respond to the body-fat-burning hormones effectively, it stays heavy. However, the lean rat is not clogged. The clog-free rat is able to respond to all of those body-fat-burning hormones. Lots of body-fat-burning hormones plus the ability to respond to them equals burning body fat despite eating the same quantity of calories.

In a similar manner, when researchers stitch a normal rat and a starved rat together, the starved rat’s body-fat-storing hormones make the normal rat get fatter regardless of the quantity of calories the normal rat eats. The starved rat is producing body-fat-storing hormones in an effort to get back to its set-point. These body-fat-storing hormones enter the normal rat, and its unclogged metabolism does exactly what the hormones tell it to do: the normal rat stores body fat without eating any more or exercising any less.

Besides the horror of joining living animals together, these and hundreds of other experiments clearly show that hormone levels strongly influence weight gain or loss. In the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, J. Le Magnen captures the importance of healing our hormones before we are free of body fat: “Humans that become obese gain weight because they are no longer able to lose weight.” Le Magnen’s statement is brilliant.

Gaining body fat because we lost the ability to burn body fat thanks to a hormonal clog is totally different than gaining body fat because we eat too much or exercise too little.

If we are gaining body fat because our body has lost the ability to burn fat, then what good is pushing harder to eat less and to exercise more? That’s like pushing harder on the gas pedal of a car with no wheels. The solution is not to push harder. The solution is to restore the car’s ability to burn rubber…and to restore our body’s ability to burn fat. Once we give our body “wheels” and get rolling with high-quality food and exercise, we’ll be surprised and delighted with how little we have to push and how far that gets us. We’ll be working smarter instead of harder and we’ll be slimmer and healthier because of it.

Jonathan Bailor
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http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanbailor
(212) 465-3130
 
What do you think? Share. Get support. Learn simple science. Join us in the free Smarter Science of Slim Community today!
 

The process of creating new body fat is called lipogenesis (lipo = fat and genesis = creation). And with genesis in mind, in the beginning there was food, and food was classified by its dominant macronutrient.

*Vegetables, fruit, most dairy, beans, and everything else is a carbohydrate. They are not proteins or fats, so what else could they be?

As soon as our body gets its hands on protein, fat, or carbohydrate, it turns them into amino acids, fatty acids, or glucose, respectively.

Once fat is converted to fatty acids, if there are more fatty acids around than we currently need, all of them are sent off to be stored as body fat. The glucose we get from carbohydrates does not work that way. Glucose cannot be stored as body fat without the hormone insulin. And then there are amino acids from protein. Amino acids must first be converted into glucose. Once they become glucose, they need insulin or they cannot be stored as body fat.

Now let’s assume the hormone insulin is making its rounds and we have glucose on its way to fat cells. At that point all remaining glucose is converted into fatty acids and we are one step away from new body fat. During the last step in the process all those fatty acids combine with a glycerol molecule to form triglyceride—aka body fat. This is called esterification and it is not possible without a substance called glycerol-3-phosphate.

From Food to Body Fat