Fortunately, I'm a carnivore, so I'm happy to eat meat all the time. Not that you have to eat only meat to avoid carbs. I eat green vegetables because my mother taught me to eat them, and I like them.
I probably eat more veggies than I used to because I'm replacing the starch with the vegetables. I eat a lot of eggs and bacon, a lot of beef and chicken.
That sweet tooth does vanish. For me, now I can't even imagine a big glass of OJ — it would be too sweet. It's like any addiction. When I was younger I smoked cigarettes — and I couldn't imagine life without cigarettes. But when I gave it up, the intense cravings lasted about three weeks.
That was followed by a couple of years of simply missing the cigarettes, when I always had to be on my guard that I might slip and go back to smoking.
But after a while, I couldn't imagine going back, and I found it hard to imagine why I ever smoked. It's true of nicotine, bad relationships and carbs. Personal stories like my own are anecdotal, which means they don't say much scientifically. But I first tried eating like this as an experiment 10 years ago — an economist at MIT suggested I try it — and I've stuck with it.
I weigh 10 pounds less than I did when I started, but I was gaining two pounds a year at the time, so I might be 30 pounds less than I would have been otherwise. I do have more energy. I need less sleep. My skin is clearer. I could go on, but I start sounding like an infomercial, which is precisely what I'm trying to avoid. The point I'm making in this book is that this is about science, and when the evidence is studied without preconceptions, what it tells us is pretty clear.
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Now Reading:. Membership My Account. Rewards for Good. Share with facebook. Share with twitter. Share with linkedin. Share using email. Who doesn't love a big bowl of pasta and a hunk of garlic bread for mopping up the sauce? Read 3 Tips for Resisting Unhealthy Cravings. Read Fat to Fit Community. You're telling me that the advice to eat a low-fat diet is a bunch of hooey?
But doesn't high-fat food mean big thighs, bad heart and high cholesterol? What happened? How did we get here? And the other path? But then why did this school of thought survive? Inspired by Your Browsing History.
Undo It! Anne Ornish and Dean Ornish, M. Good Calories, Bad Calories. The Case Against Sugar. The New Sugar Busters! Morrison Bethea, M. Leighton Steward and Luis Balart, M. Zero Belly Diet. David Zinczenko. Fat Chance. Robert H. The Good Gut. Erica Sonnenburg and Justin Sonnenburg. Breaking Up With Sugar. Molly Carmel.
The Microbiome Solution. Robynne Chutkan M. The Cruise Control Diet. Jorge Cruise. Zero Belly Smoothies. Elizabeth A. King and Elliot D. Dean Ornish, M. I'm just one of those lucky folks, Gary says, whose genes let them chow down carbs without getting fat. Here is another more significant exception: Many Asian people consume lots of carbs, especially rice, without getting fat.
Well, Gary says, that's because these Asians don't ingest as much highly processed sugar—contained in soft drinks, for example—as Americans do. But then why not just cut out these sugary foods instead of almost all carbs? But now we're moving away from the dramatic, celebratory claim that the Atkins diet solves obesity to a more complex perspective: For many people high-carb diets are fine, and the low-carb Atkins diet isn't; different diets work for different people.
Reviewing Why We Get Fat in The New York Times , Abigail Zuger, a physician, notes that "in virtually all head-to-head comparisons of various diet plans, the average long-term results have invariably been quite similar—mediocre all around. Toward the end of our Bloggingheads interview, I asked Gary about his family's diet. He answered cagily, but he implied that his wife has resisted putting their two kids on Atkins.
I think that's sensible, and Gary, when in his critical rather than celebratory mode, probably does, too. Although he insists that the evidence for his diet claims is overwhelming, he acknowledges in an author's note to Why We Get Fat that the claims still need to be "rigorously tested.
So, when Gary divides diets into two basic categories—the Atkins diet, which is good, and all other diets, which are bad—he's oversimplifying and distorting reality. But read his new book with a critical eye, check out my Bloggingheads interview with him and make up your own mind. The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. For many years, he wrote the immensely popular blog Cross Check for Scientific American. Follow John Horgan on Twitter.
Already a subscriber? Sign in. The other disclaimer is that my mother and sister are somewhat obsessed with low cholesterol diets. The fundamental idea that lies behind the generally accepted theory of why we get fat is that it is all about a misbalance between the energy we take in via our food and the energy we expend in working during the day.
He makes the point early in the book that if you mess this balance up by as little as a bite of toast a day then over a twenty-year period you will end up obese. He is really very good at reducing to the absurd the generally accepted theories of why we get fat.
The problem is that we humans prefer really simple metaphors that also link nicely to the world we live in. Our bodies are likely to be compared to a car. By his stressing how it is almost impossible to balance calories in and calories out he then turns his attention to exercise. It seems reasonable that if you want to lose weight the best way to achieve it would be to burn your fat off through exercising. The problem is that exercise makes you hungry.
So, yet again you need to somehow balance calories in and calories out and if you are like me and have tried to do this you will know that it is virtually impossible. Central to his argument is the idea that not all food is good food. The calories in and calories out idea is that you could get all of our calories from coke and as long as you were burning off the same number of calories during the day your weight will remain the same. Essentially there are two mechanisms that are used to power our bodies and these come into conflict and help to make us obese.
The first is how our bodies respond to sugars and carbohydrates. These foods are easy to digest and easy to get energy from, so our bodies digest them first. In response our bodies produce insulin — but one of the things insulin also does is to stop our cells from burning the fat they have stored in them and rather to store more fat in our cells.
With increasing levels of insulin in our blood our bodies never get around to burning the energy reserves that are stored as fat within our cells. This process has a kind of irony about it. But our bodies still need energy — so even though we ought to be sated, we crave more food, particularly carbohydrate rich food that can quickly be turned into blood sugar for an energy boost.
This again spikes our insulin levels, which again makes it impossible for us to get to the energy stored as fat. So, instead we lay down more fat and feel hungrier still. The method of overcoming this vicious cycle is to stop eating carbohydrates and this will then allow our bodies to reduce the amount of insulin in our blood and thereby allow our bodies to start burning our grossly increased fat reserves.
Insulin, then, is the problem — essentially, this guy is saying that obesity is a kind of diabetes. But he goes further — he says that many of the diseases that are associated with Western diets are effectively forms of diabetes. So, how to get thin and live a healthier life? Well, this is the uncomfortable part of the story for me. We have to give up sugars and carbohydrates and to eat much more meat and fat. He claims that meat, rather than vegetables and starch, was the key to our diet as hunter-gatherers.
And as such we have evolved to eat lots of meat and certainly not lots of bread. What he says makes sense. If any of you have some link to something that debunks this viewpoint, I would be keen to read it.
And my interest in all this? The high meat and high fat diet does have lots of things going for it — not least the promise that it allows you to lose weight without feeling hungry all of the time. The promise of an easy way to maintain a healthy weight and avoid the associated problems of increasing body weight is very appealing — but at the risk of sounding particularly Protestant, it all does sound a little too easy.
This is a very interesting book. The problem is that it is supposed to be the snappier version of Good Calories, Bad Calories — but if this is snappy I dread to think what that book must be like. This could really have been cut in half again without much loss, but I do understand he is trying to cover all arguments against and I have to say he does do that. All the same, if what he has to say is even only half true then much of the dietary advice that has been given to us for around 50 years is not only useless, but actually counterproductive.
View all 39 comments. Jan 29, Ricki Lindsay rated it it was ok. Drink it daily before 10 am! In engineering, there a problem-solving technique called "5 whys". If you have a problem, you don't just ask why and answer that question, you go 5 levels deeper. In health matters, more levels would be great, but here we go just one level deeper that common sense. This book starts by criticizing the popular answer to 'why we get fat' - namely that we get fat because we consume more calories than we spend.
The author say it's certainly true, but it's not particularly useful in practice, because neither diet nor exercise work too well in the long run, and because explicitly counting calories is near to impossible.
There surely must be very accurate weight regulation mechanism, and it just gets broken sometimes. So, the book proceeds to second "why" - why the regulation mechanism malfunctions.
It is claimed that insulin is the reason. It rises when we eat carbohydrates and causes fat and excess carbohydrates to be stored into fat cells. It drops when there are no more carbohydrates to use, and that switches the body to using stored fat.
Seems straight-forward. And then it is said that the more carbohydrates we eat, the more fat we accumulate in the long run. The explanation makes little sense. Sure, if I eat more than I immediately need, extra energy is either stored or discarded.
If insulin is a mechanism for storing extra energy, then blaming it for helping to store that energy makes no sense. If the body generates more insulin that is necessary, then why?
That question is never answered. There is some discussion of insulin resistance, but rather superficial, too. If we accept that insulin is the right answer for the second why, no next question is asked. But insulin might not even be the right answer. Just typing "insulin and obesity" into Google finds sources that claim the link is not proven at all.
For example, one source say that for Pima people, used in the book as example of very obese in general, high insulin predicts less fat, not more. The book, however, is very certain on its claims, and never mentions any research that might contradict that. To summarize, this is one-sided and not too deep discussion. Oct 24, Jessi rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction , weight-loss.
First Line: "In , a young German pediatrician named Hilde Bruch moved to America, settled in New York City, and was 'startled,' as she later wrote, by the number of fat children she saw - 'really fat ones, not only in clinics, but on the streets and subways, and in schools. I am not yet certain whether I am willing to buy into his arguments, b First Line: "In , a young German pediatrician named Hilde Bruch moved to America, settled in New York City, and was 'startled,' as she later wrote, by the number of fat children she saw - 'really fat ones, not only in clinics, but on the streets and subways, and in schools.
I am not yet certain whether I am willing to buy into his arguments, but there are three things that are making me at least consider that he might be right or partially right.
He begins the book by asking all readers to analyze the material his book and any others and to make decisions for them. Most fad diet books tend to just take the stance that they are absolutely right and never remind us to use our brains. For every argument that I came up with while reading this book, he addresses it at some point and provides data to back up his theories. I have been trying to lose weight through recommended methods low-fat diets, calorie cutting, and exercise for almost nine years and have watched many of my family and friends with the same struggle.
With chances like that, I am willing to consider a different method and give it a try. I will also say that this book is simply a fascinating read. I don't think I have ever been so enthralled with a non-fiction book especially one steeped in science that I literally couldn't put it down, so this was a first for me. From these four which sometimes contradict each other, I constructed a diet with unlimited meats and veggies, no processed sugars, grains, or legumes and limited amounts of nuts, berries, dairy, and root vegetables.
I am exercising but only in ways that I enjoy, specifically yoga and hiking. Since Jan I have lost 24 lbs, 1 pant size, and I feel much more energetic. I have had a few slip ups, but not many and when I do eat sugar or carb heavy items I'm almost immediately exhausted and grouchy. I am at the lowest weight I have been in nine years and my success makes it much easier to stick with it. I've got 66 lbs to go and for the first time I have hope that I'll actually make it and maintain it.
View all 5 comments. Apr 21, Richard marked it as to-read Recommended to Richard by: People that eat. Shelves: read-these-reviews-first , science , nonfiction , food. Plain corn syrup, on the other hand, is effectively just glucose—no fructose. Therein lies, apparently, a key difference.
When the liver is presented with fructose, it preferentially metabolizes it, dramatically elevating insulin and related hormones. Whole fruits still have fiber , which apparently slows down intestinal absorption so much that it doesn't overwhelm the liver the way a soda does. But fruit juices? Where is that from? Not fat, so much — that represents only 45 calories out of the total. Where is that coming from? Mostly soda. One can of Coca Cola or other soft drink is about calories. I hope the book goes into more detail on metabolic and biochemistry.
I fondly remember the Krebs Cycle from my high school physiology class, and I really like knowing the science behind all this stuff. For those of you just looking for the highlights, read the New York Times article, and then watch the video. View 2 comments. Aug 11, Mariah Roze rated it liked it. Gary Taubes shares his knowledge of not what only makes us fat, but what also keeps some people leaner than others. He emphasized how weight isn't only an overeating problem.
It can also be caused by genetics, hormones and much more. We need to be careful of the assumptions that we make, because many people that are obese especially are because of one of these health issues. This book was an eye-opener to me and broke down all the assumptions that I have made about food and bodies. Jul 30, Lee Klein rated it really liked it. You'd think that shoving lard down your gullet wouldn't be better for you your weight and your heart and triglyceride levels and blood pressure than an equivalent amount of bread, even whole grain stuff, but it's counterintuitively true -- this book includes a few really interesting, counterintuitive, scientificially proven again and again assertions eg, we don't get fat because our metabolism slows; our metabolism slows because we're getting fat.
Sucks to have grown up during the food pyramid era, with its fattening base of grain. Easy to eat this way now that it's summer but the test will come when it's time for stouts and pizza in the fall and winter.
Oh if only porters were brewed from porterhouse steak instead of grains. View all 14 comments. Jan 09, Suzanne rated it it was ok. Although I am inclined to agree with Taube that low-calorie diets and exercise do not lead to weightloss, based on personal experience as well as some new research, I find his argument for a primarily meat-based diet unconvincing.
The primary weakness of the work is the lack of any scientific evidence to support his conclusions, but it also suffers from severe bias. He carefully presents only that data which will support his claims, and ignores reams of contradictory data. He claims that pre-hist Although I am inclined to agree with Taube that low-calorie diets and exercise do not lead to weightloss, based on personal experience as well as some new research, I find his argument for a primarily meat-based diet unconvincing.
He claims that pre-historic humans lived primarily on meat, but gives no support for that claim, and ignores any evidence that would suggest otherwise. The meat that is provided by the men is wild game, which is low in fat and an uncertain source of food. The only way that he can make his case is to skip thousands of years of human civilization and known history.
Certainly historic humans, if we can go by the business records of the Sumarians as well as the Bible, lived on beans, grains, fruits and vegetables. Logically, if humans were not eating cereal grains, why did they settled down to farming in the first place?
And if starchy vegetables, fruits and grains are to blame for obesity, why didn't the epidemic begin around 2, B. Why weren't the Irish the fattest people on the planet once they began living primarily on potatoes? He holds up the example of the Pima Indians, yet ignores the known fact that their native diet consists primarily of beans, corn, squash.
And if fruit leads one to be fat, why aren't Europeans massive? They eat fruit as dessert at least twice a day. They also eat bread with every meal. He admits that he can't explain why Asians, whose natural diet is high in rice and vegetables, with only a little lean protein, are not fat until they begin eating a Western diet. He unconvincingly suggests that it's because they don't eat much fruit -- a claim he does not document.
The only conclusion that can reasonably be drawn from the data he presents is that it is the introduction of refined grains and refined sugars as basis for our diets coupled with massive overeating that has led to the obesity epidemic.
View all 9 comments. Dec 10, Kevin rated it it was ok Shelves: library. My son saw me reading this book and said, "Put the book down and go outside. Some interesting ideas but I believe this journalist chose to ignore many important studies arguing against such a drastic dietary change.
I get it But adding the copious amounts of high fat meats and cheeses makes no sense to this coronary student.
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