Spending Youself Thin

I was watching late night TV last night, and I saw about 1000 commercials for various diet and exercise products. I have some knowledge on this topic (my wife being a professional fitness competitor), so I decided to look into the claims made by most of these commercials and the reasons that the companies make these claims. In order to properly evaluate these commercials, some basic medical knowledge is required. 1 - Fat is Bad First, it is common knowledge that eating large amounts of fat is bad, and will usually result in weight gain. This is because the fat that is eaten is emulsified with bile salts in the gall bladder; this is then broken down by the pancreas into glycerol and fatty acids. In the intestines, the parts are reassembled into packages of fat molecules (the dreaded triglycerides) with a protein coating called chylomicrons. They are then released into the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system eventually merges with the veins, at which point the chylomicrons pass into the bloodstream. Chylomicrons do not last long in the bloodstream (less than 10 minutes) because enzymes called lipoprotein lipases break the fats into fatty acids. The activity of lipoprotein lipases depends upon the levels of insulin in the body. If insulin is high, then the lipases are highly active; if insulin is low, the lipases are inactive. The fatty acids are then absorbed from the blood into fat cells, muscle cells and liver cells. In these cells, under stimulation by insulin, fatty acids are made into fat molecules and stored as fat droplets. This is why large amounts of fat should be avoided. 2 - Sugar is Bad - Sort of Sugar itself is not bad; the problem has to do with insulin. In the body, insulin is secreted in response to elevated blood sugar levels, such as those that occur after a meal, and it pushes that sugar into storage. First to be filled are the tissues of the muscles and the liver where the sugar is converted to glycogen. Glycogen is the body's fuel of choice for high intensity aerobic activity because it is readily available and because it is quickly converted to ATP for energy. The problem is that the body only has storage for about 2500 calories worth of glycogen providing your stores were totally empty (which is impossible). Most people only have room to store about 500 calories of glycogen from any given meal. After these storage areas become full, insulin pushes the remaining sugar into the other infinite storage area, FAT STORAGE. How to Diet So, now we see that large amounts of fat and sugar lead directly to the enlargement of fat cells for storage (You don't actually get more fat cells, the ones you have just get bigger.) So, the obvious thing to do is to limit the amount of fat and sugar consumed. Food eaten in small, 500 calorie increments allows the glycogen stores in the body to be replenished without requiring additional storage in fat. Many of the best diets involve eating many small meals in 2-hour increments throughout the day - the diets used by professional bodybuilders, for instance. However, bodybuilders must have a high supply of glycogen in order to do intense weight training workouts. Therefore, they need some fat and sugars in their system. Fortunately, not all sugars are created equally. The critical thing is not whether a food has sugar, but how quickly the sugar enters the blood stream. Food is actually categorized by this rate of entry. This is known as the glycemic index. Must of the new diets available tout this as the secret to success. As an example, The Nutri System Diet, a popular new technique which delivers food to the dieter, is based on the manipulation of the glycemic index to regulate insulin levels in the body; this avoids storing excess glycogen as fat. However, the commercials never mention that the portion size must be near the 500 calorie storage limit as well. Most people have been psychologically trained to feel "full" only when consuming far more than 500 calories in a sitting. This necessitates the small, frequent meals mentioned above. For the average eater, however, this is not practical in the long term. Ironically, this is exactly what the diet companies are hoping. The "diet" industry is now a $50+ billion dollar enterprise in the US. This industry is predicated, for the most part, on the supposition that the biology of the problem is so complex that a myriad of doctors and nutritionists are required to develop a plan that will be successful. It is also important to make sure that he American public is sufficiently afraid of the consequences of being fat. Heart disease is currently a health danger to the American public, and this danger is augmented through advertising to seem as a horrible plight, which only the nutrition experts can solve - if you buy their system, that is. So, we have fear of a consequence that seems very large, and a series of intellectuals telling us to spend money to avoid the consequence. Sounds a lot like my educational post in Fear, Education and Indoctrination. The common thread I have found among almost all of the diets available today is that they are not long-term sustainable. Eating small, frequent meals interferes directly with most lifestyles. The Nutri System diet will happily deliver food to you, but this is very restrictive because you must always bring your own food anywhere you go. This is usually not a problem for a short period of time. As a lifestyle, however, it is impractical to all but the most dedicated dieters. This is very important to the diet industry. People who lose weight and then maintain the results are not good customers. Good diet customers lose weight in the short term, but re-gain it in the long term. This requires them to become diet customers again, and the cycle repeats. The key to ending this cycle is a change in both diet and lifestyle, such that the changes are symbiotic enough to allow for long-term success. My advice: 1. Do not diet out of fear. Hearing from a doctor that you need to eat better or suffer a heart attack is an excellent short term motivator. Many heart patients immediately assume a rigid diet approach to improve their cardio-vascular health - for a while. This type of diet is doomed from the outset because the bastions of long term success - understanding and lifestyle - do not exist. 2. Learn about how diets and exercise work. The discussion above involving the processing of fat and sugar, especially when combined with the gylcemic index, is invaluable to understanding how what you eat affects your body. Understand additionally how water, vitamins, and other nutrients affect your system. 3. Do not be too strict. If you love pizza, eliminating it completely from your life will not work in the long term. Eat something you like once in a while, just limit the frequency (once a week perhaps). 4. Decide what lifestyle change you can manage. This relates to #3. If you assume you will change everything about your life immediately, you will fail. Allow yourself some moderate change, and determine if it is sustainable. If so, you may have found something worth pursuing. If you follow these 4 items, the chances for success improve greatly. And it won't cost you a thing.