Eat more. Weigh less.
Why the most widely held premise of weight management is deeply flawed.
Sounds counter-intuitive? Well, yeah, because the point is to draw attention to the fact that broadly held public perceptions and general advise on dieting and weight loss have been based on a fundamentally false premise: calories.
Those diet fads and trends whatever they are clearly aren’t working as the obesity epidemic is not in reverse. Quite the contrary in fact.
Here’s the thing, if you want to consistently manage or lose weight, you need to eat more of ‘the right things’, because when you eat more of the right things there is less space for ‘the other things’. By ‘other things’ we’re talking those foods which are calorie-dense, but nutrient-poor. That is, Ultra Processed foods from sliced white bread, frozen pizzas, candy bars, and every other type of junk food out there.
By ‘right things’ we’re essentially talking whole foods with plenty of fibre.
The long and the short is: eat more of the right things, then you’ll eat less of ‘the other things’ and the impact of on your blood sugar levels of junk foods will have a less of a detrimental impact overall.
Calories Counting isn’t the Solution
Most people think that the crux of weight management ultimately comes down to the how much we eat and that if we want to lose weight, we have to reduce our calorie intake.
Of course there are some elements of truth to calorie intake. However, focusing on calories as the basis of weight management is a doomed-to-fail strategy, because no one likes calorie counting. And if you aren’t enjoying your food, you’re going against something that is so fundamental to the human experience: the pleasure of a good meal.
We’re hard wired to enjoy our food. And so we might be able to carry on counting calories or follow some other similarly restrictive diet trend for awhile, only to fall right back into our old habits when the experiment is over, and put on the kilos that we’ve just suffered so much to shed.
Nutrient Poor Foods are Mainstream
The real heart of the problem concerns the our hyper industrialised food system, which, to use Michael Pollan’s expression from his book, In Defense of Food, has given us a vast array of ‘food-like substances’. These all share a common and dangerous trait: they are incredibly rich in calories, but contain very little in terms of nutrients and dietary fibre.
Nutritional science is working to test a hypothesis that the reason we overeat is because of a hormone called ghrelin that is responsible for making us feel hungry. When we’ve eaten another hormone called Leptin takes over and makes us feel satiated.
Now the problem is that Leptin doesn’t seem to be triggered when we’re eating food calories rich, nutrient poor foods because the body, when eating these types of foods, in effect is starving because empty calories have failed to give it the nutrients it craves, and so therefore it continues to produce ghrelin, and we continue to eat, even though we’re now over-eating calories. It’s a strange phenomenon where the body can effectively be starving even though that body may actually be obese.
Fibre, fibre fibre
This cannot be stressed enough. Most people are fibre deficient. If you’re struggling with weight you are almost certainly fibre deficient. Fibre is really, really important to get enough of, because it helps maintain gut health by acting as a broom that sweeps our intestines, and, crucially, becuase fibres themselves don’t contain any calories and so therefore help fill us up without adding calories.
Another key reason why fibre must be a part of any healthy diet, is because fibre acts as a mesh or filter if you will through which the carbohydrates in our meal, the glucose, will have to pass through, to be absorbed at a slow and steady rate. This in turns serves to avoid spikes in blood sugar levels, and avoid the liver turning excess energy into fat reserves — and you getting type 2 diabetes.
Most people aren’t getting enough fibre in their diets, because the fibre content in most industrial food products e.g. sliced bread, breakfast cereals, ready meals, etc. has been stripped out.
Some of the very best sources of fibre to include:
Pulses
Leafy greens
Whole grains
Pulses and whole grains are fantastic because they also are an excellent source of protein, which is critical for satiation.
High Fat Low Carb vs. Low Fat High Carb doesn’t matter
A paper based on a 12 month study of diet genotypes and weight management found that:
“There was no significant difference in 12-month weight loss between the HLF and HLC diets, and neither genotype pattern nor baseline insulin secretion was associated with the dietary effects on weight loss.”
The criteria for the study was that participants had to eat a diet based on whole foods. They could eat as much as they liked and they were not asked to count calories. Participants in both groups lost approximately the same amount of weight over the study period.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673150
The Conclusion
How much you eat matters way less than what you eat. If you eat primarily foods that are nutrient dense i.e. whole grains, pulses, fruit and veg, and seeds and nuts, it is practically impossible to eat too many calories because you brain will send the hormonal signal that you are full, before you have the chance to eat too many calories.
The bonus for eating a diet primarily consisting of nutrient dense whole foods with a high fibre content is that if you then eat some ice cream or chocolate or other kind of sweet after, then the sugars will be absorbed gradually and slowly, so that you don’t have massive spikes in insulin that lead to diabetes and weight gain.