"So what happens if you are trying to lose weight by adopting conventional advice to reduce the dietary fat and calories, and eat 6 times a day. By doing so, you keep insulin levels high because you are eating lots of low-fat bread, pasta, and rice and eating all the time."
I don't think "conventional advice" is to eat 6 times a day. And "conventional advice" is certainly not to eat lots of bread, pasta, and rice.
Fung is pretty obviously setting up a strawman argument here.
Furthermore, even accepting his absurd strawman, wouldn't the body still end up burning fat when you sleep (8+ hour fast)? Fung himself said so earlier in this article: "But what happens when you go to sleep? Because you are not eating, you are fasting."
This article is mere ad copy to sell Fung's books (and whatever else he is selling).
By the way, I personally think there may be something to intermittent fasting and I plan to try it sometime myself, I just can't stand con-men who have to puff themselves up by creating strawmen arguments and preying on people's insecurities about their weight, which is basically what Fung is doing here. Any benefit from intermittent fasting will just be a marginal improvement over achieving caloric reduction through other means.
If you want to lose weight, cut calories. You can do that by eating 6 meals a day, or occasionally fasting, or eating low-carb or eating low-fat, whatever works for you.
But if you consume fewer calories than you eat, you will lose weight. Read carefully and you will find that even people like Fung are forced to admit this. Be skeptical of anyone who tells you otherwise, they're almost always trying to sell you something.
While I completely agree with you on the general puffery of most of these diet book people, note that Fung comes at this from having treated thousands of people for diabetes, with a great deal of success. I think you should take a closer look at his writing, which is fact-based and extensive.
The eating six times a day advice IS advice I have repeatedly heard and I have known many people who follow it. The idea that we should be eating lots of carbohydrates IS conventional advice if you consider the medical community's decades of instruction that we should not eat fat or meat: the only remaining macronutrient that most westerners will eat is carbohydrates. The popular prevalence of keto and paleo and Atkins makes people forget that the prevailing medical advice STILL effectively directs people to a high carb, low calorie diet.
Calories-in-calories out isn't wrong, but it is incomplete. It doesn't explain why the "Biggest Loser" winners see their base line calorie consumption drop way below what you'd expect for someone of their new weight. It doesn't explain why some people NEVER have to diet while other go through life starving but still gain weight. If it were just "calories in calories out", you wouldn't see these anomalies. In short, it doesn't explain hunger.
Fung's insulin theory has good science behind it and fits well with a lot of historical observations, such as the increase in sugar in our diets. And the ADF diet study had incredibly good results.
> It doesn't explain why some people NEVER have to diet while other go through life starving but still gain weight
This is simply not true. I monitored behaviors of my friends or asked them probing questions where I suspected this was the case. They may 'skip dinner' or 'have a light dinner' the day you watched them gorge on cake, but you might not see that. They may run 10 miles the day after eating the same Mexican food as you.
Same with other side, people who say they don't gain weight in spite of eating 1000s of calories in surplus just aren't eating 1000s of calories in surplus. They think they are because they often eat candy, ... but they may take a bite or two and 'save the rest for later', or 'have dessert for dinner' and think that's eating lots of calories.
They may also be taller than you by a couple inches and you're underestimating the effect height has.
Do we eat too much sugar these days? Too much meat? Too much dairy?
Yes to all of it. Probably so.
> It doesn't explain why some people NEVER have to diet while other go through life starving but still gain weight.
But there is a very simple explanation: Self-reporting is bullshit.
Never believe anyone who says "I can eat anything I want and not gain weight" or "I hardly eat anything and still gain weight". There's always something they aren't seeing. Anyone who says that needs to keep a very strict food journal for a month. No cheating, no "well it's just a mint". Strict. Everything gets recorded. You take a bite of someone's ice cream, you record it.
What you'll find is that their caloric consumption is right in line with their weight.
"This is the reason that you do not die in your sleep every single night."
I just about rolled my eyes. You can go without eating for quite a while without dying. 8 hours isn't killing anyone who wasn't already knocking on that door.
Calorie restriction basically categorically works. If it is not working for you, you are either not accurately measuring your intake, or you need to restrict more aggressively. It's that simple.
Now, is calorie restriction the OPTIMAL diet? Maybe not, but half the problem with weight loss is that people get hyper fixated on finding the ideal dieting methodology and never just start. Calorie counting works, IIFYM works, zone diet works, keto works, weight watchers works. As long as you pick a validated plan that matches your lifestyle and you are adherent, you will have success.
Saying that it categorically works is pretty misleading. Many people try straightforward calorie reduction and find that besides experiencing extreme discomfort from cravings and reduced metabolism, they make very little progress over periods as long as a month and these people often walk away thinking that weight loss is impossible for them.
The truth is that many people are metabolically imbalanced or diseased and will not respond the way a young otherwise healthy man does to caloric restriction. Calories in, calories out is certainly true because we know the laws of thermodynamics are obeyed by the human body. However, there are all sorts of subtleties here. For instance, one person might not absorb all the food they're eating and may shit out much more viable calories than another person. Further, we know that hormones play a dramatic role. Look at pubescent boys versus pubescent girls. In both cases, caloric intake goes up (it also doesn't go up consciously, the kids are signalled to eat more by their bodies and are nearly helpless to do otherwise) but what is done with the excess calories is different in boys versus girls due to hormonal influence. In boys, the majority of excess calories goes into creating more lean tissue whereas in girls it is much more balanced between lean tissue and fat growth and the fat distribution is not the same as boys. Hormones are an important factor in weightloss and weight gain and should be considered.
This is just my long-winded way of saying: yes, simple caloric restriction works for many people, but among many people with hormonal and metabolic problems, caloric restriction is much more likely to result in needless suffering and poor results. If the conversation focuses solely on simple caloric restriction, then these people who likely make up the majority of obese people will likely never get the information they need to find strategies that work for them.
I feel like that's like saying "making more money categorically works to solve poverty."
I don't disagree with that statement, no one can, but is it useful, actionable and helpful?
As a lifelong obese person, I disagree immensely that any of those things work. I have been asking doctors for years if they have any success stories of any of those things "working" for longer than 1 year and I have found none.
You're speaking with someone who has had success. I've had success using both keto / Atkins and if it fits your macros (basically calorie counting with more tracking). I would be happy to share my experience with you / provide advice if you would like. Alternatively, please feel free to refer to my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15604761
That's great! Thank you. I definitely want to know how long you've been able to do it for. I've had similar successes but then much longer failures about a dozen times since 8 years old.
How should I contact you? There's no info in your profile. Thanks.
Your disagreement is not relevant. We know categorically that anyone who consumes fewer calories than they expend will lose weight. Many people lack the discipline to stick with caloric restriction over a long period, but it's not a universal problem. If you're asking doctors for success stories then you're wasting their time.
Interesting, I've never actually heard this point of view.
Do you mean I'm wasting their time because it's not their responsibility to know if they have had successes? Or because it's my fault for eating too much when I could decide not to?
I'm honestly asking this, please don't take this as an attack. I am very curious as to your thoughts about doctors.
I'm generally asking because I am hopeful that they provide me with a motivation to believe that someone else has done what they're asking me to do.
Why do you want others to provide you with motivation? You know what you have to do. Just do it. Right now it seems like you're expecting to fail, and looking for excuses to not even try.
Because I have questioned for decades if it is possible.
Similar to an alcoholic finding comfort in Alcoholics Anonymous, I would love to find someone who has been lifelong obese who has shed the pounds for more than a year.
Do you mean that it is wasting a doctors time because they don't owe me motivation? I am talking about my obesity specialists. They are giving me diets and exercise plans that I am doing. I don't feel like I am not trying.
Do you mean that I am not trying because I am not successful?
Oh I wasn't clear. I was just using the word "try" because you did in your previous reply. I totally agree with you. I think I said that in my original comment. That is unassailable. You are correct.
With respect to doctors and motivation though, do you think that I should not ask them for success stories?
If you're not really willing to take action then you can always find a plausible excuse about why it was too hard or outside your control. You can certainly ask doctors if you like but I can't imagine how their answers would make a difference.
I'm mainly looking for their successful treatment of others because that is a typical way to assess medical professionals. When a surgeon wants to perform a bypass, most people ask how successful that surgeon has been in the past.
I understand that you're saying that the doctor can't do anything if I'm so lazy that I find excuses all the time, but I don't feel like I have ever given a doctor an excuse. I feel like doctors give me excuses constantly about their success rates.
From my perspective, if they give the same advice to 100,000 people and of them they have 0 successful treatments by their own data, I'm going to assume I should find other advice
The advice is always going to be some variant of consuming fewer calories than you expend. Obviously the success rate is >0. Other than that I suspect you're just looking for reasons to argue instead of taking responsibility for your own choices.
I've been consistently dropping weight since highschool (c. 2005, ~250lbs - now, ~160lbs) by simply cutting my caloric intake little-by-little. Started by switching out regular soda to diet soda. I think we generally underestimate our caloric consumption.
I'm a walking example of why it's not true in a more pragmatic sense.
I used to weigh 350 pounds, every diet I tried was just caloric restriction nonsense that just fed insulin resistance (thus making anyone who tries that without actual diet modification a dead walking zombie until they give up on the diet and remain fat)....
So, for exactly one year, I did something new: I cut out all grains, refined sugars, dairy, and legumes, but kept CICO the same.
After the end of one year, I weighed 214 (and kept going after the end of that year until 184). I do not exercise enough to explain losing 544 thousand calories (or about 1490 a day), nor did my diet suddenly drop 1490 calories (as I regularly eat 2000-2200 calories a day, before and after the diet modification).
Afterwards, I realized two things were true: one, the calories in the little nutrition facts panel is wrong, based on very outdated science; and two, some foods contain chemicals that trick your body into increasing the rate at which carbs are transformed into fat.
Once I quit tricking my body into shoving everything I ate into fat cells, I felt like I had lot more energy, my brain worked better, the fat just melted away, and I feel better than I ever have.
Unless you truly have an eating disorder, you don't need to count calories. You need to just stop eating foods that cause you to be fat. It isn't how much, but what.
The only problem I've found is people asking me what I did to lose the weight, and I tell them, and they look at me like I eat babies and worship Satan. "You stopped eating grains and refined sugars? But-but-but my doctor said count calories, he said nothing about grains and refined sugars! You must be wrong, or you're lying!"
So yeah, you're fat because you want to be fat. There's an effective way out there, it worked for me when nothing else would and it was the lowest effort diet I ever did. Don't fucking shoot the messenger when he's giving you good news.
Edit: and for the record, I was pre-diabetic at 350, was on my way to getting diabetes, which runs in my family (no, no one runs in my family), and now I have zero clinical signs of ever having had chronic insulin resistance (which is what being pre-diabetic, or having metabolic syndrome, means).
If you were eating 2000-2200 calories a day before and after losing the weight, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. The difference between 200 pounds and 350 pounds is... about 1500 calories per day.
Most people are really bad about tracking what they eat in their head. They think they're good at eating for sustenance. It's quite possible that changing to an Atkins-esque diet also cut out a lot of calories because you weren't eating bread or sugar anymore.
Just like a lot of people experience success going on Fuhrman's plan. You cut out bread, sugar, oils, most animal products. What you are left with just isn't that calorie dense. It becomes difficult to overeat calories because you just can't physically fit that much inside of you.
So while some of that may be true. There may be some variance in metabolism, nutrition labeling isn't 100% exact (and honestly, I don't see how it can be considering most of our methods of measuring are destructive so we're basing all values off of a sample), certain foods affect us differently. I don't believe that there is enough variance to account for some of the wild stories I hear like "I wasn't eating anything and not losing weight" or "I eat all day long and never gain a pound".
There's only been one Tarrare. Everyone else who has made that claim has been found to be mistaken about how much or little they eat.
Sure, but there was also a Charles Domery (AKA Domerz)[1]. They even overlapped in time, and were both in/around France.
I like to imagine an alternate history in which a military conflict was settled not with battle, but by pitting these two against each other in an eat-off. They're both alleged cannibals, so I guess the logical end for that competition would have been for the winner to eat the loser.
Nope, I was tracking it using the labeling on the package... which goes back to my point, the labeling is grossly inaccurate to the point that it may be just random numbers.
And no, it also isn't difficult to overheat on a diet that isn't calorie dense. I've since added OMAD, and can eat 2000 calories in one sitting.
Just because you don't have grains and refined sugars as a hyper-dense calorie crutch doesn't mean you cant. It merely means you aren't used to it.
The argument I am making is quite literally "tracking by using the labeling isn't tracking", but not for the reasons you're stating.
What I'm saying is that if you eat a serving of something, the package says x calories per package (and x servings per package, for those packages that are clearly one serving but say 2), and you write down all of those values you ate, and you arrive at a number... that number is entirely fictional.
When I say I ate around 2000 calories a day on the SAD (standard American diet), I have no clue. That is the problem with processed food, you have to trust the numbers on the box are correct because you have no clue what the recipe is, if the food could even be expressible in terms of normal ingredients.
Once you cook everything yourself, which also came with the diet change (because everything is contaminated with grains, refined sugars, and just weird strange shit), which makes it much easier to track calories (as USDA values for generic foods seem to actually be in the realm of reality).
And I'm saying there are likely things you missed. Because while it's never going to be 100% accurate, even for values from the USDA for 'generic foods', it won't be wrong to the tune of 75%. And that's what you're saying. That on average, the values are 75% more than what they're reported.
Caloric restriction may not be the "optimal" diet, but it's still "true". Anyone who's taking grade 10 physics can tell you exactly why the difference between calorie input and calorie output equals your change in weight. It simply cannot be untrue -- you body cannot disappear energy without it going "out", and it can't create energy without it coming "in".
The linked article is a good explanation of why IF works; I don't disagree. But you can't say, "The key to weight loss is not to reduce calories"... because reducing calories is literally the only way you will ever lose weight.
> Anyone who's taking grade 10 physics can tell you exactly why the difference between calorie input and calorie output equals your change in weight.
This is one of those places where you can be entirely correct but entirely unhelpful. The problem is that calorie output is both a) non-constant (even your base metabolic rate changes over the course of your life, much less any lifestyle changes) and b) influenced by environment and physical condition (your calorie burn will change in response to environmental pressures, including caloric restriction and changing body fat content).
