Thursday, May 8, 2008

Health and weight loss

You can eat whatever you want and still lose weight, is an interesting header at VG online today. Citing a study from Mandoleanklinikken at Karolinska Institutet, VG claims that you can still eat pizza, cake and what have you, as long as you limit the intake, and eat slowly and frequently. In other words, as long as you limit the caloric intake, you can eat whichever combination of nutritional sources and still potentially reduce your body mass.

Take a minute or a second to read that last sentence again. Click the link, read the story, check the background material, google the big words if ya have to - it's all right - and then come back.

If ya take in less calories than you expend, ya probably gonna lose weight - how very Simpson-esque: "LISA! In this house we obey the laws of THERMODYNAMICS!"

So ok; having established that the laws of nature apply to the human metabolism, let's move on to what if anything this has to do with health. For some inexplicable reason, weight loss is tied closely to improved health in the minds of the people who are likely to purchase diet plans and diet products. Whenever people go on a diet, they measure their success in the loss of body mass. Assuming that the goal of accomplishing body mass is met, does this equate to improved health? In other words; does it matter what you eat, can the diet subsequently affect your body composition and in turn your health?

Not according to Professor Per Södersten from Karolinska. With the caveat of VG misquoting him, he states that it doesn't matter WHAT you eat; your body still extracts what it needs of nutrients from the available food.

Is that right, Chief.......dude should have quit while he was still ahead....and that point ended almost exactly where he stated that eating less calories than what is expended leads to weight loss. Take another minute to re-read what he said...a calorie is a calorie, etc.

...so if I decide to take in my ideal amount of calories exclusively in the form of bacon grease and beer, it won't have any ill effect on my health. Nice going.

...soldiers and sailors from the 18th century and earlier just called and said that Prof. Södersten is full of crap.....something about scurvy and a deficiency of vitamin C, despite them taking in enough calories.

Fortunately, VG also got some comments from Norwegian nutritionists who stress that you should eat healthy foods etc.

Epic douchebaggery from Prof. Södersten considering that people are gullible enough to buy into concepts like the Atkins diet, the grapefruit diet, the Hollywood diet, etc. People can get hurt by shoddy dietary advice like this.

Apparently those diplomas you can get online are more authentic-looking now.

6 comments:

Anders said...

Just a general comment: There are indication that some of those Atikins kind of diets works simple because people take in less calories. Yes, eat all you can, but for some reason people don't feel like eating huge amounts of steak for breakfast...

As for professor Södersten: I do hope that he's been misquoted. Karolinske Institutet has a too good reputation to have a guy with such opinions in their staff...

Wilhelm said...

I sure hope that Prof. Södersten was misquoted.

And yes; many of these diets work for a limited time because you take in less calories. However, they also screw up your metabolism something fierce, and the mass you lose ain't necessarily limited to fat.

Not to mention that loading up on bacon, red meat and butter while treating starchy carbs like they were the devil is a sure-fire way of puttin' your ass on the cardiac arrest short-list

Anders said...

Yes, some of those diets out there is not only unhealthy, but some are outright dangerouos.

The perfect weightloss diet for overweight, but otherwise healty people should:
A - give a decent rate of weight loss/ loss in inches.
B - be healthy
C - Require minimal effort.

A and B is simple, it's due to point C we have all those crappy diets. If you going to lose weight and stay slim, it does require an effort to exersize or adjust your diet, preferable both. If you can figure out a diet that require no effort, is effective and healthy, you pretty much got it made.

Wilhelm said...

....clenbuterol is one helluva drug....

Actually; if the consensus is that losing weight is a state function, then all you need is a li'l of the Lemmy special plus some radios to take apart. Tweakers might be completely fried, but damn are they skinny.

Seriously though; giving out diet advice to the general population is serious business, and unless you approach this with the attitude that health comes first, you need to shut up.

Like that loser from years ago who'd allegedly exercised himself right into full-on cripple mode but insisted that his training and dietary advice ruled and even landed a gig on doktoronline.no Remember him?

Anders said...

Like that loser from years ago who'd allegedly exercised himself right into full-on cripple mode but insisted that his training and dietary advice ruled and even landed a gig on doktoronline.no Remember him?

The dude with the theory that if you just ate when you where hungry and stoped when you felt full, you get the right amount of calories? And advised that anoretic girl that two slices of bread per day was OK, as long as she didn't felt hunger? Jupp, I do remember him. Got fired from that web page, if I remember correctly.

Wilhelm said...

And advised that anoretic girl that two slices of bread per day was OK, as long as she didn't felt hunger? Jupp, I do remember him. Got fired from that web page, if I remember correctly.

That's the douchebag, yeah. Good thing if he got fired. Like I said; giving people dietary advice is serious business