Weight Loss Thread

Convo_sl said:

It's wonder so many of us are confused in regards to proper nutrition. There is just so much information out there to filter.

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Stick to reading studies by actual medical doctors, biologist, biochemists, etc., or recommendations by people who footnote their plans go check and make sure those are real studies (some people just make up fake studies), then spot check the studies to see if they were read correctly (as opposed to just reading the summary, yeah, that happens).

There is a lot of misinformation out there, because of personal beliefs, to drive profit, whatever, but it is mostly avoidable if you aren't naive or emotionally invested in a given plan.

I do and have.. I always just come across more confusing info tho.. Like this articleNew study links L-carnitine in red meat to heart disease - Harvard Health Publications

It's wonder so many of us are confused in regards to proper nutrition. There is just so much information out there to filter.

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Yeah, you could go insane trying to min/max your nutrition due to:

1) The sheer volume of information out there
2) The high volume of misinformation, broscience, and outright lies
3) The conflicting information (This study says something is bad for you, this other study says it's ok)

I think all most people can do is find a diet (meaning your food in general, not a short-term weight loss plan) that works for your specific life situation and makes you feel "healthy". I used to eat almost nothing but frozen and/or heavily processed food (think: stuff from boxes) and it's no wonder that I used to get constantly sick, feel tired, and overall just be miserable. That's how I grew up and that's how my family ate (eats) so I figured it was normal. It wasn't until I started reading bits and pieces of information on the internet and began to adopt a largely "natural" diet that I realized just how shitty I felt before. I look better, feel better, and rarely get sick now compared with how I was in the past. Is my diet optimal? Of course not. I'm sure I'm eating lots of stuff that various studies say I shouldn't, but as far as I know I'm in overall good health and I feel great.

I, personally, would never go fully vegetarian or vegan, but if someone finds that they feel better overall by eating that way, why not? Our bodies are strange things, and it's really impossible to know how you'll feel with a given diet unless you try it for a while and see.

Good point McCheese.. Sounds like we had a similar upbringing lol.. Over the years I have learned more about what to eat and what not to.. Some of it easy(processed foods) but when you start getting into meats, dairy, fish, etc.. it can get confusing. I just assume a safe route is to consume a ton of natural things like plant based foods. I guess the 90/10 ratio did catch my attention a bit.

btw.. is the China Study worth reading or has someone poked holes in that too?

Convo_sl said:

I do and have.. I always just come across more confusing info tho.. Like this articleNew study links L-carnitine in red meat to heart disease - Harvard Health Publications

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Didn't read your article, but that one I believe was pretty much debunked (or the study wasn't conclusive enough for that correlation to be made).

There's so much bullshit out there. That's why I just go by the everything in moderation approach. I eat fats, proteins, and carbs. I avoid processed shit. The end.

Convo_sl said:

Good point McCheese.. Sounds like we had a similar upbringing lol.. Over the years I have learned more about what to eat and what not to.. Some of it easy(processed foods) but when you start getting into meats, dairy, fish, etc.. it can get confusing. I just assume a safe route is to consume a ton of natural things like plant based foods. I guess the 90/10 ratio did catch my attention a bit.

btw.. is the China Study worth reading or has someone poked holes in that too?

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What China study?

Sorry that's a book based on what I was talking about. China- Oxford-Cornell project

Convo_sl said:

to use an analogy from the book..Which has more protein oatmeal, ham or a tomato? The answer is they all have about the same. The difference is the tomato and oatmeal are packed with fiber and other disease fighting nutrients and the ham is packed with cholesterol and saturated fat. The writer Dr.Joel Fuhrman, believes (and uses tons of studies to make his case) that Animal products meats, cheeses , and processed food are the reason for our ailing health problems and high cancer rates. Food like meats and cheeses have very little in form of good nutrients. As opposed to veggies which have a high nutrient density.. for instance steak has 6.4 grams of protein per 100 calories and broccoli has 11.1 plus fiber and other disease fighting nutrients. He references a lot of studies, China project, medical journal, etc.. It's an interesting read for anyone looking to pick up a new book on nutrition.

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If you have not watched the Fat Head documentary I'd suggest it just to get another perspective. I also liked "Perfect Human Diet", which covers vegan/vegetarian options. They discuss what they feel are the flaws of the China study. I think they are both on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

As for the ham in your first analogy, there are many would would argue convincingly that cholesterol and saturated fats are not bad things. Fiber is good but good luck getting a lot of protein from broccoli.

Having said that I'm a believer in many paths to health and do what works for you so let us know how it goes.

I warned you....

Tonight for dinner I ate a whole bag of broccoli/cauliflower with hummus for dip just to spite you all.

Post about your next shit in the GWBYH thread

chaos_sl said:

Post about your next shit in the GWBYH thread

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It will probably be liquidy and smelly, been drinking all night and medication I'm on gives me diarrhea.

fifey_sl said:

It will probably be liquidy and smelly, been drinking all night and medication I'm on gives me diarrhea.

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Sounds delightful.

Decided to change some stuff around in my life. I graduate college in a year and I kinda want to slim down by then. College degree = new life, Not so fat me = new life. Most of classes are on the 6th floor so I decided to take the stairs today. Slightly ashamed to say it kicked my ass. Made it to the 4th floor and decided I needed to look out the window for a couple minutes to make sure my heart didnt blow a rod.
Stairs are fat discrimination!

Someone poked major, major holes in the China Study.

That is to say, she showed that the conclusions drawn by the authors of the study is not supported by their very own data. She used the data in their actual study to show no direct correlation between meat consumption and disease/death compared to non-meat concumption.

China Study | Raw Food SOS

Which is kind of the purpose of peer review. Another reason claims made by personal trainers are highly suspect, if a doctor or scientist publishes a study with bad methodology, data, or conclusions, it'll be evaluated by their, equally knowledgeable, peers and the study will be replicated to see if the results match. If a personal trainer says equally unsupportable things, no one is going to correct them. Thankfully there are any number of free resources where people footnote their suggestions with peer reviewed studies. That is a good thing to look for, actually, if you are going to be taking advice from anyone who is trying to sell you something. Do they footnote their work? Because most of them don't. Actually I haven't seen a book on fitness or diet published by anyone who wasn't a doctor that rigorously sourced their suggestions with actual studies that had been peer reviewed.

The Master_sl said:

Which is kind of the purpose of peer review. Another reason claims made by personal trainers are highly suspect, if a doctor or scientist publishes a study with bad methodology, data, or conclusions, it'll be evaluated by their, equally knowledgeable, peers and the study will be replicated to see if the results match. If a personal trainer says equally unsupportable things, no one is going to correct them. Thankfully there are any number of free resources where people footnote their suggestions with peer reviewed studies. That is a good thing to look for, actually, if you are going to be taking advice from anyone who is trying to sell you something. Do they footnote their work? Because most of them don't. Actually I haven't seen a book on fitness or diet published by anyone who wasn't a doctor that rigorously sourced their suggestions with actual studies that had been peer reviewed.

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That's what gets me about this book.. is you have people like Dr.Oz and other doctors supporting it. I didn't read his other book but apparently the first chapter is dedicated to his detractors by himself and other prominent doctors where they support his Eat to Live diet.

and reviews like this..http://www.einstein.yu.edu/uploadedF...natullah46.pdfWhich is probably what some of the guys here are pointing out as he does with some of his content.

@fifey- are you following that book?

Dr. Oz is a well established "quack", he'll say anything if there is money in it for him. Doctor's aren't immune to greed just because they have an M.D. What matters is evaluating their claims and evidence.

This is especially true for doctors that are "media personalities" since the media loves shallow quick-fix nonsense they get along quite well.

I am going to lay it out for you Convo. Here is what we know for sure...

The Global Western Industrial Diet, also known as the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.), is absolutely fucking awful for you. The evidence for this is utterly incontrovertible. Because it is so ridiculously, awfully, amazingly bad for youanyintervention that pulls you away from it even a little, no matter how asinine, will almost certainly lead to health improvement.

Beyond that...

The problem is that vegan proselytizers claim that a vegan diet leads to better health because itlacks meat, not because it is less crappy than the S.A.D. They compare "vegan diets" to the worse lifestyle imaginable, then conflate eating meat alone with a host of other factors in order to convert people to veganism. Not because better health is the desired outcome, but because veganism itself is the goal beyond all other factors. It is an ideological/religious movement, and like all such movements actual evidence is irrelevant, only the belief is relevant. Therefore all data is twisted, maligned, or downright lied about in order to support their worldview. They are completely untrustworthy.

I have yet to see any controlled scientific study that even compares a vegan diet to one containing non-industrial meat where the only variable was the meat itself (i.e. Controlling for smoking, exercise, vegetable intake, etc). Never mind one that shows pure animal protein is the main culprit for metabolic disease. And the reason we haven't seen this is because it would be very hard and VERY expensive to complete. It also isn't necessary because the correlative evidence doesn't point in that direction anyway.

I hope this little rant helps.

It does. Hopefully we will get better studies in the future.

I came across this article looking for some solid research on meatStudy Points to New Culprit in Heart Disease - NYTimes.com

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Convo_sl said:

That's what gets me about this book.. is you have people like Dr.Oz and other doctors supporting it. I didn't read his other book but apparently the first chapter is dedicated to his detractors by himself and other prominent doctors where they support his Eat to Live diet.

and reviews like this..http://www.einstein.yu.edu/uploadedF...natullah46.pdfWhich is probably what some of the guys here are pointing out as he does with some of his content.

@fifey- are you following that book?

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He footnotes his work, good. Go read the actual studies, turns out he is making a standard error: correlation is not causation. The studies he references in no way support the conclusions he draws from them and the studies themselves usually don't even state a conclusion similar to the one he espouses to have garnered from it. Denaut explained why eating vegan/vegetation ends up being better than most people's average diet. This is usually called cherry picking. Taking information out of context and using it to support a claim, while ignoring contradicting information. It is a form of selection bias.

I often wonder what the world would be like if human beings were better at being truly scientific.