Diet advice do jour. Usual grains of salt apply.

[elfs]

In an article entitled Unhappy Meals, author Michael Pollan documents the rise of food science and "nutritionalism," the belief that one can control one's nutrition completely by understanding nutrients. Pollan's advice is simple and direct: all of the diet advice in the world comes down to seven words:

"Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

Pollan's main point is that it is the second word in all that advice that is difficult for people to grasp. Power bars and soda pop are not "food"; anything that tries to sell itself to you as "nutritionalized" is probably not "food". His advice: if someone from 1900 wouldn't recognize it as food, it's not. Avoid ingredients that are unfamiliar and unpronouncable. I especially like his "You're an omnivore: eat like one!" line.

And the bad news came in yesterday: A calorie is a calorie. I can't make my gut go away by doing abdominal crunches. The distribution of fat is wholly genetic: the only way to make it go away is to eat less. That may not be entirely true: some of the middle-age abdominal distension is due to a loss of muscle tone in those areas, so exercise will help that. But not the love handles.

Comments

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

You can so make your gut go away by doing abdominal crunches. It's just that they are no more nor less efffective at making belly flab go away than are bicep curls. This is subject to the caveat, of course, that most strength training exercises aren't aerobic, and that aerobic exercise -- exertion that raises breath and heart rates only moderately but over sustained periods of time -- burns body fat directly.

It isn't so much "eat less" as it is "burn it away and don't replace it" -- if losing that body fat is your goal. Exercise is a key part of this. You could be exercising a lot, eating more and still be burning body fat. And you are better off six ways from Sunday exercising regularly anyway. It is far more important that your belly fat be an active participant in your body's energy economy than that this fat be reduced or eliminated.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

fat beneath the abs can't realy be hidden.

What happens to it is, it crowds, squeezes & compresses the viscera, the internal organs, which can seriously compromise their function, your comfort, and your health, both overall and long-term. Visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is the hardest fat to lose, and the biggest single health risk for men as they age.

...or so I hear....

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating. Because I see food as undergoing a major change at the moment. We're moving to a place where the wealthy eat real food and everyone else gets processed grains in different shapes.

Prime example: Quaker Oats Breakfast Cookies actually have more fiber and more vitamins than a serving of oatmeal.

I foresee more things like this: meal bars, breakfast cookies, easy to carry, easy to eat, ready to be put into a too-busy life.

I'm just waiting for the day one of the pet food makers offers Human Chow: a nutrionally complete meal in a pouch. Just eat it like other snack food. Comes in 14 different flavors including beef stew, ham and beans, roast turkey, etc.

And people will buy it, because it's cheap, easy and "nutritious."

Human Chow?

[jenk]

Isn't that what MREs are? :)

Re: Human Chow?

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Except MRE's still bear some resemblence to actual food. And tend to require a fork. They're also too expensive for regular consumption.

I'm thinking something that looks like a cross between trail mix and cat chow, comes in both pre-measured pouches or a large bag. "Have a scoop of kibble, kids, the PTA is running late!"

Re: Human Chow?

[adaveen.livejournal.com]

I've always called this stuff "Kellog's People Chow"

http://www2.kelloggs.com/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?brand=139&product=559&cat=cereal

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

the actual equasion is: Calories taken in - calories burned = calories stored
since unburned calories are converted to fat for storage, there you go.

of course, the quality / actual-food-value of the calories you take in matters greatly, but the bottom line is so straight-forward: calories consumed but unused become (larger) fat deposits.

crunches can and will tighten up the abdominal muscles, which is important (*very* important, actually - and for far more reasons than just 'love-handles'), but crunches are not a particularly thermogenic (ie, fat-burning) activity. Cardio will burn fat, but it is not particularly kind to the system overall.

Weight-bearing exercise (weight-lifting, bodyweight exercise) is much more effective at burning calories because muscle is metabolically more active than any other tissue type, excluding organs / viscera); the end result of adding muscle is an elevated metabolic rate (BMR)...and the end result of that is that your body burns more calories on a continuous basis - not merely as a response to exercise.

Weight-bearing exercise also offers the benefit of increasing one's energy, one's physical capacity for activity (greatly increasing one's ability to perform and enjoy sexually, among other things).

As with anything in life, there's always a trade-off.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

The 'rubber bag' theory of weight loss (i.e., your body is a bag, you take in food, dump waste, and burn calories; put in more than you burn, and you gain weight, put in less than you burn, you lose weight) is the basic premise behind the Hacker's Diet, which takes an engineering approach to weight loss, including a tiered exercise program that works up from a level that any couch potato can do to serious workouts, moving up a rung only when the current level becomes easy. Along with the material on exercise and diet are sections discussing how the random variations in day-to-day measurement can make people think they're not making progress, and how to use well-known statistical measurements to help kill noise and show you what your real progress is.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

My brother's advice was simple, which made it great for me.

1) Walk to Greenlake and then walk around it once, and then walk back home. Go fast or slow, but go the distance. Do that at least three times per week.

2) If hungry, walk around the block. If still hungry, drink some water. If still hungry, eat just a little.

3) Either before or after the Greenlake laps, do at least 20 push-ups.

Funny, I started dropping weight and keeping it off. It helped I lived in the University District, but even the walk to and from was good exercise by itself. Plus the scenery was pretty, not including the plant life and buildings. :)

[mundens.livejournal.com]

You can loose fat by exercise, but "crunches" or any actual particular exercise are irrelevant. (though as other have said they're good for other reasons)

What's required to begin using up the fat is for you to use up your readily available energy store, and force your body to start using it's reserves. This means that you generally need at least thirty minutes of sustained exercise of some sort, and only after that, will any exercise begin to burn off fat.

The good news is that brisk walking for that amount of time is as good as any other exercise!

Over here in New Zealand our government health agencies run television commercials and the like to educate people about this sort of thing. As we have a public health system, they have realized that the cost of commercials to try and get action now is minimal compared to the cost to the country if action isn't taken to improve health!

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

In an effort for me to lose all the weight I did, I tried this revolutionary new diet.

I ate healthily, and took in less calories than I used to.

And you know what? It worked! I lost about 30kg (66lbs) of fat, and then I started going to the gym and put on muscle, but people are still commenting on the fact that I look like I have lost more, so I'm guessing about 40kg (88lbs) of fat loss.

It make a HUGE difference.

[halonic.livejournal.com]

same applies here, started reading the backs of ready made food and got scared by the calorie/fat content, so made more of my own meals using real food (fresh veg mostly) and avoided eating out of packets/takeouts/restaurants. Was already a member of a gym so just kept going regularly.

Went from 21 stone to 13.5 in two years, a size 42inch waist to about 33inch now.

Actualy have the luxury to concentrate on muscle development now, the good eating keeps the weight easily in check