It’s been a crazy week for me. I was in Montreal for the weekend, checking out the local cuisine. I had some very tasty duck, and some amazing raw fish at Buona Notte (I highly recommend this restaurant!) Unfortunately, on Sunday I was caught in that huge snow storm that pummeled southern Ontario. Needless to say, what should have been a 6 hour drive home ended up taking almost 11 hours!
By the time I finally got home I was so behind on work that I had to spend the last couple days trying to get caught up on emails. One of the emails I received had a really great question asking whether it’s carbs or calories that causes weight gain. I’ve copied the question and my answer below…
Hi Brad,
I’ve read your book Eat Stop Eat and I’m wondering whether you would have written it differently now that you’ve read “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes. I mean, in your book you still write as if the amount of calories matter and as if you shouldn’t differentiate between them. What Taubes has found is that the only thing you really can say is that too many Carbs are unhealthy.
George
And here is my answer:
Hi George,
Thanks for the email and for the excellent question.
I have read “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and was very impressed with its content. I believe that Taubes has accurately pointed out the health issues surrounding a high sugar intake. However, I do not believe that he accurately analyzed the data regarding the correlation between total calories and obesity.
Taubes examined studies containing diet record data and concluded from this research that the obese do not eat any more calories than non-obese people. Unfortunately, we have learned from the work of Brian Wansink that obese people tend to under report their caloric intake by as much as 30% when using diet records. This phenomena has been noticed by other researchers, and has been written up as an extremely important confounder in weight loss research. (For a great write up on this point you can see a Trial by Steven W. Lightman et al. published in the New England Journal of Medicine, volume 327 (37), 1992.)
For this reason I would not have changed any of my recommendations in Eat Stop Eat if I had read “Good Calories, Bad Calories” before I began writing.
I think that the points that Taubes makes about sugar are accurate, and I do believe that one or two 24 hour periods of complety no sugar (like during the Eat Stop Eat method of fasting) is beneficial to human health, yet I also believe that the only way to reduce body weight is through a negative caloric balance, and the best way to ensure that the majority of that weight loss is fat is by using the combination of caloric restriction and resistance exercise (the two keys to Eat Stop Eat’s success).
I hope this answer helps,
Brad
To learn more about the benefits of short periods of flexible fasting for weight loss, visit http://www.eatstopeat.com
