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</p>
<p>There is a great explanation of this (though it refers to insulin resistant folks specifically who are not even on restricted diets) in the documentary Fathead. It uses some interesting graphics to illustrate the point, and it does it very well.</p>
<p>Processed foods (bread, pasta and on to all the stuff in boxes, cans and packages) is usually more glycemic than plainer, raw, fresh foods.
Glycemic foods raise blood sugar more quickly, and cause the insulin secretion and storage.
That is why drinking fruit juice is much more insulin producing than eating a piece of fruit.</p>
<p>The entire American lifestyle and the food industry are about convenience. The human is hard-wired to get calories conveniently, so when it is all around, that’s what the majority will eat. The food industry has been very successful!
Dare I say, to the detriment of the health of those who follow the lifestyle and eat the processed foods so abundantly and relatively cheaply available here.</p>
<p>It takes HUGE willpower and good knowledge to avoid this in a way to reverse this cycle once one’s body is “in” the loop.
Going super-lo carb-paleo can do this, but who knows this? And who can make themselves do it? And who can afford it?</p>
<p>I do hope we can find a way to AVOID so many getting onto this position, but, at the moment, we need to find a way to help people lose excess fat to slow down the storage loop.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, once there is “so much” fat stored, the whole thing is a self-reinforcing loop of storage.</p>
<p>lol That’s your first mistake. Listening to Taubes.</p>
<p>He’s pretty much the laughing stock of the entire fitness/performance community.</p>
<p>Review of: Why we get fat and what to do about it by Gary Taubes.</p>
<p>By a comp. athlete with a background in exercise physiology/nutrition.</p>
<p>Let’s review it.</p>
<p>It has two books (kinda like GCBC had 3). In the first one, he’s talking about how obesity is rising in different parts of the world. To me, it didn’t seem to hold crap.</p>
<p>Then he talks about how diets don’t work. People are put on calorie restricted diets and when they should have lost 10 pounds they only lose 2 and so on. And if they lose more, the weight comes back. Little bias here, doesn’t mention many of diet studies that have worked well. And he doesn’t note that it might be possible that people just didn’t eat as little as they’ve been told to. Point is, undereating works for only few months - if that - and all the weight comes back.</p>
<p>From here he goes on to saying that if undereating isn’t the cure for obesity then overeating must not be the cause. What a ****ing idiot.</p>
<p>Then he moves to exercise. Cherry-picking continues. He cites studies that haven’t shown significant weight loss, if at all. He cites studies on rats that showed that rats exercising doesn’t work for weight loss. And when they stop exercising, they eat more and get fat. And hamsters and gerbils get fat when they start to exercise.</p>
<p>The reason why exercise doesn’t work, says Taubes, is that it work up appetite so effects of exercise are basically wasted.</p>
<p>On the next chapter he talks about the significanse of ‘twenty calories’. if overeating by that much every day you are 50 pounds fatter in 20 years. From here he goes on: ‘‘How is it possible that anyone stays lean, if all it takes to grow gradually obese is to oversfoot this point of energy balance by twenty calories daily?’’ How about leptin you ****ing idiot, which Taubes doesn’t mention in this book, yet again. Then he goes on to pointing out that there just might be something more than calories in this obesity issue.</p>
<p>‘‘But if eating in moderation means we consciously err on the side of too little food, why don’t we all end up so lean that we appear emaciated? The arithmetic of calories in/calories out doesn’t differentiate between losing and gaining weight; it says only that we must match calories consumed to calories expanded. And if it’s simply the case that lean populations are only those populations that don’t have enough food available to overeat, why it is that populations in this situation can still have plenty of obese adults?’’ Omg what a jackass.</p>
<p>On the next chapter he talks about lipidystrophy and how it can’t fit to calorie theory. Eg. They loss most of the fat from the upper body but have loads of fat in the lower body.</p>
<p>‘‘So what does this have to do with calories in/calories out? If we believe that we get fat because we overeat and we get lean by undereating, are we to assume that these women lost fat on their upper bodies because theyn underate? And gained fat on their lower bodies because they overate?’’ So it can’t be the calories.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about lipidystrophy so someone please correct me if I’m wrong in this case. But fatty acids get removed from upper body, but are then stored in the lower body, like Lyle talked in Stubborn fat book. Maybe something like that in here?</p>
<p>The next chapters Taubes talks about thermodynamics. Here he basically repeats the same old stuff. He cites one paper published in 2007 ‘what fuels fat’</p>
<p>‘‘An animal whose food is suddenly restricted tends to reduce it’s energy expenditure both by being less active and by slowing energy use in cells, thereby limiting weight loss. It also experiences increased hunger so that once the restriction ends, it will eat more than its prior norm until earlier weight is attained.’’</p>
<p>Taubes claims that it should have said ‘person’ instead of ‘animal’, since these results have been demonstrated over and over again in humans. So exercise and diet no work because they won’t last so long.</p>
<p>The nook numer two. He starts it by talking about the science of adiposity. He talks about some crapola that isn’t really revelant, citing animal stuff. ‘‘How any of us remain lean if it requires that we consciously balance the calories we eat to those we expend with an accuracy of better than 1%? That seems impossible, and assuredly is’’. No, it’s not ****ing impossible and it doesn’t have to be day to day, just long term. And don’t forget leptin and dozens of other satiety/hunger controlling hormones.</p>
<p>Next he’s stating that we overeat because we get fatter, not the other way around, talking about kids growing as an example and animals. Same stuff as in GCBC.</p>
<p>Next up, science of fat storage. He talks about basic stuff what’s happening on fat storage after meal and in postabsorptive state. Then, finally, we enter insulin. The primary regulator of fat storage. Caused by eating the evil carbohydrates. He doesn’t mention that protein raises insulin, too, and even fat can do it to some extent. he talks about how it effects LPL and so on.</p>
<p>And, unlike in his previous book, he talks about insulin effects on HSL and what HSL does for fat mobilization. Of course, not mentioning that fat inhibits HSL, too.</p>
<p>He says that insulin is the only hormone that makes us fat, except one other.</p>
<p>‘‘A hormone discovered in late 1980s known as acylation stimulating protein is almost assuredly an insignificant exception. It is secreted by fat tissue itself, process that is regulated at least part by insulin.’’</p>
<p>He doesn’t mention ASP again in this book. I have no idea from whose ass he pulled that from. Then he talks about how insulin totally blocks fat burning and how it also makes as hungry and so on.</p>
<p>Next he says some people who are thin, are likely to be so because they secrete less insulin and/or have good insulin sensitivity in muscle but less in fat.</p>
<p>Next fructose, HFCS and how it makes us fat. Fructose makes us fat, it is turned to fat in liver and it has no acute effects in insulin sensitivity but in the long term, it makes us insulin resistant. The idiot is just saying fructose, not ■■■■■■■■ amounts of fructose.</p>
<p>That’s also why Japanese and Chinese don’t get fat; they don’t eat a lot of sugar. Or because they eat less, freaking moron and/or move more.</p>
<p>Some stupid sentences here and there.</p>
<p>‘‘They restrict fat and protein, which have no long-term effect on insulin and fat deposition.’’</p>
<p>He cites that infamous young study done in 1971 were subjects (all 8 of them!!) were given low calorie diet (researchers prepared and weighed every meal but physical activity wasn’t controlled.) and the ones on the lowest carbohydrate diet lost the most fat, the ones on higher carb diet lost less.</p>
<p>Of course, he doesn’t say anything about numerous other studies that have been more controlled, but talks about this only study that had plenty of flaws (energy exppenditure not controlled, small number of subjects, huge difference in energy expenditure in subjects, and body weight and fat mass researchers didn’t even seem themsleves no how much fat they had lost, one week spring break during the study, and the fact that it has never been repeated).</p>
<p>He talks about he Paleo man only ate 22-40 of his calories from carbohydrates. And Inuits ate 80% of cals from fat. Paleo man also ate low GI carbs, which don’t cause big insulin response. And diet of that era didn’t make them fat. He says that Paleo man ate fruits but less sugar than people now. OMG, eating less keeps you thin.</p>
<p>He talks about how we like carbs, how they are like drugs, and thus eat much of them and get fat.</p>
<p>He obviously didn’t say anythin about that Inuits were freaking fat. And GI is total BS. And there wasn’t so much food available that they couldn’t get fat, even if they wanted. Also because they died in their 20s or 30s.</p>
<p>He also says that we didn’t evolve to eat the foods we eat now (which make up 60% of total calories) and certainly not in these quantities.</p>
<p>We also didn’t evolve to write such BS as you do.</p>
<p>He says that Paleo man had no diseases that we had now. Yes, they were dead by then when we start to have them.</p>
<p>Next some talk about colesterol which wasn’t all bad.</p>
<p>Then he cites an year lasting study where Atkins group lost the most weight, 10 pounds in year,a nd improved blood levels the most. Of course, he blames their varb for such insignificant weight loss. And doesn’t address all those other longterm studies that have shown insignificant differences between high and low carbohydrate studies.</p>
<p>‘‘If a diet requires that you semi-starve yourself, it will fail, because (1) your body adjust to the calorie deficit by expending less energy (2) you get hungry and stay hungry (3) a product of there, get depressed, irritable and chronically tired.’’</p>
<p>‘’ You can eat all you want of protein and fat, so you don’t get hungry and you don’t expend less energy. You might even expend more’'</p>
<p>Awesome BS, too tired to address this more.</p>
<p>Sometimes he’s quite confusing. Indicating in some parts that physical activity helps, eating less helps and calories matter, but on other parts they won’t help. And says that low carb diets won’t make you hungry because you can finally burn fat and use it for energy and thus have energy for physical activity.</p>
<p>He lists references in a reasonable fashion, not 100 page long either, so it’s pretty easy to shoot him down from there.</p>
<p>He is a published scientist, but this is not his field. Still, he feels compelled to comment on papers outside his discipline, and Nature(i think that’s the one, was it Science?) is somehow bound to humor him. So, he has a pseudo-cred based on poor judgment at some journal(s).</p>
<p>He’s basically just a layperson in this area, though, and it shows.</p>
<p>Actually, Gary Taubes is a Harvard educated science journalist. He makes his living interviewing top scientists in a field and publishing cover stories in the New York Times Magazine. None of his theories on insulin resistance and so forth are new. They have been pretty well understood in the endicrinology field since before WWII. It would require a willful suspension of disbelief to think that something as basic as food and nutrition and energy storage is the one human system that is not tightly regulated by hormones, expecially when we know that it is controlled by hormones. And, especially when we’ve already identified obesity related diseases that are defined as disorders of insulin regulation.</p>
<p>I would not say that he is scorned by the fitness community at all. Quite the contrary, the fitness community tends to embrace low carb/high protein fat loss (because it works in many cases). Mike Boyle, for example, recommends “Why We Get Fat” as the first book to read on subject of nutrition for fat loss. There are some internet guru “nutrition expert/personal trainers” selling their fat loss consulting services, often with complex intermittent fasting or bulk and cut strategies, who dismiss the notion that it can be as easy as laying off the carbs.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m glad that I’m not searching for something that works. We all have to find the approach that works for us and I would say the proof of my approach, for me, is in the pudding.</p>
<p>Harvard educated means next to nothing when you’re talking about cutting edge research. He has not kept up with the times. (And it shows)</p>
<p>He is scorned by anybody that actually matters. There are a LOT of schills running around the fitness community now btw</p>
<p>If you want to read articles/books by people with actual bonafide knowledge on the matter, I would recommend Lyle McDonald and Alan Aragorn. Those are by far the two best ones. They are both informed/educated, and above all else, objective.</p>
<p>Best book on keto/LC diets if you want to give it a read is The Ketogenic Diet (By Lyle McDonald)</p>
<p>It is a very long book (600 pages) replete with references. Well worth the read.</p>
<p>Btw, Mike Boyle is yet another schill. I would avoid him.</p>
<p>What you have to realize is that there are the good crop of fitness people (Who will be have the best information. For free I might add) and the ones that sold out due to commercial interests.(These will twist/lie about the science in order to sell you a product/service).</p>
<p>For those that want some good books to read:</p>
<p>Someone asked me to put together a recommended reading list so here it is. I’m grouping stuff by topic and making a couple of comments on each. This list shouldn’t be considered all inclusive, I know I’ve left good stuff off.</p>
<p>Weight training technique:
Starting Strength by Rippetoe: Only covers 5 movements, squat, bench, deadlift, press and power clean with a small section on programming but it is excellent in every regards. Both for those who want to teach those movements as well as those looking for better technique in their own lifting.</p>
<p>The Insider’s Tell-All Guide to Weight training by Stuart McRobert: Another must-have IMO. Covers more movements than starting strength but goes into absurd detail on all of them in terms of safe and proper technique.</p>
<p>Note: neither book will teach you optimal powerlifting technique, they are aimed at general strength training/bodybuildingish types of training.</p>
<p>Weight training programming:
Practical Programming by Rippetoe and Kilgore (with Pendlay): An excellent and practical book on periodization, from beginner to advanced. A book that anyone involved in strength training must read.</p>
<p>The Strongest Shall Survive by Bill Starr: One of the original, still one of the best. Details his 5X5 approach, don’t let the title (which mentions strength training for football) throw you off.</p>
<p>Powerlifting Basics: Texas Style. The Adventures of Lope Delk by Paul Kelso: No nonsense weight training advice told in the form of stories. Very entertaining, good basic information more geared to powerlifting than bodybuilding.</p>
<p>Kelso’s Shrug Book by Paul Kelso is a very different kind of book but describes every shrug variant you can think of (and a few you probably didn’t think of).</p>
<p>Keys to Progress by McCallum: Another book on training told in the form of stories. He can be a little volume happy at times but most of the programs are solid bulk and strength programs.</p>
<p>Rock, Iron Steel by Steve Justa: Some very interesting and different ideas towards building strength.</p>
<p>note: pretty much anything Ironmind sells is a worthwhile buy depending on your exact interests.</p>
<p>The Encyclopedia of Weightlifting by Arthur Dreschler: The most complete book on Olympic lifting out there but also valuable information for non OL’s in terms of strength training theory and application.</p>
<p>Dinosaur Training by Brooks Kubik: Another old school approach to strength training. 5X5, singles, rack training, some good stuff in there for people who want ideas on getting strong.</p>
<p>The Poliquin Principles by Charles Poliquin: Basically a collection of stuff he wrote for MM2K but still an excellent resource, aimed at bodybuilding. I have not seen the most recent edition but am told it was mainly error correction and layout.</p>
<p>General exercise physiology stuff:
The Physiology of Exercise by Wilmore and Costill: still my favorite undergraduate level exercise physiology book. Not too technical even for those without massive science backgrounds.</p>
<p>Human bioenergetics: Exercise PHysiology and it’s applications: by Brooks, Fahey and whomever their third author is this time around. Best graduate level exercise physiology book. Not for the fainthearted, it’s very technical.</p>
<p>Strength training theory:
Science and Practice of Strength training by Zatsiorsky: Very technical, not an easy read, very little of practical application.</p>
<p>Fitness and Strength Training for All Sports by Tunemann and Hennemann: Very German, somewhat technical, somewhat out of date. But at least it has some practical program examples (mostly based on old school pyramid training which is out of vogue right now).</p>
<p>Strength and Power in Sport by Komi: Very technical, very thorough look at factors related to strength and power expression. Zero application except for a couple of chapters at the end about OL’ing.</p>
<p>Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning: This is the NSCA textbook, I haven’t read the second edition. But it is possibly one of the best general references to a huge variety of topics related to strength physiology.</p>
<p>Supertraining by Mel Siff: I’m tempted to put this in the not recommended list but anybody interested in ALL of the details of strength training should probably read this. Overwritten, totally non-applicable, get this last. I consider most of the Russian translations to be in a similar boat and most of Verkoshanksy’s stuff is in Supertraining anyhow.</p>
<p>Periodization theory:
Peak when it Counts by Freeman: Geared towards American track and field and only covers straight linear/Western periodization (working to a single peak) but one of the best introductions to periodization theory I know of.</p>
<p>Periodization by Bompa: Extremely complete but only really only covers old school linear periodization. Still has a lot of useful information on recovery, overtraining, and methodology for improving different capacities (strength, endurance, etc).</p>
<p>Could also put Supertraining in here since it discusses a variety of different periodization approaches.</p>
<p>Sports nutrition:
Optimal Sports Nutrition by Colgan: Ignore the supplement pimping and realize that it’s a few years out of date but it still has an excellent introduction to overall sports nutrition in terms of carbohydrate, protein and fat intakes.</p>
<p>Priming the Anabolic Environment by Will Brink: a decent primer on bodybuilding nutrition, many years out of date.</p>
<p>Bodyopus by Dan Duchaine: A must have for dieters and anyone interested in the details of fat loss.</p>
<p>Nutrition physiology:
Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism by Groff and Gropper: An excellent introduction to nutritional physiology. Undergrad level so not too miserably technical.</p>
<p>Biochemical and Physiological Aspects of Human Nutrition by Stipanuk: Graduate level nutritional physiology text. Very technical and detailed.</p>
<p>Sprinting:
I cannot claim to have read much in this area. However</p>
<p>Charlie Francis Training System: Still considered one of the best. You can get the e-version on the website. Contains many training ideas that aren’t sprint specific.</p>
<p>Speed Trap: Although this is more biographical, it still contains many hidden training gems. Like him or hate him, he was ahead of his time. Good luck finding a hardcopy (sometimes you get lucky at used book stores) but an e-version is available at charliefrancis.com.</p>
<p>Endurance training:
Training and Competing with a Power Meter by Coggan: Required reading for anybody using a power meter on their bike.</p>
<p>Performance Cycling by Morris: describes a relatively new approach to cycling called Block training, which has you train intensely 2-3 days in a row followed by an equal number of days off. Very different than typical endurance periodization schemes.</p>
<p>Maximal Performance for Cyclists by Ross: Another block training cycling book, some interesting ideas on training for cyclists.</p>
<p>Daniels’ Running Book: i haven’t read a lot of running stuff but Daniels is considered one of the best. Very practical, very applied.</p>
<p>Successful Endurance Training by Neumann, Pfutzner and Berbalk: Very German, very technical but still very applied. Has information applicable to all endurance sports in terms of physiology of training.</p>
<p>Other:
Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance by McGill: Stuart McGill is arguably the man when it comes to lower back health and safety and this book will give you plenty of practical information on how to train your core while keeping your spine health.</p>
<p>jsanches, please note that by calling someone “********* idiot”, you are turning people away from reading your posts. It is OK to try to debunk some theories that you do not subscribe to, but your arguments will be much better recieved if you present them without sprinkling profanities all over your posts. Even bleeped out, profanities are not welcome on CC.</p>
<p>lol Sorry, but that isn’t actually written by me. </p>
<p>It’s just a copy/paste from a site I frequent (Last time I put in a link to another site a mod deleted it. So I left it out this time)</p>
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<p>So according to your statements, Harvard Medical School twists/lies about science because they do not give their health and fitness books for free (FYI - it was their weightlifting exercises that helped me to get rid of arm flab)? How about the long list of books you posted? Are they all written and published by altruists who are giving them out for free?</p>
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<p>Then please state that it is a quote and how the website can be located without posting a link. These are the CC TOS rules.</p>
<p>They don’t use bad science, which makes their work factual. Well worth the money you pay for the book.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you why Taubes should be ignored. He continually projects from rat/animal studies to try to back up one of his points. That is ridiculously bad science. You should never extrapolate from animal studies to humans as your main source of “evidence”.</p>
<p>FTR, stop trying to lump in Taubes with Harvard. (Why do people always do this)</p>
<p>The running rationale is always: Well, he studied at Harvard so he must be right. </p>
<p>You couldn’t be more wrong there. What he does is write reviews. (And bad ones at that)</p>
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<p>You’ve never actually read anything he’s written, have you?</p>
<p>As for your reading list, it has a lot of powerlifting stuff. This is the parents forum. Most of us are nearing 50 or older. While Rippetoe is an excellent teacher of Olympic lifting, Olympic lifting is probably not the best injury risk/reward ratio for somebody beginning strength training at age 50. There are better squat variations than the back squat and better deadlift variations than the conventional barbell deadlift. And, I’m not sure that Rippetoe’s nutrition advice (drink a gallon of whole milk every day) is going to work real well for many of us in keeping our trim figures. Rippetoe is also somewhat one-dimension in that he would not be a good source for the kind of mobility and core stability work that most of need.</p>
<p>If, however, you want to enter powerlifting or Olympic lifting competitions, Rippetoe would be an excellent place to start. I’ve learned a lot from his videos, although I don’t personally do the back squat, the conventional deadlift, or the bench press as regular parts of my weight lifting workouts and I would not particularly recommend them to other parents, given the relatively high spinal shear loading with both lifts.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I have. I DL’ed the electronic format of “Why we get fat” a few months ago to see why people were ripping his books apart. It didn’t take me long to see why. He is truly obsessed with Insulin. He constantly demonizes it. Also, he never talks about Leptin. He just ignores it which is why most of the fitness crowd ignores him.</p>
<p>That list was generated in 2006. I can post a more updated list. (It’s probably floating around somewhere).</p>
<p>deleted… I was in the wrong place lol.</p>
<p>Ok, I will be lulled into this.</p>
<p>Ummm, I am confused…
AND I will challenge you a bit here, jsanche, because YOUR tone is so “dismissive”.
OK, these books are instructional for those who want to be super weight-lifters. Exactly how does that equate to weight loss?
Also, exactly what sort of research did THESE authors do? Were these large trials with controls? Or were these experiments in the gym with clients??
Are these guys “one size fits all” in their conclusions and techniques?
p.s. Insulin IS a big deal. And so are a bunch of other appetite, satiety and metabolic hormones. Testosterone and estrogen play a big role in all this stuff, too.
p.p.s. A lot of great books ARE compilations of other people’s research.</p>