I've reached the conclusion that Gary Taubes is correct

(Bob M) #1

This is Gary Taubes’s latest Substack post:

Sorry if it makes you register.

Mr. Taubes believes that #2 is true:

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I’ve reached this conclusion for many reasons, but one is the observation that some people who go on keto lose weight and get back to whatever their “best” weight was, very easily; yet others don’t. I’m in the latter, and I think it’s because there’s some hormonal error/defect I still have, which may be part genetic and part I broke something. This is obvious to me, as I am often not hungry in the evening.

But since my family is eating dinner, I’ll eat with them. I start out eating a small part of a meal, but that makes me hungry. So I eat more. Invariably, I eat basically a full meal or more.

Whatever hormone (hormones?) it is that is the “feedback” (in electrical engineering terms) hormone that is supposed to say “hey, you’re really not hungry and should stop eating” is broken in me. Not totally broken, because I can easily eat 2 or 1 meal a day, but it’s broken to the point where it doesn’t work as well as it should.

Further, I can only get so thin. Once I hit a certain weight, I always rebound from there.

Another observation is the pictures Taubes has in one of books where he shows two sets of sisters, one heavy and one thin. They look exactly alike. I see my wife and oldest daughter, and both of them have trouble with food. Hunger drives them.

Yet I see my daughter’s thin friends who eat high carb and are able to be thin. There is some feedback mechanism her friends have that she doesn’t (or at least has less of).

I’m therefore convinced that Taubes is correct. Being heavy is about an error in fuel partitioning.

The problem is that, while keto/low carb really helps with this,it doesn’t fully correct it in all of us. And I don’t know how to correct the part that’s broken or even what that part is.

#2

You may be right. And there are plenty of other reasons to overeat, it’s often mental. I always could eat a ton after reaching satiation (my chances depended on the circumstances). My overeating was due to 1. hunger (or lack of satiation as I had a strong urge to eat when not hungry but not satiated either) 2. mental/circumstantial things (some tempting food was present, for example, that is a strong one). Part of the latter is that I need a certain amount of satisfaction from my food so if it’s not good enough, I probably will go and find something better, almost no matter my satiation level (not a big danger as I focus on eating very tasty food but sometimes it’s not a full success or I desire more food enjoyment on that particular day). Knowing other people, I am far from alone, the mental part is often pretty significant. And it’s connected with the physical part. When I started to eat a very satiating diet, I lost the big urge to eat more and more. The physical hunger is something I can’t and don’t want to fight against, hunger means I need to eat (my stance has changed lately but I still tend to consider serious hunger like this. subtle hunger means I should fast more but I almost always felt like that unless there was temptation present already).
I have no idea what my hormones do, that part was always pretty much hidden from my consciousness. It’s my body’s job, I don’t think about it (it wouldn’t help anyway, I have no idea).
I just can experiment and figure out what works best.

For me, it’s almost all about calories (as far as I know, I almost always maintain so I have very little experience with losing or not extreme slow gaining) but what I eat controls how much I eat and health is even more important than slimming down so again, just trying to eat little from whatever food I find is a very, very bad idea for me just like it is for many people. Even the people on the “CICO forum” I frequent (I use it to keep my recipes and track) tend to realize it’s important what we eat if we don’t want to suffer unnecessarily. What we eat is clearly highly important, it’s another matter that many people reach success by eating their normal diet, just less. But the normal diet should be kind of good already or else it won’t be healthy at all, among other problems… But it doesn’t need to be low-fat or low-carb as long as it works for the one in question.

(KM) #3

This is me. However, if I put a bite of certain foods in my mouth, there is some kind of trigger that just delights in having more of it. I’m not sure it has anything to do with hunger signaling at all. Personally I think it is a dopamine response, or some similar chemical, perhaps it’s even an unknown one. I might report it as hunger, but it’s truthfully not that, it’s physical enjoyment and even mental joy happening. Whether the food itself is addictive I don’t know, but the response is absolutely the same as an addiction response. I can usually discipline myself, but it’s definitely in strong opposition to what my body wants of me.

That food challenge guy, Adam Moran, nearly always requests dessert after he has finished the challenge. I know it’s part of his stchick, but at times it seems he’s really in need of that sugar hit to signal his body to end what is basically a forced food binge.

#4

I noticed that it’s possible for my hunger sign to get triggered just because I really love the food available - or the opposite of it. I didn’t have this on high-carb but since low-carb, it rarely but happens. Normally I just feel I don’t need food but fancy eating it so I obviously eat it, who am I to deny my own desires.
But it’s not the same hunger as the proper, stronger one. And anyway, I can check if I really need energy intake, it’s independent from the hunger sign (correlated somewhat but one can be without the other). It requires some conscious thought and willingness to entertain the idea not eating if I don’t need it though.
I could write a long essay about my different hunger signs alone… Sometimes my stomach has hunger (I practically always ignore my stomach, I really don’t care about its state) but my belly doesn’t if it makes sense for anyone else. It’s weird but very rare.

Physical and mental joy (I don’t think it’s possible to have the former without the latter, we like physical joy from food because it feels good mentally, right? I do) can be problematic, especially the mental one as in very unfortunate cases, it can push through even physical discomfort, even PAIN. Obsessive eating is a bitch and my condolences to everyone who has it THAT bad. I don’t and I nearly always get food joy from it, it must be even worse when it’s no joy, just one is triggered and can’t help it. I wonder if it’s just bad mental state or something or the right food choices help everyone. They help me a lot, I love carnivore because it makes my relationship with food a lot healthier. I still can overeat (for a while or occasionally, it’s not easy for a long time on carnivore when one even tries not to), I still think about food a lot and do food related thing for hours (well I have to but I do more than strictly necessary) but I don’t get very wrong desires all the time. Non-animal net carbs mess with my body and mind, it’s nice to get rid of most of them.
But maybe there are people who are truly messed up, no matter the diet. OR they only like their bad trigger items and they feel unsatisfied on an otherwise good diet. I have heard a lot that “only unhealthy food is tasty” and I stopped to wonder if it’s really true for some super unlucky persons… Or if they have the wrong idea about what healthy food is, that has a chance too. I wouldn’t like a low-fat, low egg, very low red meat diet for sure but that wouldn’t be healthy for me anyway.

There are items where I just love eating a lot but it feels normal… And there are cases where it truly feels wrong and obsessed and addicted. I only have the first type on carnivore and it’s very rare.
Whenever I find something that does the second, I get super careful with it (usually. I have looser days but with good training, I never ever ever ever will eat a ton of peanuts, like 50g at once… 20g is my highest and it’s a very wild, loose, generous amount. 0.5-5g is my normal and it’s still more than what I actually should do, zero… but it’s fine and I feel loads better mentally because I am free… I used to eat very much peanuts nearly every day, in minutes and it was a problem for multiple reasons. my SO eating 250g peanuts at once, that was a reasonable meal in some situations - now he only does 120g or so - but for me… 100g was 100g more than ideal).

IDK if he needs sugar or dessert or it’s mostly mental “look I can even eat a dessert”. I don’t know him.
For me, dessert is dessert. It’s part of nearly every meal of mine since ages. I could lose habits but not this one. I usually miss it if I don’t have it but I don’t analyze it why. It’s dessert, not sugary and sometimes not even sweet but it is a dessert and that makes a difference.
My SO eats about 20 desserts per week, not counting his sweet, fruity meals (but we don’t consider oatmeal a dessert). He surely loves them but once I asked and he said he needs them to get his nutrients. And I can’t say it’s not true… He just couldn’t skip a day (one meal is a stretch already).
But we know desserts are special, especially us having a separate dessert stomach :wink: