Everybody "knows" some health information that's wrong and is undermining your best efforts to be healthy. Eating the right diet, is your best tool for success. Doctors, dietitians and worthy organizations have for many years been giving us poorly considered but professionally approved advice. They are now reluctantly reconsidering their position. How did the experts get this wrong in the first place? Animal fat doesn't make you fat. There are bad fats, trans-fats and vegetable oils used for cooking, the one's that were supposed to be more healthy, 30 years ago. You can see the failure of the old advice on the street, in people's waistline. Over the last forty years, by following the "low fat" nutritional advice we have been given people have become much fatter. Even children.
In the field of nutrition there are several schools of thought, all of which are extremely passionate about their point of view. In most life circumstances we recommend that diversity and balance are the keys to success. That's the position most professional dietitians take. That's the justification that Diabetes Associations use to justify eating a "balanced diet" and then correcting for excess sugar by using insulin.
If you want to study the science the Nutrition & Metabolism Society, is one organisation promoting the use of scientific methods in the choice of a diet for human subjects.
Obesity is the result of hormone disorder, particularly involving insulin, and driven by the excessive intake of carbohydrates. Don't count calories, that doesn't help. Your genes do affect how you metabolize food, but it's a hormone disorder involving insulin, CAUSED by eating too much carbohydrate that makes people fat.
Unfortunately, 100 years of "research" into the best human diet has not produced much reliable evidence. This is partly because of the nature of food itself. The foods we eat often have active biological compounds, but these are usually in such low doses that they are not considered to be clinically effective doses. You are eating food, not taking medicine. Over a very long time there may be measurable effects from eating better quality food, but it's not likely to be evident in a few days or even months. Supplements, vitamins and medicines are highly concentrated to produce effective doses.
The diet a person eats over time tends to change, certainly over a period of 20 or 30 years, even because of changes in what supermarkets are offering. Most of us over a time period like that also have significant changes in employment, residential address, and physical activity, all of which are likely to change who we know, what we choose to do, and what and where we eat.
It's not possible from an ethical point of view to control the diets of people over a long period, and in a few cases where the diet in an institution like a prison or a nurses home was substantially controlled, the people in the institution could not be controlled, (people came and went) so they were not in the end a stable group.
It's very unusual for any closely monitored study of what people eat to last more than a few days, usually a week, with fifteen days being a long time. This has meant that research into low carbohydrate, high fat, ketogenic diets is virtually unknown. It can take 20 to 30 days for the human body to adjust to burning fat rather than burning glucose. And it takes maybe a year (based on my own experience) for the person to adjust their thinking and habits so that the new diet is well embedded.
Dr Jeff Volek has conducted tightly controlled experiments with athletes (cyclists), who for performance reasons wanted to eat a ketogenic diet, and to continue to do so for a long time. Because of the cost the number of participants is small, but the evidence he's produced is startling.
This short video tells you how athletes have already changed their diet for high performance.
Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is sometimes called "Syndrome X" or "insulin resistance syndrome", and was first described by endocrinologist Gerald Reaven. Metabolic syndrome is a medical term for a constellation of health symptoms or markers related to insulin resistance in the body. It's thought that more than half the population in developed countries have Metabolic Syndrome to some degree, and almost everyone is on a progressive path in that direction. "Although there is no universally accepted definition or mechanism, a rough common denominator is the set of five features: obesity (high body weight, BMI and/or waist circumference), high glucose and insulin levels, low HDL, high TAG and high blood pressure. Involvement of insulin resistance is generally a common feature and a likely causative agent for at least some of the symptoms."
Prof. Tim Noakes - 'Medical aspects of the low carbohydrate lifestyle' (Sep 2014) (45 min)
Professor Timothy Noakes introduced me to the concept of low-carbohydrate diets two years ago. It seemed too fantastic, so I didn't rush in and try it. Prof. Noakes is a South African professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town. He has run more than 70 marathons and ultramarathons and is the author of several books on exercise and diet. He is known for his support of a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, as set out in his book "The Real Meal Revolution." This best selling book has just been published beyond South Africa.
Here is a review I wrote for Fishpond: "This really is an excellent book about how to get your weight under control and how to live more healthy life. Prof. Tim Noakes writes an very informative essay about the science that supports low carbohydrate and high fat diets if you want to lose weight. He also makes it clear that high cholesterol does NOT cause heart disease. In fact higher cholesterol is associated with better brain function and longer life.
The bulk of the book contains recipes by Jonno Proudfoot, that are a delight because he teaches us how to successfully use fat in our diets and how to avoid carbohydrate." In particular the Seed Crackers and the Banting Bread have become essential to my present diet.
The key dietary recommendation for the last 60 years, has been to eat a "balanced diet" low in fat, and high in whole grains and vegetables. There is no scientific basis for that view, although it seems to make common sense. For instance a gram of fat contains 8 calories, but a gram of carbohydrate or protein only contains 4 calories. The mathematics tells you that fat makes people fat. However, human metabolism is controlled by hormones. You have to eat something. If you choose not to eat fat, you must eat more carbohydrate or you'll stave. Carbohydrate both stimulates appetite, and it causes an insulin spike. Insulin is a hormone that causes the body to burn glucose and store fat. That's our problem.
Your hormones (insulin) make you fat. However, if you eat differently, (eat more fat) you can avoid turning insulin on, you'll not be hungry, and that degree of hormone control will make you thin.
For years Carolyn and I ate lots of cereals for breakfast, adding a little fruit, and usually with toast and margarine. That's what we were told was a "healthy breakfast". It was "low fat". But it made us FAT. We now eat a low carbohydrate, high fat diet, and we've both lost weight and we never feel hungry.
If you want to lose weight, have bacon and eggs most mornings. If you think this is incredible, you need to read much more about the latest nutrition science.
Modern science is very clear that vegetarian diets are nutritionally undesirable. Science also tells us that diabetics are much better to remove sugar all carbohydrate foods from their diet, with a view to stopping or at least reducing the need to use insulin. Science explains that we don't need to have glucose in our diet, nor any carbohydrates at all, to be healthy and well. The body can use glucose as fuel, but the body can also run at least as well and perhaps even more efficiently using ketones that the body makes by converting fat. It turns out that Dr Atkins, who was in his lifetime labeled with many abusive names, was mostly right. If you eat more fat, you feel sated (full) and you will lose weight and become more healthy. That was known in Europe before 1939, and Dr Phinney, Dr Volek and some others have reconfirmed that science.
People struggle to accept new information about how to improve their health, that doesn't confirm what they already believe. Your health, and who you are as a person, and all the things you believe; are part of "YOU" and you'll go to great lengths to protect your own hard won knowledge from attack. In this way, each of us lives in a self defended fortress. What you believe drives what you choose to do.
This is a self made trap. The key to better health is inside yourself, in your knowledge and in what you choose to believe. For instance you may believe that vegetarian diets are good, and that both saturated fats and high cholesterol are bad. Modern science re-examines those three mistaken ideas, and much else. The ability to learn NEW things, is turned on when you believe, that what you think about your health can make a real difference. You have that ability. With new knowledge, slowly you can identify and turn off, the bad information that's causing your health problems.
Nobody can do that for you. Here, I hope, we can encourage you to explore your options.
If weight control is troublesome for you, change what you eat for breakfast. Or go without breakfast altogether.
After all this, what causes heart disease? Frankly we don't know. Something that changed after 1910, that had an effect world wide. The easy availability of sugar? Environmental changes? George Vaillant is sure it's not stress, but maybe he's wrong about that. Some doctors think it's a response to inflammation in the body.
Better health is really possible. That starts by learning what you can, by keeping a health diary, by understanding in a new way what is and isn't a healthy diet, and by engaging with other people to talk about health. All you need to do is to get started, do something to improve your health. Do it now, not tomorrow. Did that work? Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
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