Rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes...it's sobering

(Bob M) #1

I starting rereading Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. It’s sobering.

  1. He discusses many populations that went from primarily meat to primarily (crappy) carbs and how much weight they gained.
  2. He reviews many studies showing that weight appears unrelated to exercise.
  3. He reviews studies showing increasing exercise does little to nothing. He likes one where they took sedentary men and women and trained them to run a marathon. The men lost an average of 5 pounds, the women lost nothing. (Had a colleague who trained for a marathon and ran it, lost no weight.)
  4. He reviews overeating studies where there’s a huge range in the amount people gain, even though they are eating the same “excess calories”.

Concerning #4, this has been one of the problems for me with CICO (calories in, calories out). I saw a person (on Threads? Don’t remember) who was calculating the difference between two foods and stating that one would cause 10 pounds of extra weight gain. I think it was full-fat yogurt versus non-fat yogurt or something similar (chicken with skin versus chicken without skin). I replied that there was zero percent chance that calculation was valid.

One of the reasons why (this study was cited by Taubes):

They took 12 sets of twins and made them eat 1000 calories more than what they calculated was their base calorie requirement. They did this 6 days a week for 100 days. Some people gained 9.5 pounds, but others gained 28.5 pounds. That’s a range of about 3 times. And if you use 3,500 calories = 1 pound the calculated amount would be 24 pounds (1000 cals x 84 days / 3500).

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If you exercise, you don’t really burn many more calories,no matter how much you exercise (your body adjusts by lowering calorie output when you’re not exercising). If you eat less, your body most likely shuts down to require fewer calories. If you eat more, you may or may not gain much weight,and for the lucky few, the weight you gain might be muscle instead of fat.

Gary Taubes reaches the conclusion that weight gain/loss is primarily hormonal. I think he’s correct. If you go keto, you drop insulin,which means your fat cells can start giving up their energy to your body (instead of the energy being locked into the fat cells).

But even this doesn’t explain why some people can eat keto and get back to their lowest weights, while others don’t. I’m in the latter camp. Are we still “insulin resistant”? And if so, why?

And how do other hormones (eg, GLP-1) fit into this? Did we “break” something there, or perhaps we have unfortunate genetics that causes us to want to eat more (or perhaps burn less or store more or whatever)?

It’s sobering, because if you’re already keto, where do you go from here?

(KM) #2

Aaarggh. Why not another twin study, overfeeding the same number of calories with different macronutrients or with / without processed foods. Answers the question much more concisely, whether a calorie is a calorie or not.

(Doug) #3

Why not use exactly the same person? Feed them one diet, measure calories in and out, then repeat with a different diet. Get right down to the molecular level and see exactly what is happening.

(Cathy) #4

I read the book and also listened to it. So much to learn and to consider. A shorter and equally thought provoking book is Why We Get Fat.

So my first attempt at keto was called Atkins Diet back in 2000 and at the time I needed to lose 50 lbs. and did so in under a year. That meant that I was at a good weight for my height and bone structure.

Life happened and after about 1.5 went back to eating carbs in a big way. Gained 100 lbs. Struggled to get back to keto for years and finally got traction in 2009. Lost about 55lbs. in the first year and then ground to a full stop. Struggled and struggled to lose more.

Now almost 16 years later, I still have about 25 - 30lbs. to lose. I am glad I never gave up but of course, the big question is why did weight loss stop and then slowly, meek out a couple of lbs. a year?

I have lots of theories but primarily I think that insulin resistance becomes a barrier over time when it is constantly raised like during the years between both keto periods. I think it may be that some measure cannot be reversed or if it can, only over a long period of time.

If I live long enough, I may reach my weight goal. I would be about 83 at this rate. Oh well… I don’t worry about it much now and am sure I wouldn’t then if I am lucky enough to get to 83.

#5

I see no problems with it. CICO always works, it’s unavoidable. When I ate 1000 kcal extra and gained nothing in a month, it was easy to see that I simply got an elevated CO when my CI shot up. So my extra calories were minuscule. Some of us are like this, quick gain isn’t possible even if we eat a ton.

So if I overeat, I can’t possibly know how much I will gain of any. (I do know it probably will be almost nothing.)
But if I eat little, I can make an educated guess. I obviously am unable to lose more than 2kg fat in a week without (much) exercise (or feverish sickness or being in super cold or losing a lot of blood…etc.) as I can’t make much more than 2000 kcal deficit a day. How my energy need would change, I couldn’t know but I don’t think my metabolism could slow down noticeably without involuntary starvation (and I don’t do a voluntary one). It’s not that simple and calculable, sure but my body is stable, stubborn and I don’t care about tiny differences. It’s so insane when people expect -10kg per week from a diet when it’s quite impossible for us mere mortals… The numbers say so and they are quite stubborn. I only talk about fat, of course, losing water is useless unless it’s weighing for a competition or something.

I am pretty sure my massively overeating years were worse. I gained 1kg per year. My tracked trial was only 30 days, zero gain. It’s just how some people function.

I won’t EVER believe that. It makes no sense. Ultramarathoners lose kgs of muscle and fat in days. Sure, it’s occasional, they wouldn’t need many thousands of kilocalories for the same activity if they did it every day (if that’s possible for a person but the human body can be amazing) but even with the lowered amount must have been over their full basic energy need.
What about running in the Himalaya, there is cold too… Our ultramarathoner ate almost nothing, only 2000 kcal a day as he couldn’t stomach much food and lost weight like crazy. Again, yes, it’s occasional but still. There are limits to reduce energy need for exercise - and I see not much room to reduce energy need for basic functions without a very good reason and even that can’t be ideal. Unless we start with a state where the body is forced to waste energy on unnecessarily quick metabolism to avoid more fat gain I suppose. But I can see my true energy need when I eat less and less and see when fat-loss happens. My body doesn’t want to take from that minimum as it’s the optimal amount. If exercise demands more, there are ways: demand for more food, using up unnecessarily fat (I have plenty)… Both sounds loads better than starting to work suboptimally, being cold with a slow wound healing rate or whatever the body does when not getting enough energy to function right. Suboptimal functioning should be for extreme cases where there is simply not enough energy, no matter what. Better being in a poor alive state than dying.

I don’t lose fat on keto because I overeat fat, personally. If I eat little, no matter the diet, I always lose fat. I did keto, 2000 kcal, no fat-loss. I quit, ate much more sugar but only 1800 kcal, I lost. My body is simple like this. (I ate no meat back then so my tracking was pretty accurate.)
BUT others have these hormonal changes or whatnot. So it’s not just about calories for them.
And some people automatically eat less on keto while others (like me) not. I do eat less on keto than on high-carb but I ate the same on and off keto since I went low-carb. (Same… Well I had 4200 and 1300 kcal carnivore days so my days aren’t the same even on the same diet… But my normal low-carb days aren’t this crazy.)

Wanting to eat more is another, even more complex thing. There are zillion reasons to eat, I could write an essay about it regarding only me. And I don’t even do comfort or boredom eating! Definitely not a significant one.
Food choice is extremely important there. Who cares if I could quickly lose fat on HCHF eating little if it’s impossible and I would suffer like crazy if it was forced on me? Of course I need an enjoyable, healthy method.
For some people, mere keto helps with overeating. For me, it’s not that easy, it took many years to have a chance. And I only talk about satiation here! Normal keto food left me hungry unless it’s too much for fat-loss. I had to learn to eat lean. Never ever did that before, it took time and effort. (And I still don’t lose just see a way for it.)

Better keto? Lower-cal keto? Lower-fat keto? Lower-protein keto? To me, it’s all of the above. I tried carnivore (I had to stop needing vegs first), it is great but I love fatty meat, that’s how my 4200 kcal day happened (it was fabulous. too much fat, too much protein but I had perfect satiation, lightness, satisfaction…). Carnivore is even worse to my fasting abilities as low-carb and anyway, I had to learn to eat lean. Now I focus on egg whites, low-fat quark and lean pork, sometimes chicken breast - and as I don’t even do carnivore, vital gluten as well. Still too much fat (as I eat other items, obviously. it’s me AND I do need some fat) but I think the success isn’t that far anymore… So that’s for me. Why would be keto enough? Overeating won’t make me slim, no matter the diet.