I really accept theories of why we get fat. The problem is that we humans prefer really simple metaphors that also link nicely to the world we live in. This is part of the reason why the mind used to be thought of as a steam engine and now is compared to a computer, when, really, it isn’t like either. Our bodies are likely to be compared to a car. You put fuel in and that lets you drive around – except that if you keep putting fuel into your car that you don’t use your mini doesn’t grow into a Cadillac and then into a bus – you know, in the way we do. By his stressing how it is almost impossible to balance calories in and calories out he then turns his attention to exercise.
It seems reasonable that if you want to lose weight the best way to achieve it would be to burn your fat off through exercising. The problem is that exercise makes you hungry. So, yet again you need to somehow balance calories in and calories out and if you are like me and have tried to do this you will know that it is virtually impossible. I’ve used calorie counters and my iPhone to tell me how much energy I’ve burnt during my walks – but my weight remains remarkably consistent whatever I seem to do.
Central to his argument is the idea that not all food is good food. The calories in and calories out idea is that you could get all of our calories from coke and as long as you were burning off the same number of calories during the day your weight will remain the same. This is the fuel in / energy out model taken to the extreme. But the human body doesn’t work like that. Essentially there are two mechanisms that are used to power our bodies and these come into conflict and help to make us obese. The first is how our bodies respond to sugars and carbohydrates. These foods are easy to digest and easy to get energy from, so our bodies digest them first. In response our bodies produce insulin – but one of the things insulin also does is to stop our cells from burning the fat they have stored in them and rather to store more fat in our cells. With increasing levels of insulin in our blood our bodies never get around to burning the energy reserves that are stored as fat within our cells.
This process has a kind of irony about it. We eat carbohydrates and sugars and they encourage fat into our cells to be stored for a later that never comes and by raising the insulin levels in our blood eating carbohydrates ensures that that fat can’t ever be used. But our bodies still need energy – so even though we ought to be sated, we crave more food, particularly carbohydrate rich food that can quickly be turned into blood sugar for an energy boost. This again spikes our insulin levels, which again makes it impossible for us to get to the energy stored as fat. So, instead we lay down more fat and feel hungrier still.
The method of overcoming this vicious cycle is to stop eating carbohydrates and this will then allow our bodies to reduce the amount of insulin in our blood and thereby allow our bodies to start burning our grossly increased fat reserves.
Insulin, then, is the problem – essentially, this guy is saying that obesity is a kind of diabetes. But he goes further – he says that many of the diseases that are associated with Western diets are effectively forms of diabetes. This includes many cancers (breast and colon in particular) and Alzheimer’s – which he claims people are now referring to as Type Three Diabetes.
So, how to get thin and live a healthier life? Well, this is the uncomfortable part of the story for me. We have to give up sugars and carbohydrates and to eat much more meat and fat. As counter-intuitive as it might seem, fat and meat are ‘good calories’ and he provides an evolutionary just-so story to prove it. He claims that meat, rather than vegetables and starch, was the key to our diet as hunter-gatherers. And as such we have evolved to eat lots of meat and certainly not lots of bread.
As you can see, this is a full-frontal attack on carbs and like I said, I’ve no idea if this attack is justified – although the case he makes is very convincing. What he says makes sense. If any of you have some link to something that debunks this viewpoint, I would be keen to read it.
And my interest in all this? Well, the problem is that diabetes doesn’t so much run in my family, it sprints. Out of the six siblings in my mother’s family only one does not have diabetes. If avoiding diabetes means I can also avoid Alzheimer’s I’m more than happy to give up just about anything.
The high meat and high fat diet does have lots of things going for it – not least the promise that it allows you to lose weight without feeling hungry all of the time. I’ve actually tried exercise and limiting calories and exercise doesn’t work for weight loss (though it is much better at improving mental wellbeing and that isn’t something to be sneezed at). The promise of an easy way to maintain a healthy weight and avoid the associated problems of increasing body weight is very appealing – but at the risk of sounding particularly Protestant, it all does sound a little too easy. All the same, I am interested in science and don’t like to think that I am believing something that is not supported by the facts.
The problem is that it is supposed to be the snappier version of Good Calories, Bad Calories – but if this is snappy I dread to think what that book must be like. This could really have been cut in half again without much loss, but I do understand he is trying to cover all arguments against and I have to say he does do that. All the same, if what he has to say is even only half true then much of the dietary advice that has been given to us for around 50 years is not only useless, but actually counterproductive.
