I've written about nutrition before but also know that I am by no means a nutrition expert, but I wanted to comment on something that just came out. Apparently there is this new article on some pseudo- diet study performed by a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University who wanted to show that calorie counting was the only important factor in weight loss. Basically he ate a bunch of Twinkies. The article can be found here. Before I go into detail of why this case study is meaningless, I just want to say one thing. "Really?"
Twinkie Burger
I couldn't think of anything healthier either
The article, if you haven't read it, states that the professor limited his Calories to less than 1800 per day, lost 27 pounds, and dropped his body fat percentage from over 33 to just under 25. Two-thirds of his "nutrition" came from junk food. Some of his blood chemistry improved as well.
Nutritionists are going to look at that article and be outraged because of how unhealthy junk food is and how he is sending the wrong message about clean, healthy eating. Then some less informed people (like many you see commenting on the entry) are going to say that nutritionists don't know what they are talking about because clearly the diet worked amazingly for the guy and that results are all the matters.
So that's great and everything, but I'm going to go a different route. My biggest critique with this is that he took his body fat percentage from 33 to about 25 by simply restricting his calorie intake for 8 weeks. This is basically an example of an obese man turning into an overweight man. This is not at all representative of anything else. If he were at 25% body fat and tried to reduce that to 17% by restricting his calories even more, he would fail miserably. What is he going to do, restrict his calories even more to 1400 or 1200? I bet around that point, he starts losing a lot of muscle mass as well. Then you might see his body fat percentage level out or even start to rise even though pounds are coming off the scale. What about those people who are trying to get to 12% or lower? A full grown man cannot get by on 800 Calories a day without severe health consequences
Quality and quantity both matter. You can eat healthy food all you want, but if you eat too much of it, you aren't going to lose fat. Likewise, you can lose weight eating only junk food if you don't eat that much. Guess what? You can also burn fat without losing a lot of muscle mass if you eat clean and control your portions! Throw in some exercise concepts from The Theory of Fat Loss and you will probably have the best results.
Moral of the story: Anybody that has A LOT of weight to lose can lose a lot of weight with really poor diets by solely restricting their calories. Why? Chances are that their diets were extremely poor in the first place. Now they are just eating less bad food. Everybody else that actually cares about their health and fitness needs to eat cleaner and train.
What are your thoughts on the Twinkie Diet? Let me know below.
My understanding of energy is that if you use more calories than you take in you have to lose weight. your 4th paragraph is unclear you have not set up why further calorie reduction is the only way to lose more fat. If he continues on this reduced calorie diet why wont he continue to lose fat?
ReplyDeleteAs you lose weight, your basal metabolic rate drops (you have less tissue for your body to support). That means you need to restrict your calories even more to get the same calorie deficit you had when you were larger. Does that clear things up, or do you need a more detailed explanation? Let me know. I'm happy to help.
ReplyDeleteOne more thing. You lose weight when you expend more calories than you take in. You don't necessarily lose fat unless there is some kind of reason to selectively lose fat and not muscle (such as weight training).
ReplyDeleteActually that clears up alot. My next question would be to the function of fat in a body. why would something that is (as I was taught anyway) little more that insulation and more importantly stored energy, not be selected for extra calories as opposed to muscle protiens or whatever else the body uses as energy to make up the difference? Why would we burn off parts of us that are useful i.e. for locomotion or other life continuing functions.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the late response. I'm supposed to get emails whenever I get a comment, but for some reason I didn't for this one. Anyway, that is a great question and one that I don't have a definitive answer to. I think this is something that others have pondered as well because some animals actually do burn fat before muscle (especially animals that hibernate). It probably has something to do with hormones. I am not qualified to answer such a deep physiological question.
ReplyDeleteOne guess I have though is that we only keep what we need. If we don't have a stimulus to keep a lot of muscle, then we lose it. We truly only need a tiny bit of muscle to move and perform daily activities. So, if we aren't lifting weights, why keep such "useless" mass that just burns a lot of energy?