Food is Not the Enemy

Q I recently heard about a study that showed that people who went low-carb lost more weight than those on other diets. I know you aren't a fan of diets and wondered about your thoughts on this.

A I don't like fad diets, primarily because they do little to educate us nutritionally and do not address the underlying psychological reasons for weight gain. Instead, the message conveyed is that we should avoid a particular food or food group if we hope to achieve our goals. The result has been an almost phobic response to eating carbohydrates, fearing they will automatically lead to weight gain. In essence, carbohydrates have become the bad guy, just as fats were a few decades ago when low-fat diets were popular. Most diets can indeed result in weight loss, but few work long-term and few place emphasis on losing pounds in a healthy manner.

Trying to avoid food eventually leads to feelings of deprivation and stress, which in turn leads to binges and cravings, abandoning the diet, and reverting back to old habits. Unfortunately, this usually results in even greater weight gain, leaving the person feeling like a failure.

Taking an approach where food is not the enemy allows you to relax again and take charge of your eating habits in more sensible ways, instead of feeling powerless.

The guaranteed formula for body fat loss remains the same: calorie intake must be less than caloric expenditure. Wherever calories are cut, be it from carbohydrates, from fat, from protein or a combination, the result will be the same: weight loss. Or, you could burn more calories with exercise and keep your diet at the same level. The best scenario is to eat a well-balanced diet from all food groups with the focus on health and portion control, and to increase physical activity. We must be willing to make necessary changes to lifestyle habits that continue to promote overeating and/ or under-exercising.

I am not familiar with the study you mention and so in order to agree or disagree with the outcome, I would need to have more information, such as how many calories each participant was consuming prior to the study. The higher the prestudy caloric intake, for example, the more weight would be lost once calories were controlled and reduced.

I would need to see the statistics on how much each participant weighed beforehand, along with height, ratio of muscle to fat and activity levels. It would be important to also know participants' pre-study carbohydrate intake.

Prestudy calories burned with exercise would also need to be compared to the number expended during the study to determine how much of each participant's weight loss was from exercise and how much was from diet. It would be important to know if calculations were performed to determine how much actual body fat was lost as opposed to scale weight. If calories are cut in a drastic fashion, the result is that the body perceives starvation, and works to preserve its fat stores in order to survive, while sacrificing muscle.

The body always burns a combination of carbohydrate and fat calories, and burns carbohydrates more readily and in greater proportion. If carbohydrates are depleted to a level too low for normal functioning, the body eventually begins to break down muscle and bone tissue to supply needed energy. Therefore, any muscle or water weight loss would reflect as weight loss.

It would be interesting to know how many men, who for the most part have more muscle mass than women, participated in the study.

The higher the number of males and potential muscle loss, the greater the overall weight loss would appear.

Source: Dayton Daily News