Trying to lose weight, a calorie doesn’t always equal a calorie

The Globe and Mail recently reported that Jenney Craig is the top Diet based on percentage of weight lost and the client’s ability to keep the pound from coming back.  It also costs approximately $9000US per year.  The U.S. News & World Report recently evaluated and ranked 20 different diets based on the ease of the regimen, level of nutrition, safety, and their effectiveness for combating obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Topping their list is the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), followed by the Mediterranean diet.  In this report, Jenney Craig placed 7^th and oddly, the Paleo diet ranked lowest of the 20 not because it was a poor diet, but because they didn't believe it was possible to find the appropriate foods in this modern era!  This really speaks to the degraded state of our food supply.

 

And yet another study supports the notion that when it comes to your weight, the quality of your food is paramount.  In this comprehensive study, researchers determined exactly how much weight gain is associated with the consumption of certain foods. It should come as no surprise; the worst offenders were potato chips, which caused more weight gain per serving than any other food.  This features the total disregard Big Food and has on the role they play in the out-of-control Healthcare crisis in North America, especially when you see how much real estate grocery stores dedicate to this unhealthy food type.  But then again, it’s not surprising when you consider the profit margin made on ever bag of chips.  The actions of Big Food are clear; the health of the nation they feed is someone else’s problem, certainly not theirs.  They will give the all to common excuse that they’re meeting the need of their customer....pitiful.

So what makes the DASH Diet Successful?

The DASH diet, in many ways is similar to the Mediterranean diet, and has been found to be quite successful at reducing both hypertension and promoting weight loss. DASH promotes the consumption of vegetables, fruits, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy, and recommends avoiding sugars, red meat, and salt.  Many believe that the low-sodium is responsible for its hypertension success. However, salt probably doesn't have that much to do with it. I personally believe the primary reason it works is because it restricts the intake of fructose—as does the Mediterranean diet. The idea that salt promotes high blood pressure is actually in part, misleading. In order to make heads or tails out of it, you must first understand that just like calories, not all edible salts are created equal. One is health damaging, and the other is health healing.

Salt—Essential or Harmful?

Ordinary table salt undergoes a great deal of processing. It is approximately 97.5 percent sodium chloride and 2.5 percent chemicals, such as iodine and moisture absorbents, dried at over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. This high heat alters the natural chemical structure of the salt. By contrast, unrefined natural salt, such as Himalayan salt, is 84 percent sodium chloride and 16 percent other naturally occurring minerals, including many trace minerals like silicon, phosphorous and vanadium.

Ordinary table salt has absolutely nothing in common with unrefined natural salt... The latter is essential for proper biological function, while too much of the former can indeed create health problems.

Unrefined natural salt is important to many biological processes, including:

• Being a major component of your blood plasma, lymphatic fluid, extracellular fluid, and even amniotic fluid
• Carrying nutrients into and out of your cells
• Helping the lining of your blood vessels to regulate blood pressure
• Helping you regulate propagation of nerve impulses
• Helping your brain send signals to your muscles, so that you can move on demand (sodium-potassium ion exchange)

However, for every gram of excess sodium chloride that your body has to neutralize, it uses up 23 grams of cellular water. Hence, eating too much common processed salt will cause fluid to accumulate in your tissues, which may contribute to:

• Unsightly cellulite
• Rheumatism, arthritis and gout
• Kidney and gall bladder stones
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Fructose and High Blood Pressure

That said hypertension is actually promoted more by excess fructose than excess salt... So while I certainly agree you should not consume large quantities of refined processed salt, just switching to low-sodium processed foods is not going to do much to improve your health. The connecting link between fructose consumption and hypertension lies in the uric acid produced. Uric acid is a byproduct of fructose metabolism, and increased uric acid levels drive up your blood pressure.

The amounts of salt Americans consume pales in comparison to the amount of fructose eaten on a daily basis, and I'm convinced that it's the sugar/fructose consumption that is the major driving force behind our skyrocketing hypertension rates, not excess salt. For more information about this, see investigative journalist Gary Taubes' article, The (Political) Science of Salt. In it he writes:

"While the government has been denouncing salt as a health hazard for decades, no amount of scientific effort has been able to dispense with the suspicions that it is not. Indeed, the controversy over the benefits, if any, of salt reduction now constitutes one of the longest running, and surreal disputes in medicine….

After decades of intensive research, the apparent benefits of avoiding salt have only diminished. This suggests either that the true benefit has now been revealed and is indeed small, or nonexistent, and researchers believing they have detected such benefits have been deluded by the confounding influences of other variables…"

Fructose and Weight Gain

Taubes has also delved deep into the science of fructose, and his new book, Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About it, explains why a low-carb diet is the path to optimal health and weight. His excellent New York Times article, Is Sugar Toxic? also sheds much needed light on this issue. At the heart of the low-carb theory is this: You don't get fat simply because you overeat—you overeat because your fat tissue is accumulating excess fat.

But why would your fat tissue continuously accumulate fat if you're not simply "eating too much and exercising too little"? Because:

1. Dietary carbohydrates, especially fructose, are the primary source of a substance called glycerol-3-phosphate (g-3-p), which causes fat to become fixed in fat tissue, and
2. At the same time, high-carb intake raises your insulin levels, which prevents fat from being released

The resulting equation is simple: fructose and dietary carbohydrates (grains, which break down into sugar) lead to obesity and related degenerative health issues.

It's Not about the Amount of Calories, but the Type of Calories...

We’ve been told over and over that if you consume more calories than your burn, you will gain weight. But the issue is more complex than that. It's really important to understand that the type of calories you consume is far more important than the number of calories you count.

If you eat lots of fructose (and there's a good chance you are, considering it's the number one source of calories in North America, or anywhere in the world where people are eating like North Americans), it could be "programming" your body to become fat.

Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. Here are a few important facts about fructose:

• After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to type 2 diabetes.
• Fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn free fatty acids (FFAs) into triglycerides that get stored as fat. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this. When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose, however, results in 40 calories being stored directly as fat. So consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!  Remember this fact the next time you give you kids a Soft Drink or Slurpee from the 7-11, or consume any of the other 7000+ food items at your neighborhood grocery store.
• The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.  Ask yourself the next time you eat at McDonald’s if you’re lucky and ordered “one” of the only “seven” food items from their entire menu that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup (hit: bottled water is one of the seven).
• Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating. For further information on this, check the 2008 study published in the Journal of Nutrition. The researchers concluded that fructose turned into body fat much quicker than glucose, and that having fructose for breakfast changed how the body handled fats at lunch.

Ironically, the food products that most people rely on to lose weight—low-fat diet foods—often contain the most fructose! So beware, and always read the content labels.

 

Quality is More Important than Quantity

Another study illustrating the connection between your weight and the type or quality of the calories you consume (as opposed to just counting calories) was published last month, in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). As reported in Time Magazine:

"It matters, of course, how many total calories you take in each day, but the authors say the age-old advice simply to 'eat less and exercise more' is naïve. To control weight over the long term... the study suggests that people benefit more by focusing on eating right, rather than less."  In this comprehensive study, the researchers determined how much weight gain is associated with the consumption of certain foods: 

• Potato chips led the pack, causing more weight gain per serving than any other food; followed by potatoes, and sugar-sweetened beverages.
• Weight gain was inversely associated with: yoghurt, nuts, fruits, whole grains, and vegetables.

However, I would caution you to not fall into the whole grain trap. Whole grains will increase your insulin levels just like any other grain. Additionally, whole wheat contains very high amounts of Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA), which even in small quantities can have adverse health effects.

My Diet Yields Great Results Too.....and it’s Free!

The one diet that I’ve seen the best return on investment, in terms of weight loss, optimal health, and cost and is not included on any list or review mentioned in this blog, is “My Diet Plan”.  No, that’s not some new exotic diet plan from a team of PhD’s and Nutritionist’s with Master’s degrees from California; it’s actually my own diet.

What I like best about My Diet Plan is that it works and the only cost of my diet is the food I buy and the discipline to stick with it.  I’ve seen many successes, including my own year after year results. I believe my diet can improve just about anyone's health, while reducing weight without breaking the bank by paying for unnecessary advice, administration fees and pre-made meals.  

When you eat according to My Diet Plan, there's no need to count calories, because it's all about eating the right types of food and avoiding foods that are unhealthy.  I haven’t counted a calorie for decades, but that doesn’t mean you simply eat and eat and eat.

Summary of My Basic Principles

Following is a summary of the basic concepts.  The challenge is the discipline required to stick with it. 

• Limit your fructose to less than 25 grams per day.
• Limit or eliminate all processed foods (that includes all fast food)
• Significantly reduce or eliminate gluten
• Eat organic foods whenever possible
• Eat at least one-third of your food uncooked (raw)
• Increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables (look at your plate, 70%-80% should be fresh fruit, vegetables or leafy greens .... organic whenever possible)
• Avoid all artificial sweeteners
• Swap all trans fats (vegetable oils, margarine etc) for healthful fats like raw butter or coconut oil
• Re-balance your omega-3/omega-6 ratio, by taking a high-quality omega-3 supplement, such as Krill Oil, and reduce your consumption of processed omega-6 fats from vegetable oils (trans fats).  Take the Krill Oil with CoQ10 (more on this important topic in a future post)
• Drink plenty of pure filtered water
• Optimize your vitamin D levels, either through appropriate sun exposure, or if you live in a northern country with long winters, like Canada, or anywhere with limited sun exposure, I strongly suggest a vitamin D3 supplement (I recommend either YouthJuice which has Vitamin D3 added, or Nu-life D3).
• Limit or eliminate alcohol from your diet.  If you must drink; never more than 1 drink a day for women and 2 drinkis for men (and it goes without saying, don't smoke)
• And athletes, consume a high quality Organic Whey Protein Concentrate within an hour after every workout for rapid recovery.

Following this relatively simple diet plan will yield very positive health result, especially when combined with a daily exercise program.

Enjoy the Ride.... Rob

 

Comments

[weight loss perth]

It is true. That is a myth where your calories burned are the equivalence of stored fat. It is not a case of vis-a-vis.

[Pharma exporters]

Hello, This is very great thing you have shared with us.Now I found enough resources by your tips about this issue, Thank you

[Generic Viagra]

Она што е навистина интересно, ти си блогер високо квалификувани. Јас се приклучи вашата храна и со нетрпение очекуваме да се најде повеќе од вашите прекрасни порака. Исто така, јас дели вашиот сајт во мојот социјални мрежи!

[Robert Armstrong]

I think anyone would be lying if they said they didn't like chips. I love them, so it's on a very rare occasion that I ever eat them.

[Gerry]

Chips are my big weakness, among many other smaller ones, mind you. I'm going to find some discipline somewhere and stay away from that aisle...most of the time! Great article as always, Rob.