15 January 2009

Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey

I have been thinking about the nature of this blog and have a few thoughts on the direction. First, I don't want it to be simply a tip blog. I want to capture principles that can be applied to life, which keeps it all at a higher level. The other thing is, I don't want it to be a news digest blog. I want the content to be more or less timeless. Not something based on today's news or gossip.

Having said that, I will now go against those principles and publish a letter I sent to Oprah Winfrey about her diet. OK, I believe the principles are timeless, but it is a little newsier than I am interested in.

I also said I would go lighter on diet articles, but here I am with another diet article. I have developed a bit of an obsession around diet. Starting next month, Feb 2009, I will be going back to more general topics. Thanks for staying with me.

Letter to Oprah

I sent a letter to Oprah through her website. That site limited me to 2000 characters and I had much more to say. So following is the original note that I wrote that has much more detail. Any bets on whether she'll leave a comment here?


Dear Oprah,

I have been reading about your weight loss efforts. I am sure you have received thousands of letters of advice and encouragement. I would like to add one more voice to the din.

First, I want to say that I admire you and your accomplishments. You have found ways to connect with large numbers of people in ways that are meaningful to them. You have been a source of inspiration and information for millions.

But this weight loss thing...

I know you have received lots of advice from leading nutritionists and trainers, but they all have the simple calories-in minus calories-out approach.

While that is mathematically correct and in accordance with the laws of physics, it misses a key point; starving oneself is not a sustainable lifestyle. Your body needs energy to live. It can obtain that energy from outside through food, or it can literally eat itself by burning its own fat, muscle, and carbohydrates.

To lose weight, you limit the amount of food coming in from the outside so that the body uses itself for energy. You have only about 400 grams of carbohydrate stored in your body, so that is not a significant source of weight loss. You do NOT want to lose muscle, so you therefore want your body to be using its fat stores.

You achieve this state by setting your body up hormonally to burn fat.

Something for you to think about. Many people believe that binge eating or unhealthy eating is a symptom of poor mental health and represents a failure. People start on diet and exercise programs, then when they fail, blame themselves for being weak or "emotional eating." That is not the reality.

Think about it. People who kick themselves for emotional eating are often already on a diet and overweight. They feel hungry all the time and struggle to find the energy and time to exercise. Then something happens. Maybe their kid gets sick or their spouse loses a job. Suddenly, the stress level ramps up. Well you may not be able to control the course of sickness or your spouse's job search, but you can reduce the hunger and exercise stress. In a way then, going off a diet may be a very HEALTHY response, not a sick one. In times of stress, your body needs sustenance. Not providing it can lead to your own ill-health.

Gary Taubes has written Good Calories, Bad Calories. Many people mistake it for a diet book. Others mistake it for a scientific treatise. It is neither. It is a documentation of how poor science has led to misconceptions about healthy diets. He also lays out an alternative hypothesis about diet.



The key in all this is to eat foods that allow your body to use its own fat as fuel. An important key to this is the hormone, insulin. Insulin is, in essence a storage hormone. It takes nutrients out of your blood and stores them in muscle and fat cells. Fat and sugar are stored as fat, while proteins are either put into muscle or converted to glucose in the liver for use as a fuel. Insulin also prevents fat from leaving fat cells. This is really important so I'll say it again. The presence of insulin prevents fat from leaving fat cells.

So, in general terms, carbohydrates, especially sugars and highly processed flours induce your body to release insulin. This in turn traps the fat cells in your body. When you run out of fuel in your system from the previous meal, an obvious choice to refuel your body's cells immediately is to eat more carbs. This sets up a vicious circle. you feel hungry so you eat carbs for a pick-me-up. Insulin cleans out your blood stream, you feel hungry again. Your body never has a chance to burn those fat cells.

This is the deal with the lower carb diets. They shut down the insulin response to food and let the fat come out of your tissues to be used for fuel. When the fat can flow freely you tend not to feel hunger because your body's cells are fueled.

You have to be careful not to overdo it a diet though. Research indicates that your body can burn about 31 calories of its own fat per pound of body fat per day. So you can maintain a caloric deficit of about 31 calories per pound of body fat without cutting into muscle. As an example, a 200 pound person at 35% body fat is therefore carrying about 70 lb. of fat. 70 lb. times 31 calories per pound is 2,170 calories of potential fat loss per day. If you diet harder than that you will cut into muscle. As you lose fat, your maximum daily loss will also decrease. This is one of the reasons that a rate of weight (fat) loss is difficult to maintain.

My Story

The things I have written above come from a fair amount of research and my own experience in weight loss. In 2007, I weighed 240 lb. (I'm 5'10 and was 50 years old). I had tried losing weight in the past, typically by cutting back on fats, cutting back on calories, and exercising like a maniac. I could lose 15 lb. or so, before beginning to feel weak, lose muscle, and feel hungry all the time. Inevitably, I would then fall off the wagon and gain it back.

At Thanksgiving of 2007, I got gout in my left foot. I started to research that, and for some reason stumbled across Gary Taubes lecture at Berkeley. That lecture (http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216) changed my life.

I dialed back pasta and bread (I had already cut out sweet sodas) and the weight simply disappeared over the next four months. I lost about 30 pounds with almost no effort. I am now working on the next phase of my weight loss where I will lose another 15 lb. I will be using a very similar approach with a few modifications. Specifically, I will be doing a periodic (weekly or so) carbo load to induce leptin secretion. This follows some of the ideas that Lyle McDonald has laid out at his website (http://www.bodyrecomposition.com).

So I urge you to consider a lower carb diet in your fat loss efforts. In the long run, it is more sustainable, it seems likely that it is a more healthful way of life than low-fat,

I have written about diet and other issues at my blog. I invite you to check out Emotions for Engineers at http://www.emotionsforengineers.com.

Best regards,
Tony


The following is the letter as submitted to O.

I admire you and your accomplishments. You have found ways to connect with people in meaningful ways. You have been a source of inspiration and information for millions. But this weight loss thing.

Simple calories in minus calories out misses a key point; starving oneself is not a sustainable lifestyle. Your body needs energy to live. When it doesn't get it, it sends hunger signals. We obtain energy from outside through food, or it can literally eat itself by burning its own fat, muscle, and carbohydrates. You want your body to be burning fat. You achieve this state by setting your body up hormonally.

People who kick themselves for emotional eating are often already on a diet They feel hungry and struggle to find the energy and time to exercise. Then maybe their kid gets sick. Stress increases. You can't control the sickness, but you can reduce the stress from hunger. Going off a diet may be a very HEALTHY response, not a sick one. In times of stress, your body needs sustenance.

Gary Taubes lays out another diet hypothesis diet in "Good Calories, Bad Calories." The key is to eat foods that allow your body to use its own fat as fuel by limiting insulin release. It takes nutrients out of the blood and stores them as fat. It prevents fat from leaving fat cells and can cause you to feel hunger.

Carbs induce insulin. This is why lower carb diets work. By limiting the insulin response, your body uses its fat as a fuel without hunger.

Dietary fat has been vilified by the government and press. It is not bad for you. In fact, when your body burns its own fat, you are burning the equivalent of a high fat diet.

I urge you to consider a lower carb diet in your fat loss efforts. In the long run, it is more sustainable and it seems likely that it is a more healthful way of life than low-fat.

I have written about diet and other issues at my blog. I invite you to read at a more detailed version at http://www.emotionsforengineers.com.

Regards, Tony

7 comments:

  1. Hi Tony. Well put. Good luck getting past "Dr. Oz". I remember when he was on Larry King Live with Gary Taubes, and in nearly the same breath extolling whole foods, he described some purple soy goo he lets his children drink. Cognitive dissonance?

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  2. Tony, You have a mistake in your letter to Oprah. It's this sentence in paragraph 11: Fat and sugar are stored as fat, while proteins are either put into muscle.

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  3. Thanks so much David.

    Once I realized I had a 2000 character limit on Oprah's website, I stopped editing the original longer note. I think I'll go in and make a few fixes on it.

    A bit of brain flatulence...

    Cheers,
    Tony

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  4. Great letter and it would be wonderful if it made it to Oprah.

    I sent in a transcript of this audio from Dr. Heidi Dulay.
    http://tinyurl.com/ERintrocall
    It says the same things you wrote and follows Taubes and yes Atkins.

    BTW I found your blog while writing a post about Jimmy Moore and Taubes.

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  5. good luck with that.

    oprah is not open to your argument.

    i GUESS she has some basis in reality, but generally speaking...i consider Oprah is to Logic as Satan is to the Lord.

    and it's sure that if Oprah were level-headed, this is NOT an area where she'd be open to logical arguments.

    and yes please do post some stuff that is not diet related. email me if you are low on inspiration. i would help you out.

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  6. I agree, I suspect Oprah will never see it or be aware of it, and even if she did...

    robin, thanks for the link.

    werouious, please feel free to put suggestions for future posts in the comments. It will either put an issue on my radar screen or elevate something I'm already working on.
    Cheers,
    Tony6

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  7. AWESOME JOB with your letter, Tony! Oprah, are you listening?

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