<p>The more I read about the Stanford study, the more impressed I was with how it was designed. He’s very clear in the lecture that this wasn’t a “feeding” study where you’re fed exactly what the study designer wants you to eat – but instead a study of how well people did in real life with various diets based on having been trained very, very thoroughly on them and with strong encouragement. He several times mentions a woman at the University of Pennsylvania (or was it Cornell?) who does do some impressive feeding studies, but that’s a very different approach. Since I don’t have a personal chef/shopper at home, I felt that the Stanford study participants/plan actually was very representative of my options, and that was helpful. Seeing the lipid chemistry results was also very helpful, as was knowing that the study wasn’t funded by a certain interest group.</p>
<p>I’m going to try and get a copy of the actual study to read the whole thing, but it is something that I’ll need some help to get since I don’t have a subscription.</p>
<p>What is interesting is that full body images of some of these diet authors do not seem to be commonly available on the web. Makes you wonder why…</p>
<p>Here are the one-year average weight losses for the four diets. In all cases, the one year averages were less than the six-month averages, as some had gained weight back:</p>
<p>The women averaged 40 years old, weighed an average of 187 pounds at the start of the study, and had an average body fat of 40%.</p>
<p>I guess that one key finding is how ineffective all these diets were, on average, considering that all of these women got eight weekly classes teaching them the book to start. Of course, women with 40% body fat are likely to have lifestyles and physiological factors that tend towards being fat in the first place, so it’s not surprising that many of them were still fat at the end of a year. Some apparently gained 20 pounds “on their diets”. Ouch.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link, i-dad – the one I found was just to an abstract. One of the other interesting details of the study is that the Atkins group had about half the dropouts of the other group – and while they show the stated “reason” for the dropout, I think that the subtext for dropouts (other than move-away or got pregnant) is often dissatisfaction with the diet. </p>
<p>One of the things that is not broken out in this study – but that he mentions in the video – is that when you analyze the subgroup of those with metabolic syndrome, the results are even more pronounced. I’m going to try and see if that has been published. (It may not be publishable since that wasn’t the intent of the study, and I know that there are some real limitations to what you can do legitimately from a statistics point of view when you begin to delve into things you didn’t initially plan to study.)</p>
<p>And while 10.3 pounds on average at a year may not sound like much at all, it is still enough to show some favorable changes in blood pressure and blood lipids for the group, and it also means that some people lost 30 or more pounds, and some gained. It also reinforces the notion that weight loss is really, really hard. I think that I have it easy – don’t watch much TV (and thus don’t see the commercials for food), shop and have the resources to buy high quality food, and a kitchen to prepare it in along with the cooking skills to make it tasty. D is finding it harder in the dorm cafeteria environment – and I don’t envy her seeing the coffeecakes, donuts and muffins out every morning. I had a good look at them when I was out at an early morning meeting, and it took some real strength of will. Maybe that will change. (I hope so.)</p>
<p>I also think that it is very interesting to see what kinds of metabolic changes happen to most people who have weight loss surgery – the almost immediate transition to a non-diabetic state can’t be explained by the weightloss, which doesn’t happen nearly as quickly. It will be interesting to see what they learn about that. (I’m not interested in surgical options, but I do find that aspect pretty fascinating in exposing just how much we don’t know about weight and blood sugar regulation.)</p>
<p>The other interesting thing is that the reported energy expenditure of about 34 kcal/kg per day calculates to 2890 kcal/day for the average 85 kg participant. It could be very well that the participants’ reported exercise habits are greatly overestimated (or the formula for calculating energy expenditure overestimates), since a 1000 to 1300 calorie daily deficit should result in significant loss.</p>
<p>The lead researcher is quite forthcoming that the self-reported calorie intakes are always under-reported. Clearly 300 women with an average 40% body fat and weighing 187 pounds were not actually eating the 1900 calories a day they reported at the beginning of the study! Women eating 1900 calories a day are not generally obese; obese women are generally eating far in excess of 1900 calories a day.</p>
<p>He advises to disregard the actual numbers and assume that, in a group of 300 women, they tended to under-report consistently across-the-board.</p>
<p>Yes. This whole metabolic syndrome/insulin resistance issue seems to be pretty important. If I recall, the lead researcher said that fully one third of the women in his study had the clinical signs of being insulin resistant.</p>
<p>That’s one of the big reasons that I think Gary Taubes is on the right track with carbs/insulin/fat storage as a key mechanism in obesity and probably a huge factor in how getting fat leads to getting fatter still. I felt like I was on an accelerating curve.</p>
<p>Yeah, the danish or glazed donut has to be the absolute worst thing imaginable. Taubes cites some evidence that sugar magnifies the insulin release fat storage of eating white flour carbs. A bagel is pretty much the devil’s spawn when it comes to belly blubber, too. </p>
<p>Reading Taubes’ book has really helped me in that I can’t look at this junk food in the same way. My attitude is that largely avoiding carbs is what buys me the freedom to enjoy a big serving of my bar-b-que pork roast or a huge salad with blue cheese/olive oil/balsamic dressing for lunch. Or a snack of pistachios. At the end of the day, that stuff all tastes better than a slice or two of whole grain toast or whatever.</p>
<p>I’m waiting for the opportunity to give the book to my daughter. I think it’s important that anyone with a predisposition to gain weight at least consider the possibility that Taubes is right. Lord knows the “official dietary dogma” is not working very well.</p>
<p>That would also call into suspicion the post-diet reported consumption of 1500-1600 calories per day, as well as the reported physical activity of 2890 calories per day, right?</p>
<p>Overall, it seems to be a rather poor performance for all of the diets, more so in the lack of compliance and perhaps the self deception in what people think that they are eating and exercising versus what they actually do. Perhaps it is like Atkins got a D and the others got a D-, to use a school grades analogy.</p>
<p>Yes. Absolutely. If these women had actually averaged 1500-1600 calories a day, they would have lost significant weight in a year, much more than they actually lost.</p>
<p>To me, the really stunner here is that the official dietary recommendations of the US government, American Heart Association, and others is apparently dead wrong. There advice to eat low-fat high carb diets is wrong from the standpoint of obesity and wrong from the standpoint of minimizing factors associated with heart disease. That’s pretty eye-opening and this is not the only recent study showing that.</p>
<p>Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that government bureaucrats are wrong, misguided, incompetent, or clouded by bias. The problem in the health care field is that official government policy establishes what health care providers have to recommend in order to get paid. So bad advice gets compounded quickly. Kind of scarey to think that the obesity epidemic has been made worse by the recommendations of the health care providers to their patients.</p>
<p>I have been wondering about this myself, with my daughter. With women, especially young women, weight is such a sensitive subject. For me, the question is how to make her hear that it is about health and not about weight.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why it is the case, but it seems that many people (especially women but also men) seem to be obsessed with how much they weigh, even after being told about better measures of body fat and health, including body fat percentage and waistline.</p>
<p>Sometimes, this results in people getting frustrated that they are not “losing weight” after beginning an exercise program, when the exercise stimulated the gain of muscle weight, which is desirable and healthy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, body fat cannot be reliably measured, so it is a pretty useless measure for most people. Rachael Cosgrove builds the motivation in her program around the idea of “thermometer jeans” – jeans that are too tight now and fit eight weeks later. With her clientele, she sees women who fit into their thermometer jeans without losing much scale weight. I am experiencing that myself. My current workout program is changing the shape of my body with relatively minor changes on the scale these days. I am visibly building muscle and shedding fat.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I question all that when talking about a seriously obese starting point. There is no way in heck that any of of us ol’ fat guys or gals are going to convert 40, 50, or 75 pounds of blubber into muscle. With that kind of lard, the scale’s gotta move. I’m afraid that the idea of “building muscle” is used as an excuse in some cases. In that case, the strength training and workouts are simply limiting the loss of lean body mass that is inevitable when large fat stores are dropped. I suspect that fluctuation in water weight is a more likely culprit.</p>
<p>Speaking of building muscle, I finally got back on the workout track. My final shot at Workout A of Phase II of NROL4A. I kept the weights all the same except I bumped up my ghetto dumbbell dead lift to two 50 lb dumbbells.</p>
<p>16 Split squats (2 x 30 lb)
16 One arm rows (50 lb)</p>
<p>8 Ghetto Dumbbell deadlifts (2 x 50 lb)
16 Alternating DB presses (2 x 35 lb)</p>
<p>Four sets of each. Every muscle in my body is firing. I love how just four exercises in these workouts covers all the bases and the two alternating workouts cover the bases in different ways.</p>
<p>Core was Valslide painful pushaways and swiss ball mountain climbers (ouch, those things still make me want to puke) plus half-kneeling resistance band chops.</p>
<p>Eventually, it has to move as the large amount of blubber is lost – but initiating exercise may mask the fat loss on the scale if muscle gain occurs at the same time.</p>
<p>If the scale is not moving, but the waistline is shrinking, that is progress. Waistline is a decent proxy for abdominal body fat, the kind most dangerous to health. Even if it is inaccurate in determining an absolute body fat percentage, noting whether the waistline is shrinking or growing is valuable information on one’s progress or lack thereof.</p>
<p>Plus, the waistline can be powerful motivation! Going down in pants size is much more fun than having to go to the store to buy a bigger size. That is so depressing.</p>
<p>^^Excellent on the 34s! At least you don’t have to deal with vanity sizing as much as women do. I was in Ann Taylor Loft this past weekend and wound up trying on Size 0 things! Um, no. I know I’m lean right now, but I am NOT a size 0. I suspect that is the size 4 or maybe even 6 of 25 years ago. That’s just nuts, because how are the Ann Taylor “8” or “10” ladies going to feel when they go to Macy’s or Banana and have to buy a 12! Stupid sizing…</p>
<p>They have no idea how hard it is to shop with all the variation in “fits” and sizing. It must be horrible for women with all the crazy sizing.</p>
<p>I really didn’t think I’d get to a 34 inch waist. Interestingly, my shirt size and sport coat/suit jacket size is not really going down as the flab on my arms and shoulders is being replaced by a little bit of muscle gain.</p>
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