Friday 20 August

Ub Iwerks wrote:

Dally wrote in message ...


Yes, I know, now you mention how wonderfully your low-fat diet worked
for you. Lady, I've seen your picture. It didn't work.


What part of alt.SUPPORT.diet do you not understand? Why not post a
photo of yourself, and let us take a shot?

Google for it.

Dally

Dally wrote:
I do understand. And you keep acting like it worked. Losing it and
keeping it off are two completely different things. We're teaching
people how to lose FAT and keep it off. You can lose WEIGHT
temporarily through any number of methods, including low-fatting it.

Wouldn't you like to know more about how to partition your weight loss
preferentially towards fat? Wouldn't you like to know more about how
we are finding ways of managing our food intake so we're not hungry or
deprived and can eat socially and just get used to doing this for the
rest of our lives?

Well, I'd like to know, lol. That said, are lowfat diets always bad? Why are
they suboptimal?

--
PL
(320/309/170)
(First mini-goal: 299)



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"PL" wrote in message
...
Dally wrote:
I do understand. And you keep acting like it worked. Losing it and
keeping it off are two completely different things. We're teaching
people how to lose FAT and keep it off. You can lose WEIGHT
temporarily through any number of methods, including low-fatting it.

Wouldn't you like to know more about how to partition your weight loss
preferentially towards fat? Wouldn't you like to know more about how
we are finding ways of managing our food intake so we're not hungry or
deprived and can eat socially and just get used to doing this for the
rest of our lives?

Well, I'd like to know, lol. That said, are lowfat diets always bad? Why
are
they suboptimal?

--
PL
(320/309/170)
(First mini-goal: 299)



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What's bad about low-fat? You eat lots of lovely fruit and tangy plain
yogurt instead of ice cream. Not using butter on your bread isn't such a
hardship when it's really good bread. You use mustard and ketchup in your
sandwiches but not mayonnaise. You leave the cheese out of your chili but
you add peppers -- yumm! You make oven fries with Pam and Mrs. Dash
seasonings instead of deep frying. You can still have wine and beer and so
on (7 calories a gram instead of 9 for fat but it's still empty calories so
watch it). I have a ton of low-fat recipes that taste great.

You're not losing flavor unless you are using the wrong recipe book. So
what's the problem?

PL wrote:
Dally wrote:

I do understand. And you keep acting like it worked. Losing it and
keeping it off are two completely different things. We're teaching
people how to lose FAT and keep it off. You can lose WEIGHT
temporarily through any number of methods, including low-fatting it.

Wouldn't you like to know more about how to partition your weight loss
preferentially towards fat? Wouldn't you like to know more about how
we are finding ways of managing our food intake so we're not hungry or
deprived and can eat socially and just get used to doing this for the
rest of our lives?

Well, I'd like to know, lol. That said, are lowfat diets always bad?

Low fat diets have been found to play a role in reducing heart disease
in men, according to the research Ornish did. I believe MacDougal found
the same thing.

Why are they suboptimal?

In practice they turn out to be suboptimal for three reasons: they make
it hard to feel satisfied on a meal without fat, so you keep eating.
Fat lowers the glycemic index of things so you stay sated longer and so
don't get the munchies as often. And the third reason is that you are
less likely to store the food as fat because your body uses it to do
metabolic things that just wouldn't get done if you didn't have the fat
in your diet.

Low-fat diets also reduce your metabolism. If your goal is to burn more
calories than you consumed then you have to look at both sides of that
equation simultaneously. You have to eat less calories and/or burn more
calories and hold both ideas in your head at the same time:

You can eat less calories to burn LESS calories (the typical low-fat
way), but this leads to lowered lean muscle mass and a subsequent
slowing down of the metabolism which leads to rebound weight gain (when
you stop depriving yourself) as well as all the ailments associated with
yo-yo dieting.

You can eat LESS calories to burn MORE calories (eating in such a way to
increase your metabolism a bit and have energy so you can get some
exercise). This is the golden mean most of us are aiming for: less
calories, but not so much less that we feel deprived. This is how we do
the long-term transformations. We do this by smart eating. It's tricky
to work out because it typically involves making substantial changes in
the way you eat (or you wouldn't have gotten fat to begin with.) There
is a fair amount of experimentation and listening to your body in this
stage.

And then when you're good at this, you can eat MORE calories to burn
EVEN MORE calories: this usually involves weightlifting, that is,
gaining some lean body mass. It probably also involves some metabolism
repair work like doing high intensity interval training. This method
takes some work to get it right, but the payoff is being able to eat
like a normal person without fear of gaining 10 pounds over the
week-end. :-)

I could give you a ton of books and NIH research and website after
website, but I really highly recommend you start by reading everything
in Mistress Krista's Eating section at
http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html

Keep an open mind about the terms "low" and "high". Over and over again
Krista keeps coming back to the idea that you get the macronutrients
rather balanced. Low-fat means substantially less than 33%, high carb
means substantially more than 33%. "Eat a balanced diet" means
something different that I used to think it did: I used to think it
meant eat a variety of foods from the food pyramid or from the four
basic food groups or whatever. It doesn't really: it means eat a fairly
balanced macronutrient load.

The best tool I can give you (besides knowledge) is www.fitday.com. Log
your food in there for a while and see how the macronutrient breakdown
shows up. It will be very illuminating, I assure you.

If you're anything like me you'll get a few lessons on portion size, on
actual macronutrient breakout and how many calories you're really
eating. I frequently find that I have to adjust the calories UPWARDS.
Don't go below 8x your weight in calories (if you're a woman) or 10x
your weight in calories (if you're a man) without a pretty darn good
reason (and medical supervision.)

Dieting (as I use the term) is NOT about deprivation, it's about
learning to eat. When you *get* it you'll discover that all the diet
books converge and are really aiming you in the same direction: eat to
fuel your body with good food.

Good luck!

Dally

Dally wrote:

I could give you a ton of books and NIH research and website after
website, but I really highly recommend you start by reading everything
in Mistress Krista's Eating section at
http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html

Keep an open mind about the terms "low" and "high". Over and over
again Krista keeps coming back to the idea that you get the
macronutrients rather balanced. Low-fat means substantially less
than 33%, high carb means substantially more than 33%. "Eat a
balanced diet" means something different that I used to think it did:
I used to think it meant eat a variety of foods from the food pyramid
or from the four basic food groups or whatever. It doesn't really:
it means eat a fairly balanced macronutrient load.

This is what I've been aiming for - a balance of carbs, protein and fat. I'm
trying not to go too high or low on any of them.

The best tool I can give you (besides knowledge) is www.fitday.com.
Log your food in there for a while and see how the macronutrient
breakdown shows up. It will be very illuminating, I assure you.

I've been logging on Fitday for a few weeks now. It really did open my eyes
to just how MUCH I was eating before.

Thanks for the good explanation, Dally.

--
PL
(320/309/170)
(First mini-goal: 299)


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Patricia Heil wrote:

What's bad about low-fat? You eat lots of lovely fruit and tangy plain
yogurt instead of ice cream. Not using butter on your bread isn't such a
hardship when it's really good bread. You use mustard and ketchup in your
sandwiches but not mayonnaise. You leave the cheese out of your chili but
you add peppers -- yumm! You make oven fries with Pam and Mrs. Dash
seasonings instead of deep frying. You can still have wine and beer and so
on (7 calories a gram instead of 9 for fat but it's still empty calories so
watch it). I have a ton of low-fat recipes that taste great.

You're not losing flavor unless you are using the wrong recipe book. So
what's the problem?

I really don't have a problem with people avoiding saturated fat. It's
mostly the combination of low-fat with high-carb that causes the
problems. Low-fat where "low-fat" means only 30% of your calories come
from fat versus 60% isn't a problem for me. It's when avoiding fat
leads to avoiding protein and maximizing carbs that we run into problems.

Low-fat high-carb can be yummy. It just turns out to be a difficult way
to lose fat and keep it off because of the way bodies work, especially
as women age. How about you, Patricia? What's your success withh
low-fat/high-carb?

Mary M. is the only one that comes to mind of someone who lost
significant fat and kept it off that way. And I bet if I analyzed her
diet I'd find that "low-fat" to her didn't mean 75% carbs.

Dally

Ignoramus8546 wrote:

Some notes.

Some components of fat (called fatty acids) are essential, which means
that our bodies cannot produce them. A diet that is deficient in them
is harmful to our bodies.

It takes a relatively small amount of essential fatty acids to provide
us with enough nutrients. Something around 10% of calories from fat
would do, if you select your fat sources very carefully.

True. But people who are in the "low-fat" mentality tend to avoid fats.
Annabel, for example, would pass on coconut because it has saturated
fats, but Udo Erasmus in his books "Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill"
exempts plant-based saturated fats from the no-sat-fat rule. That means
you get to eat avocado, too. I don't know how strong the research is
into this but it sure makes sense to me that avocados and coconuts are
good nutrition.

No particular carbohydrates are essential, which means that we can
live without any particular carbohydrate (as long as we obtain
adequate nutrition from other carbohydrates and nutrients).

That's a big "if" you shoved in there. You understand phytonutrients
better than anyone else alive? And where is the fiber coming from -
chicken breast?

Many, but not all, fat people are also insulin resistant, which is a
term that means that after eating carby meals, their blood glucose
concentration goes up significantly. Those people normally do poorly
on high carb diets and require great willpower to lose weight. That is
because a rapid rise or fall in blood sugar concentration causes a
sensation of hunger. Insulin resistance and obesity reinforce on
another. Later on, high blood sugar begin to damage beta cells in
people prone to such damage. Some IR individuals are prone to this
damage and some are not. Those who are, become diabetics.

And how do they BECOME IR if they aren't already?

Fats that are not hydrogenated, do not raise a person's heart risk if
you look at how various fractions relate to one another and how these
ratios change.

I see you've conquered all those causation vs. correlation problems with
a wave of your hands. Good job.

That fat is a cause of health problems and high mortality was a
presumption, a hypothesis, that never received enough testing.
Numerous current studies pretty much disprove this old theory.
Unfortunately, it has become entrenched as many nutritionists,
organizations etc built themselves around the diet heart hypothesis.

Or the diet cancer hypothesis or the diet hip fracture hypothesis or
whatever. Mortality and morbidity are complex. I don't believe you've
just discovered the One True Answer.

I recently posted about my personal experience with low carbing, in
the thread titled "paleo diet -- my results".

It was cross-posted so I kill-filed it unread. The people in ASD don't
play well with the people in ASDL-C. We use two separate threads if we
want to talk with both groups. I figured you were trolling and just
skipped the whole thing.

I lost weight by eating
less, but after almost a year, felt hungry often and was using
"willpower". As soon as I stopped eating grains (I was not eating
sweeteners by that time) and potatoes, my hunger is gone and weight
maintenance became automatic. This has been only going on for one
month only, so my results are not quite conclusive for me.

And yet you're saying the low-carb concept is only useful for people
with already present insulin resistance.

A low fat diet is defined as a diet that supplies less than 30% of
calories from fat.

Says you. I consider low-fat to be anything substantially less than
33%, where in practice "substantially less" means within the range of
about plus or minus 10%, because plus or minus 10% is what I see my
macronutrients be off by when I'm living real life. I'm defining my
terms based on functional requirements, you're defining your terms based
on fiat. I win.

It is improper to say in one sentence that a low fat diet is wrong and
advise to get 25% of calories from fat.

Life is just awful that way. I hope you manage to get over the shock.

I will be happy to supply references for every sentence in this post.

No doubt. Won't make them right, though. You're on the cutting edge of
what people know, Igor. You can hypothesize, you can make choices for
yourself, but you can't positively state half the things you are
asserting here.

Dally

"Dally" wrote in message
...
Patricia Heil wrote:

What's bad about low-fat? You eat lots of lovely fruit and tangy plain
yogurt instead of ice cream. Not using butter on your bread isn't such
a
hardship when it's really good bread. You use mustard and ketchup in
your
sandwiches but not mayonnaise. You leave the cheese out of your chili
but
you add peppers -- yumm! You make oven fries with Pam and Mrs. Dash
seasonings instead of deep frying. You can still have wine and beer and
so
on (7 calories a gram instead of 9 for fat but it's still empty calories
so
watch it). I have a ton of low-fat recipes that taste great.

You're not losing flavor unless you are using the wrong recipe book. So
what's the problem?

I really don't have a problem with people avoiding saturated fat. It's
mostly the combination of low-fat with high-carb that causes the
problems. Low-fat where "low-fat" means only 30% of your calories come
from fat versus 60% isn't a problem for me. It's when avoiding fat
leads to avoiding protein and maximizing carbs that we run into problems.

Low-fat high-carb can be yummy. It just turns out to be a difficult way
to lose fat and keep it off because of the way bodies work, especially
as women age. How about you, Patricia? What's your success withh
low-fat/high-carb?

Mary M. is the only one that comes to mind of someone who lost
significant fat and kept it off that way. And I bet if I analyzed her
diet I'd find that "low-fat" to her didn't mean 75% carbs.

Dally


I'm low-fat high fiber because of cholesterol problems and because I have
fewer cravings. I haven't heard a thing from the FDA about how "carb" is
defined so I ignore it.

Ignoramus8546 wrote:

In article , Dally wrote:

Ignoramus8546 wrote:

No particular carbohydrates are essential, which means that we can
live without any particular carbohydrate (as long as we obtain
adequate nutrition from other carbohydrates and nutrients).

I never said that eating vegetables or fruits was not healthful (other
than, say, high carb fruits for diabetics). I said that no particular
carbohydrate -- no type of sugar or starch -- was essential to
health. I did not say that vegetables were not essential.

Vegetables are mostly carbs. When referring to macronutrient ratios the
vegetables you eat go in pretty much the exact same place as sugar in
your macronutrient ratio. I think this view is faulty, and it is being
addressed by considering the fiber and phytonutrient value of a carb
rather than just it's calories. But to act like carbs are just grains
or sugars doesn't fit with reality. Carbs are essential, in that fiber
and nutrients are essential. As for your qeustion about phytonutrients,
the best answer is that we don't know. Vitamin manufacturers aren't
sure whether they've gotten the essence of what's good out of a
vegetable when they distill it down into a vitamin. The general
consensus is that there's more to be learned about the nutritional value
of vegetables. Those "nutrients to be named later" are called
phytonutrients. (My source for this is years of reading about the
benefits of vegetables in Nutrition Action Healthletter.)

And how do they BECOME IR if they aren't already?

Insulin resistance is understood as a combination os several
problems. For example, muscle may be slow tp take glucose, beta cells
may be slow to produce insulin, the liver can be slow in stopping
producing additional glucose. It is called a "triumvirate".

Right, and eating too much and exercising too little is what brings it
on. It is highly correlated with eating a high carb diet, in fact. I
brought it on myself with my high-grain vegan diet.

That fat is a cause of health problems and high mortality was a
presumption, a hypothesis, that never received enough testing.
Numerous current studies pretty much disprove this old theory.
Unfortunately, it has become entrenched as many nutritionists,
organizations etc built themselves around the diet heart hypothesis.

Or the diet cancer hypothesis or the diet hip fracture hypothesis or
whatever. Mortality and morbidity are complex. I don't believe you've
just discovered the One True Answer.

I will be happy to discuss any particular relation if you are
interested. I just don't know if you have any interest in this.

I didn't much care for your pronouncement that we were doomed because we
had once been overweight and lost weight. I understand the study that
suggested that, but I still wonder if they didn't just find people who
lost weight through either unhealthy ways or because they were
unhealthy. The number of people who have done what we've done are few
and far between and not well studied. I believe I've been following the
studies, but feel free to point me to links.

I'm particularly interested right now in the hormonal landscape for
women who have ceased making estrogen in their fat cells due to high fat
loss. Do you advise hormone replacement therapy, and if so, what
hormones? (I'm not seriously asking you, I'm just pointing out that the
questions I've got aren't studied.)

I am absolutely not an expert of any sort, but I am trying to learn
and unserstand about that stuff, preferably from sources that are
objective experiments.


I recently posted about my personal experience with low carbing, in
the thread titled "paleo diet -- my results".

It was cross-posted so I kill-filed it unread. The people in ASD don't
play well with the people in ASDL-C. We use two separate threads if we
want to talk with both groups. I figured you were trolling and just
skipped the whole thing.

Except that there was zero animosity between the two groups in that
thread. Many people read both newsgroups.

I know. I say the same thing about misc.fitness.weights. Just know
that the people who do NOT read both newsgroups often don't read
cross-posted things. And the people who DO read both groups don't mind
seeing the thread in two places, in my opinion.

A low fat diet is defined as a diet that supplies less than 30% of
calories from fat.

Says you. I consider low-fat to be anything substantially less than
33%, where in practice "substantially less" means within the range of
about plus or minus 10%, because plus or minus 10% is what I see my
macronutrients be off by when I'm living real life. I'm defining my
terms based on functional requirements, you're defining your terms based
on fiat. I win.


I am defining this term according to the government definition.

http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/f...ramid/main.htm

(talking in the context of the recommended low fat diet)

They never reference "low fat" anywhere in that page. They recommend
people limit their calories from fat to 30%, which is about what I
suggest people do INSTEAD of low-fatting. People doing "low-fat" do NOT
aim to get to the 30% level. Have you ever done low-fat? 10-20% level
is normal. I try to eat more like 30% but I end up around 25% partly
because I don't have much urge to eat fat after years of low-fatting.


``The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans limit fat in their
diets to 30 percent of calories.''


It is improper to say in one sentence that a low fat diet is wrong and
advise to get 25% of calories from fat.

Life is just awful that way. I hope you manage to get over the shock.


Why do you want to insult me? What is it that it will accomplish for you?

"Low" is a word referring to relative levels. You don't get to assume
everyone means the same thing by it. I'm telling you what I mean by it.
You're still upset that I don't mean the same thing you mean and
making up bogus definitions by fiat. I don't know what else to do with
this besides laugh at you and let it go.

Besides, I'm in a bad mood.

Dally

PL wrote:
Dally wrote:

Losing it and
keeping it off are two completely different things. We're teaching
people how to lose FAT and keep it off.

I have found the keeping it off phase much harder. I stuggle to
keep off half of my best loss. But that's still better than before
I started. Day after day I have to make the good choices and the
result isn't more loss. That feedback of the scale being lower
than last month makes the losing phase so much easier.

Wouldn't you like to know more about how to partition your weight loss
preferentially towards fat? Wouldn't you like to know more about how
we are finding ways of managing our food intake so we're not hungry or
deprived and can eat socially and just get used to doing this for the
rest of our lives?

Well, I'd like to know, lol. That said, are lowfat diets always bad?

They aren't bad for everyone. What's bad for everyone - The idea that
one type of diet is better than all of the others therefore folks should
not try various types to see what works for them.

Low fat diets are bad for a few people. Same as other types of plan,
about the same failure rate too.

But there is a general objection to low fat plans: Once the medical
folks started stressing low fat as the one and only right answer, an
epidemic of obsesity occured. It's easy to blame this on low fat,
but realistically the problem is really view one type of plan as the
only right answer.

Why are they suboptimal?

Low protein plans lead to more lean loss compared to medium and high
protein plans. To the extent that low fat plans are low protein,
the objection applies. Are low fat plans actually low protein when
folks follow the directions in the books? No. It's more a problem
of what goes wrong when folks don't follow the directions. That
problem, too, is shared by other plans.

But there's a wide belief that just plain cutting total fat intake
works, so plenty of low fat folks don't get the book and there isn't
all that much pressure to do so. Just plain cutting fat is
perceived as safe for everyone.

With any plan it needs to be done carefully.