Weight loss – part 3
This is the third part in a series about weight loss including diet, exercise, measuring your success and keeping the weight off when you stop.
Last week we looked at the idea of creating a calorie deficit, the laws of thermodynamics and touched on the idea that, despite the simple physics, we still need to consider what combination of foods make up our calorie intake.
Today I will cover some of the specific foods that people are advised to avoid to help in their war against the flab.
Martin Berkhan – a starting point
Martin Berkhan, a guru of fat loss who has learned the art of maintaining an incredibly low body fat percentage all year round (and still indulging in his favourite treats every so often), wrote a superb guest post for Fitness Black Book highlighting the foods (and meals) that he recommends you skip to get the best fat loss benefits. In particular he focuses his black-list comments on:
- nuts;
- protein bars;
- dried fruit;
- liquid foods (including shakes, fruit juices, milks and yoghurt); and
- breakfast.
Nuts, seeds and dried fruit - significant calories in a small snack
I was fascinated to read that he is an advocate of using daily morning fasting to raise his metabolism. When I am on a fat loss diet I find breakfast to be the most awkward and ridiculous meal of the day, clocking in with two egg whites and a bit of broccoli. When I don’t get round to it at the weekend I find that I cope fine, so perhaps the answer is a bit of minor daily fasting.
I’ll go into a bit more detail on fasting in another post since it is a whole approach to weight loss in itself.
Liquid foods
I find that liquid foods are particularly important to avoid. With liquids it is incredibly easy to put a huge number of calories in during a short space of time. Often people don’t realise how many calories there are in their shake, smoothie or soup and your body is unlikely to register that it has had a proper meal.
There are diets that utilise a liquid food program, such as the Velocity Diet, and people have seen excellent results on these. However, it is important to note that in those diets the total calorific intake is carefully measured before people begin and it is difficult to believe that those on fluid-based diets don’t suffer from hunger.
I tried to use high calorie shakes to get round a tough cycle tour holiday once because I couldn’t guarantee food availability and wanted to ensure good nutrient intake. I was getting in more than enough calories each day but still suffered horribly from hunger cramps because my body wasn’t convinced that it was being fed enough.
The point I return to all the time is the fact that those on weight gain diets rely heavily on shakes, smoothies, soups and stews. I’ve also seen the best improvements to my weight loss diets since I swapped most of my protein sources to very dense chicken that requires plenty of chewing. There’s an element of placebo effect here. Plenty of chewing to convince your body that its been fed so that it doesn’t torment you with messages that it is hungry.
The Monster Shake - more than 600 calories in a glass
High-fructose corn syrup – an evil ingredient
Adding some extra foodstuffs to the list above from Martin, I can’t recommend strongly enough avoiding high-fructose corn syrup. I’m a strong believer that it should be avoided at any time, but a study carried out in rats and reported by both Dr Briffa and on Lifehacker showed that the rats fed the high-fructose corn syrup diet instead of a sucrose (table sugar) solution gained significantly more weight. This was despite the high-fructose corn syrup group consuming fewer calories than the sucrose solution group.
If you want to pick holes in this, I’ll accept that the study wasn’t done on humans. The problem with doing diet or exercise studies on humans is that it is difficult for researchers to ensure 100% compliance with the set diet or exercise plan. Unless you allocated one researcher to each test subject and the researcher cooked the meals and spent every waking hour with the test subject, they just can’t just fully control the study. It has also been noted that when you put individuals on a perceived “healthy” diet they tend to adjust other areas of their life, becoming more active and doing other things that are perceived as healthy. You would also need to take into account the placebo effect.
So instead researchers use rats or mice for controlled studies for their initial results. They might later roll out something similar to humans but the fall-back results will be those gathered from the studies on the rats and mice.
Carbohydrates
Low carbohydrate diets for weight loss is such a big topic that I’m not even going to start trying to cover it here. Instead I’ll treat it to a short post of its own next week!
If there is anything in particular you would like me to explore as I work through this series, please let me know and I’ll build it into my research.
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