Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Why are we so fat?

ColdFusionGuy links to this excellent article from the New York Times about the one factor that reliably (shift of statistical means) results in losing weight; bariatric surgery.  I am in agreement despite my endorsement of the Mayo Clinic Diet, and really that of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association), and really for the same reason; any successful diet works by persuading the body that it doesn't want as much food as it thinks it does.  Mayo's diet does so by introducing plant foods in place of calorically more dense animal products, and bariatric surgery does so by physically reducing the size of the stomach. 


To grossly oversimplify things, the body's "full" signals from the stomach thus counter-act other signals that would induce us to eat more.  And that, in turn, illustrates a well-known fact of behavioral change; you need to see things before your eyes all the time, it seems, to be consistently reminded of your need to change.  The athlete needs to envision competition to get out of bed; the overweight person (guilty) needs to envision his next lipids and blood sugar test.  Doing so in a world of Krispy Kreme and the like often takes some doing.

4 comments:

Hearth said...

My coach has me slugging down a tbsp of coconut oil on an empty stomach every morning to reduce appetite. Oh, and doubling my water intake.

The normal water came off from the low-carb diet but I *think* it might be working on the fat too. And, going to powerlifting, where I can move more weight/tear up more muscle fiber/burn more calories is helping too.

Which is good. Coconut oil first thing in the morning is not nice at all. NOT. NICE.

Bike Bubba said...

Is that supposed to work differently than the butter I use to cook my morning eggs (yes I'm working from Julia Child) and the fish oil I take each morning?

Being a lousy SOD (sonofadietician), the thing that comes to mind with the coconut oil is that if you can't do a diet long term, it's not going to work long term. (#whyIdon'tdietwithliver)

Hearth said...

I figured out a way to make it happen - I stir it into a bit of matcha tea and make "bulletproof tea" and then have a nibble to get that down.

The idea is to 1) cut your appetite and 2) apparently the particular type of fat in coconut oil increases metabolism. She's put me on a low-GI diet to get that in gear. (This is tots fine, I have diabetes on both sides of my family tree, and other than being CRANKY about a lack of sugar, I run fine without it).

So you slug that coconut oil down and you're un-hungry for the next four or five hours. Unless you woke up hungry. When I wake up hungry, I have breakfast too. Flipped tires - 30 times - yesterday, today I knew it was a breakfast day by the time my eyeliner was on. Not supposed to be sitting around hungry. So you're substituting your normal 500 cal breakfast for 100 cal of oil. Or, in my case, 200 cals with the nibble. Calorie deficit is always the game, it's just a matter of making that happen. I'm trying *very* hard not to calculate up what I'm eating, because I know how much less it is - but on a low-GI, higher protein/fat diet, I'm not as hungry.

I'm not calling this a success until I hit the minus-ten-pounds mark, being exceedingly cynical about the normal water-weight loss, but I will let you know...

Bike Bubba said...

Got it. I did see how medium chain lipids do tend to go to the liver instead of directly to fat, and that this can suppress appetite a bit. That noted, it strikes me that one group known for eating a lot of coconut products, Polynesians/Samoans, are not exactly known for being svelte. So I'm guessing there are limitations to the concept. :^)