Dr. Sekula on weight loss, fitness and nutrition

“Scientists in Indiana are reporting progress toward development of low glycemic and slowly digestible starch, a form of starch that would be less apt to cause the spike in blood sugar – and perhaps sharp hunger pangs – that many individuals experience after eating bread, baked goods, and other high-carbohydrate foods.”

The rest of the summary can be read here.

My only question is why?

I can understand the need for people to consume healthier foods – particularly than those listed in the quote above. But what if we just ate less of that food and more fruits and vegetables, healthier meats and drank more water? What if we just ate grains as they grow in the field?

Look in your pantry. Foods in plastic bags and carboard boxes are loaded with things that used to be good, healthy foods. Take enriched white flour for example. Out in the field, its a perfectly healthy and natural food.

To end up as a cake, bread or other food, it gets processed. The problem with processing is that it removes the good stuff, mainly the fiber, vitamins and minerals. As the end-product food stuff, it’s a plain-old, bland, quickly digesting starch.

Now, based on the objectives of these scientists, a new, more slowly digesting starch is being manufactured. And they’re making progress. I don’t know if I should jump for joy or just ask the question: “What is wrong with this picture?”

If we have a perfectly healthy food, process it and turn it into something that is not good for our digestive system, why do we want to further alter it so that it is better for our digestive system? Before you answer, think about the steps being taken to make the food better.

Is this coming full circle or am I just missing something completely obvious here? Please enlighten me!

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Reading this summary, I felt an urge to blurt out: “No blank, Sherlock!”

A recent study published in JAMA, a leading pillar of medical research dissemination, compared low GI diets with low-fat diets on insulin secretion in high insulin secreters.

On the surface, this appears to be a legitimate research question. Insulin is related to glucose metabolism and given the current state of obesity and type II diabetes in America, this might be something we should know.

However, most people in the medical fields should intuitively know this. The glycemic index of any food indicates the level it raises blood sugar when consumed. The higher the glycemic index, the higher the blood sugar response. For example, twinkies rate rather high on the glycemic index. Consume two or three of them and your blood sugar will spike.

At least for a while. In response, your body will release (secrete) insulin to bring it back down to normal.

If you are a high insulin secreter, you’re either type II diabetic, pre-diabetic or have a non-lifestyle related condition effecting your ability to metabolize blood sugar. You have to secrete more because the insulin you do release is becoming more and more insensitive to blood sugar. When this starts happening, the amount you secrete increases just to get your blood sugar back to normal. Over time your ability to regulate blood sugar becomes difficult and you become type II diabetic. For more info, go here.

But back to the study…

All markers of cardiovascular health were improved following low GI diet when compared to a low-fat diet. Again, this makes perfect sense. You’re not obese or diabetic because you eat a low-fat diet of whole, natural foods. You’re obese or diabetic (even if you eat a low-fat diet) because you are consuming overly-processed foods – cardboard boxes and plastics bags. The fat they contain is not healthy (trans fat) and to increase palatability (here) and shelf-life, sugars and preservatives are added.

The end result is a low-fat food that has a high GI, which increases insulin secretion when consumed. And the cycle continues…

I’ll conclude by saying that as a former academic, I’m well aware the importance peer-reviewed publications play in the tenure process. So in some ways, I understand why this paper was published. Without knowing all the details, I can only hope this paper was part of a larger study with these data points already collected, making the question easy to answer.

Until next time…

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Press Release 1: Walking not enough for significant exercise benefits.
Press Release 2: “No time to exercise” is no excuse, study shows.

By most publications, walking is the most popular form of physical activity. And why not? It’s easy to incorporate walking into your daily routine. You can make a concerted effort to take the stairs rather than the elevator, walk down the hall to speak with a colleague rather than emailing or phoning them, or even take a quick 10 minute walk on your lunch hour.

For the longest time, many health-related organizations trumpeted the healthy effects of walking on cardiovascular disease, chronic disease, mental disorders and weight control. In fact, Shape Up America has dedicated a large part of their mission to their 10,000 steps a day program. The main message of this program (and others like it) is to accumulate 10,000 steps (about 5 miles) each day and your health will improve.

But are we missing something?

“Generally, low-intensity activity such as walking alone is not likely to give anybody marked health benefits compared to programs that occassionally elevate the intensity,” says Dr. Vicki Harber, lead author of the study in the first press release.

Their study compared traditional exercise (using treadmills and stationary cycles) at a moderate-intensity with the 10,000 steps a day program, where subjects accumulated 10,000 steps per day.

The most significant finding was that fitness levels in the traditional exercise group improved at a rate 2.5 times that of the 10,000 steps per day group.

A separate study confirms these findings.

One group followed an interval training protocol while the other performed continuous, moderate-intensity stationary cycling. Over the study period, the interval training group trained for a total of 2.5 hours while the cycling group trained for 10.5 hours.

The results?

No significant differences in health or fitness markers between the groups.

“The most striking finding from our study was the remarkably similar adaptations induced by two such diverse training strategies,” says Martin Gibala, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University.

My thoughts
People in the service side (personal trainers, coaches, instructors, etc…) of the fitness industry have known for a long time that harder exercise provides better results. Those doing research on physical activity and health (I used to be one of them) realize this too. However, those doing research also understand that a continuum between the benefits of exercise and the intensity of exercise exists.

So much of the American population is completely inactive that getting up and following the 10,000 steps per day program will provide health benefits, which explains the major campaigns. But it’s important to realize too, that once you leave the “couch potato” behind, increasing the intensity of exercise will do more (and in a shorter period of time) than simply walking. So the continuum is getting people off the couch to doing something and then getting them to do more.

All of this leads us to walking and “burning calories.” Earlier I mentioned a few of the reasons why walking is the most popular form of exericse. I intentionally did not mention fat loss (although I mentioned weight control, which is a completely different issue). You can readily verify the tie-in between walking and fat-burning zones by reading magazine headings, talking with any un-informed trainer or reading the “charts” in the fitness center or on the treadmill.

What do the headlines, trainers or chart say (or show)?

That fat-burning zones are of lower intensity than “cardio-training” zones. This may be true for “in-the-moment” metabolism, but completely off the mark in every other regard. Higher intensity exercise burns more calories, can be done in a shorter period of time and provides better health benefits than “fat-burning” zone exercise.

There is a ton of research to suppor this claim but the health conditions that receive the most benefit from higher intensity exercise are cardiovascular diseases. These include hypertension, type II diabetes, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome and obesity.

Your take home message
Don’t give up on walking!

Instead, replace some of your walking with higher-intensity exercise. Make your body huff-and-puff a little. You’ll be better off in the long run.

Isn’t it better to get the same (or better) results in a shorter period of time?

Of course it is. That’s why working out harder is better than the alternative.

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The text between the dashed lines comes directly from the press release. A link to view the press release is at the bottom of this post. Unless otherwise stated, the text between the dashed lines is exactly as it appears in the press release.
All text after the dashed line contains my comments.

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A study in the September, 2006 issue of Cell Metabolism evaluated normal and obese individuals for their response to the hunger-fighting hormone peptide YY (PYY). In previous research reports, it was shown to reduce food intake by up to 1/3 when given by injection.

“We’ve now found that increasing the protein content of the diet augments the body’s own PYY, helping to reduce hunger and aid weight loss,” said Medical Research Council clinician scientist Rachel Batterham of University College London. (Emphasis added by me).

Further investigation in mice supported the human study results.

Also, genetically modified mice unable to produce PYY ate more and became markedly obese.

When researchers treated those hormone deficient mice with PYY, the animals lost weight.

“The findings show that PYY deficiency can cause obesity and that PYY appears to mediate the beneficial effects of increased-protein content diets,” Batterham said. “One potential weight loss strategy is therefore to increase the satiating power of the diet and promote weight loss through the addition of dietary protein–harnessing our own satiety system (Emphasis added by me).

“Such a diet is perhaps more typical to that of our hunter-gatherer ancestors,” she added.

The average Western diet derives 49% of energy intake from carbohydrate, 35% from fat, and 16% from protein, Batterham said. That differs considerably from the diet of hunter-gatherers, who ate as much as twice the amount of protein (Emphasis added by me).

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EUREKA (only because this press release comes from Eureka Alert), more protein in your diet leads to greater weight loss. I think Dr. Atkins was onto something many years ago, regardless of the bad press.

People in the know have realized for a long time the positive role protein plays in your diet, health and body weight. That’s why I recommend eating protein at every meal and even with your snacks. But you can’t eat just any protein. It must be healthy, natural and not packed with preservatives and saturated fats.

In other words, get the majority of your protein from chicken, beef, turkey, fish and wild game. Stay away from meats that come in plastic bags or containers and cardboard boxes. This meat is processed and loaded with preservatives and trans fatty acids.

To limit processed meats, make sure the meat you do eat is as close to its natural state as possible. In this condition, it has undergone little processing.

For a better understanding of how to determine the extent of processing a protein source has undergone, you need to ask yourself four questions. The answers to these questions will lead you to an obvious conclusion.

To learn these four questions, read my nutrition e-book. You can get a free copy simply by signing up for my newsletter, Brian’s Report: 18 Holes of Golf fitness, nutrition, heath and much more. To sign-up, go here: http://www.briansekula.com/golf/BReport/BriansReportSignup.htm.

Some more of my thoughts from the article…

Why was the study replicated in mice after humans? My best guess is they wanted to isolate the PYY hormone, so they used the genetically modified mice. I’m not sure, but the sentence caught me off-guard.

The typical Western diet contains too many carbohydrates. But carbohydrates alone are not the culprit. It’s the type that matters. Too many people eat a diet laden in processed carbohydrates, which include chips, cookies, crackers, soda water, etc… If these “foods” were replaced with fruits and vegetables, along with healthy proteins, several things would happen. The incidence rates of many behaviorally related diseases would drop significantly. These include: obesity, heart disease, Type II Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, many forms of cancer and even some bone and joint disorders. The list goes on. Additionally, the rate at which Americans take prescription medications would significantly decrease. How much help would that be to an over-burdened health care system?

But back to the article…

Archaeological studies indicate the typical hunter-gather diet consisted of proteins high in healthy fats, namely omega 3, 6 and 9 fatty acids. This was pre-agricultural times and the meat consumed was wild. It’s the modern-day equivalent of free-range meat. In other words, wild animals went where they wanted and ate what they wanted.

Soon after introduction of the agricultural period, it was discovered that farming meat was much better than the alternative. Who can blame them? If you had to kill something to eat it, you were just as likely to be killed while out hunting and gathering. So cattle (and other forms of meat) were raised as a meat source for the populace. It was also soon discovered that feeding them (as opposed to allowing them to range free in captivity) caused them to gain weight faster than if they were in the wild.

It wasn’t long that animal husbandry techniques discovered diets high in corn and other grains would cause a young calf to weigh over 1,200 pounds in about 14 months, as opposed to 2 years or more in the wild. As you might guess, this much of a weight gain in this short period of time is not a healthy weight gain. Tissue analyses show the vast majority of this weight gain is fat – specifically, saturated fat.

Coincidentally, fossil records from pre- and post-agricultural periods indicate when animal husbandry techniques were introduced, significant increases in nutritionally related diseases began to appear.

The Take Home Message

This is what I recommend. Note: I am not telling you what to do. I’m only making some recommendations. If you’d like, follow these suggestions but be aware that I am not qualified (not an MD) to TELL you what to do (that’s a disclaimer).

1. Eat more protein.
2. Eat protein at every meal.
3. Eat protein with your mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks.
4. Keep protein powder at home and at work (for convenience).
5. Take two hours one day each week and plan your meals and snacks.
6. Significantly increase the fruits and vegetables you eat.
7. SIGNIFICANTLY decrease the food you eat in plastic bags and cardboard boxes.

Press Release Link
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-09/cp-epb082806.php

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