“You catch more flies with honey…”
^^^good policy in general, but especially for debating in the realm of nutritional sciences.
A short while back, Nina Teicholz
Three topics that could not be avoided in such a discussion: saturated fat, cholesterol, and carbohydrates.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, fiber, Fish, Grains, insulin, muscle, Protein, Sugar, TPMC
Tagged Atkins, calories proper, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, fiber, insulin, ketogenic, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, protein, sugar
“despite not eating more or moving less”
We’ve seen this time and time again: LIGHT IS A DRUG.
above quote is extrapolated from this rodent study: “Prolonged daily light exposure increases body fat mass through attenuation of brown adipose tissue activity.”
Artificial light impacts nearly every biological system, and it doesn’t even take very much to have an appreciable effect (think: checking your smart phone or watching a television show on your iPad in bed at night). In this study, adding 4 hours to the usual 12 hours of light slammed the autonomic nervous system, disrupting sympathetic input into brown adipose leading to a significant increase in body fat “despite not eating more or moving less.”
Posted in Bromocriptine, chronopharmacology, circadian, Dopamine, Energy balance, Exercise, melatonin, muscle, sleep, Sun
Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, circadian rhythm, energy balance, obesity, Paleo
Dietary protein “requirements” are some of the most context-dependent nutrient levels to decipher, and depend largely on energy balance and even meal frequency.
An objective look at intermittent fasting (Alan Aragon, 2007)
Meal frequency and energy balance (Lyle McDonald, 2008)
New study: “Increased meal frequency attenuates fat-free mass losses and some markers of health status with a portion-controlled weight loss diet” (Alencar et al., 2015)
This wasn’t well-received in social media because bro-science & many low carb advocates say grazing is no longer in vogue — “it’s much better/healthier/whatever to eat once or twice daily, because intermittent fasting and all that jazz” …however, this may be problematic when it comes to meeting overall protein needs, which is particularly important when you’re losing weight.
@CaloriesProper Really? Drawing conclusions based on a 2 week study of 11 pts?
— Dr. Jason Fung (@drjasonfung) April 17, 2015
The study: 2 vs. 6 meals per day, crossover.
Conclusion: “On average, fat-free mass (FFM) decreased by -3.3% following the 2 meals/d condition and, on average, and increased by 1.2% following the 6 meals/d condition (P<.05).”
In other words, 6 meals per day was better for body composition than 2 meals per day. But context is everything, and this hypothesis has been tested from a variety of different angles, so what does it mean?
The relevant context here: 1) big energy deficit (1200 kcal/d for obese women is a pretty low calorie intake); and 2) “adequateTM” protein intake (75 g/d).
The standard dogma says that in the context of an adequate protein hypocaloric diet, meal frequency matters a LOT, whereas with high protein, it doesn’t matter as much. Theory being that with an “adequate” (read: too low?) overall protein intake, the fasting periods are simply too long with only two meals per day; you need either: 1) higher protein intake; 2) increased meal frequency; or 3) more calories (ie, smaller energy deficit).
In this study, BOTH diets suppressed insulin and induced weight loss, but the increased protein feeding frequency skewed the weight loss to body fat while preserving fat-free mass. I actually agree with a lot of the bro-science in this case, and also think that 75 grams of protein is not enough in the context of a big energy deficit (if body composition is a goal).
Historical precedence?
Meal frequency and weight reduction of young women (Finkelstein et al., 1971)
Relevant context: 6 vs. 3 meals per day (3 meals per day may not seem like that many more than 2, but it significantly cuts down on the duration of time spent with no food or protein).
Smaller energy deficit: 1700 kcal/d in overweight patients is less of a deficit than 1200 kcal/d in obese patients.
Higher protein intake: 106 – 115g/d.
Result: nitrogen balance (a surrogate for the maintenance of muscle mass) and fat loss were similar in both groups. This study fixed two problems in the abovementioned study: 1) 3 meals is better than 2 in the context of an energy deficit; and 2) protein intake was higher.
And again here, with 3 vs. 6 meals per day (Cameron et al., 2010), just to make the point that 3 meals per day is better than 2 for preserving lean mass in the context of an energy deficit.
The effect of meal frequency and protein concentration on the composition of the weight lost by obese subjects (Garrow et al., 1981)
This study tested the opposite extremes: super-low calorie intake (800 kcal/d), much lower protein intakes (20g – 30g/d), and 1 vs. 5 meals per day.
Result: “a diet with a high-protein concentration, fed as frequent small meals, is associated with better preservation of lean tissue than an isoenergetic diet with lower-protein concentration fed as fewer meals.”
It basically confirmed all of the above.
Protein feeding pattern does not affect protein retention in young women (Arnal et al., 2000)
1 vs. 4 meals per day; and 70 grams of protein but no energy deficit (~2000 kcal/d isn’t very hypocaloric for lean young women). In this study, no effect of meal frequency was seen, likely because 70 grams of protein isn’t inadequate when energy intake isn’t restricted.
1. PROTEIN “NEEDS” ARE HIGHLY CONTEXT-DEPENDENT
2. NEED =/= OPTIMIZATION
3. MEAL FREQUENCY & meal timing and peripheral circadian clocks > “MACRONUTRIENTS”
If you’re losing weight (ie, in an energy deficit), then intermittent fasting is cool if protein intake is high (above “adequateTM“)… the bigger the energy deficit, the more protein is necessary to optimize changes in body composition.
How much is ‘enough?’ Sorry, can’t give you a gram or even gram per pound of body weight answer… but if you’re losing weight and seeing no discernible effect on body composition (muscle vs. fat mass), then it may be prudent to consider eating more protein-rich foods… and paying more attention to sleep quality (which also greatly impacts nutrient partitioning).
No amount of protein will help you if circadian rhythms aren’t intact!!!
further reading:
Yes, it’s a high protein diet (Tom Naughton, 2015)
Protein requirements, carbs, and nutrient partitioning
Dietary protein, ketosis, and appetite control
For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.
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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, fat, muscle, Protein, strength
Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories, carbs, energy balance, energy expenditure, insulin, muscle, protein
Nuts are good calories.
I’m not a big fan of the omega-6 fatty acid linoleate, but that’s largely in the context of processed foods and confectioneries, where it’s more than likely no longer in it’s native form (Dc9,1218:2n6)… but in the context of unprocessed whole foods (eg, nuts), a little n6 is fine imo.
What are good calories? They’re nutrient-dense and don’t generally lead to overeating… like the opposite of soda and junk food. Nuts are low carb and many are highly ketogenic (eg, Brazils, macadamias, and pecans are ~90%fat). Mr. Ramsey may even approve of macadamias because they have virtually zero PUFAs.
BONUS: magnesium, copper, selenium, many trace minerals and micronutrients, etc., etc.
I’m not saying you should crack open a can of Deluxe Mixed Nuts and sit down with nothing to do other than NOM NOM NOM ALL THE NUTZ. I’m talking about a few nuts with a meal. Possibly earlier in the day (coinciding with LIGHT); nuts are tryptophan-rich and this may improve melatonin onset -> good for circadian rhythms:
In this study, the participants were instructed to eat a serving of almonds
Regardless of when the almonds were consumed, the calories were practically completely compensated for. The participants unwittingly ate less other stuff. And in 3 out of 4 of the conditions, the almonds were so satiating that the participants actually ended up eating fewer overall calories.
That, in a nutshell, is what I call “good calories,” and I don’t think it’s too far from Taubes’ original definition
Further, the participants clearly weren’t obesity resistant. They were overweight, obese, or lean with a strong family history of type 2 diabetes. Sam Feltham would’ve been excluded.
This is not an isolated finding: another study showed a dose-dependent response to almonds: 28g or 42g consumed in the morning resulted in a compensatory reduction of hunger and total energy intake at lunch and dinner (Hull et al., 2014). This wouldn’t happen with soda or junk food.
Another study tested ~350 kcal almonds daily for 10 weeks and concluded: “Ten weeks of daily almond consumption did not cause a change in body weight. This was predominantly due to compensation for the energy contained in the almonds through reduced food intake from other sources” (Hollis and Mattes, 2007).
Almonds vs. complex carbs? Almonds, FTW.
1 Brazil nut daily: “After 6 months, improvements in verbal fluency and constructional praxis (two measures of cognitive performance) were significantly greater on the supplemented group when compared with the control group.” ONE FRIGGIN’ NUT
Walnuts
Pistachios improve metabolic and vascular parameters (Kasliwal et al., 2015).
Meta-analysis (not an intervention study): nut consumption is associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality (Grosso et al., 2015). Yeah yeah yeah, I know, correlation =/= causation. Whatever.
Nuts are good calories. That’s all I’m saying.
Tl;dr: buy these
For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, fat, fiber, insulin, microbiome, microbiota, Protein
Tagged bifidobacteria, body composition, calories proper, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fiber, insulin, nutrition, prebiotics
Carbs: low is good; is *lower* better? this study suggests “nope” http://t.co/5MATDl8Msr
— Bill Lagakos (@CaloriesProper) February 27, 2015
This was met with much backlash from the low carb cavalry, because, well, if low is good then lower must be better…
I’m not anti-keto; but I’m not anti-science. FACT.
“…some people are not genetically equipped to thrive in prolonged nutritional ketosis.” –Peter Attia
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, fat, Fish, insulin, Protein, TPMC
Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories, carbohydrates, carbs, energy balance, energy expenditure, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, obesity
“Wait… what? nutrient partitioning?”
Calories In, Calories Out should not be interpreted as “eat less, move more,” but rather kept in its more meaningless form of: “if you eat less than you expend, you’ll lose weight.” At least then, it’s correct… meaningless, but correct. Eating less and moving more is no guarantee of fat loss, in part, because total energy expenditure isn’t constant and there’s that whole thing with nutrient partitioning.
For obese insulin resistant folks, this is Low Carb’s strong suit: it causes “eat less, move more”spontaneously.
For some obese insulin sensitive patients, for whatever reason, their adherence and success is greater with Low Fat. You might say, “yeah, but those suckers had to count calories.” To that, I’d counter with: “it doesn’t matter, THEY WERE MORE SUCCESSFUL COUNTING CALORIES ON LOW FAT THAN NOT COUNTING ON LOW CARB.” The spontaneous reduction in appetite obviously didn’t cut it. Do not be in denial of these cases.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Grains, insulin, Protein
Tagged body composition, calories, carbs, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, fat, grains, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, protein
Is it possible to improve the amplitude and resiliency of your circadian rhythms? Is this desirable? Yes and yes, I think.
Introducing, the aMUPA mice (Froy et al., 2006). What you need to know about ’em: they have very robust circadian rhythms. How is this assessed? Take some mice acclimated to their normal 12 hour light-dark cycle (LD) and place them in constant darkness (DD). Then take liver biopsies and measure circadian genes to see how well they still oscillate throughout the dark day; this is also known as the free-running clock, and it craps out differently in different tissues depending on a variety of factors. Most of the time, however, it’ll run for a few days in the absence of light. Circadian meal timing also helps to hasten re-entrainment.
Note in the figure below: 1) there are two distinct lines of aMUPA mice; and 2) both exhibit a greater amplitude in circadian oscillations during free-running, or DD conditions.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, angiotensin, circadian, diet, Energy balance, insulin, muscle, sleep
Tagged body composition, calories proper, circadian rhythm, energy balance, melatonin, mortality, nutrition, sleep
I got a laugh out of this one; not for the actual content, but because of how the authors worded their findings. They sure love their fishies.
We have two very closely related fish, both Mexican tetra, Astyanax mexicanus, one with eyes who lives on the surface, and another who’s blind and lives in dark caves (“Pachon”). It’s thought that they were the same species one day; divergent evolution.
note: eyeless
The blind ones are circadian arrhythmic (Moran et al., 2014). Surface-dwellers are more active during the day than night (blue line, left figure below), and their free-running circadian clock maintains this in the absence of photic input (blue line, right figure). The blind ones, on the other hand, exhibit no circadian rhythm in the light or dark (orange lines):
Cave-dwellers are circadian arrhythmic. This is both in their natural photoperiod (ie, darkness) and in light-dark conditions (which is technically an environmental mismatch, but since they’re eyeless, it doesn’t really matter).
Posted in circadian, Energy balance, fat, Fish, muscle
Tagged body composition, calories proper, circadian rhythm, energy balance, energy expenditure, muscle
*ugh* journalists
I’m talking to you, Mandy Oaklander!
Regarding the new low carb vs low fat study, she writes: “Popular diets are pretty much the same for weight loss, study finds.”
Effects of low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets: a randomized control trial (Bazzano et al., 2014)
Further, “An earlier study in Annals of Internal Medicine did find that low-carb dieters lost slightly more weight than low-fat dieters after one year. The study today reached similar conclusions, but the differences in weight loss were not significant.”
Perhaps Mandy just doesn’t realize there’s a difference between significant, as in “meaningful,” and significant, as in “P<0.05.” Pro-tip: you can tell them apart relatively easily, because the latter is usually accompanied by a cute little asterisk. For example, the differences in weight loss were quite statistically significant (P<0.05):
She goes on to say “After a year follow-up, some of those pounds crept back for people on both diets…”
To that I say: yeah, but fat mass continued to decline in those on the low carb diet
So, between 6 and 12 months, carbs and calories were creeping up in the LC group, yet fat mass was still declining. Perhaps this way of eating improved their metabolism, or restored the ability to effectively partition nutrients.
***in real-time: at this point, I realize that Mandy was actually talking about the other study, which she was covering accurately. Sorry, Mandy!***
…so maybe the low-carb (LC) diet
In sum, this is actually one of the more “pro” LC studies. And it wasn’t even a huge difference in carbs: 198 vs 127 grams/d at month 12 (54% vs 34%). Big difference in fat mass; and CRP, a marker of inflammation, even declined in the LC group.
Low fat diet advocates
The study Mandy was actually talking about: Comparison of weight loss among named diet programs in overweight and obese adults: a meta-analysis (Johnston et al., 2014)
It was a meta-analysis, which is just about the only type of study capable of taking down LC.
@JohnPiersonPT @trendclues @CaloriesProper @samiinkinen @BradSchoenfeld Ah yes, meta-analysis. pic.twitter.com/MSnK5L1eb4
— Gerard Pinzone (@GerardPinzone) September 3, 2014
…but at least it had this cool chart (modified):
cool chart (modified)
*ugh* scientists
The macro’s in “Low fat” overlap with “Moderate,” implying “Low carb” is “EXTREME” …the authors’ bias is subtle, I’ll give ‘em that, but I’m getting too old for this.
Dear Obesity Researchers,
If you want to design a study showing a low fat diet
If you want to show low carb is better, recruit patients with obesity.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Protein
Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, insulin, obesity, protein
Meal & exercise timing in the contexts of “damage control” and nutrient partitioning are frequent topics on this blog. I generally opt for a pre-workout meal, but nutrient timing hasn’t panned out very well in the literature. That’s probably why I’m open to the idea of resistance exercise in the fasted state. A lot of pseudoscientific arguments can be made for both fed and fasted exercise, and since a few blog posts have already been dedicated to the former, this one will focus on the latter.
The pseudoscience explanation is something like this: since fatty acids are elevated when fasting, exercise in this condition will burn more fat; and chronically doing so will increase mitochondria #. The lack of dietary carbs might enhance exercise-induced glycogen depletion, which itself would bias more post-workout calories toward glycogen synthesis / supercompensation. Much of this is actually true, but has really only been validated for endurance training (eg, Stannard 2010, Van Proeyen 2011, & Trabelsi 2012; but not here Paoli 2011)… and the few times it’s been studied in the context of resistance exercise, no effect (eg, Moore 2007 & Trabelsi 2013). However, there are some pretty interesting tidbits (beyond the pseudoscience) which suggest how/why it might work, in the right context.
John Kiefer, an advocate of resistance exercise in the fasted state, mentioned: “the sympathetic nervous system responds quicker to fasted-exercise. You release adrenaline faster. Your body is more sensitive particularly to the fat burning properties of adrenaline and you get bigger rushes of adrenaline.”
Much of this is spot on. That is, ketogenic dieting and glycogen depletion increase exercise-induced sympathetic activation and fat oxidation (eg, Jansson 1982, Langfort 1996, & Weltan 1998).
The question is: can this improve nutrient partitioning and physical performance? Magic 8-Ball says: “Signs point to yes.” I concur.
Contrary to popular beliefs, glycogen depletion per se doesn’t harm many aspects of physical performance. A lot of fuel systems are at play; you don’t need a full tank of glycogen.
Increased fat oxidation compensates for reduced glycogen at lower exercise intensities (eg, Zderic 2004), and ketoadaptation may do the same at higher intensities.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diet, endurance, Energy balance, Exercise, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, TPMC
Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, exercise, insulin, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, protein
