Always hungry? Why traditional low-calorie diets don't work...

IT SOUNDS so simple.

 

Ditch your low-fat diet and try a new approach to weight loss - eating fat!

 

If you want to lose weight, just eat less and move more. 

With a few straightforward changes such as skipping dessert and walking an extra 20 minutes a day, virtually anyone could become lean for life. 

It’s just a matter of “energy balance”.

So people who are overweight must be either uninformed or lacking in willpower. 

This way of thinking gave us the low-fat diet. 

Since the fat in food has more than twice the calories of an equivalent amount of protein or carbohydrate, cutting back on dietary fat should lead to automatic weight loss. 

Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as hoped. 

Rates of obesity in the UK and US skyrocketed as we progressively replaced fat with carbohydrates. 

Recent scientific reviews show that typical low-fat diets produce less weight loss than other comparison diets. 

Of even greater concern, a focus on fat reduction may increase risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and cognitive decline, according to new findings from the Predimed study which looked at whether following a Mediterranean diet could prevent cardiovascular disease. 

 

Clearly the low-fat way has failed but not for lack of trying. 

So where do we go from here? 

When I began my career as an endocrinologist in the early 90s, the low-fat diet had become almost universally accepted. 

The US Department of Agriculture had just published the Food Guide Pyramid which encouraged us to fill up on grains (six to 11 servings per day) and consume fat sparingly.

I had little formal training in nutrition – medical schools are notorious for neglecting diet in favour of drugs – but my ignorance turned out to be a blessing. 

Rather than thinking of obesity as a simple problem of energy balance, I became interested in why people overeat. 

What made some people feel persistently hungry, despite eating enough food to satisfy calorie requirements? 

And why were so few people able to lose weight over the long term, even as they suffered physically and emotionally from being heavy? 

I spent months in the Harvard medical library poring over research studies, some dating back a century. 

Although the knowledge isn’t commonly appreciated in clinical practice, scientists have suspected for decades that biology, more so than willpower, determines body weight over the long term. 

 

When animals in experiments are forced to eat more than normal they of course gain weight. 

But the animals lose all interest in food and metabolism speeds up in an attempt to shed the extra weight. 

Human volunteers in force-feeding studies feel just as miserable as those in starvation studies. 

Afterwards their weight naturally declines right back to where it started. 

From this perspective, the conventional approach to weight loss, stressing self-control and willpower, seemed misguided. 

Intrigued by these insights I determined to dedicate my career to obesity research and patient care. 

This 20-year line of investigation has led me to an entirely different way of thinking about diet – not as a delivery system for calories but instead according to how food affects our hormones, our metabolism and ultimately our fat cells.

And I’ve come to a striking realisation:  

• Overeating doesn’t make us fat, the process of becoming fat makes us overeat.

• Our low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet (and other adverse influences in our environment) has triggered fat cells to hoard too many calories, leaving too few for the rest of the body. So we get hungry and metabolism slows. Cutting back calories only makes this situation worse, creating a battle between mind and metabolism that we’re destined to lose. 
• The calorie-balance model fails in the real life for the simple reason that humans aren’t machines. Although we tend to think of obesity as a state of excess, it’s really a question of starvation to the body. The fundamental problem isn’t having too many calories in fat cells but too few in the bloodstream available to fuel the brain and other organs. 

 

 

 

 

The three-phase programme in my book Always Hungry? aims to address this problem at the source – fat cells stuck in calorie-storage overdrive. 

With a diet designed to lower insulin levels and calm chronic inflammation, fat cells can be reprogrammed to release their excess calories back into the body. 

When that happens, cravings vanish and metabolism speeds up, leading to weight loss without the struggle. 

And because this approach works with, rather than against, biology you get to eat until you’re satisfied, snack when hungry and never count calories again. 

The diet is the opposite of low-calorie/low-fat. 

It includes nuts, full-fat dairy, rich sauces and spreads, savoury proteins (with vegetarian alternatives) and real chocolate.

You can enjoy a range of natural carbohydrates (root vegetables and whole grains) and in phase three we reintroduce some of the more processed carbohydrates such as bread and white potatoes, creating an individual plan for you. 

The diet is so satisfying, you won’t miss all those highly-processed carbohydrates you might have overindulged in. 

Participants in a 16-week national US pilot test consistently reported less hunger, fewer cravings, improved energy levels and enhanced wellbeing. 

For an end to the deprivation approach to weight loss in 2016, forget calories, focus on food quality and let your body do the rest. l 

David Ludwig’s book Always Hungry? is published by Orion Books (£20).

To order, please call The Express Bookshop on 01872 562310, send a cheque/PO payable to Express Bookshop to Express Bookshop, PO Box 200, Falmouth, TR11 4WJ or order online at expressbookshop.com. UK delivery is free.