Quick Notes for mid March 2015

Updated 3.12.2015
Quick comments derived from reading the various tabs open in my browser currently.

Scoring system for diets

Yoni Freedhoff suggests a new way to score competing diets. His concept is to try and indicate the enjoyability of a given diet. Because any diet (or way of eating) that isn’t enjoyable for you isn’t one to which you will adhere. It’s an interesting concept that is completely impossible to implement.

Someone who loves eating low carb might score that highly, whereas I would not because I disliked eating that way and only lasted about two months. Enjoyability is completely individual. I suppose you could include some sort of personality metric in the score, but I'm not sure that would add any value. I doubt all low carbers are similar in personality any more than are all vegans.

Low fat diet is better for losing body fat

Kevin Hall PhD (of the NIH calculator of which I am so fond) presented new research comparing low fat and low carb diets in terms of fat loss. It’s a metabolic ward study, the results of which perhaps indicate that NuSi will have a big problem if it tries to fudge its results. In this case, they put their subjects (mean BMI 36) into a metabolic ward and fed them the test diets. They were each fed the diets with a wash out period in between.

The results of the study indicate that a low fat diet is better for fat loss than a low carb diet. FAT loss, not WEIGHT loss— weight loss is dependent on calories. They are looking at the effects of manipulating macronutrient levels, which is something body builders have know about for years. If you want to have less body fat, then you must eat less fat.

An important limitation is that they did not address how easy or difficult the diet was to stick to. Adherence as always is the most important thing when it comes to diet. If you don’t like how you’re eating to lose the weight, then you will not continue to eat that way and will put the weight back on. That’s the dirty little secret the fatosphere downplays. Weight loss IS possible and it CAN be maintained, but not if you go back to eating the amount that you did when you were larger. And if you hate the way you're eating, you will go back.

Debating fat?

The new guidelines backed off the limitation on cholesterol, I think the keep saturated fat levels low is still in place. The Star Tribune thinks differently, thanks to Nina Teicholz's revamping of Gary Taubes' work. I can’t identify with either woman mentioned in the piece. Teicholz's diet of 70% fat sounds ghastly to me. And I eat bacon and eggs and plenty of meat. I eat rice, potatoes and pasta (albeit gluten free at the moment). I keep going back to that Greger video about the saturated fat intake and LDL. and at 70% fat, your sat fat intake has to be elevated. I keep remembering that and thinking that in a few years the race back to high fat will result in a health catastrophe. Although, if Boomers suck down ample fat, perhaps they won't be as expensive to care for in their dotage, because a greater percentage will have dropped dead of a heart attack.

Marilyn Monroe was NOT fat

Every so often in the fatosphere, someone will lament the fact that overweight/obese (because these two very different categories are too often conflated, but that's a quick discussion) used to be the preferred body type and very often Marilyn Monroe will be offered as a classic example. I always thought that was an odd thing to assert, I'm not really a Monroe fan, but in the clips of her movies I've seen she in no way seemed fat to me. She was perhaps not as ludicrously thin as actresses are today, but by no means a "sistafriend" of the fatosphere.

Marilyn Monroe's dressmaker has provided hard evidence of her official measurements and weight. Some of the confusion stems from the differences in standard sizes in the United Kingdom versus the US. UK sizes generally have a number 4 digits greater than the comparable US size. So a size 16 in the UK is a size 12 in the US. And size 12 is by no means a "fatty" size. At least that's true with traditional US sizing. Because US retailers have been altering what equals an 8 or a 12. I am now about 10 pounds smaller than I was when I was in highschool, when I fit into size 12s. Suddenly when I go shopping I am fitting in to 6s or 8s. That's a function of vanity sizing, not a reflection of my smaller body.

I sometimes sew my own clothes (something I started doing when I was near my largest weight because finding clothes that fit was becoming difficult) and thus I know what size I actually am. I am comfortably a traditional 12 in most measurements. At my largest I was closing in on 16 to 18.

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