What The New “Low-Carb” Study REALLY Says

A news media feeding frenzy erupted recently when a new diet study broke in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Almost all the reporters got it wrong, wrong WRONG! So did most of the gloating low carb forumites and bloggers. Come to think of it, almost everyone interpreted this study wrong. Some valuable insights came out of this study, but almost everyone missed them because they were too busy believing what the news said or defending their own cherished belief systems …

The New England Journal of Medicine

The new study, titled, “Weight Loss With a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet” was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in issue 359, number 3.

I quickly read the full text of the research paper the day it was published. Then, I shook my head in dismay as I scanned the news headlines. I found it amusing that the media turned this into a three ring circus, putting a misleading “low carb versus high carb,” “Atkins vindicated” or “Diet wars” spin on the story. But that’s mainstream journalism for you, right? Gotta sell those papers!

Just look at some of these headlines:

“Study Tips Scales in Atkins Diets Favor: Low Carb Regimen Better Than Low Fat Diet For Weight And Cholesterol, Major Study Shows. “

“Low-Carb and Low-Fat Diets Face Off “ “The Never-Ending Diet Wars” “Low Carb Beats Low Fat in Diet Duel.” “Atkins Diet is Safe and Far More Effective Than a Low-Fat One, Study Says” “Unrestricted Low-Carb Diet Wins Hands Down” Some of these headlines are hilarious! I wonder if any of these reporters actually read the whole study. Geez. Is it too much trouble to read 13 pages before you write a story that will be read by millions of already confused people suffering the pain and frustration of obesity?

Here’s a quick look at the study design.

The low fat restricted calorie diet was based on American Heart Association guidelines. Calorie intake was set at 1500 for women, 1800 a day for men with 30% of calories from fat, and only 10% from saturated fat. Participants were instructed to eat low fat grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes and to limit their consumption of additional fats, sweets and high fat snacks.

The Mediterranean diet group was placed on a moderate fat, restricted calorie program rich in vegetables and low in red meat, with poultry and fish replacing beef and lamb. Energy intake was restricted to 1500 calories per day for women and 1800 calories per day for men with a goal of no more than 35% of calorie from fat. Added fat came mostly from nuts and olive oil.

The low carb diet was a non-restricted calorie plan aimed at providing 20 grams of carbs per day for the 2 month induction phase with a gradual increase to 120 grams per day to maintain the weight loss. Intakes of total calories, protein and fat were not limited. However, the participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of protein (more on that bizarre-twist shortly).

The study subjects were mostly male (86%), overweight (BMI 31) and middle age (mean age 52)

Here were the study results:

There were some health improvements in cholesterol, blood pressure and other parameters in the Mediterranean and low carb group that bested the high carb group. That was the focus of many articles and discussions that appeared on the net this week. However, I’d like to focus on the weight loss aspect as I’m not a medical doctor and fat loss is the primary subject matter of this website. All three groups lost weight. The low carb group lost 5.5 kilos, the Mediterranean group lost 4.6 kilos and the low fat group lost 3.3 kilograms…. IN TWO YEARS! Whoopee!

My conclusion would be that the results were similar and that none of the diets worked very well over the long term!

Amanda Gardner of the US News and World Report Health Day was one of the few reporters who got it right:

“Diet plans produce similar results: Study finds Mediterranean and low-carb diets work just as well as low fat ones.”

Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times also came close with her headline:

“Long term diet study suggests success is hard to come by: In a tightly controlled experiment, obese people lost an average of just 6 to 10 pounds over two years.”

Even this headline wasn’t 100% accurate. The study was HARDLY tightly controlled. Tightly controlled means metabolic ward studies where the researchers actually count and control the calorie intake.

The problem is, you can’t lock people in a hospital or research center ward for two years. So in this study, they used a food frequency questionnaire. Sure, like we believe what people report about their eating habits at restaurants and at home behind closed doors! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

“No! I swear Dr. Schwarzfuchs! I swear I didn’t eat those donuts over the weekend! I stayed on my Mediterranean diet. Honest!”

One of the most firmly established facts in dietetics research is that almost everyone underreports their food intake BADLY, sometimes by as much as 50%. I’m not saying everyone “lies,” they just forget or don’t know. In fact, this underreporting of calorie intake is such a huge problem that it makes obesity research very difficult to do and conclusions difficult to draw from free-living studies. Another blunder in the news reports is that this study didn’t really follow Atkins diet parameters OR even the traditional low fat diet for that matter, so it’s not an “Atkin’s versus Ornish” showdown at all. If you actually take the time to read the full text of the research paper it doesn’t say ANYTHING like, “Atkins is the best after all.” That’s the spin that some of the news media cooked up (and what the Atkins foundation was hoping for). It says, “The diet was based on the Atkins diet.” However, the sentence right before that says, “The participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein.” Vegetarian Atkins? The chart on page 236 says the low carb diet provided 40% of calories from carbs at 6, 12 and 24 months. If I’m reading that data properly, then the only low carb period was a brief induction phase in the very beginning. Does that sound like Atkins? 40% carb sounds more like the Zone diet or my own Burn The Fat program to me.

The Atkins Foundation, which partially supported this study, told reporters, “We feel vindicated.” HA! They should have paid the reporters and told the researchers they felt ripped off and they wanted a refund for misuse of their research grant!

After carefully reading the full text of this study, there are many interesting findings we could talk about, from the differences in results between men and women to the improvements in health markers. Here’s what the study really says that stood out to me. It’s what I would have talked about if the newspapers or TV stations had called me:

1. “Mediterranean and low carb diets may be effective alternatives to low-fat diets.”

I can agree completely with that statement. All three diets created a calorie deficit. All three groups lost weight. Low carb lost a little more, which is the usual finding because low carb diets often control appetite and calorie intake automatically (you eat less even if you don’t count calories). Also, if body composition is not indicated, there’s an initial water weight loss that makes low carb diets look more effective in the very early stages.

2. “Personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions.”

Absolutely! Nutrition should be individualized based on goals, health status, body type, activity level and numerous other factors. Different people have different phenotypes. Some people are more predisposed to thrive on a low carb approach. Others feel like crap on low carbs and do better with more carbs or a middle of the road approach. Those who dogmatically follow and defend one type of diet or the other are only handcuffing themselves by limiting their options. Iris Shai, a researcher in the study said, “We can’t rely on one diet fits all.” Hmm, far cry from “Atkins wins hands down,” wouldn’t you say?

3. “The rate of adherence to a study diet was 95.4% at 1 year and 84.6% at 2 years.”

THIS was the part of most interest to me. When I read this, immediately I could have cared less about the silly low carb versus high carb wars that the news reporters were jumping on. I wanted to know WHY the subjects were able to stick with it so well. Of course, that’s boring stuff to journalists… adherence? What does that word mean anyway? Yawn – not interesting enough for prime time, I guess. But it was interesting to me, and I hope YOU pay attention to what I found. The authors of the study wrote:

“This trial suggests a model that might be applied more broadly in the workplace. Using the employer as a health coach could be an effective way to improve health. The model of group intervention with the use of dietary group sessions, spousal support, food labels, and monthly weighing in the workplace within the framework of a health promotion campaign might yield weight reduction and long term health benefits.”

Hmmmmm, lets see: * Dietician coaching
* Group meetings
* Motivational phone calls
* Spousal support
* Workplace monitoring (corporate health program)
* Food labels – calorie monitoring
* Weigh-ins (required and monitored)

Wow, everything helpful to long term fat loss that sticks. Can you say, ACCOUNTABILITY? These factors help explain the better adherence.

By the way, the adherence rate for the low carb group was the lowest.

90.4% in low fat group
85.3% in the Mediterranean group
78% in the low carb group

Here’s the bottom line, the way I see it:

First, please, please, please learn how to find and read primary research and take the news media stories with a grain of salt. If you want to know who died, what burned down or what hurricane is coming, tune in to the news – they do a GREAT job at that. If you want to know how to lose weight or improve your health, look up the original research papers instead of taking second hand information at face value.

Second, those who prefer a low carb approach; more power to them. Most studies, this one included, show at the very least that low carb is an option and it’s not necessarily an unhealthy one if done intelligently. I also have no qualms with someone claiming that low carb diets are slightly more effective for weight loss, especially in the short term, free living situations. Is low carb superior for fat loss in the long haul? That’s STILL highly debatable. It’s probably superior for some people, but not for others.

Third, low carb people, listen up! Even if low carb is superior, that doesn’t mean calories don’t count. Deny this at your own peril. In fact, this study shows the reverse. The low carb group was in a larger negative energy balance than the high carb and Mediterranean group (according to the data published in this paper), which easily explains the greater weight loss. Posting the calories contained in foods in the cafeteria may have improved the results and helped with compliance in all groups.

When energy intake is matched calorie for calorie, the advantage of a low carb diet shrinks or disappears. For most people, low carb is a hunger management or calorie control weight loss advantage, not metabolic magic (sorry, no magic folks!)

Fourth, choose the nutrition program that’s most appropriate for your personal preferences, your current health condition, your genetics (or phenotype) and most important of all… the one you can stick with. Then tend your own garden instead of wasting time criticizing how the other guy is eating. Your results will speak for themselves in the end. Take your shirt off and show us.

If I were forced to choose only one approach (and thank god I’m not), I would recommend avoiding the extremes of very low carb or very low fat or very high fat or very high carbs. Balance makes the most sense to me, and the research suggests that this helps produce the highest compliance rate. That’s not rocket science either, it’s common sense. If you have a serious fat loss goal, as when I compete in bodybuilding, then a further reduction in carbs and increase in protein makes perfect sense to me as a peaking diet. If an extremely low or extremely high carb diet worked for you, great. But generalizing your experience to the entire rest of the world makes no sense. Arguing from extremes is the weakest form of argument. The reason I have THREE nutrition plans (three phases) in my own fat loss program is because programs with flexibility and room for individualization beat the others hands down in the long term. In fact, I wrote an entire chapter in my e-book about unique body types, how to determine yours and how to individualize your nutrition – it’s THAT important. If you have more choices, you have more power. The people who are shackled by dogma and narrow thinking are stuck. They also risk missing what’s really important. Things like: Personalization
Adherence
Long-term Maintenance
Accountability
Social Support

and…

CALORIES!

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Fat Loss Coach
www.OfficialBurnTheFat.com
PS. If you want to learn more about a balanced, flexible and proven approach, which teaches nutritional individuality and which can produce similar weight loss in one month, month after month, that the subjects of this study produced in TWO YEARS, (if you ADHERE to it!), then visit my fat loss website.

About the Author:

By Rob Poulos, Fat Loss & Fitness Expert & Author of “Fat Burning Furnace“

I was puttering around on the internet this morning and I saw something that caught my eye.  It was the latest data regarding our current life expectancy as humans from the World Health Organization, along with a history of how that’s changed over the years.

This info went all the way back to the Neanderthal period (the guys from the Geico commercials) up to present day humans. Those poor Geico guys only lived to be 20 years old on average, while today’s humans can expect about 75 years of life.

But did you know that today’s people have an average healthy life expectancy of just 67 years?  In other words, this is saying that you can expect 8 years of your life in poor health.  8 years!  That’s 2900+ days of poor health.  I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I’m looking forward to.

I sure think we can do better than 67 years of good health on  this planet.  And you know what?  We can.  This number is an average.  Like anything else, you don’t have to be average if you don’t want to be.  The average person doesn’t exercise properly, if at all.  The average person doesn’t know how to make the right foods selections and maintain a healthy diet.  The average person doesn’t apply themselves mentally and emotionally to maintain relatively stress free living.

If this sounds a little bit too much like you, the good news is you don’t have to be this person any longer.  While it is a shame that today’s health, fitness, and diet industry is simply confusing more people than it’s helping, there are a few people and organizations out there that can provide a realistic, effective and efficient approach to breaking past the average healthy life span and living those years full of energy, strength, and vitality.

I get questions from my Fat Burning Furnace readers all the time, after going through the FBF materials, about how they can’t believe how little exercise I recommend.  And even though I’ve told them up front that they can let go of the aerobics or traditional cardio, many still have trouble doing that.  And what I tell them is directly related to the subject of life expectancy and just how much time we really have in our lives.

I tell them that having a lean, strong, and healthy body is great.  It’s one of the most important things we can attain. Period.  But, how much time is it worth to you?  That’s the question I asked myself over and over when seeking out my own methods and developing the FBF methods.

Most people, after years and years of trial and error, come to realize that spending several days and hours a week working out is just not worth the trouble.  And carefully measuring your food, counting calories, and depriving yourself of nutrient rich foods like whole grain carbohydrates is also something that shouldn’t be necessary to enjoy a healthy and energy filled life.  And it isn’t.

What we really should be focusing on is how much time and effort is minimally required to get the results we’re looking for. Think about that.  Not how much, but how much is minimally required.  Remember, we’ve got just 67 healthy years as a starting point…If I valued my time on this planet, this is what I would be searching for.

If it really took hours and hours a week and all of that crazy nutrition manipulation to burn fat, build muscle, strength, and cardiovascular health, I’m not sure I’d do it.  Not for very long anyway.  I’ve tried that approach, for years, and if you have you know it’s no fun.  And it’s just not realistic given the demands our lives place on us in today’s world.

But as I’ve mentioned before, you don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff anymore.  The principles in my FBF system allow you to approach your genetic potential for a lean, strong, and healthy body in just minutes each week and with very simple lifestyle changes.

I’ve been using the FBF principles for a while now.  I work out twice each week.  I even take a week off entirely every few weeks or so.  I don’t count calories.  I don’t deprive myself of the foods I love.  If it’s my daughter’s birthday, I eat a piece of cake.  I just work the FBF principles and continue to stay in great shape day after day, week after week, year after year.

I work out so little because of the way the workouts are performed and created, and I eat with such flexibility because I stick with the FBF lifestyle, which gives you the power of flexibility and variation that is lacking in most programs.

What I’m saying is that I’ve discovered what is minimally required to give me the health and body that I wanted.  And many of my FBF students are doing it as well.  Sure I could add another day a week to my workouts, but at this point it would actually be detrimental to my results.  I could also start messing with my diet in all sorts of crazy ways, but that would just make my body angry and cause me unneeded stress.

So, I ask you, are you trying to find what’s minimally required to get you the results you want?  If you truly value your time and the other worthy pursuits in your life, I’m suggesting that this is exactly what you should be doing.  If you don’t, you may just end up being an average 67 year old with 8 years of poor health to look forward to.

Claim your free copy of Rob Poulos’s “7 Secrets Of Permanent Fat Loss & Fitness” at his website: http://www.fatburningfurnace.com

Weight loss is not about using some quick fix diet pill and supplements and hoping to shed all the pounds in one instant! When you are trying to lose weight, you must think long term. Shortsightedness can actually prove to be quite disastrous to the achievement of your weight loss goals. When you are thinking about long term, you are focusing on healthy weight loss.

When you want to lose weight healthily, you must follow some rules and methods, otherwise it is near impossible to lose weight! There are of course dozens of weight loss rules but in this article I will tell you about two most important ones, and I can guarantee that if you follow only these rules you will be able to lose weight quite fast!

1. Eat small meals: When you lead a normal life, you can eat only one large meal and still stay healthy (I know I have done that many times). However, when it comes to weight loss, you need to modify your eating habits a bit. For example, instead of eating one large meal in an entire day, you should split that meal into several smaller portion sizes, and eat these portion sizes every three or four hours. Eat a minimum of at least three or four small meals in a day, with a gap of no more than 3-4 hours between each meal.

There are several advantages that come with eating small and frequent meals. First of all, you won’t feel hungry as often as you used to do, so there is less possibility of you gorging on junk and fatty foods; secondly, whenever you eat, your metabolic rate will be increased, with the result that you will start burning fat. In case you don’t know, there are actually dual advantages of burning body fat: first, you lose weight, and second, you get a tremendous energy boost. You will no longer feel fatigued and tired all the time; instead, you will feel much more energetic than before!

2. No ‘straying’ in between meals: It is highly unlikely that you will ever feel hungry with the frequent meal eating formula that I’ve outlined above. But if you have a monstrous belly, you may still crave for some snacks. I need to warn you here: if you are looking forward to having a nice tea time with cakes, biscuits, chips etc., you are not going to lose weight. In order to lose weight, you must forget about these food items. The reason is that most of them contain sugar or fat in some or the other way, both of which would increase your pounds!

If it becomes impossible to control your stomach, just drink plain water whenever you feel hungry. In case you don’t know, water is a great energy booster as well as aids in weight loss!

—————

Add to your weight and fat loss by using the calorie shifting diet.

In order to reap the benefits from the intense exercise I recommend to my Fat Burning Furnace students, you must get adequate rest. I can’t stress this fact enough. In fact, rest is just as important, if not more important that the actual exercise. During the high intensity resistance exercise that my students perform, the muscles experience tiny injuries or tears. The body’s response is to adapt and repair, getting stronger and larger muscles, which of course leads to burning more fat and a leaner body.

But this growth and repair process won’t take place if the body is not allowed the time to do its job. Too often, people rush back into the gym, as many have been inundated with the “more is better” axiom when it comes to exercise. But if we don’t get out of the body’s way and let it do its magic, we will experience poor results. We won’t burn fat like we want to, and we will just end up demotivated or possibly give up our efforts altogether.

If you don’t get enough rest or sleep, you’ll have a very difficult time building the fat-burning muscle that will transform your body. And you’ll also have a tough time burning fat off too! That’s why we can’t work out too long or too often when using a sufficient intensity level. When giving the body an intense stimulus, such as proper weight training, you can’t keep hammering it into the ground. If you did this, you’d quickly over train your muscles and negate your body’s ability to recover from exercise. Your immune system could become so worn down in fact, that you might even get sick…this happened to me a few times in the past when I wasn’t paying attention to getting adequate rest and sleep.

And this repair and recover process doesn’t happen overnight, it usually takes 2 days or more, So make sure to keep between 1-3 days of rest between your properly conducted resistance training workouts, or you will be short-circuiting your chances of success to burn fat and build lean, strong, muscle.

Now that we know how important rest is to burning fat and building muscle, we also must understand the most important component of rest…otherwise know as sleep. Sleep is the ultimate recovery tool, and not only for recovery from exercise. It’s a recovery tool from any stress you take in throughout the day. Whether it’s from family pressures, work issues, or finances, etc., increased stress can be dissolved by adequate sleep. And don’t think you can burn fat maximally when you’re over-stressed by other things in your life. A high stress level can shut down the effectiveness of your ability to burn fat, among other things.

So make sure to get adequate sleep. What’s ideal? I would recommend no less than seven or more than nine hours. In fact, seven and half hours per night might be the perfect amount! Research has shown that we sleep in cycles of 90 minutes or so. It has been suggested that if we wake up too far before or after one of these 90 minute cycles, you will probably feel groggy for a good part of the day. So try the 5 90 minutes sleep cycles, or 7 and a half hours…you’ll most likely wake up feeling well-rested and energized, and your fat burning furnace will show it’s appreciation, allowing you to burn more fat faster.

Claim your free copy of Rob Poulos’s “7 Secrets Of Permanent Fat Loss & Fitness” at this website: http://fatburningfurnace.fat-loss-solutions.info

Rob Poulos is a celebrated fitness author, fat loss expert, and the founder and CEO of Zero to Hero Fitness. Rob created the world’s most efficient method for fast and permanent fat loss with his “Fat Burning Furnace” system to help those looking to put an end to restrictive fad diets, long boring cardio workouts, and the need for super-human willpower for good.

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