Studies reveal that 95%+ of people who diet never lose weight permanently. Fat which was previously vilified is now the redeemer.
The startling headline of this weeks’ Time Magazine reads: Eat Butter. Scientists labelled Fat the Enemy. Why they were wrong.
What a volte facie? What a heresy. Two generations of medical personnel will have to unlearn their mantra: Fat is bad. Fat will kill you.
Not surprisingly, we each have our own stories of our odyssey in this saga.
Mine commenced at age 40. In order to overcome my mid-life crisis, I undertook to run a marathon in 3:30 ie at five minutes a kilometre. To do so I would have to shed at least 10 to 15 kgs in weight. Driven by these desires, I undertook a rigorous dieting regimen. I starved myself, I cajoled myself, I was determined that the thinner and skinnier me would emerge from this rotund figure. Gradually it came forth and as it did so, my times improved.
Finally my mental picture of my body and reality coincided.
I was elated.
After four months of starvation rations like the Holocaust victims except that it was self-imposed, the family and I were going for a week’s leave to Port Elizabeth. We would be staying at the Humewood Hotel opposite King’s Beach. After four months of purgatory, I would succumb to the temptations of the hotel fare.
On returning to Joburg, the bathroom scale revealed the error of my ways: in one week I had picked up every kilogram which I had so arduously lost over four months.
I made a solemn vow on that night’s supper of 5 lettuce leaves sans dressing and a small piece of grilled meat that I would NEVER EVER GO ON DIET AGAIN, so help me God!
Simply put, I would embrace the dietary Satan and eat what I craved, whenever I so desired to.
Quite frankly after suffering in silence in months to what end, why would I ever want to endure those hunger pangs ever again.
Justifications soon followed: I was heavy boned, my stomach muscles were slack or I was genetically predisposed to be morbidly obese.
But then came my back problems. The one mantra that the doctor mumbled with every visit was that if I lost 20kgs, I probably would not require a back operation.
Being mindful of the need to lose weight, an article entitled Against the Grains appeared about five years ago. It was heresy liable to have Tim Noakes drawn and quartered by the gate keepers of conventional dietary wisdom.
Even though the article reiterated very timidly that perhaps in the off-chance that received wisdom was a tad incorrect, then for those suffering from carbohydrate intolerance, eating carbs would be akin to drinking milk if one were lactose intolerant. Hidden away in deep cover was the comment that 80% of people suffered from carbohydrate intolerance. What Tim was alluded to sotto voce was that the whole bloody lot of us had better stop consuming carbohydrates!
Tim Noakes
As expected, in spite of such a timid assertion, the heavens did descend on Tim’s head.
Also hidden away in the article was a book which was the Bible on this issue: The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes. I promptly purchased it from Amazon. It was a dense 620 tome of all the scientific investigations relating to dieting. It was not an easy relaxing read but what it did rapidly become clear to me that if Gary Taubes was correct, which seemed scientifically possible, then the generally accepted diet containing high-carb low fat diet was ironically the very root of the obesity epidemic now.
Gary Taubes deals with this issue in extremis as well. Surprisingly it was partly on account of poor science and political reasons that what is now considered to be the conventional was derived.
After WW2, rises in the number of heart attacks had created a panic situation in America. Worse yet, President Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack and gone were the days when the politicians could not react when deaths as a result of heart attacks could not be addressed. A Senate Committee under the Chairmanship of Senator George McGovern was tasked with determining the root cause and proposing some remedies.
A leading scientist post WW2 was a Dr. Ancel Keys. Not only was he an excellent scientist but be possessed an extremely strong personality. He posited that high levels of cholesterol would clog arteries causing heart disease.
His landmark Seven Countries Study, found that people who ate a diet low in saturated fat experienced lower levels of heart disease. This Study commenced the vilification of fat as the originator an evil product to be avoided at all costs.
In reality, the results of his tests were not as conclusive as Dr Keys would have liked them to be. In order to reinforce his opus magnum he omitted results from West Germany and France which did not support his results.
Key’s unshakeable confidence and his willingness to deprecate and disparage any researcher who disagreed with him, swiftly created the rising accepted reasoning that correlation equated with causation. What that implied was that as cholesterol was derived from fat, fat a priori was the villain in the equation.
After the publication of the McGovern Report backed by the dubious science of Dr Keys, the patch was set. We were all to embark on a dietary experiment which was doomed to failure.
This fallacy was accepted blithely until recently with Gary Taubes first casting aspersions on the underlying science.
This is where Tim Noake’s involvement in the debate originated. Despite remaining fairly active – fitter than 90% of South Africans – after his Comrades heydays, he steadily and inexorably gained weight. At 60 years of age and substantially overweight, he implicitly understood that a change was required.
Based upon both anecdotal and scientific evidence, the conventional low fat diet did not yield great success. There had to be an alternative which worked. After casting around he happened to become acquainted with Taube’s book, The Diet Delusion. After intensive study, Tim could not fault the logic. In secret he applied these principles and lost 15kgs in 6 months. But what was more surprising was the ease of the weight loss. No hunger accompanied the dieting. In fact he could eat as much as he wanted to as long as it had a high fat content. Even more surprising was that his cholesterol levels remained static.
With the confidence of a successful test under his belt, he now put his toe into the water knowing full well that the establishment would retaliate violently.
They duly did.
Tim has been slated on numerous occasions in the SA Medical Journal for his heretical views.
That then brings the diet back to my predicament.
In early December 2013, I experienced crippling pains in my back. Based on prior experience, this was clearly a sciatic nerve being pinched. An MRI scan confirmed by non-medical diagnosis. An epidural injection into the spine provided no more than temporary relief. The only reason for not having the operation was that by the time that the epidural was proved to be useless, all of the neuro-surgeons were on leave.
It was now or never. I would break my solemn promise. I would lose those 20kgs. Finally after 3 back operations, I broke my solemn vow made in the sanctity of our dining room. The only caveat that I placed was a pre-condition. I would use the Tim Noakes method.
Changing from low fat to high fat was a mind shift. But it was surprising easy. The one consolation of a high fat diet is the lack of hunger pangs
So far after my first cholesterol test subsequent to commencing this diet, the readings are the same as previously.
The jury is still out on this issue but the weight of opinion has started shifting.
Undoubtedly there will be many battles in the foreseeable future but diets as we know them as destined to change radically as the evidence mounts.
Poor science and political decisions led the world into a cul de sac from which it now needs to extricate itself.