My husband and I watched Cosmos last night, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I loved how he emphasized how dedicated science is to follow where the evidence leads. Except when it comes to nutrition, I guess.
Here are some revelations I have discovered in my nutrition awakening, relevant only to what I previously believed:
1. You have to limit fat if you want to lose fat.
FALSE. Limiting dietary fat is no fun and is largely unsustainable. Instead, try limiting carbs, which will subsequently lower insulin production (the hormone responsible for triggering fat storage). Of course, you shouldn't outeat your true energy needs no matter your macronutrient ratios. Fat is amazing. It tastes great. And if you can change your metabolic pathways to better utilize fat for energy, fat can be so beneficial in curbing hunger, providing sustained energy, and burning fat.
2. Every meal should be a balanced meal.
NOT REALLY. It kind of depends on what your body needs. If you need some quick energy (as an efficient fat burner), you should go for some medium-chain triglycerides or saturated fat, such as coconut butter, butter, coconut oil, and palm oil. If you need micronutrients, you should go for chia seeds, avocados, asparagus, spinach... Carbohydrates are the only non-essential macronutrient. We would die without dietary fat. Same for protein. We would function just fine without carbohydrates. The body has other mechanisms for creating glucose, which is essential for a small portion of the brain.
3. It's best to eat small meals throughout the day.
NOT IF YOU CAN BREAK YOUR CARB ADDICTION. While this may be true for the majority of the population that depends on the quicker burning (non-essential) carbohydrate diet, this is good advice. If you are working with mostly fats, then your meals will naturally be small (fat packs in a lot of calories), but you can (and should) go for at least 5 hours in between meals. Some people even try intermittent fasting (IF) and do just fine.
4. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
AGAIN, TRUE FOR CARBERS. NOT TRUE FOR EFFICIENT FAT BURNERS. The reason that carbers should never skip breakfast is because their body is at the whims of the blood glucose cycle. Your body needs to replenish the glucose stores it went through during the night. If you don't replenish these supplies, you can land yourself in big trouble (read: famished by lunch, craving carby foods and further exacerbating the cycle). However, if you train your body to use fat for fuel, you will efficiently burn stored fat throughout this morning period without getting super hungry and without losing energy. This is freeing.
5. If you skip meals, your body will go into "starvation mode."
KIND OF TRUE, BUT MISREPRESENTED. Starvation mode is the amazing mechanism of our bodies turning to stored fat for fuel. But your brain needs some glucose, so it will use some stored glucose for that ~20% brain function that relies on glucose (the rest can use a byproduct of fat breakdown called ketones). If need be, your body can bust into lean muscles and tissues for protein, and create glucose from it, called gluconeogenesis. If you are already an efficient fat burner, "starvation mode" makes little difference. See the previous point about skipping breakfast. You should eat. Your body needs fuel eventually, and you do NOT want to start metabolizing muscle and tissue.
Until recently, I was participating with a group of health coaches promoting the low-fat, high-carb, restricted calorie lifestyle. I think this approach is one that will work for many people who lack the discipline to stay away from carbs and realize that they "like" carbs because carbs stimulate pleasure in the brain--let's think of other ways to do this! But if we are going to really educate people, we should be screaming from the mountaintops: There is no one size fits all approach! And if there were, it would certainly not be a high-carb, low-fat approach. Calorie restriction and low-fat, high-carb usually does not work long-term, and it certainly isn't working as a societal recommendation.
It can work short-term, and it can work for people with the right kind of genes to handle all those carbs, but I am convinced that our dietary guidelines should be steered to a lower carb approach. Maybe 60% of calories from fat, 15% from carbs, and 25% from protein.
For your entertainment, here are a few gems of the "fuzzy math" of nutrition being promoted by self-titled health coaches:
- Your body turns protein and fat into glucose. Huh? Since when? Your body turns carbs into glucose at very high rates, turns 30-50% of protein into glucose (which is why you shouldn't overdo protein), and, in rare circumstances, can turn as much as 10% of fat into glucose (like, if you have been running for 40 hours and have run out of glucose stores and you broken down a significant amount of muscle and tissue--not a common scenario).
- Complex carbohydrates are called as such because they have protein in them. Yeah, that's not really how the naming convention works in science. It's based on the structure of the carbohydrate molecule, and how complex it is compared to a simple sugar. Nothing to do with protein.
- You should eat 1.5 g of protein per pound of body weight. OK, all you are doing here is providing an excess of protein to be turned into glucose. Good job. The recommendation on this one is pretty sound, actually (about 54 g of protein for a 150-lb adult; not at least 54, but 54). It's mostly comes from the performance oriented goals of sports nutrition science. As a caveat, if you are truly building muscle, then your protein needs will be a bit greater. Also--a good benefit of protein is that is slows digestion and hence, makes you feel full. An overage of protein can stop up the works. The best approach to calculating your protein needs is to start with your bodyweight, and from there, account for any significant muscle-building you are consistently doing.
Unfortunately, I don't think there's as much money to be made from promoting a high-fat, low-carb, moderate protein lifestyle. Protein is expensive and has many allies (meat and soy industry, nutrition companies that are on the protein bandwagon), carbs are a cash cow for the food industry (cheap to make and you can rely on people's cravings for them), and are especially lucrative when you throw a "low-fat" banner on the label.
Where's the money to be made in promoting whole foods that naturally promote less consumption, like olive oil, butter, green vegetables, coconut milk, etc... ? In this approach, you would need to eat a lesser amount of food, as your energy is mostly coming from fats, which pack more that 2 times the amount of energy per gram than protein or carbohydrates. Instead of a huge, $15 salad with fat free dressing and chicken, you could have what I had today: 2 eggs cooked in coconut oil plus 1/2 an avocado. Last night I fasted from 4pm to 11am this morning and felt totally sustained. Not to mention my blood sugar stayed on a straight path between 75 and 110 all day. Pretty good for someone with a dysfunctional pancreas. And for someone living in a country with dysfunctional thinking on nutrition.
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