The diet that really works

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/diet_and_fitness/article4523487.ece

by prakash • 18 years ago

66 97 18 years ago

women.timesonline.co.uk

brm3• 18 years ago

why is food always the culprit? what ever happened to just increasing the amount of exercise you do? Michael Phelps seems to be doing ok on 10,000+ calories a day

This also bothers me: "But what’s different about Arthur is, first, he is not selling anything, except for subscriptions to his website."

Tichy3• 18 years ago

Swimming 6 hours a day is simply not an option for everybody. Besides, even with enough exercise I would imagine that some diets would still make you sick, for example if all you ate were chocolate and ice cream. (Note that I don't advocate the low-carb diet from the article).

The "not selling anything but..." bothered me too, also "Thirdly, he is very smart. His reasoning is immaculate and he knows a lot more than your average doctor or nutritionist." The doctors on TV trying to sell me on chocolate bars also look very smart...

brm3• 18 years ago

yes I agree that 6 hours is unreasonable, but 90 minutes a couple times a week would probably have people in a lot better fitness than removing all the carbs from their diet. Frankly moving up from the 0 minutes most people get to 30 minutes a couple times a week would be more beneficial to most people than a change in diet.

gaius8• 18 years ago

Because, unless you are very genetically gifted and/or using steroids, there are surprisingly low limits on the amount of exercise you can do and still see gains. After 45 minutes or so cortisol (stress hormone) levels rise and a process called gluconeogenesis sets in - your body begins burning muscle tissue for energy. The net effect of this is to lower your resting metabolic rate, which is what burns most of most people's calories. Which means you can cut back on the calories you consume, train like a madman and still get fatter.

3-4 sessions of 45 minutes per week, at a decent level of intensity, is about right for most people.

brm3• 18 years ago

Let me get this straight... you're claiming that after 45 minutes of moderately intense cardiovascular exercise, most people begin to see negative fitness effects?

menloparkbum2• 18 years ago

you can cut back on the calories you consume, train like a madman and still get fatter.

Could you post a link or reference for one example of someone who cut calories and "trained like a madman" and still got fatter?

There's a lot of debate about hormones, metabolism, calorie quality and optimum exercise. However it has still proven difficult to break basic laws of physics.

streety4• 18 years ago

Don't worry about the not selling anything bit. It's total nonsense.

He is selling a 4 DVD set for $139.95

enra• 18 years ago

I don't agree. Calories are not treated equal and it's not only about staying not-fat eather but also promoting health. Calories are not just some unified fuel that you put in to your system. Your body needs to process different foods differently.

scott_s6• 18 years ago

Michael Phelps also swims 120 miles a week. He eats 10,000+ calories a day because that's how much energy he needs to maintain weight and muscle mass.

mattmaroon7• 18 years ago

And it's not healthy long-term. His diet is designed to make him win Olympic gold in his early 20's, not to achieve a long, healthy life. The only reason any swimmers ever live past 40 is that they stop doing this well before 30.

mattmaroon7• 18 years ago

Let's check back in on Phelps in 20 years. If he's lucky, his current lifestyle won't have lasting effects.

unexpected4• 18 years ago

On a related note, I met someone who swam for the US team in 1996. I won't name him or his event b/c it'd be mean to identify him, but let's just say the ensuing 12 years have done absolutely horrifying things to his waistline.

When I met him, I thought that there was no way he could be a swimmer!

Tichy3• 18 years ago

I thought low-carb was already the fad of the past.

From "The China Study" about high-protein diets:

"And yet these books are immensely popular. Why? Because people DO lose weight, at least in the short term.[...](about a study) The first sign that all is not rosy is that these obese subjects were severely restricting their calorie intake during the study (35% fewer calories). [...](list some problems) Additionally, they found that the dieters had a stunning 53% increase in the amount of calcium they excreted in their urine, which may spell disaster for their bone health. The weight loss, some of which is simply initial fluid loss, might come with a very high price. [...](from an Australion study:) 'Complications such as heart arrhythmias, cardiac contractile function impairment, sudden death, osteoporosis, kidney damage, increased cancer risk, impairment of physical activity and lipid abnormalities can all be linked to long-term restriction of carbohydrates in the diet.'".

ars3• 18 years ago

Blah blah blah blah blah. The entire article is just blah blah blah. The guy needs an editor to cut it to 10% of it's size. Is he paid by the word or something? He sure knows the art of saying nothing using many words.

Heck I can summarize it in 2 words:

Modified atkins.

ssanders82• 18 years ago

Or 2 other words: South Beach. (Which is a modified atkins diet - low carb, but doesn't advocate steak every meal.)

eugenejen2• 18 years ago

I agree with you on that his article requires editing.

But is this method a modified Atkins one? It requires dieters to experience not only the food that paleolithic human ates, but also the frequency of insecurity of hunger and periodic exposure to unaware danger in life. I had an old boss before who stuck to Atkins after coronary artery bypass to lose 40 lbs, but he still ate a lot, ate frequently and he hated the feeling of being hungry. The method in the article actually wants you to experience randomly meal skipping and hunger to get into the zone. I think at this point, it is different.

jksmith• 18 years ago

Even more obvious, if you want to relive the native experience, then you've got to simulate the hunt before eating. In modern terms, get your cardio in the morning before eating breakfast. Many believe as I do that this keeps your meta rate kicked up a bit for several hours afterwards. It is great for dropping weight, at least until Kurzweil has developed v1.0 of an evolved diet technology.

gojomo3• 18 years ago

It's easy to criticize 'blah blah blah'. But the style of the article is personal testimonial plus character study. It's going to include discursive storytelling, and it's not trying to boil down a diet/lifestyle/person to the fewest possible words. The cheapest form of criticism is to skewer a work for not meeting some ideal it wasn't even aiming for.

DeVany is a very interesting and credible guy with a different spin on eating and training than you'll usually find.

Check out especially his warnings about marathon/endurance running [1] compared to the typical media celebration of marathon running as some ideal of fitness [2].

[1] "Top Ten Reasons Not To Run Marathons", http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html

[2] "The Perfect Human", http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/ultraman.html

ars3• 18 years ago

Except why do I care that the reporter was early to the interview? Why would anyone care?

It's not a diary, it's an article about a new diet. Tell me about the diet. You want to add a supplement about the author fine. But I don't need 3 pages of useless text about the author without once mentioning what the diet actually is.

Sorry, but there is too much garbage in the world to spend 15 minutes reading all about some dude, and only then discover that the diet is no good for you.

First tell me about the diet. Then, if I'm interested tell me about the dude.

streety4• 18 years ago

I've got to give the guy respect for giving references with his arguments but I don't think his sources are sufficient to suggest that marathon running is bad for you.

It's a shame he loses much of that respect as we near reason #1 and they get increasingly 'silly'.

Let's take #2: "At least four particiants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years. Purely anecdotal, but consistent with the elevated S100beta counts and TKN-alpha measures. Perhaps also connected to the microthrombi of the endothelium found in marathoners."

I'm researching this with google but, "In the United States, the annual incidence of brain cancer generally is 15-20 cases per 100,000 people." http://www.oncologychannel.com/braincancer/index.shtml "In 2007 more than 20000 runners completed the race." http://www.bostonmarathon.org/

I can't quickly find numbers for the preceding years, nor how many each year had run it previously, so lets assume the numbers increased linearly over the preceding 10 years to give a total number of runners as 100,000. That, rather conveniently, suggests 15 - 20 incidents of brain cancer should result. Shock result - marathon running prevents brain cancer!

#1 is the first runner of the marathon, Phidippides, died. Hopefully I don't need to explain why this one is silly.

Some of his other points would be worth further study but I can't find a single point without weaknesses.

sutro• 18 years ago

I have no problem believing that marathons may be harmful to the human body. The reason I run marathons isn't primarily for the races themselves but rather for the motivation the races provide to get in shape. You can't easily wing it or cram for a marathon (Lord knows I've tried), so the races' looming deadlines provide an escalating urgency to one's workouts. The resulting workouts are fairly short (amateurs rarely run full marathons in training, and only hit high distances near the end), intense, and irregular (ie, increasing over time with rest days interspersed as opposed to the same routine every day) -- qualities which match DeVany's own recommendations for how to exercise as related in the TimesOnline article. For a guy who preaches that one should consider the whole of complex systems, his dismissal of marathons considers only the tip of the iceberg. I believe that the health benefits associated with my training will more than make up for whatever health risks I may face on race day.

kul• 18 years ago

It's in the Sunday Times, so it's meant to be a leisurely read (and most likely in the magazine section). The purpose isn't to convey as much info in as few words as possible.

JoelSutherland• 18 years ago

So why does a leisurely read about a fad diet belong on Hacker News?

Goronmon2• 18 years ago

Why did you need to waste all that time writing out that reply? Couldn't you have just said "Article sucks."?

fgimenez• 18 years ago

This isn't digg?

henryw• 18 years ago

a highlight of what the diet is about:

Carbs, not fats, are modernity’s most deadly assassins. And, even if they don’t kill you, they make you feel worse. I sleep better without them and I seem to have become a nicer person; what with that and the weight loss, my friends – or were they enemies? – barely recognise me.

The good, the bad and the tasty

The fundamentals of Arthur De Vany’s diet: bin the carbs and packaged food, and delight in lean meat and at least two veg meals

- Cook by colour and texture so that meals look beautiful. If busy, skip meals with little worry. You don’t have to have three square meals a day. Snack on nuts or celery. Drink plenty of water. I also drink tea, coffee and a little wine.

Carbs Avoid bread, muffins, bagels, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, vegetable oils, beans or anything in a package — empty, high-calorie foods with a high carbohydrate content.

Flavour Spice up your food with fresh ingredients such as basil, garlic, parsley, rosemary, spring onions, avocados and nuts, and use various oils, such as olive oil, for flavour.

Celery adds texture (and is good for testosterone too).

Fruits Fresh fruits of all sorts are good; I focus on melon and red grapes. Fruit juice is out. I have one or two fruits with most breakfasts; now and then a piece with other meals.

Vegetables Eat lots of fresh raw, steamed, sauteed or grilled vegetables. I never use frozen, canned or packaged vegetables.

Protein Eat plenty of meat, such as ribs, steak, bacon, pork loin, turkey and chicken, but trim fat from the edges. Fish, seafood and eggs are also good choices.

Breakfast I tend to eat last night’s leftovers: turkey with jarlsberg cheese and fruit, bacon with red grapes, omelettes with rosemary, olives and spring onions.

Lunches Usually salads, with red cabbage, romaine lettuce, spring onions, garlic, kale, broccoli or cauliflower, with salmon, tuna, turkey, chicken, pork or steak.

Dinners I sometimes eat a whole rack of ribs with salad and vegetables. Or a large steak, trimmed of fat. Almost always there is a beautiful salad and vegetables.

caglouq• 18 years ago

Here is the ultimate diet "Slow down on the food you like the most" ... you may add to this diet the (always right) corollary "never stop your diet"

swombat6• 18 years ago

Hardly. "Slow down on the unhealthiest foods," perhaps. I love fruit. Should I slow down on fruit?

rob• 18 years ago

Most likely yes if you're eating tons of it a day.

Tichy3• 18 years ago

I've actually read one book about "sugar addiction" where one candidate allegedly got their sugar fix from eating lots of fruit. Not sure how credible the book is, though, but I thought it was interesting.

It did not say that fruits in general are bad.

orib2• 18 years ago

Don't gobble it down. Savor every bite. You'll enjoy it more, and you'll feel fuller on less food. So yes, slow down while eating it.

swombat6• 18 years ago

Arthur asked himself what was going on here – and, basically, decided almost everything we thought we knew about diet and metabolism was wrong.

Yeah, that sounds likely.

</sarcasm>

albertcardona• 18 years ago

Someone rediscovered the paleodiet.

josefresco• 18 years ago

I hereby nominate timesonline.co.uk for temporary suspension from Hacker News.

Too many articles submitted recently that were poorly researched and written.

andyjenn• 18 years ago

Agreed. A terrible daily, bereft of insight or intellect in keeping with Murdoch's other rags.

vaksel4• 18 years ago

Diet doesn't really matter, I have a horrible diet I eat anything I want, I don't deny myself anything(junk food, fast food) but I'm in good shape because I work out an hour every day and burn off the calories I gain during the day.

swombat6• 18 years ago

Wait until you hit your mid-thirties and let's talk again.

vaksel4• 18 years ago

As long as your calories out => calories in, it shouldn't matter. Should it?

shard• 18 years ago

You also need to consider the overall health effects of all the chemical additives in your food. Why dump those things into your body for the fleeting pleasure of succumbing to your lower brain.

yters• 18 years ago

Cuz my higher brain says it isn't bad.

thomasmallen• 18 years ago

"Eat less, move more." - Mad TV

edw519• 18 years ago

Much better:

http://www.tbkfitness.org/

fendale• 18 years ago

I gave up on this article before I got to the 'meat' as it was too waffley ... anyway, to lose weight my best advice is to:

* avoid fizzy drink as much as possible * avoid crisps (do americans call them chips?) * go easy on fried and fast food (no need to cut them out completely) * Try to cut down on alcohol, but I don't really follow my own advice here!

Then

* walk or cycle as much as possible * take the stairs instead of the lift for 5 floors or less * and exercise 4 or 5 times a week doing whatever you find fun.

Maybe I am just lucky, but I never seem to put on any weight, and I do eat fast food and drink plenty of beer, but I do exercise a lot and cycle to work each day.

qqq• 18 years ago

This is why we should have topic limitations. Yeah, people will post stuff like this anyway, and I don't think we should punish them.

But we also shouldn't make it officially legitimate which will encourage a higher volume of such posts.

Edit: Umm, you guys like wordy articles about fad diets with bad signal/noise ratio?

mattmaroon7• 18 years ago

This guy should have just read In Defense of Food. Not much that he says here hasn't been known for quite some time. And it's very interesting to learn exact where our diet went wrong.

defen• 18 years ago

Call me skeptical, but I doubt a 71 year old is capable of driving a golf ball 340 yards without some serious help from the wind.

teuobk• 18 years ago

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." -- Michael Pollan

mattmaroon7• 18 years ago

+ exercise.

hussong• 18 years ago

I was really surprised to learn that the horny old caveman was the same guy that wrote one of the most interesting papers I came across in media economics:

De Vany, Arthur & Walls, W. David, 1996. "Bose-Einstein Dynamics and Adaptive Contracting in the Motion Picture Industry," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(439), pages 1493-1514, November.

dejb• 18 years ago

We need down-voting of articles

jgamman• 18 years ago

OMFG - diets!!?? on HN?? good grief.

weegee• 18 years ago

this is a classic Atkins diet, and it will work, but it's a diet you need to stay on for the rest of your life if you want to remain lean. I'm currently addicted to carbs at the moment, and would have a real difficult time giving up beer.

The diet that really works

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