Tag Archives: nutrition

High Meat, Low Carb During Pregnancy

Posted on May 8, 2017 | 7 comments

The Motherwell Studies

Around 50 years ago a group of expecting mothers were asked to increase their meat intake to about a pound a day and cut out the carbs (Campbell et al., 1996). They assessed a variety of traits of the infants and again when they were all grown up.

The babies were healthy, but as adults they tended to have higher blood pressure (Shiell et al., 2001), higher cortisol response to stress especially if the diet was also low in green vegetables (Reynolds et al., 2007), and modestly worsened glucose tolerance (Reynolds et al., 2007).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Energy balance, fat, Protein

Tagged calories proper, carbs, diet, fat, nutrition, protein

Clara Davis: Babies Know Best

Posted on April 26, 2017 | 7 comments

“The nurses’ orders were to sit quietly by, spoon in hand, and make no motion…”

The babies never had anything other than breast milk prior to starting the experiment. Fully ad lib, they could have as much of whatever food they wanted. Every morsel was weighed and quantified.

Setting: orphanage.

“Armed with growing evidence from the newly emerging field of nutrition, doctors began prescribing with bank teller–like precision what and when and how much a child should eat in order to be healthy.” #fakenews LOL

Results: “Every diet differed from every other diet, 15 different patterns of taste being presented, and not one diet was the predominantly cereal-and-milk diet, with smaller supplements of fruit, eggs and meat, that is commonly thought proper for this age.”

“15 uniformly well-nourished, healthy children”

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet

Tagged calories proper, diet, nutrition, Paleo, processed food

The DietFits Study

Posted on April 20, 2017 | 3 comments

Preliminary results from Chris Gardner’s follow-up to this study suggest insulin resistance may not be as big an influence on the success of LC/LF diets as prior studies have shown. Maybe I was wrong.

We aren’t given many details in the abstract or interviews, and there are still some good studies showing otherwise (eg, those by Cornier, Pittas, Ebbeling, and Gardner himself), although this one is bigger (n = 609) and longer (1 year). However, the range of weight change was huge, something like +20 lbs to -80 lbs, so the devil might be in the details… time will tell. Might be subtle yet important changes in body comp or other metabolic indicators.

If it turns out to be true, my best guess: they were all following Hunger-Free Diet(s)… which work regardless of whether low fat or low carb.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, insulin, Protein, TPMC

Tagged calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, nutrition, processed food, protein, sugar

Whole grains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

Posted on April 14, 2017 | 14 comments

WUUUT *rimshot*

A new study on whole grains demonstrates how nuanced & complicated nutritional science can be.

Substituting whole grains for refined grains in a 6-wk randomized trial favorably affects energy-balance metrics in healthy men and postmenopausal women (Karl et al., 2017)

Sounds simple enough…

Study design: adequate to address the questions being asked. Isocaloric, weight-maintenance diets. Biggest differences between the two diets were whole grains (0 vs. 200 g/d) and insoluble fibre (15 vs. 30 g/d).

Disclaimer: I’m not a huge fan of cereal fibre, but that’s irrelevant for the point of this post.

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14 Comments

Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, fiber, gluten, Grains, insulin

Tagged body composition, carbs, diet, energy balance, fiber, GOS, grains, nutrition, Paleo, prebiotics, processed food

The BROAD Study or Meat

Posted on April 6, 2017 | 7 comments

Is eating meat necessary? Optimal?

THE ANSWER MAY SURPRISE YOU

Hint: it’s more important to not eat processed refined junk foods.

Exhibit A. The BROAD study: a randomized controlled trial using a whole food plant-based diet in the community for obesity, ischaemic heart disease, or diabetes (Wright et al., 2017)

Tl;dr: it worked.

The longer version: it was a low-fat vegan diet supplemented with 50 ug B12 (methylcobalamin) daily.

“Participants were advised to eat until satiation.

We placed no restriction on total energy intake.

Participants were asked to not count calories.”

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diabetes, diet, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, mortality, Protein

Tagged body composition, carbs, mortality, nutrition, Paleo, processed food, protein

A timeline of ketoadaptation

Posted on February 26, 2017 | 5 comments

This is how ketoadaptation works (when it works), chronologically, on physical performance (I think):

Dark grey line: the gradual increase in performance for someone training on a regular diet.

Red line: performance declines on keto initially, but is back to baseline (light blue line) by week 3.

Light grey line: as long as ketoadaptation doesn’t impair performance, similar gradual increase in performance for someone training on a regular diet. Parallel to the dark grey line. May even catch up to the dark grey line. I don’t know, but probably not as per FASTER – long-term LC athletes were not superior to their LF counterparts.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, muscle, nutrition, protein

Protein, ketosis, and lean mass

Posted on February 7, 2017 | 24 comments

Most people make a big deal about protein. I do, too. Low carb diets aren’t muscle-sparing. Again.

Comparison of a Low-Fat Diet to a Low-Carbohydrate Diet on Weight Loss, Body Composition, and Risk Factors for Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease in Free-Living, Overweight Men and Women (Meckling et al., 2004)

Part 1. Hunger Free Diet(s)

Focus on what they’re eliminating:

LC diet: “limit intake of breads, pastas, rice, and desserts, eliminating intake of deep-fried foods, dried fruit, candy, sweetened soft drinks, and sugar, and increased consumption of vegetables, lean meats, eggs, and nuts”

LF diet: “eliminate high-fat dairy products and substitute with no-fat or LF alternatives, to increase intake of fruits, vegetables, whole-grain breads, and pastas and to eliminate fried foods, cream sauces, and high-fat/sugar cakes, pastries, chocolate, and candy. They were also asked to reduce use of oil products in cooking. As with LC subjects, LF subjects were encouraged to consume lean meats as alternatives to high-fat meat products.”

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, insulin, ketogenic, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, Paleo, protein

LCHF negates performance benefit of training. O_o

Posted on January 8, 2017 | 16 comments

It takes about 3 weeks to become fully ketoadapted and you don’t really get more ketoadapted thereafter, at least as per max fat oxidation rates (which seems a pretty good surrogate, imo).

Important point: “Athletes who drop carbs cold turkey suddenly suck.” And performance usually recovers by around week 3. This has been confirmed in nearly every proper study on the subject, in a variety of contexts.

Which brings me to the latest alleged slam on keto & physical performance:

Low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit of intensified training in elite race walkers (Burke et al., 2016)

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength, TPMC

Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, exercise, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketosis, nutrition

HANGRY! (part deux)

Posted on December 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

Effects of diet composition on postprandial energy availability during weight loss maintenance (Walsh et al., 2013)

Now, we’re getting somewhere!

3 diets (carbs 10%, 40% or 60%; protein was higher in the lowest carb group). Four weeks. CROSSOVER.

Then a test meal which approximated the diet assignment. Total “energy availability” in the blood was approximated by measuring the calories in blood glucose, free fatty acids, and ketones.

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These dudes ate a ton of sat fats and nothing bad happened

Posted on December 20, 2016 | 16 comments

Study: 12 weeks, obese men, very high fat low carb (VHFLC) vs. low fat high carb (LFHC) (Veum et al., 2016) #FATFUNC

Pictorially:

It wasn’t explicitly AD LIB, but pretty close. I say this because that is the magnitude of appetite decline we might expect when people go on The Hunger Free Diet(s), eg,

^^^ GOOD IDEA

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, Sugar, TPMC

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketosis, nutrition, processed food, protein, soda

Tag Archives: nutrition

High Meat, Low Carb During Pregnancy

Clara Davis: Babies Know Best

The DietFits Study

Whole grains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

The BROAD Study or Meat

A timeline of ketoadaptation

Protein, ketosis, and lean mass

LCHF negates performance benefit of training. O_o

HANGRY! (part deux)

These dudes ate a ton of sat fats and nothing bad happened

awesome finder

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