I don't think anyone disputed that fact. However, the diet one chooses, and the ability to embrace it as a long term lifestyle change is important. My years of experience (and others as well) suggests that diet alone won't work. I found it near impossible to maintain a healthy diet without an adequate dose of exercise. Without *adequate* exercise I found that I was able to lose a limited amount of weight before I plateaued and lost interest in the whole thing. I've never been able to do what I've done in the past three years...lose the weight, gain a phenomenol amount of strength, and do physical activities that I was never able to do, even in my teens.

I agree. Any diet works, few are lifelong. I have a close friend who routinely yo yo's from 165 to 210 lbs as he tries a diet, then drops it.

There are many things to think about in trying to find which you'r willing to do for the rest of your life.
Having a social life can make a large impact on success of certain lifestyle choices. Staying at home its easy to eat only what works for your system. Being on any kind of restricted diet makes it hard to eat out at restraunts, parties, etc. Not that it cant be done, its just harder. Even Mrfreddy in his posts has mentioned he 'takes a break over the holidays'. This is all too common I think and natural in most people.

If your very active socialy your always out at pubs, restraunts, pot luck parties, etc, etc. Its a lot harder to remain adherent to a restricted diet than a wide open one.

Any diet works, but once your at a target weight you need to maintain good eating habits, for the rest of your life.....
Even if my 'balanced' diet is proven to have a few faults down the road, Its probably the easiest to maintain as a lifestyle and eat socially.

But, whatever works for ya. If it works, it was correct choice

um, haven't seen any actual proof supporting a high carb/low fat diet, nor any that supports the contention that sat. fats in a low carb diet are bad for you.

the evidence supports the geek, along with a lot of highly respectable scholarly scientific types. I like the direction Harvard seems pointed in, unfortunately, they still take a stand against sat. fat, a stand that is simply not supported by science. Every study done in a setting where carbs are controlled proves that a high fat diet that includes sat. fat actually IMPROVES your indicators for heart disease.

as to why you can't trust Harvard, I can only guess. could be careerism, someone, or a lot of someone's have based their careers on the lipid hypothesis and they can't turn back now, could be a lot of things. could be they are so arrogant that they haven't even seen the studies.

quite clearly the failure is my own, ha haaa... I know exactly why I'm overweight, I love to eat, and I love to drink. by drink, I mean beer, scotch, wine, etc. and I have only been, at best, sporadic with the workouts (till now, I've turned a new leaf. I'm starting my 4th week of working out 6 days a week,w/out fail).

I hesitate to respond to you point about my weight, becuase it's just so darn silly. I have a friend who is mick jagger skinny, he eats cheeseburgers, fries, pizza, ice cream, the works, and he stays rail thin. does that mean his diet is a good one?

I stick to low carb for a lot of reasons beyond wt. control, although wt. control is one of them. without changing anything else, I can keep my wt. down 30 pounds below where it was, simply by following low carb guidelines. I also do it because I like to eat this way, I love never being hungry, I love the satisfied feeling I have, I love steaks, I love fish, I love pork, I love chicken, I love broccoli, I love spinach, I love butter, I love mayonaise, etc. I also do it because it seems to affect my mood, I am always much calmer and more relaxed. this is impossible to prove or quantify, but I can feel it for sure. I also do it because all of my health indicators are better than before. My LDL and HDL (although I think these are pretty much meaningless) are far better, blood sugar is better, triglycerides are way better, etc. etc. etc. I stick with it because it works,a nd because none of the things that the cert. nutritionalists of this world tell you about low carb are actually true. Unless you're a sprinter. apparently that is true, you can sprint faster and lift heavier wts. etc. with your body loaded with glucose and water. If I were a competitive athlete on a serious level, this would mean something to me, and I might consider carbo loading for the slight advantage it provides (and I mean slight), but I'm not, so it isn't worth it to me.

if I ever said everyone else is wrong, I apologize, I certainly dont feel that way. apparently you can follow a high carb diet, and as long as you exercise a lot, you can stay healthy (<cheap shot warning==>tho it didn't help Jim Fixx or the Power Bar folks!). my real point here is that I can chooose the low carb route and exercise and see vast improvements, and that I disagree with those would tell me that I must have carbs to reach my goals, or that I must avoid sat. fats to stay healthy, or that a low fat diet is somehow healthier than a low carb diet. it just aint so.

sorry about your friend,

your study is pretty technical and hard to read, and I dont have time right now to parse thru it, but it seems to be one of those typical distortions where the studiers contrive to find what they're looking for... they associate meat consumption with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but did they control for carbohydrate consumption? I'll be the first to admit that a high fat diet in combo with a high carb diet is dangerous.

anyway, it's all very confusing, one study suggests this, another suggests that, the interest groups line up to attack the studies they dont like, and fund studies to get the results they want, etc. etc....

which is why I always fall back on the paleo diet. that is the big trump card, the long term study to end all long term studies. it's pretty hard to argue with millions of years of evolution (tho, of course, some still do, hahaa).
there's also the fact that a huge rise in heart disease, diabetes, cancer, are all closely associated with the rise in refined carbs and sugar consumption in our diet.
and the fact that EVERY primtive group found living on very high fat low carb diets are found to have excellent health, with virtually no problems with heard disease, cancer, diabetes. if sat. fat was really the problem this could not be the case.

Does anyone besides me see that 15 pages of posts siding one side or the other might suggest that a balanced diet, with healthy carbs, healthy fats, and healthy protein might okay? That BOTH camps might have valid points? Does anyone not support the basic calories in/calories out theory?
Again, throughout the world, the majority of the population is NOT on a diet, and are NOT overweight. They eat a balanced diet of carbs, fats, and protein, in moderate portions. What's wrong with that 'diet'?

Yes, yes, yes, and nothing.

Exactly

sure, of course, as long as...

healthy fats = all fats except trans and vegetable oils
healthy proteins = all animal sources (including fish), preferably grass fed (well, not the fish, obviously)
healthy carbs = max around 75 - 80 g/day (ymmv), strictly low starch vegetables, low sugar fruits

btw, I thought the world was undergoing an obesity crisis, and I dont know anyone who actually follows a balanced diet, as I understand the term. I'm sure they're out there, but I dont know them.

As I and others have mentioned, if it works for you, great. I eat a balanced diet and keep my weight down with no real effort.

So this works for me.

How's what you're doing working for you?

Yesterday my diet was right on target for my goals. :) I had one cup of coffee when I got up, and a bowl of Nature's Gate Optimum Power cereal (with flax seeds, fiber, and blueberries) in soy milk (calcium and isoflavones!) In the mid-morning I had a cup of green tea (catechins and other polyphenols!) and an apple (fiber and quercetin!), and for lunch I had a banana (fiber and minerals!), hummus (fiber, folate, magnesium, oleic acid, vitamin E!) and a whole wheat pita (fiber and B vitamins!). I had a Clif bar before my spinning class. For dinner, I ate about 4-5 oz. of baked salmon, about 1/2 c. of brown basmati rice, and about 2 c. of red leaf lettuce, mixed spring lettuce, cucumber, walnuts, cranberries, dressed with homemade olive oil and basalmic vinaigrette.

Here's hoping today goes as well! So far I've had my cereal, coffee, and tea. A pear for a snack, lunch was PBJ on whole grain/multi grain bread and organic stone ground corn chips. I'm saving my apple for an afternoon snack, I'll probably munch on some cottage cheese and water crackers when I get home, and then I have to decide on dinner -- maybe I should hit the co-op health food store now and get some veggies for a chicken stir-fry! That's exactly what I'll do. :)

Is this where your going to chime in that people following a balanced diet are not really balanced ?
I pointed to two sites, harvard and jigsawhealth, both have differing but very similar definitions of balanced diets.

You can give that definition any term you want, the majority of the world would most likely call it balanced.

If you cant comprehend it, maybe all that fat is clogging your brain function.

true enough, although I don't know about EVERY tribe :)

there's a few examples on this link:
http://www.theomnivore.com/sat-fat-chol-CHD.html

The Masai tribe of East Africa ate ~300g a day of mostly saturated fat, but were free of CHD.

The Samburu tribe, also of East Africa, virtually live on milk, consuming ~400g of sat fat a day through the wet season, but are free of CHD.

The people of the Pukapuka and Tokeluau Pacific atolls ate a bunch of coconuts, obtaining up to 53% of their daily calories from saturated fats, but were free of CHD.

And we all probably know about the French "paraodox", who, depsite eating more saturated fat than any other Western European country, have the lowest rates of CHD

Do you have any information on the level of exercise these tribes experienced?

there's some info on that link:

"You may also be thinking that a high level of physical activity was responsible for the low rate of CHD amongst the aforementioned populations. The Masai, for example, walk up to 30 miles a day. That no doubt helped, but not because it was countering any purported harmful effects of saturated fat. After all, heavy physical activity did not help the population of North Karelia, Finland in the 1960's. Despite a high proportion of lumberjacks and farmers, residents of this isolated community suffered one of the highest CHD rates in the world. The population of St. Helena, where motorized transport was rare and the residents were forced to transverse the hilly landscape by foot, was also observed to suffer from a high rate of CHD. Fat consumption was relatively low in St. Helena, but sugar consumption was high (17)." http://www.theomnivore.com/sat-fat-chol-CHD.html

Do they live in houses with central heating ? and plumbing ? Do they sit at a desk 8 hours a day, eat in restraunts? Live in a city with supermarkets as their source of food?

If not, its not really relevant to me.

what? that's half the point!! It's NOT the fat that's killing us, it IS the desk job, the inactivity, smoking, the stress, lack of antioxidants, and the refined supermarket food (synthetic oils, refined carbs, acrylamides, etc),

Is it possible that, after generations of Masai, Samburu, et. al. living in this fashion, natural selection has produced an organism that has adapted to this lifestyle?

also touched on in the article:

"Perhaps you are thinking that the Masai, Samburu and Pacific islanders are blessed with some sort of genetic protection against the allegedly harmful effects of saturated fat. Hardly. Studies show that when the Masai migrate to Nairobi where they are exposed to a more "refined" diet and sedentary lifestyle, their cholesterol levels rise, discounting the proffered notion that their low cholesterol levels were a manifestation of some sort of advantageous genetic aberration (12). When Pukapuka and Tokeluau residents moved to New Zealand, where they were similarly exposed to processed foods and a more sedentary lifestyle, they experienced a marked increase of gout, diabetes and other degenerative disorders (13-16." http://www.theomnivore.com/sat-fat-chol-CHD.html

some more interesting epidemiology:


"The incidence of acute myocardial infarction is seven times higher in southern India than in northern India; however, in southern India, dietary fat provides only 3.5 percent of total calories, 45 percent of which is polyunsaturated. In northern India, dietary fat provides 23 percent of total calories, only 2 percent of which is polyunsaturated.(3)
Ischemic heart disease is not a problem in populations whose diet derives over 45 percent of its total calories from coconut-derived fat.(4) The fat contained in the coconut is 95 percent saturated fat. This percentage of fat is even higher than butter and much higher than the common vegetable oils we currently use.
Before Western dietary habits were introduced into the Eskimo population, Eskimos lived almost exclusively on animal meat and animal fat. Yet the incidence of heart disease among the Eskimos was very low and cholesterol levels were below 200 mg.(5)
These studies should cause us to seriously question whether there is a direct link between the ingestion of dietary fat and arterial diseases such as athero and arteriosclerosis." http://www.arltma.com/CholMystDoc.htm

Hasnt that been obvious forever?
I dont know about you, but i dont need a study to tell me that.
But I still live a modern life, and live in a modern city, and shop at modern supermarkets.

I am unwilling to forgo everything, live in the bush and hunt for all my own food in order to add 6 months to my lifespan.

So with that in mind, i structure my balanced diet to go along with my office sitting, stress filled life. And that entails eating carbs, and untill sat fat is proven to not do harm when consumed in mass quantities, i'll continue to restrict it.

And i dont consider some pygmie tribes ability to eat high sat diet as proof.

These anecdotes of isolated tribes are interesting, but there may be many issues that are being overlooked. When you look at the overwhelming society of people in the world, and the diet they eat (China, for example), you find that heart disease is not as pronounced for them as it is in westernized countries with meat as the main staple.

hmmmmmm..... that's a bit extreme -- who's telling you to do that? The French don't hunt their own food, nor do they walk 30 miles day, but they eat as much (or more) saturated fat than us, but have much less CHD.

The tricky thing to avoid is stress. If we're motivated enough, we can eat all the right stuff, do the exercise, etc, but then the health experts tell us to "avoid stress". How to we just up and get rid of stress? Crikey!! It just sounds too easy. We can't all quit our jobs, get rid of all our financial responibilities, dump our families and ride our bikes and meditate all day.



Once again, who's suggesting 'mass' quantities, and what is 'massive'? At the moment, I would only suggest that we should at least not be frightened of saturated fat.



it's not meant to be proof; it is, at least, very interesting epidemiological data.

Mass quantities is over and above the 'recomended'.

And yes it is very interesting data, which is why i've said all along that its still up in the air, jury's still out, not yet proven either way. I'll continue to sit on the side of the fence that restricts it (not eliminates) untill such time as it is proven.

In science nothing is ever proven, I hate the word. We just get to a point where we can't think of new experiments to test/violate the current model. However, an overlooked fact is that just because a model is disproven doesn't mean that the model loses usefulness. Take Maxwell eq for example, disproved by quantum mech, yet still used to design countless electrical devices daily.

works great!