Tag Archives: calories proper

All my organs hurt and I think I’m going blind.

Posted on July 26, 2013 | 38 comments

People, this is how you should eat.

There have been a lot of diet postings lately, and they are some of the healthiest diets you could imagine.  Please click the links to get the full versions, which include lifestyle tidbits, other pearls, and WHY.  And take notes.  I’ve just listed some of the foods here for the sake of brevity (and as an excuse to link to the diets).

Disclaimer: all of these diets fall somewhere on the “low carb” spectrum.  I don’t eat low carb because I have to*, I do so because it’s healthy, convenient for my lifestyle, and I rather like the foods.  *I say I don’t “have to” because I have no underlying health problems or carb-sensitive GI issues.  The people below are also far healthier than most (from what I can gather)… but if you are overweight &/or obesity-prone, or glucose-intolerant &/or diabetic, then you might want to consider following any of them.

Hyperlipid (Petro Dobromylskyj): The Optimal Diet
butter, egg yolks, cocoa, dark chocolate, macadamia nuts, sour cream, beef, green veggies.  His stats: BW stable, 28” waist, greying beard.  Peter will outlive us all.  And take over the world if he ever has the desire to do so.

Anna Fagan (Lifextension): Low Carb Paleo, probably keto
eggs, butter, avocado, cheese, shrooms, bacon, salmon, tea, coffee, nuts, sardines, lamb, pork, eggplant, cream  –> “high fat =/= fat.”  She’s currently off studying paleoanthropology somewhere in Turkey (?).

Jane Plain (ItsTheWooo): Ketogenic
cream, sour cream, nuts, butter, beef & fatty meats, pepperoni.  She, too, is rather fit.  The Scribble Pad = diet & lifestyle vs. psychoneuroendocrinology & metabolism (mixed with equal parts humor & gravitas).

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Posted in chocolate, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, fat, Ketosis, Protein

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Energy Balance > CICO

Posted on July 18, 2013 | 40 comments

The regulation of energy balance is a long-term process, and it can’t be maintained by counting calories on a day-to-day basis.  Taubes once wrote that exercise doesn’t cause weight loss because it builds up an appetite, so you end up sucking down a Starbuck’s Jumbo Calorie Bomb on the way home from doing Yoga at the gym.  This is probably somewhat true, but this little gem from 1955 exposes some very interesting nuances.

Edholm(Edholm et al., 1955)

These researchers rigorously measured food intake and did a comprehensive assessment of energy expenditure during a wide variety of activities – lying down, standing, walking, gun cleaning, stair climbing, dressing, etc., etc.

Divide and conquer

The individual differences: big people expend more energy on life.  most of the time.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Energy balance, Leptin, muscle

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On calorie information posted in restaurants

Posted on July 5, 2013 | 19 comments

“This is biology, not mathematics.”

It’s law in some places.  It’s a burden on restaurants.  And it will do nothing for the cause – like trying to put out a candle by pressing the off button on your remote control.  In other words, a waste.

Here’s some of the “science” behind it.

Exhibit A.
In a study by Dumanovsky, fast-food customers were surveyed prior to and after mandatory calorie labeling in New York.  25% of the people reported “seeing calorie information,” and 10% of them said it affected their buying decision (ie, 2.5% of all fast-food consumers surveyed thought they knew enough about “calories” to be scared of them).  After the law went into effect, 64% of people noticed the calorie information, and 20% of them were affected by it (=12.8% of all fast-food consumers thought they knew enough about “calories” to be scared of them).  Sooo, the proportion of people making misinformed decisions quintupled.  Calorie Labeling = Nutrition Disinformation.  It’s misleading, and usually wrong.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, TPMC

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Look AHEAD – Nutrition Disinformation 2.0

Posted on June 27, 2013 | 1 comment

The day you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived.  Results from the Look AHEAD study have been published.  When I first wrote about this study (HERE), it had been prematurely halted because the intervention was providing no benefits.  Everybody was in a state of shock and awe because Low Fat didn’t save lives.  But that was before we even had the data.  

Reminder: the “intensive lifestyle intervention” consisted of a Low Fat Diet & exercise.  The results?  Yes, they lost more weight than control, but they also took more Orlistat (of which I’m not a fan, see HERE for why):

orlistat

Orlistat = pharmaceutically enhanced low fat diet. 

Their normal diets were not healthy, but neither was low fat –>

med use

Medication use increased drastically in both groups.  The pundits have gone wild because medication use was lower in the intensive Low Fat group at the end of the study, but this is Nutrition Disinformation 2.0.  Eerily reminiscent of the recent Mediterranean Diet study, the conclusions are the same: keep eating poorly and the need for medications will increase.  You can call it a lot of things, but not “healthy.”  The alternative –>  How to define a “healthy” diet.  Period.


Significant adverse events:SAE

The only thing to reach statistical significance was more fractures in the intensive Low Fat group, but you didn’t read any headlines that said “Low Fat breaks bones.”  Imagine if that happened on low carb [sigh]  The next closest thing to statistical significance was increased amputations in the intensive Low Fat group :/

gem:History of CVD

Translation: if you were healthy at baseline, then you could tolerate a low fat diet.  Otherwise, not so much.  This is exactly what happened in the Women’s Health Initiative.

Ha

needless to say, none of the “possible explanations” they considered were Low fat diet Fail.

calories proper

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Posted in diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, mortality

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Dopamine

Posted on June 22, 2013 | 18 comments

“When we block the D2 receptor in humans, it is expected they will develop glucose intolerance, obesity, and sedentary behavior.” -Jane Plain, in her series on The physiology of body fat regulation.  It’s probably true.

Randomized pilot study of cabergoline, a dopamine receptor agonist: effects on body weight and glucose tolerance in obese adults (Gibson et al., 2012)

Cabergoline is primarily used to treat prolinactinoma, or prolactin-secreting tumors.  In women (& men apparently), prolactin stimulates milk production; in men, it is associated with the refractory period after orgasm.  In both genders, dopamine inhibits prolactin secretion.  Cabergoline targets the D2 receptor, but it’s a dirty drug.  It’s used off-label for gyno and to improve sexy times (Kruger et al., 2003 <– yes, that was actually tested).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, Bromocriptine, Cabergoline, Dopamine, insulin, Leptin

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Eating in the Absence of Hunger

Posted on June 17, 2013 | 12 comments

Hat tip to Jane Plain and her ongoing series on “The physiology of body fat regulation” for citing this study as it provides a rather interesting insight into the psychoendoneuropathophysiology of the obese condition.  Eating in the Absence of Hunger.  

Caloric compensation and eating in the absence of hunger in 5- to 12-y-old weight-discordant siblings (Kral et al., 2012)

They were all full or half, weight-discordant, same-sex siblings and each sibling pair had the same mother; same mitochondrial DNA, shared a womb, etc.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, chocolate, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, insulin, Ketosis, TPMC

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Are carbs stored as fat?

Posted on May 25, 2013 | 65 comments

Hint: “no”

DNL proper.

Lots of metabolism talk below, but first a brief intro.  My “muse,” if you will.

Taubes’ recent article in the BMJ (Taubes, 2013; full text) generated some interesting feedback.

In the original article, Taubes basically re-states his philosophy on obesity.  Nothing new.  But one rebuttal by Cottrell got under my skin (Cottrell, 2013), and Taubes’ response was woefully inadequate.

Cottrell [sic]: “A third incorrect assertion is that obesity can be attributed to the conversion of carbohydrate to fat. This is an unsatisfactory explanation of obesity, because this route is a minor pathway to depot fat in humans, even under conditions of substantial overfeeding of sugars to obese subjects.  An unproved assumption is that the hypothetical diversion of carbohydrate energy into fat storage leaves the subject hungry, thus stimulating overeating.”

strawman

Cottrell set up a straw man and handily took it down.  The primary mechanism whereby excess carbs contribute to obesity is via insulin’s effects on adipose tissue.  Even if you’re eating very little fat, insulin will cause it to get stored.  Insulin is very good at this – it is actually far more potent at stimulating fat storage than it is at stimulating glucose uptake (eg, Insulin vs. fat metabolism FTW).  Cottrell’s straw man is that excess carbs themselves are stored as fat.  This does not occur to any appreciable extent in humans.  Here is why I believe that to be true, from one of most insightful and informative studies on the topic IMHO.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, fat, insulin, TPMC

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Brown adipose tissue

Posted on May 6, 2013 | 13 comments

Once thought to be the holy grail of energy expenditure manipulators and a potential cure for obesity – fail.  I don’t have great evidence for this; it’s really just a hunch.

A new mouse study has provided some additional fodder for speculation, however.

The theory & background info: increased BAT activity can effortlessly burn away excess fat mass by using fuel to create heat instead of energy.  This model was most aptly summarized by the title of Dr. Efraim Racker’s 1963 ediorial: “Calories Don’t Count-If You Don’t Use Them.”  At best, I don’t think BAT is a panacea.  At worst, we might’ve learned our lesson long ago from DNP (circa 1938; also McFee et al., 2004; Miranda et al., 2006; Tewari et al., 2009; and Grundlingh et al., 2011).

drug banned

In a slurry of publications in 2009, researchers re-ignited the quest by showing cold-induced BAT activation in healthy humans (Virtanen et al., 2009):Virtanen BAT

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, empty calories, Energy balance, ephedrine, nicotine, TPMC

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Alcohol-proof your liver. SFAs.

Posted on April 29, 2013 | 16 comments

it probably has other benefits, too. 

Tissue lipid turnover, adipose vs. liver.

Can the saturated fat & MCTs in dark chocolate & coconut oil protect liver against the ravages of alcohol?  Tonight?

The studies discussed in “The liver is evil but need not be punished.  SFAs”  entailed chronic alcohol feeding in combination with a high saturated fat/MCT diet – the animals were given a liquid diet of complete nutrition and a LOT of booze.   Not very applicable to humans, imo [hopefully].  Which brings up the question: how long does it take for coconut oil & dark chocolate to flex their hepato-protective muscles?

wine and dark chocolate

Fortunately, [if tissue fat composition is in fact the relevant protective factor], unlike adipose fat which hangs around for years (Beynen et al., 1980 & Katan et al., 1997), liver fat appears to turn over quite rapidly.

For example, a single shot of radiolabeled oleate is cleared out of the liver within a few days, whereas it lingers significantly longer in adipose of rats (Iritani et al., 2005).  And this is actually enhanced in rats fed a higher fat diet.fat-free diet

Similarly, a study on diet-induced changes in liver fat in humans showed that after only 3 days of low carb dieting, liver fat significantly declined in 5/10 patients, and in all of them by day 10 (Hollingsworth et al., 2006):liver fat time course

Shoutout to Mike Eades for directing me to this study.  Whatever happens after 3-10 days, I suspect, will reflect the new dietary pattern – you are what you eat?  :/

I don’t put too much stock in generic nutrition textbooks, but those data are rather close to estimates put forth by Frayn, Arner, and Yki-Jarvinen (2006, free full text):Frayn

Translation: while a single meal of dark chocolate and coconut oil may not acutely protect the liver from alcohol [tonight], a few days’ worth just might.

Others?

Red meat.   While the saturated fat content of red meat is expected to similarly bolster liver resistance to oxidative stress, another component – carnitine (of the recent TMAO infamy) – may also provide some benefit by enhancing liver fat turnover (Kepka et al., 2011 sorry no full text, so only in theory).  Taurine, also found in red meat, also prevents some alcohol-induced liver pathologies [in rats] (Kerai et al., 1998 & Pushpakiran et al., 2005).

Coffee, too (Gallus et al., 2002; Tverdal et al., 2003; Klatsky et al., 2006; Lopez-Garcia et al., 2008; Sugiyama et al., 2010).  Probably has more to do with prevention of lipid peroxidation via antioxidant polyphenols.  just sayin’     …compared to the SFA’ers, would those on a high PUFA diet benefit more from coffee in this regard?

The culprit isn’t red meat or TMAO, its cigarettes & sedentary obese HFCS PUFA empty calories – the bona fide confounding factors in most anti-nutrition propaganda.

 

calories proper

 

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, chocolate, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, fat, wine

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Molested fats, Op. 139

Posted on April 23, 2013 | 10 comments

or
Trans fats, part IV

Proceed with caution, this is an exploratory post.  Replacing CakesCookiesPiesPastriesBreadCerealsBiscuitsPizzaMuffins with [insert any whole food item here] is just a good idea.  And more reasons to eat dark chocolate.

In Inflammatory, trans, or linoleate? the idea was explored that it might not be the theorized textbook pro-inflammatory end products of omega-6 fats that give them a bad rap, but rather the foods that contain them – ie, “cakes, cookies, pies, and pastries” (Kris-Etherton et al., 2012 NHANES), or “bread, cereals, cakes, biscuits, pies, pizza, and muffins” (Meyer et al., 2003 from down under).

dark chocolate

Further, what starts out as an omega-6 fat can easily become peroxidized or isomerized into an oxidized or trans fat, respectively, via industrial molestation or just plain old cooking (eg, Romero et al., 1998, Marmesat et al., 2012, & Minami et al., 2012) – even just a few minutes in the microwave (Herzallah et al., 2005)!  I don’t know exactly what all of these end products are for sure, but they might look something like this:ox linoleate

Thus, the culprit may not be native Dc9,c1218:2n6 linoleate.

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10 Comments

Posted in Advanced nutrition, Dietary fat, empty calories, fat, Trans fat

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