Nimm's Journal, 25 June 2012

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Life and work have been extremely busy the last few weeks, but things should be back to a more manageable level where I can do a few updates again. In the meantime, the exertion headaches aren't gone entirely, but they're not a big factor. For the last week, the bigger impediment to lifting has been a nasty sunburn - we took our son to an amusement park the weekend before last, and while he had a great time, my aversion to sunscreen left me as burned as a lobster. Squatting with a few hundred pounds of barbell stretching across your highly-sunburned back is a pain I will be happy to never experience again. Ever.

Back to the science:
Discrepancy between Self-Reported and Actual Caloric Intake and Exercise in Obese Subjects

Over the years, a lot of published research on nutrition has involved studies that were not rigorously controlled - usually for cost reasons. "Metabolic ward" studies aren't nearly as common as those that rely on the subjects' self-reported food intake. This paper highlights why relying on what people say they eat, as opposed to controlling or confirming what they actually eat is a very fundamental problem for researchers. It also highlights why it's important to take "I'm eating nothing and still not losing weight!" with a large grain of salt.

The researchers took a group of 16 "diet resistant" people who had claimed to be unable to lose weight despite eating fewer than 1200 calories per day, and often taking thyroid medication: "Although the subjects in group 1 had no distinct psychopathologic characteristics, they perceived a genetic cause for their obesity, used thyroid medication at a high frequency, and described their eating behavior as relatively normal."

For 14 days, the subjects were instructed to record/log everything they ate, and record/log their activity level (sound familiar?). While doing this logging, the subjects were also having their actual calorie intake and daily energy expenditure (TDEE) measured with doubly-labeled water.

The results speak for themselves:




One subject who was logging her own daily calorie intake at around 1000 was actually eating 3000.

All of this is to say that unless we're quite careful, we tend to be extremely bad at counting calories - to the point where we think we're at a starvation level of energy, but are actually overeating.
And while I don't want to open the door to another low-carb/high-carb fight, this research is probably the most compelling argument in favor of a low-carb approach. Even through the research doesn't support the insulin hypothesis of obesity - it still comes down to consuming more energy than you expend - this paper shows how and why it can be extremely difficult to stay in a consistent calorie deficit. And the research is pretty consistent that as an ad libitum strategy, reducing or eliminating carbohydrate tends to keep people from overeating. Combine these two facts, and you have a recipe for eliminating the problems that so many people have while counting calories.

But that's all beside the point - I'm not using this study to encourage or discourage any particular diet strategy. It's simply to highlight how bad we tend to be at estimating what we're eating and what we're burning. The next time you see a forum thread complaining about the inability to lose weight despite a 1200 calorie/day diet, the answer is very likely "You're counting badly." Whether or not actually saying that is a good idea, however, I'll leave for you to decide.

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3350 kcal

Fat: 113.51g | Prot: 206.69g | Carb: 422.97g.   Breakfast: Organic Sugar Free Coconut Milk - Vanilla, broccoli & cauliflower, optimum strawberry, chobani plain nonfat, peach, strawberries, raspberries, carlson fish oil, eggland's best large. Lunch: cocoa roast almonds, spinach, meijer organics vegetable medley, strawberries, eggland's best large, tomatoes, bumble bee salmon. Dinner: chobani plain nonfat, eggland's best, Milk (2% Lowfat with Added Vitamin A), fiber one 80, kashi golean. Snacks/Other: apple cinnamon cheerios, dannon light & fit pineapple, Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream, fiber one 90, dannon light & fit blueberry, crunchmaster, meijer cottage cheese, krema, oatmeal cookie chunk, dark chocolate dreams, fiber one chewy bar, pure protein whey, blueberries, optimum casein, 2% milk, cocoa roast almonds, Extra Dessert Delights Sugarfree Gum - Mint Chocolate Chip. more...