Why we get fat and what to do about it

Steve, are you able to answer my first question in this thread? With regard to this particular book?

The book, from what I've read (I haven't quite finished it) doesn't directly ask or answer that question.

It does give many examples of studies from the 19th century and early 20th century which found that the poorest people (those who couldn't obtain meat or fish and did eat very high amounts of carbs) were often more obese than better off people despite often being malnurised and sometimes under fed.

This is exactly what is being questioned here.

Simply 'calories in' is not working in many cases. On average it is claimed we are eating less calories than we were a decade ago yet we are getting fatter and fatter. And more of us exercise.

Even when calories are kept at expenditure people get fatter (young ladies are a good example of this, even more so when doing large amounts of exercise becoming a higher bf% when staying the smae weight).

I have dealt with people getting fatter running 40 miles a week and eating 12-1500 cals per day. It's not a nice place to be but reducing calories is not an option.

What happens to food within the body is more important that calories and plays the major role in determining weight loss/gain. Activity at cellular level is dictated by hormones and calories are not the only influencer to this.

I can't answer it but I'll try to shed some light

When did carbs make up 70-90% of our diets?

Looking back over the last 50 years we have started to eat less fat and more carbs. Over the last 20-30 years we have seen a massive change in our carb sources to refined syrups and sugars. Alot of food aimed at the health conscious is now low fat (high sugar) and low calorie. We tend not to fry anything anymore or use low fat sprays if we do.

It wouldn't surpirse me if at one point we did eat more carbs with less pro/fat. But I can bet they were not the carbs we eat today.

Put simply, it's down to everyone being different. Some people are more resistant/sensitive to the insulin that is secreted in the body.

I personally believe that there's no "one size fits all" answer to the question. In my experience people react what I consider to be very differently to each other when trying similar things.

Obesity rates have risen significantly – dietary changes have occurred over the last fifty years but much more is that activity levels have changed which alters how we respond to any given food as well

One of the often quoted studies int his area is the prentice and jebb review which looked at macro/total energy intake and activity levels http://www.bmj.com/content/311/7002/437.full


activity levels went down the most – so for most people it’s a case of eating the wrong foods/amount COMBINED with being a lazy git.

If your active you can consume more calories, if your active your body will handle carbs better (hormonally)

As such most people need to be more active, this quote pretty much sums it up IMO

Their direct estimates of participation rates in various activities yield some telling statistics: 30-35% of men and women had undertaken fewer than four 20 minute periods of any type of moderate activity in the previous month

Combine that with stuffing your face with carb or fat and you will get fat

you mean like japanese - a nation with very high carb intake in terms of white rice and one of the healthiest BMIs and other health indicators.

or vegetarians in western world - again, higher intake of carbs, but healthier BMIs and other health indicators.

books like this have an agenda - and selectively choose their evidence and examples to support their quack dietary guru agenda trying to make themselves relevant, and rich.

An increasing number of studies, as tthe press have recently been keen to point out, have concluded that exercise is not an effective way of losing weight and that it simply serves to increase your appitite.

I am certainly not claiming it is true, but the suggestion by Taubes is that people are less active because they get fat as opposed to people get fat because they exercise less.

I was probably at my leanest and healthiest living in Japan.

The rice did make the diet fairly carb heavy, but there was also lots of veg, lean meat, fish and soy products. The carbs largely lacked refined sugars etc. The majorty of fats were from oily fish and meat. There was usually a large veriety of foods in every meal, making most meals quite nutritionally balanced.

Generally the diet was very good and most people are much more physically active than here. Most houses dont have a sofa, you sit on the floor, so people tend to spend less time sitting around.

The lack of dairy in the diet can be a positive and negative, many peoples posture suggested an element of calcuim deficiency.

I'm quite confused. Is this guy suggesting that zero (or very low) carbs are the way forward? Or have I misinterpreted that from Martin's post about stopping people eating carbs?

It seems like this conversation went from 'carbs are the devil', to 'simple carbs are the devil'.

This doesnt correlate with Steve's suggestion that it should be looked at from an unbiased objective viewpoint by health professionals, because as far as I can tell, they already know that!

Unfortunately the majority of mainstream doctors and dieticians will have exactly the same response as you and dismis the book without reading it.

Something is clearly going very wrong in the West and maintream medicine has failed to find any solution other than switching the blame to the individual (gluttony & sloth).

Re Japanese - agreed - I'm sure the type of carbs is far more important than quantity

Re Veges - I'm sure done correctly vegetarianism can be healthy - the three veges I know are however amongst the most unhealthy people I know. Possibly proper vegatarians are health because they make better food choices and eat more real whole food rather than anything to do with carb/protein/fat ratios?

Every obese person I know falls into one or the other

Which one do you fall into

Both