The Fit, the Fat, the Fads…the Facts!
B y Mel A. Ona, M.S., M.P.H., M.A.According to recent statistics reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 64.5% of Americans are overweight and 30% are obese. These numbers represent the fact that many people overeat and under exercise and underscore the importance of finding solutions to this epidemic.
Clearly, the causes for the overweight and obesity epidemic are multifactorial, and the adverse health consequences are staggering for those who fail to maintain a healthy weight. Poor diet and insufficient exercise lead to increased risk for diabetes, cancer, stroke, and heart disease, not to mention burgeoning health care costs and decreased quality of life.
Our country’s obesity problem is not without myriad “solutions” and methods for losing weight and keeping it off. Diet books, supplements, fitness gadgets, and health gurus alike cram bookshelves and saturate the media promising “instant results” or “magical weight loss” effortlessly and painlessly.
Unfortunately, diet books and the multi-billion dollar supplement industry have added much confusion among those who are looking for scientifically valid and applicable methods for nutritiously balanced eating, effective exercise, and realistic weight loss.
For instance, people entrust well-known authors who have devised and aggressively market their own unique nutrition system whether or not it has any scientific basis.
Here are just a few… Atkins: a cardiologist from Cornell Medical School , espouses the consumption of extremely low carbohydrates and unlimited amounts of high fat foods such as bacon, cheese, steak, and cream for losing fat without hunger…
Ornish : a doctor whose thousands of cardiac patients swear that their heart disease was reversed by following his low fat, low sugar, no cholesterol, high fiber, no calorie restriction diet…
Sears : a prominent scientist with a Ph.D., provides a macronutrient ration plan that puts you in an optimal “zone” for weight loss and maintenance…
Goglia : a trainer-of-celebrities, claims that he has discovered three metabolic types and that following his nutrition and exercise prescription according to your metabolism revs up your internal furnace and allows you to burn maximum calories…
Somers : a well-known, charismatic actress, asserts that you can “get skinny” by turning the USDA Food Guide Pyramid upside down, eat as much butter, cheese, and meat as you want, and eliminate a bunch of “funky foods” from your diet like carrots, nuts, and tofu…
and D’Adamo: a naturopathic physician, asserts that your blood governs weight loss potential and that certain foods are beneficial, neutral, or poison depending on your blood type. The sad truth is that many people blindly trust what’s being marketed as nutritional truth by prominent authors. A closer look at some of these books in the context of what really works in terms of fat loss and optimal weight maintenance is warranted.
First of all, the immutable law of physics applies to energy balance and weight loss. If one is in calorie deficit, or negative energy balance, that person will lose weight: whether by decreasing energy intake, increasing energy expenditure, or a combination of both. All of the aforementioned diets work by this mechanism whether it is explicitly stated in the printed pages – in none of them, actually – or implied.
D’Adamo’s book, Eat Right for your Type, Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, Somers’ Get Skinny on Fabulous Food, and Ornish’s Eat More, Weight Less are not calorie-restricted per se, while Sears’ The Zone, and Goglia’s Turn Up the Heat do restrict calories. However, each one of these books either eliminates or greatly restricts food groups, macronutrients, or both. Simply cuttings out carbohydrates, for example, and limiting variety of savory snacks, contribute to caloric reduction and subsequent weight loss.
Unfortunately, this restriction often comes with a nutrient cost and sacrifices dietary balance for a quick fix and short-term solution. For example, Atkins, D’Adamo, Somers, and Sears all recommend eliminating certain carbohydrates like carrots, corn, breads, tomatoes, tofu, and pasta.
Consuming significantly fewer servings of carbohydrates contributes to initial weight loss due to the loss of glycogen and water (as one gram of glycogen holds three grams of water).
Following an unbalanced nutrition plan (i.e. protracted low carb diet) may set people up for long-term failure because consuming a more moderate amount of carbohydrate after a period of glycogen depletion will result in subsequent water weight gain. This can wreak psychological and emotional havoc on a person’s resolve to maintain their lost weight and may lead that person to give up on the diet and revert to previous nutrition habits and substantial weight re-gain.
In terms of fat and protein intake, many diets emphasize choosing lean protein sources and recommend more healthful, unsaturated fat sources with the exception of Atkins and Somers who promote ketogenic diets characterized by high protein, high fat, and low carbohydrate intake.
People are led to believe that consuming saturated fat in unlimited amounts along with very low carbohydrates will translate to healthy weight loss and optimal health. However, it is well established that diets high in saturated fat significantly increase a person’s risk for developing cardiovascular disease – our nation’s #1 killer.
Scientific validity proves futile with many of these diet books. In one of my Nutritional Biochemistry classes, my classmates and I reviewed and presented several of the aforementioned diet books. We chose to review D’Adamo’s book and found that his claim of agglutination in the bloodstream mediated by certain food lectins is simply not true, in vivo.
In other words, what happens in the test tube can be totally different than what occurs in your body. All other books, except for Ornish, similarly fail the “is this diet science-based?” test and some are questionable from a safety perspective. None of them mention dietary components like the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI), Dietary Guidelines, nor explain important terms such as energy density, variety, and palatability.
To their credit, though, all of the books recommend increasing physical activity with Goglia topping them all with a prescription of 1 hour and 30 minutes of exercise each day! (I don’t know about you, but I’m happy with keeping my workouts brief but intense thank you very much!)
For the most part, reading these diet books to gain knowledge about nutrition and health is insufficient and misguided. Fat-phobic folks and carbohydrate-phobic followers should instead focus on understanding recent, science-based concepts such as increasing healthful fat intake (especially fish oils, monounsaturated oils, and polyunsaturated oils), decreasing trans fatty acid and refined sugar intake, limiting alcohol consumption for enhancing health, and minding the glycemic index and glycemic load of carbohydrates for managing blood sugar and stabilizing energy levels.
Overall, successful and optimal weight loss and maintenance involve consistent calorie control, progressive weight-resistance exercise and cardiovascular activity for building and preserving lean body mass, and lifelong behavior modification for permanent results.
Sound nutrition advice regarding daily consumption of a variety of nutrient dense foods like vegetables (at least five servings a day!), plus adequate fiber (14 grams per 1000 calories) must be followed diligently. The saying, “if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will keep getting what you’ve always had” is appropriate. People may want to change – lose fat and stay healthy – but many are unwilling to change their lifestyle permanently to attain this. They opt for the quick-fix, next-best-diet book; try it for a few weeks and maybe lose a few pounds; fall off the plan, regain the weight; and then start all over again.
Indeed, high recidivism still persists (~97%) and the diet book trend contributes to the yo-yo phenomenon. There are no magic bullets or special secrets for transforming the physique. Perhaps by looking at the positive deviants – people who have succeeded with dieting and getting to lean elite levels – we might understand that permanent weight loss and healthy weight maintenance occur not by frivolously following the fads, but rather, by being mindful and taking control of daily caloric consumption and engaging in regular intense physical activity to balance the energy equation towards healthier and longer living.
Mel Ona earned his Master of Science in Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism at Tufts University and author of Changing Bodies, Transforming Lives – Your Ultimate Guide to FAD-FREE™ Fat Loss!. You can find him online at www.melona.com.
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