I've just come across this excellent review, published earlier this year, that reinforces the message we are trying to get across: that 'eat less, move more' does not work! And, that reducing carb consumption is probably the best way to fight the biological mechanisms that try to get us to regain any lost weight.
Here are some great quotes from the article:
Next time anyone (especially a health professional) suggests 'eat less, move more' as a cure for obesity, take this paper and shove it up their backside under their nose!
Here are some great quotes from the article:
Public health weight-loss interventions seem to be based on an outdated understanding of the science. Their continued failure to achieve any meaningful, long-term results reflects the need to develop intervention science that is integrated with knowledge from basic science. Instead of asking why people persist in eating too much and exercising too little, the key questions of obesity research should address those factors (environmental, behavioral or otherwise) that lead to dysregulation of the homeostatic mechanism of energy regulation. There is a need for a multidisciplinary approach in the design of future weight-loss interventions in order to improve long-term weight-loss success.
In general, dietary carbohydrate restriction offers an alternative to the energy-balance principle and has shown good results in comparison to low-fat diets particularly in people with metabolic syndrome. The effects are attributed not only to spontaneous reduction in consumption but also to energy inefficiency, popularly known as 'metabolic advantage'. Researchers in this field have demonstrated the fallacies in the thermodynamic analysis that is supposed to provide support for the energy-balance model. Perhaps because this concept explicitly challenges the 'calories in, calories out' model, we were unable to find any public health interventions based on carbohydrate restriction meeting our search criteria and published in 2011.
Explicitly promoting reduced energy consumption and increased expenditure as the appropriate means by which to achieve weight loss poses ethical challenges. Despite the extensive literature on their long-term ineffectiveness, interventions based on this simplistic understanding of energy balance continue to be advocated under the assumption that previous interventions have not been pursued sufficiently vigorously or that participants have failed to follow the prescriptions of the intervention. It is very possible that some people who follow these interventions but fail to lose and maintain weight may become discouraged and discontinue the intervention, thus missing out on other possible health benefits. Continuing to promote a model that is unlikely to be successful in the longer term, and may result in individuals becoming discouraged, is both unproductive and wasteful of resources that could be better spent on investigating more plausible alternatives to improving weight control.
Next time anyone (especially a health professional) suggests 'eat less, move more' as a cure for obesity, take this paper and shove it up their backside under their nose!
