Archive for the ‘Diet’ Category

How to break through a plateau

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Posted 19 Sep 2010 — by Todd
Category Diet, Fitness, Psychology

You’ve embarked on a new weight loss diet or fitness program. You’ve read a book, become inspired, signed up for a program or health club and what’s more — it’s working.  For the first week, two weeks, a month, the weight is coming off, you’re hitting the gym on a regular schedule. You even drop a size or two and garner some compliments from friends.

And then…progress stalls. You’re still eating the same foods, faithfully completing your workouts, but your weight loss stalls, perhaps the scale even goes up a few pounds. The progress you make at the gym similarly maxes out…you can’t lift any more weight, your running speed or distance maxes out…maybe even some soreness or injury sets you back a bit. You’ve hit the dreaded plateau.  Sometimes it lasts a few weeks and progress resumes. But it can last months. And it saps your morale because you are not getting any more return on your invested effort. In all likelihood, you give up or cut back, your discipline withers. Your weight goes back up, maybe adding a few pounds on top of where you started, and you cut back on or cut out your exercise program. The genie is back in the bottle.

What causes plateaus?  Are they inevitable endpoints in any effort to make progress? Or are they at best temporary way-posts or resting points that you can move beyond with the right approach?  The school of thought that says that plateaus are unavoidable indicators of biological limits is called the Set Point theory. I think that the Set Point theory is wrong, and that there is a reliable way to push past plateaus to bring about substantial weight loss and improved fitness.

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Links to make you think

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Posted 15 Aug 2010 — by Todd
Category Diet, Hormesis, Stoicism

This week starts a new feature, where without comment I have linked some selected websites with ideas or accomplishments I think are particularly noteworthy, thought-provoking, or inspiring.  Let me know how you like them and post your comments.  A friend suggested this format, which I have modeled after “Assorted Links” in Seth Roberts’ blog. If this proves to be of interest, I’ll use it periodically.

If you look at all three of these links and don’t get at least one good idea to try next week…please let me know!

Calorie restriction and hormesis

6 Comments
Posted 23 May 2010 — by Todd
Category Diet

One of the first scientifically rigorous demonstrations of the benefits of hormesis was a 1934 study of calorie restriction (often abbreviated “CR”) in laboratory rats, conducted by Mary Crowell and Clive McCay at Cornell. They found that reducing the calories of rats by 30-50%, supplemented with adequate micro-nutrients, could almost double their lifespans. Later studies found continued lifetime extension with calorie restriction up to 65%. In addition, the rats remained energetic and youthful in appearance, with greatly reduced incidence, and delayed onset, of age-related diseases. This same phenomenon has been observed in a variety of other animals.

Studies on calorie restriction in primates or humans are as yet inconclusive. Controlled primate studies only started in the late 1980s and have yet to be completed, although the preliminary indications are very promising. And in humans it is more difficult to conduct controlled studies for both ethical and compliance reasons. An additional factor to consider is that animals raised post-weaning on calorie restricted diets typically have much smaller adult body sizes that animals not restricted in their eating.  Because of the social and physical implications of this consequence, advocates of calorie restricted diets for humans advise that they be started only upon reaching adulthood.

Whether or not a restricted calorie diet extends the human lifespan, the evidence is becoming overwhelming that a nutritionally complete diet with reduced calories has the potential to greatly improve our health, particularly as we age. But is it practical and possible for humans to happily adhere to such a diet?

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Flavor control diets

18 Comments
Posted 28 Feb 2010 — by Todd
Category Diet, Psychology

A number of recent weight loss methods have been developed that explicitly recognize a close relationship between flavor and appetite. These methods include:

  1. Flavor-calorie dissociation as advocated by Seth Roberts in his Shangri-La Diet
  2. Sensory-specific satiety, as advocated in David Katz’s Flavor Point Diet
  3. Tastants, another approach to sensory-specific satiety, as advertised in Alan Hirsch’s Sensa Weight-Loss Program.
  4. Odor inhalers, a third approach based on sensory-specific satiety, as described in Alan Hirsch’s book Scentsational Weight Loss, and marketed by him as ”diet pens” offered by SlimScents

At first, some of these approaches appear to be mutually incompatible. The Shangri-La theory argues that strong or familiar flavors enhance appetite when they become associated with caloric foods.  The other three approaches, by contrast, claim that intense flavors or aromas suppress appetite, based upon the principle of “sensory-specific satiety”, whereby an increase in the intensity of a single flavor or odor induces satiety. However, on closer examination, all of the above theories are consistent with one another, as I will try to show. Furthermore, they each provide some useful clues about how to achieve a long term weight loss and relief from hunger cravings by paying attention to the role of flavor and other food cues.  Finally, as I will attempt to persuade you, only one of the above diets is truly a type of Deconditioning Diet that can lead to long term, permanent reduction in appetite, based on the principles of Hormetism.

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