Weight focus or Health focus?
Weight loss or healthy body?
Weight loss is not a new thing, as we all know. It’s a natural part of the human body that has been exploited, enlivened, demonized and praised. Losing weight is easy for some, hard for others, and totally irrelevant to many. There exist countless ideas, views and opinions about weight loss and how to make it happen, and as a nutritionist who is wildly fascinated about understanding how the natural healthy state of the human body comes to flourish, I have studied a bit about weight loss and will continue to learn more. Here is what I have come to learn so far.
The calories in, calories out model is part of the issue, but definitely not the whole picture.
Some people who have led to my view on this issue are Dr. Jason Fung, Chris Masterjohn, Dr. Hyman, Ben Greenfield, Dr. Molly Maloof to name a few.
Yes, the body runs on calories as a way to obtain energy to fuel the mitochondria, the energy powerhouse of each cell. Yes, there are different numbers of calories in a gram per different macronutrients (carbs:4cal/gram protein:4 fat:9 alcohol:7)
Yes, when there is excess energy in the body that does not get used it is stored away in the form of fat to be used later. This is how species survive and procreate. However, the concept of weight gain/loss is much more complicated than this though. The human body is not a vacuum nor a single unit engine, but rather has a multitude of different levels, strategies, and preferences to use these calories, or not. Calories from fat are used differently than calories from carbohydrates and those from protein.
There are people who eat the same number of calories and experience different affects on weight.
Let us also look at exactly why a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie.
100 calories:
A 16oz container of spinach
1 reeses peanut butter cup
130 blueberries
less than a can of coke
less than half a cliff bar
You don’t have to know anything about nutrition to know that these foods each have different affects on the body.
You can see how eating these different foods will have a different affect on satiety, hunger and weight gain. In addition, the amount of nutrients in the blueberries or the spinach far outweigh the nutrients in a coke or Reeses.
Some foods promote hunger others promote satiety. Eating the same number of calories of different foods WILL have a different affect on the body, and this is mainly through hormones.
What you eat, when you eat, where the calories come from, your gut microbiome, your mood, your nutrient deficiencies, the time of year, your level of exercise, organic or conventional will all affect how your body reacts with the calories you consume.
People lose weight on low carb diets, low fat diets, low calorie diets, high fat diets. It is possible to lose weight by merely restricting calories, but is this sustainable and healthy?
People can eat a high fat diet which is high in calories and still lose weight, probably because of the lack of insulin spikes, low blood sugar levels and training the body to utilize ketones and go into the body fat for energy.
Weight has much more to do with hormones, than with calories.
Ghrelin, leptin and insulin are all hormones that tell us how to feel, when to eat and what to do with the food we consume. It is much more important to eat well and create balance in the body with these hormones rather than focus merely on the amount of calories in your food.
The gut microbiome influences our weight.
We are more bacteria than we are human cells. Before any food enters our body, it must first interact with our gut microbiome. These little critters will first break down and digest our food, giving us vitamins and essential nutrients as their by product. The bacteria in our gut eat our food before we do, so we are actually eating for them! It is easy to see why the bacteria that colonize us are so important. We have the choice to feed the good gut buddies or the harmful ones. The good ones take care of us if we take care of them, through a diet rich in whole, clean foods. They send out chemical messangers, some in the form of neurotrasmitters, to tell us how they feel and who they are. When we experience ourselves free of food cravings and in a good mood we know that we have happy and healthy gut buddies. When we crave sugary foods, are edgy, moody and anxious then we can know that we are inhabited by unfriendly gut bugs. There was a study of twins with the same genes yet one was obese and the other wasn’t. Upon investigating the gut microbiome they were completely different! When fecal transplants take place, thus moving the microbiome of a healthy weight person into that of an obese person, we see them shed weight quickly and easily. The same is true for the other sitation.
Some gut buddies utilize and absorb more calories than others. If two people eat the same number of calories they may not actually both absorb the same number depending on the species in their gut.
Exercise alone is not the answer to weight issues.
Studies on mice who exercised the same amount and ate different foods gained weight differently. Exercise is, of course, a part of a healthy life style. But the idea that one should solely exercise their way to a healthy body without taking into consideration a healthy diet is reductionist and will not lead to desired outcome for the long term and probably not the short term either.
Different types of exercise also send our body different signals on what to do with the energy within us. When we do long distance cardio we are telling our body to make the energy last longer and thus slow down the metabolism. When we do high intensity short burst exercise we burn through energy and sugar quickly.
Food quality matters
For the past 30 years the prevailing theory on weight is to lower calorie consumption and exercise more to achieve one’s weight goals. We know that the western world is becoming fatter and fatter, and that this thought processes is not helping people. Yes, people have lost weight using this method. But for how long? This is the root of the yo-yo dieting trend where weight comes off with hard work and determination, only to crawl its way back on the minute the low calorie diet and constant working out is forgotten about. The goal is to create a sustainable healthy lifestyle.
Putting weight aside for the moment, let’s focus on total health. Weigh is not health, although there is a correlation with weight and health outcomes. However, it is very possible to look healthy on the outside and not be on the inside. When the focus of a diet is on calories and not on the quality of food the body suffers. The organs are not nourished correctly and disease will ensure if low calorie junk food is taken in regularly. Nutrient deficiencies will ensure, toxicity from pesticide and other toxic chemicals will store in the fat tissue and harm the heart, oxidation and aging will occur more rapidly, and health will not be the outcome even if we achieve our desired weight.
Weight loss or muscle gain?
In addition, when someone says they want to lose weight, what they really are saying is they want to lose fat tissue. For some people, the scale is not the best guide on their journey to ultimate health. Ideally, replacing most of the fat weight with muscle will create greater health. Muscle is more metabolically active and takes more calories to maintain. This is one reason why calories are not the best tracker of losing fat, because people who carry a lot of muscle need a lot of calories, but they are not becoming fatter as a result. Two people who both weight 200 pounds may have very different states of health including their body fat and muscle ratio.
Fasting
Humans have been fasting much longer than we have been living in constant feast. Our bodies are designed to go periods of time without food and it is not a state of starvation to go long periods of time without eating. When we fast we give our body a chance to utilize the stored energy we have on us because we are not providing new energy through food. When we eat a very high carbohydrate, 3 meal a day diet we deprive ourselves of the beneficial ability to burn body fat efficiently.
What to do?
I recommend eating a natural diet free of ultra processed foods, sugar, and beverages aside from water, tea and coffee. Nourish the body with clean water, properly prepared health promoting vegetables, nutrient dense herbs, high quality extra virgin olive oil, some seasonal fruit, and high quality clean A2 animal products including organ meats. Implement periods of fasting by either periodic long term fasts, day long fasts or part day fasts. Treat your digestive tract with the utmost respect and introduce healthy probiotics and fibers into your diet. Become aware of portions and reduce portion size down to reduce total calorie intake. Cut out grains and other new world foods that are foreign to your genetics.
Combining an active lifestyle with a healthy diet and mindset is the key. Implement exercise into your life by taking the stairs, going on walks, riding your bike, and playing sports. Find ways of moving that you enjoy, whether its going to the gym, doing yoga, running, find something that is sustainable and feels good.
References:
John, G. K., Wang, L., Nanavati, J., Twose, C., Singh, R., & Mullin, G. (2018). Dietary Alteration of the Gut Microbiome and Its Impact on Weight and Fat Mass: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Genes, 9(3), 167. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes9030167. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5867888/
Turnbaugh, P. J., Hamady, M., Yatsunenko, T., Cantarel, B. L., Duncan, A., Ley, R. E., Sogin, M. L., Jones, W. J., Roe, B. A., Affourtit, J. P., Egholm, M., Henrissat, B., Heath, A. C., Knight, R., & Gordon, J. I. (2009). A core gut microbiome in obese and lean twins. Nature, 457(7228), 480–484. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07540 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19043404
Jung, A. P., & Luthin, D. R. (2010). Wheel access does not attenuate weight gain in mice fed high-fat or high-CHO diets. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 42(2), 355–360. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181a6d88f https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2963867/
