Sun, Jan-05-20, 03:13
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Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
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Why We Eat (Too Much) — a radical approach to weight loss
Why We Eat (Too Much) by Andrew Jenkinson review — a radical approach to weight
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine...eight-b6lxdzbhq
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Diets are a big fat lie. We need to go back to basics, says a leading bariatric surgeon
If you want to know how to drop a few pounds, skip to the end of this review. If you want to lose weight in the long term, read on and read carefully. Because to lose weight properly, you need to understand why you’re putting it on. And while parts of this pugnacious book are highly controversial, and parts are surprising, it is also cool, clear and highly persuasive.
The author, Andrew Jenkinson, is not a nutritionist or a dietician. He is a bariatric surgeon at University College Hospital: the kind who fits gastric bands to the obese. This does not disqualify him from writing about food. Rather, he argues, it gives him real-world experience and distance from the vested interests of mainstream nutritional science and public-health advice.
He is part of a growing movement of medics and scientists who are challenging the “diet-heart hypothesis” — the modern notion that saturated fat, which basically means animal fat, raises cholesterol and causes heart disease. He believes it has been promoted by big food and pharma companies and is based on flawed evidence. He also believes it is responsible for our swollen waistlines.
Why? Because food without fat is not tasty, so food corporations have replaced it with sugar, wheat and plant oils. Food labelled “low fat”, Jenkinson asserts, is “code for ‘high sugar’”. These fast-burning processed foods create fluctuating blood-sugar levels, which drive us to snacking. Which means more sugar, wheat and oil — and more processed food.
Half of all the food consumed in the UK is now processed, and 70% of the food in America. In Italy and Greece, the figure is less than 15% — and look at their waistlines. Jenkinson is not the first to notice this. What is striking is what he says about metabolism. Because therein lies a mystery.
We now eat, on average, 500kcal a day more than we did 30 years ago. Yet we are not nearly as fat as that should make us. The explanation lies deep within. Some 70% of our energy is spent simply metabolising — maintaining our blood, brain, breathing and digestive systems. (Daily life uses up most of the rest of our calories, active exercise maybe just 2% or 3%.) And the more we eat, the hotter and faster our metabolism runs.
That is why drunks do not feel the cold — their bodies are burning the calories in the alcohol. That is why we are not all equally obese — because the slowest metabolisers burn hardly more than 1,000kcal a day, the fastest almost 1,800kcal.
It is also why diets fail. The moment you start restricting calories, Jenkinson argues, your body thinks there is a famine. Its evolved response is to establish a new, higher “weight set-point” — the weight it thinks you need to be to survive the prevailing conditions. Fatter, in a famine, is safer. So when you diet, your body turns down the thermostat of your metabolism, saving energy and preserving fat, and turns up your appetite, stimulating you to seek food. The more you diet, the harder it is to lose weight. In a battle between the body and the will, “biology always wins”.
None of this stops dieters buying diet books. Jenkinson excoriates these tomes. The trick pulled by most calorie-restricting diets, he says, is to get adherents to lose 7-14lb in the first weeks. This gets the diet noticed at work. After that, “interest spreads like a dodgy Ponzi scheme”. A few months in, everyone is back where they were, but, crucially, they don’t blame the diet book, they blame themselves. Because they think, quite wrongly, that losing weight is a matter of willpower.
So, how do you lose weight sustainably? Jenkinson’s first suggestion is surprising: begin by eating more. This will make your body prepare not for famine, but plenty, he argues, lowering the weight set-point. When food is in good supply, your body knows it can afford to be lean. Exercise helps, but not for the reasons you think. It lowers levels of cortisol and insulin in the body, further prompting the body to steer you towards that lower weight.
Exercise is less about the number of calories burnt, then, and more about how it affects your metabolism. The same is true of the calories you consume. It is not the sheer number that matters, but the type, and their effect on your body chemistry.
The key, Jenkinson argues, is to cut out refined wheat, sugar and vegetable oils. This means avoiding processed foods, which typically contain all three ingredients in large amounts, partly to increase shelf life. As Jenkinson says, food that goes off is “actually a sign that it is food”, full of healthy omega-3 fatty acids instead of vegetable oils of the kind that, 100 years ago, “were used as lantern fuel and to make candles”.
So, what should you eat? For breakfast, sugary, wheat-based cereals are out; choose eggs, meat, cheese, yoghurt or unsweetened oat porridge. Processed fruit juices are banned; eat an actual apple or orange. For lunch, avoid mayonnaise-slathered industrial bread and make your own packed meal from fresh ingredients the night before. In the evening, cook from fresh — and embrace fat. It ought to be renamed “strength” or “vitality”, Jenkinson suggests; the word “fat” should be reserved for sugar.
The short version of all this is “eat how we used to eat before we started getting obese”. Very sensible, and probably effective.
There is a big problem, though. The underlying nutritional and metabolic science presented here is far from settled. The controversy around the diet-heart hypothesis still rages. The question of vegetable oils versus saturated fats — the old butter versus margarine debate — is still open. Jenkinson is too one-sided. And any book that claims to have all the answers is selling you a diet, after all, not science.
Why We Eat (Too Much): The New Science of Appetite by Andrew Jenkinson
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Eat.../dp/024140052X/
https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Eat-T.../dp/024140052X/
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Why We Eat (Too Much): The New Science of Appetite by Andrew Jenkinson
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Eat.../dp/024140052X/
Articulate, clear, a joy to read, this is a book that really needed written' Joanna Blythman, author of Swallow This
A practical, accessible guide to understanding the diet myth and the secret to lasting weight loss.
For over two decades, weight loss surgeon Dr Andrew Jenkinson has treated thousands of people who have become trapped in the endless cycle of dieting. Why We Eat (Too Much), combines case studies from his practice and the new science of metabolism to illuminate how our appetite really works.
Debunking the great myths of the body, and systematically explaining why dieting is counter-productive, this unflinching book investigates every aspect of nutrition. From the difference between good and bad fats to the impact of genes and genetic mutation on our weight and what happens to our hormones long after a diet ends, Dr Jenkinson explores the fields of agriculture, pharma, anthropology and medicine to uncover the truth behind our bad food habits and the escalating obesity crisis.
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