Retrospective #467: It’s not fair!

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that, “The weight reduced individual will be requiring about 20% less (sic) calories per day relative to somebody of that weight who’s never lost weight would eat…in order to keep at that weight.” That’s what Rudolf Leibel, MD, Co-Director of the New York Obesity Research Center at Columbia University Medical Center said in “Choices,” one of 4 hour-long videos in the 2014 PBS series, “Weight of the Nation.”

“Individuals losing weight are not metabolically the same as they were before they lost weight,” Dr. Leibel said. I know. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is…if you believe “a calorie is a calorie,” as Dr. Leibel apparently does. You will be consigned to accept this depressing fact and live with it. Worse still, you must be resigned to either 1) be fat because you will naturally want to eat as much as the person “who’s never lost weight” (because they don’t have to), or 2) you will eat 20% fewer calories and be hungry all the time. Your choice! (if you believe this line of thinking).

Dr. Leibel’s example: “Consider two individuals – same gender, same age, exactly the same body weight – one of whom is at that body weight as a result of let’s say a 10 or 15% weight reduction, the other who’s been at that weight for their entire adult life. If that reduced weight individual goes out to lunch with her friend, and they both order the same meal, that will represent 20% overeating for the weight-reduced individual, and be quite normal for the individual who’s not in that state. Twenty percent might seem like a little, but 20% excess calorie intake a year will account for the inexorable weight gain.” There, he said it again: “excess calories.”

But what if “calories don’t count”? I’m not joking. If you haven’t heard this before, just Google it. I got 20 million hits, many, on the first few pages, from sites that I respect. But I don’t need to search the Internet to know that. I don’t need to “count” calories (or eat 20% fewer) to keep the weight off or not regain the weight I’ve lost. I know I can do that by changing the foods I eat; by eating fewer carbohydrates, especially processed carbohydrates; by eating high quality proteins and fats instead. They will be more satiating, and I will naturally eat less without hunger (because, when my blood sugar and insulin levels are low, my body is using it’s own fat for fuel and is in energy balance).

Sound too simple? Too good to be true? Well, if you don’t want to accept this, then you are welcome to wallow in self-pity and eat the “balanced diet” that the USDA and BIG PHARMA and the medical establishment dictate. You can ignore their conflicts of interest. You can also ignore your glucose meter and what is best for YOUR health. You can follow the HHS/USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which continues to closely mirror the catastrophic “diabesity” epidemic trendline since they were first published in 1980, following the dictates of the “Dietary Goals” of 1977. 

You can also rely on the American Heart Association’s exhortation since 1961 that you avoid saturated fat and dietary cholesterol and instead eat their recommended highly processed vegetable and seed oils produced by the same USDA-subsidized AGRIBUSINESSES that made the trans-fat laden Crisco and corn-oil margarines. It’s your choice.

So, whom are you going to believe, me or your heart doctor? ;-) Okay, THAT’s not fair either. If you already have heart disease, I won’t blame you for following your specialist’s advice, even if he or she doesn’t know sh*t about nutrition. But, just for laughs, I challenge you to ask if they know 1) that in 2014 the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee declared “dietary cholesterol…is no longer a nutrient of concern for over-consumption” and 2) that Ancel Keys, the author of the “diet-heart hypothesis,” said later in life “we’ve known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn’t matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit.”

Then, there’s also this quote of “updated findings” from Dr. William Castelli, Director of the famous Framingham Study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine: “In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower people’s serum cholesterol. . . we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, and ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active.” As I said, whom are you going to believe? Me, the 2014 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the Director of the long-term, highly respected Framingham Study, or your doctor? Confounding, isn’t it?