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  #1   ^
Old Fri, Jun-01-12, 13:02
Plinge Plinge is offline
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Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default Letter on Maintenance

I’ve been seeking a quiet spot to post my musings on maintenance. This friendly corner of the site seems ideal. Few will read the thread, but that will be a good thing, as I’ll doubtless talk much nonsense. My dream is the impossible dream–to become one of those enviable people who, eating freely, maintain their weight naturally, as if by some corporeal magic.

Before I start my rambles, I should mention that I’m fortunately fit and well. What works for me might not work for anyone else, especially if they have compounding health issues.
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  #2   ^
Old Fri, Jun-01-12, 13:17
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
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The hypothesis I plan to investigate is this: that somewhere within the human body system may exist a key, or a set of keys, to natural weight homeostasis. In other words, I want to find out whether my body can regulate itself at a “normal weight”, without life having to become one long stressful diet just to tread water. This is urgent for me because my past shows that I lack the willpower to cut calories ad infinitum. I need more than willpower to stay at this weight: I need a mechanism that, once set in gear, could supervise itself.

Maintenance allows me the freedom to undertake some experiments in eating. On the reducing diet, I was afraid to experiment much in case I stalled or put on weight; but I kept detailed food journals that eventually began to suggest a number of lines of enquiry. I did make one powerful discovery during my diet, which triggered the hypothesis that the body may have the ability to control calorie balance, even the body of a “Mr Fatten Easily”, as Richard Mackarness called people like myself.

The only two books I read before starting my low-calorie diet were Dr Richard Mackarness’s Eat Fat, and Grow Slim (1970s edition) and Dr John Briffa’s Waist Disposal, a diet book for men. Always alert for loopholes in conventional wisdom, I was struck by Dr Briffa’s insistence that nuts are not fattening. I therefore tried eating handfuls of walnuts for snacks, instead of my former biscuits, crisps, and so forth. Over time, I noticed I did not gain more or lose less weight on the days I ate nuts than on the days I did not (I wasn’t counting calories at that time, because the two doctors said it wasn’t necessary to do so). As a result, I increased the amount of nuts I ate each day, and, to my surprise, my weight loss continued unimpeded. After a while, I began eating quite large amounts of nuts each day in addition to my diet food, and still they made no difference. In fact, I came to suspect them of actually helping me to lose weight, so I increased them even more. Some days, where in the past I would have fasted, I ate nothing but great dishes of nuts. On four occasions, I ate nothing but nuts for a week or more to see what would happen; I lost weight at a faster rate during those weeks than at any other time on the diet. Once I reached my target weight, I calculated that 21.7% of the weight I'd lost had been on days I had eaten only nuts. I will list the results of these nut experiments in another post; but for now I'd add that results differed between different types of nut. The best nuts for weight loss, I found, were mixed, unsalted nuts, walnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts; peanuts and pine nuts were mildly beneficial; cashews were neutral, and almonds, if anything, were slightly fattening. Roasted or salted nuts were very fattening. I did not eat hazelnuts on their own, but as they were in the mixed nuts, I expect they work as well as any. I didn't eat macadamias because I don’t like them.

So fascinated was I by this seemingly miraculous effect of nuts that I began looking up the research about them, starting with the references in Briffa's book. Not only did I find evidence for a similar effect in countless controlled scientific trials, but the published analyses of the results prompted me then to investigate whether other foods might act on the digestive system in similar ways to the nuts. I have not been disappointed.
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  #3   ^
Old Sat, Jun-02-12, 09:26
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

In retrospect, I was fortunate that the first low-carb book I read was Richard Mackarness’s Eat Fat and Grow Slim, because it includes a section on the contribution of fibre to weight loss. Most low-carb plans routinely tell us to get some fibre, but Mackarness alone equates the eating of high-fat, high-protein foods with the eating of fibre. I notice that the Web bristles with debates between gurus, bloggers, and various other visionaries who espouse either a low-carb or a high-fibre diet. This is surely a false division. Both camps insist they follow man’s ancient diet but dispute whether that diet comprised mainly animal food or mainly plant food. For Mackarness, early man was an omnivore: his digestive system, which we inherit, was adapted to either type of food.

No one knows quite how the human digestive system evolved, but clearly it did so on unprocessed food. For that reason alone, I believe giving up processed food should help towards the maintenance of a natural body weight. This is an unoriginal notion, of course; but it’s intriguing to speculate how our digestive system evolved. The body had the ability to sift the nutrients it needed from all that roughage.

Long before we became apes–who eat much more roughage than us–we were simple life forms with anaerobic digestive systems; we probably fermented the mass of ingested roughage to free the nutrients we required and then shunted the residue out of our bodies. Many animals, such as ruminants, still digest much of their food through anaerobic bacterial fermentation in their guts. We, however, developed an upper gut–the small intestine–to digest the more nutrient-dense materials that humans came to eat. We retain, nevertheless, a primitive large intestine, which ferments a significant fraction of food that resists digestion in the small intestine.

Now here’s the interesting thing: it turns out that many of the calories we consume in certain fibre-rich foods–nuts, for example–are so entrapped in fibre that they pass through the small intestine without being digested there. Many of them pass clean out of the body without being digested. A percentage of the calories in such foods could therefore be discounted, letting us eat more of those foods than we thought safe.

Thinking about this phenomenon, I saw--as some people have suggested--that certain foods have fewer available calories in them than are marked on labels or listed in nutrition tables. We are used to deducting fibre from carbohydrate totals (many labels now do it for us); we do not take account, however, of the macronutrients trapped in or blocked by that fibre. Studies show that some fats, carbohydrates, and proteins remain sequestered in insoluble fibres such as cellulose; they also show that soluble fibre encloses many nutrients in a resistant gel, preventing many of them from digesting in the small intestine, and releasing them, if at all, only in the lower intestine, to be fermented into availability by anaerobic bacteria.

Does that mean our digestive system is chaotic, inefficient, random? On the contrary, I believe it is an infinitely nuanced regulatory system designed to ensure that we absorb no more nutrients (and calories) than we need. Unfortunately, the system wasn’t designed to cope with refined food, which, depleted of fibre, releases its nutrients (and calories) into the bloodstream unrestrained. Our digestive system may know how to keep us slim (yes, even us), if only we would let it.

Last edited by Plinge : Sat, Jun-02-12 at 09:58.
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  #4   ^
Old Sat, Jun-02-12, 10:58
GlendaRC's Avatar
GlendaRC GlendaRC is offline
Posts: 8,787
 
Plan: Atkins maintenance
Stats: 170/120/130 Female 65 inches & shrinking
BF:
Progress: 125%
Location: Victoria, BC Canada
Default

I'm enjoying reading your thoughts on digestion and so far at least, I think you really have something! Keep 'em coming.
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  #5   ^
Old Sun, Jun-03-12, 08:28
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by GlendaRC
I'm enjoying reading your thoughts on digestion and so far at least, I think you really have something! Keep 'em coming.


I'm thrilled to have you comment here. I assumed I'd be engulfed by a Siberian silence. Which wouldn't make a difference: I'm self-motivating. But a visitor does make a difference.

*

I must congratulate you on your light weight and your success at maintaining it. It makes you one of the few.
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  #6   ^
Old Sun, Jun-03-12, 08:54
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

About sources

Since these posts are amateur opinion pieces on an informal message board, I will note only the occasional source, in abbreviated form. The recent trend for journalists, doctors, and bloggers to append lists of references to their online commentaries may lend a deceptive veneer of authority to their assertions. Without peer reviewers to answer to, writers will choose sources that support their arguments and ignore those that don’t–it’s in the nature of adversarial debate. Even academics reference selectively when stepping from the lab to become persuaders on the public stage.

Where I note sources, I don’t wish to pretend my views are supposed to be factual. If I mention a source, it will be just to tag findings or comments that, of the millions out there, attracted my interest. Nonetheless, if anyone requires a full reference for a given source, message me and I’ll pass on the details.
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  #7   ^
Old Sun, Jun-03-12, 09:19
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

Much research has been done on nuts. Most of the abstracts, which summarise findings, are available to read online; in many cases, whole papers appear online. A phrase in one of them raised my eyebrow:

“[…] there is some intriguing evidence that nuts can help to regulate body weight […]” (García-Lorda et al, Nut consumption, body weight and insulin resistance, 2003)

This drew my attention, because the idea that a food might regulate body weight was new to me. But the phrase lodged in my mind.

*

A significant proportion of nut research addresses the fate of the “missing calories”. Many studies show that the daily addition of nuts to a diet does not lead to weight gain, despite the extra calories. Such a finding just winds scientists up. Where, they itch to know, do those calories go?

Most attempts to explain the lack of weight gain from nut consumption hinge on their satiating character, which may reduce consumption of other food. Satiety is a fascinating subject–I have read a lot about it–but I knew satiety was not a factor in my case, because my self-experiments were based on a fixed daily intake of nuts: 1450 calories, my usual limit on my reducing diet.

Another explanation advanced by analysts is that nuts stimulate extra energy expenditure; but my energy expenditure remained the same as usual during my self-experiments with nuts. (Self-experimentation may not be scientific or transferable, but it does have the advantage that individual factors are easier to isolate. Scientists cannot, for ethical reasons, make trial subjects eat only nuts--therefore their studies struggle for definite conclusions amidst confounding circumstances and possibilities.)

Two internal mechanisms for calorie waste are also documented: increased digestive metabolism after nut consumption, and excretion of a percentage of the calories in nuts. I believe both were at work in my case. Sometimes I felt hot after a meal of nuts, betraying heightened metabolism; but digestive thermogenesis surely couldn’t explain my weight loss, on a mono-diet of nuts, of four pounds a week. So I looked into the matter of calorie excretion.

*
Among the reviews, studies, and abstracts I read, I often came across remarks such as the following:

“The absolute and relative increased excretion of stool fat on the almond diets may have resulted from lower levels of fat absorption due to the structure of lipid-storing granules in nuts or to various nut fibre components.” (Zemaitis and Sabaté, Effect of almond consumption on stool weight and stool fat, 2001)

“Fecal fat and energy loss is greater with consumption of whole peanuts compared to peanut butter, oil or flour. This may contribute to the less than predicted change of body weight observed with peanut consumption.” (Traoret et al, Peanut digestion and energy balance, 2008)

“Although the data do not permit accurate calculations of the energy loss due to limited bioaccessibility, a working estimate may be 10-15% of the energy from the nuts. Thus, direct metabolizable energy is a more accurate representation of actual energy value for nuts than package label or table value. This inefficiency stems from resistance of the parenchymal cell walls of nuts to microbial and enzymatic degradation. Thus, cell walls that are not ruptured during mastication may pass through the gastrointestinal tract without releasing the lipid they contain. This is supported by data demonstrating greater energy loss from whole nuts compared with nut butter; a higher energy requirement to maintain body weight during nut consumption; as well as microstructural analyses of fecal samples. Because lipid is the primary energy source in nuts, work on bioaccessibility has focused on this nutrient. However, the resistance of the cell walls of nuts to degradation in the gastrointestinal tract would also limit the bioaccessibility of other nutrients they contain, including protein, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals.” (Mattes and Dreher, Nuts and healthy body weight maintenance mechanisms, 2010)

At first, I was reassured, on reading such statements, to find corroborated my experience of weight loss on nuts. But then I scratched my head. The usual estimates for the extent of fat non-availability in nuts are 10% to 20%--surely these percentages were too low to explain the amount of weight I was losing.

Half way through my third nut experiment, I noticed something. It struck me that my healthy bowel movements on a diet of 1450 calories of nuts a day (not much over 200 grams of nuts) were remarkably ample, given the low weight of the nuts I had eaten. What if I were excreting not just a minor portion of the ingested nut content but nearly all of it? It seemed a staggering idea. Maybe once my body had extracted the nutrients it wanted from the nuts, it had passed the rest on as superfluous. After all, I was overweight; why would it want more fat? Was I staring down the pan at the holy grail?

*

In some ways, it felt like a mystical moment. For days my digestive tract's only intake had been one of the most primitive foods on earth, one I’d come to hold in awe for its weight-loss magic. My diet was successful enough: on about 1450 calories a day, I’d usually lose a pound a week, sometimes two–the amount we're told is the maximum likely for a healthy body. Now here I was losing four pounds a week on the same calories. I had no dysfunction, such as diarrhoea or steatorrhoea; in fact, nuts have always agreed with me. Could it be they were performing a primeval function, that of helping to regulate my bodyweight, which was much too high? As hunches go, I didn't know if there was anything in it. I still don't--but I'm on the trail.

Last edited by Plinge : Sun, Jun-03-12 at 10:30.
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  #8   ^
Old Sun, Jun-03-12, 15:19
GlendaRC's Avatar
GlendaRC GlendaRC is offline
Posts: 8,787
 
Plan: Atkins maintenance
Stats: 170/120/130 Female 65 inches & shrinking
BF:
Progress: 125%
Location: Victoria, BC Canada
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plinge
I'm thrilled to have you comment here. I assumed I'd be engulfed by a Siberian silence. Which wouldn't make a difference: I'm self-motivating. But a visitor does make a difference.

*

I must congratulate you on your light weight and your success at maintaining it. It makes you one of the few.

Don't sell yourself short -- I see you've had 124 lurking visitors to this thread already! I think you have a following

And thanks, It's become habit now -- just the way I eat without thinking about it.
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  #9   ^
Old Sun, Jun-03-12, 15:42
cnmLisa's Avatar
cnmLisa cnmLisa is offline
Every day is day one
Posts: 7,776
 
Plan: AtkinsMaintenance/IF
Stats: 185/145/155 Female 5'5
BF:
Progress: 133%
Location: Oregon Coast
Default

I haven't read the papers that you referred to but I'm just wondering...these are RAW (or I should say, unprocessed, unroasted) nuts being used. I can't imagine this being true with a can of Blue Diamond smokey almonds or dry roasted pecans.

I know I should like my nuts au-natural, but I just can't teach myself to like the taste. Yes, I'd be a Primal failure.

...and Glenda is correct....a lot of people reading....
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  #10   ^
Old Sun, Jun-03-12, 19:23
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mio1996 mio1996 is offline
Glutton for Grease!
Posts: 1,338
 
Plan: Primal-VLC
Stats: 295/190/190 Male 76
BF:don't/really/care
Progress: 100%
Location: Clemson, SC
Default

Plinge, I too am enjoying your comments! Just wanted to say that I too ate lots of nuts while losing weight and continue to do so in maintenance. My nuts are mostly almonds and peanuts (which I know aren't really nuts but they seem to work the same for me).
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  #11   ^
Old Mon, Jun-04-12, 14:44
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by GlendaRC
Don't sell yourself short -- I see you've had 124 lurking visitors to this thread already! I think you have a following


I'm astonished, frankly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GlendaRC
And thanks, It's become habit now -- just the way I eat without thinking about it.


It's inspiring, to hear that. I think all the time about eating without thinking about it all the time.
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  #12   ^
Old Mon, Jun-04-12, 14:51
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by cnmLisa
I haven't read the papers that you referred to but I'm just wondering...these are RAW (or I should say, unprocessed, unroasted) nuts being used. I can't imagine this being true with a can of Blue Diamond smokey almonds or dry roasted pecans.

I know I should like my nuts au-natural, but I just can't teach myself to like the taste. Yes, I'd be a Primal failure.

...and Glenda is correct....a lot of people reading....


I'll copy this here:

The best nuts for weight loss, I found, were mixed, unsalted nuts, walnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts; peanuts and pine nuts were mildly beneficial; cashews were neutral, and almonds, if anything, were slightly fattening. Roasted or salted nuts were very fattening. I did not eat hazelnuts on their own, but as they were in the mixed nuts, I expect they work as well as any.


I get the impression that we're more used to eating raw nuts in Britain than Americans are. Salted peanuts are eaten, but other salted nuts not so much. I find Brazils and cashews in particular very lush to eat.

But fear not, later I shall be getting onto other things to eat with nuts, making them less plain. Fortunately, I absolutely love nuts.

A bag of salted nuts probably only has a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of vegetable oil in it, but that seems to quadruple the calorific effect. The food industry is very clever at combining certain types of oil with salt to provoke addictive eating.
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  #13   ^
Old Mon, Jun-04-12, 14:58
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by mio1996
Plinge, I too am enjoying your comments! Just wanted to say that I too ate lots of nuts while losing weight and continue to do so in maintenance. My nuts are mostly almonds and peanuts (which I know aren't really nuts but they seem to work the same for me).


Yes, research backs up that similarity. It's good to hear from someone else who's lucky with nuts.

I remember copying down the following from the comments board at Mark's Daily Apple:

Since I added more almonds, I lost weight. The first four days of eating them I was losing a pound a day. When I cut back, I gained weight. I just had a baby three months ago, and I've lost all the weight I gained. It all fell off, and I was eating almonds every day, several times a day, feeling great and less hungry. I guess I'm just different.
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  #14   ^
Old Mon, Jun-04-12, 15:25
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

There’s more to my hypothesis than a peculiar effect of nuts. I need to find out if the right kind of food in general can regulate my body weight for me, as opposed to the calorie and carbohydrate counting that dogs my days. But nuts, bless their hearts, were the catalyst for the hypothesis.

Despite steady weight loss on my diet, an air of doom hung over the future. Maintenance frightened me--I didn’t think I could hack it. Until my nut epiphany, I vaguely intended to intermittently starve, or something, on maintenance–staving off weight gains with gritted teeth. The prospect filled me with grim horror, I who love meals. The nut thing didn't offer a broad solution to maintenance--it just seemed an oddity of nature--but at least it offered the prospect of nut days instead of fast days. Nuts were a handy trick to have up my sleeve, nothing more; all dieters have one or two of those.

*

It may appear that I'm heading in the direction of a primal, high-fibre diet of some sort. Well, organic food is mostly too expensive for me, so that’s out for a start. And I’ve no wish to give up the likes of rice, dairy food, or beans, which I enjoy--sometimes all at the same time. Besides, I believe we’ve evolved since the days of bonking each other over the head with cudgels and can comfortably digest many modern foods that paleo theory turns up its nose at. As it happens, I don’t eat wheat or oats, so I’ll not be stuffing a cartload of bran down my neck–nor anything else with the texture of animal feed and the smell of damp trousers; and I shall not start wearing sandals or listening to the Grateful Dead. I think one can eat a diet of mainly unprocessed food without becoming a faddist or a raving nightmare to cater for.
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  #15   ^
Old Mon, Jun-04-12, 15:37
Plinge Plinge is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 2,136
 
Plan: No factory-processed food
Stats: 230/147/147 Male 5' 10"
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: UK
Default

My experience with nuts guided me on to find related effects in other foods, which I will detail in due course.

*

But first, I want to skip ahead to a remarkable discovery I made while reading various books and papers on the digestive system. I say a remarkable discovery–I mean a remarkable discovery for me. To be honest, the news that hit me between the eyebrows like a flying flowerpot is common knowledge in the gastrointestinal literature–which, after all, is not aimed at dieters.

So when I followed the trail of nuts into the labyrinth of digestive science, I sniffed out the following fact––which is undisputed: humans naturally excrete a percentage of the calories not just in nuts but in many common foods. The percentage starts at about 5% and may rise significantly higher in some foods for some people (we vary markedly as digesters). With this knowledge, it struck me that dieters and maintainers might, after a little experimentation, be able to eat more of certain foods than they thought they could–in fact, they might be able to eat more food altogether. That is my hypothesis, anyway.

I feel nervous even proposing it. And therefore obliged to quote some of the information I came across, lest I sound a crackpot. (I don’t think I’m a crackpot––but I admit that it’s an odd man who reads about the gastrointestinal tract over breakfast as others might read the newspaper.) So here’s a selection of remarks I noted down (they may not all be word for word):

“Some fibres, in particular the more soluble, fermentable fibres from fruit and vegetables, reduce the overall absorption of fat and protein … In one study, subjects eating a low-fibre diet had an 8% higher absorption of energy from food than subjects eating a high-fibre diet.” (Howarth et al, Dietary fibre and weight regulation, 2001.)

“Fibre may affect the digestibility of other components of the diet, since fat and nitrogen excretion have been shown to increase with high-fibre intakes.” (J H Cummings, Progress Report: Dietary Fibre, 1973)


“Calorific value may not simply be additive metabolizable energy from fat, protein, and carbohydrate provided by factorial equations but may be a function of the interaction of these nutrients with dietary fibre. This is not taken into account in food labelling.” (Baer et al, Dietary fibre decreases the metabolizable energy content and nutrient digestibility of mixed diets fed to humans, 1997)


“The effect of the unavailable carbohydrates on the apparent digestibility of the other energy-yielding constituents of the diet implies that the use of a single series of energy-conversion factors for calculating the metabolizable energy of a diet from its composition may lead to an overestimation if the diet is rich in unavailable carbohydrates.” (Southgate, Fibre and the other unavailable carbohydrates and their effects on the energy value of the diet, 1973)


“Fibre has been recognised as a satiety factor for some time, but it also decreases energy intake by reducing the efficiency of energy absorption.” (Coulston and Boushey, Nutrition and the Prevention and Treatment of Disease, 2008)


“Soluble viscogenic material can dissolve and disperse through the aqueous phase, inhibiting both the solution and the diffusion of a soluble nutrient. Further, the presence and persistence of intracellular or extracellular structures that envelop or otherwise sequester particulate nutrients may impair their solution, digestion, and absorption.” (Lentle and Janssen, The Physical Processes of Digestion, 2011)


“[…] dietary fibre could provide a mechanical barrier to the enzymatic digestion of other macronutrients such as fat and starch in the small intestine.” (Huaidong Du et al, Dietary fibre and subsequent changes in body weight and waist circumference in European men and women, 2010)


“[…] the slow rate of digestion of legumes may be related to the entrapment of starch in fibrous thick-walled cells, which prevents its complete swelling during cooking. In addition, resistance of starch to pancreatic hydrolysis may result from the presence of intact cell walls, which survive processing and cooking and insulate starch in such a manner that portions of it cannot be digested or absorbed.” (FAO/WHO Report, Carbohydrates in Human Nutrition, 1998)


*

Apologies for the repetitive nature of the quotes; but if I’m to pursue the ambitious notion that dieters and maintainers could eat more food than they do, I have to show that my starting point is more than a beautiful dream.

And just as I promised this was not going to be all about nuts, I’ll add that it’s not going to be all about fibre either. Starch, as those last two quotes suggest, can make it to the lower intestine as well–as can other resistant nutrients. Meat too has a role in weight regulation (yay, a conventional low-carb statement at last!).

Nothing a healthy body does is an accident. If it sees fit to block the digestion and absorption of certain calories, I'm sure it does so for a purpose.
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