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It’s All About Results – A Pragmatism Primer

“The efficacy of any treatment of obesity can be appraised only by the permanence of the result.” – H. Burch, Baylor University Before we get into the solution to the pressing health issues facing us today, I’d like to share some simple philosophy I find useful to keep in mind. The philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatists are results-oriented—they […]

2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Calorie Quality Factor 4: Efficiency (The “E” in SANE)

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“Efficiency…is dependent on…the nature of the fuel and the processes enlisted by the organism. A simple example is the inefficiency of low-test gasoline…If a ‘calorie is a calorie’…were true, [then gasoline is gasoline and] nobody would pay extra for high test gasoline.” – R.D. Feinman, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center A calorie […]

2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

It’s All About Results – A Pragmatism Primer

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2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Calorie Quality Factor 4: Efficiency (The “E” in SANE)

Uncategorized

2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

It’s All About Results – A Pragmatism Primer

Uncategorized

“The efficacy of any treatment of obesity can be appraised only by the permanence of the result.” – H. Burch, Baylor University

Before we get into the solution to the pressing health issues facing us today, I’d like to share some simple philosophy I find useful to keep in mind. The philosophy of pragmatism.

Pragmatists are results-oriented—they believe something is right or wrong based on its results. People can try anything they want and the true worth of the program is revealed by its results. If it works, it is right. If it fails, it is wrong. Consider Communism, for example. A pragmatist asks how Communism worked out in the real world and lets that settle the argument about its merits.

When it comes to fat loss, the pragmatic view is: “Does the fat-loss program cause you to lose body fat and keep it off forever without compromising the rest of your life? If so, then it is right. If not, then it is wrong.” Unfortunately, this commonsense approach is not common practice. Despite the decades of data and tens of millions of heavy diabetic people that prove traditional weight-loss programs wrong, those people have been brainwashed into thinking that they failed because they didn’t lose any weight, not that the traditional weight-loss programs failed them.

If a program fails, it is the program’s fault. Programs are designed to deliver results. If it failed to deliver results, the program failed, not the person.

Think about software programs. If you cannot figure out how to use a software program, it is not because you failed. It is because the software program failed. Good software is easy to use. That is what makes it good software. It delivers excellent results for you. What good is any software program if it does not serve you?

Similarly, if you cannot stick to a fat-loss program forever, it is not because you are a failure. Good fat-loss programs are easy to use. That is what makes them good. They deliver excellent results for you.

Consider Oprah. She is one of the strongest and smartest women ever. Now look at Oprah’s weight-loss efforts. Thinking pragmatically, thinking about results, what do we know about the weight-loss programs Oprah tried? If they were right, Oprah would be thinner and spend less time and money trying to burn body fat. She is far from a failure at anything. The programs failed her.

If Oprah hires someone to design her house and the house collapses, we would not blame Oprah. And if Oprah hires someone to design a piece of software and she cannot figure it out, the software designer is at fault. So, if Oprah hires someone to design a weight-loss program and she does not lose weight, the program failed—Oprah did not.

Results are all that matter. People do not fail fat-loss programs. Fat-loss programs fail people.

Taubes, Gary. Good calories, bad calories: challenging the conventional wisdom on diet, weight control, and disease. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print.

2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Calorie Quality Factor 4: Efficiency (The “E” in SANE)

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“Efficiency…is dependent on…the nature of the fuel and the processes enlisted by the organism. A simple example is the inefficiency of low-test gasoline…If a ‘calorie is a calorie’…were true, [then gasoline is gasoline and] nobody would pay extra for high test gasoline.” – R.D. Feinman, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center

A calorie is not a calorie when it comes to how Efficiently our fat metabolism system converts it into body fat. The more inEfficient calories are at being stored as body fat, the better. Keeping the science of SANE eating simple, fiber and protein are entirelyinEfficient.
Explaining the inEfficiency of fiber is easy. Fiber is not digested, and therefore can never be stored as body fat. The body tries and tries to digest fiber, but then after burning a bunch of calories trying to break down and absorb fiber, it gives up and passes fiber through the digestive system. That is why fiber helps keep us regular.

Explaining the inEfficiency of protein is a bit more involved. To start with let’s talk about the calories we burn digesting food. Our body digests fat and carbohydrate Efficiently. However, it takes our body five to ten times more energy to digest protein. In fact, about 30% of the calories we get from protein are burned digesting it. Protein’s inEfficiency doesn’t stop there.

Even after we burn 30% of protein calories during initial digestion, the road from chicken breast to love handles is far from over. Correction: there is no road from chicken breast to love handles. Protein cannot be stored as body fat. However, there is a super-highway shuttling glucose to our fat cells. So when we have excess protein lying around, excess protein is sent to the liver to be converted into glucose.

The process of converting protein into glucose is called gluconeogenesis (gluco = sugar, neo = new, genesis = creation). This processburns another 33% of the original protein calories eaten. Combine the third of protein calories burned during digestion with the third of those remaining calories burned during gluconeogenesis, and you and I are left with a measly 47% of the original protein calories. What started off as 300 calories of juicy protein is reduced to 140 calories of glucose in the bloodstream. But wait, there’s more.

Converting that newly formed glucose into body fat consumes another 25% of the glucose calories. So when everything is said and done, even if we never move a muscle, only 35% of the calories we get from protein can be stored as body fat. You read that correctly. Over two-thirds of calories from protein are burned converting protein into a compound which can be stored as body fat.

If we followed the same digestion process for starch, we would find that 70% of calories from starch can be stored as body fat. In other words, calories from starch are twice as Efficient at becoming body fat as calories from protein.

This does not mean we should eat 100% protein. Yet we can eat more and burn more by eating more protein-packed (and fiber-packed) food. And keeping long-term fat loss simple, the same techniques we are using to increase Satiety, decrease Aggression, and increase Nutrition, also decrease the Efficiency of our calories.

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2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

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