"Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity" is partly a myth.

Yoni Freedhoff has already blogged about this in The New England Journal's Obesity Mythbusting

It's a mythtery.

I don't have anything to say about Yoni Freedhoff's blog post on Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity, except for Myth 1.
"Small sustained changes in energy intake or expenditure will produce large, long-term weight changes."

This is misleading. One small sustained change (say, -100kcals/day) in energy balance results in one sustained change in weight of -10lbs. If no further changes are made, there are no further changes in weight. However...

If, after the result of the small sustained change has stabilised, another small sustained change (say, -100kcals/day) in energy balance is made, there's another sustained change in weight of -10lbs. And so on...

A series of small sustained changes in energy balance will produce large, long-term weight changes.

Little changes, big results.

A new low for denialists.

Here's a new Pyramid of Argument, with an extra level added below name-calling.

Originally from http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/08/15/weekend-diversion-how-to-argue/

What's worse than name-calling? When I defecate science all over my opponents, it makes it difficult for them to respond with refutation. If they are unable to use the top 3 levels of the pyramid, they usually use the 4 levels below that. Until the other day.

See Seth Yoder's review of "The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet" - by Nina Teicholz.

If you think that Seth's review is a bit verbose, check out The Big Fat Surprise: A Critical Review; Part 1 and The Big Fat Surprise: A Critical Review; Part 2. They make "War and Peace" look like a pamphlet!

Anyway, Seth got the usual logical fallacies, including the inevitable ad-hominem from Skruby of "You're a vegan, so you don't know what you're talking about/you're biased!"

As Seth is a science guy, and I don't stand by & let science guys get attacked without doing something about it, I pitched-in with some comments in support of Seth. Well...

Check Zahc's comment out. And Allen I. Branson's comment. The new low is the BLATANT LIE.

Notice how the troll Zahc uses standard baiting practices to "suck me in" to replying to him. He:-
1) Repeats the lie about me cherry-picking 2 studies. Those are the only studies that produced results reaching statistical significance, as all of the other studies had RR ~1, with 95% CI's less than 1 and greater than 1.
2) Makes an irrelevant point about mortality. Siri-Tarino et al & Chowdhury et al are about CHD.
3) Repeats the lie about dairy fat not being protective.
4) Issues a challenge to me to comment on his blog post http://diettrialclaims.blogspot.com/2013/06/is-cholesterol-really-that-important.html I've already commented on Zahc's blog. His blog contains two posts riddled with cholesterol denialism and backed-up by a bunch of cherry-picked studies.
5) Gets aerated over me linking to his comment. Things are about to get worse.

I replied to Zahc's comment.
Zahc wrote another comment. He:-
1) Repeats the lie about me cherry-picking 2 studies. Persistent, isn't he?
2) Criticises Dr. Dayspring behind his back, a cowardly thing to do. Zahc has no intention of ever debating Dr. Dayspring, as he knows that Dayspring would destroy his uninformed opinions with data.
3) Issues another challenge to me to make another comment. Luckily, I have this blog, so I don't need to waste any more time debating cholesterol denialists.

Zahc has written another comment. He:-
1) Continues with pointless arguments. Typical troll behaviour.
2) Continues to get confused over basic English. "Uninformed Opinion" wasn't referring to what you wrote in your previous comment, you dumbass. It was referring to what you'd be giving Dr. Dayspring. Jeez!
3) Had my previous comment deleted by Amazon. What was I saying about cowardly behaviour?
4) Continues to insult me, in the vain hope that I might leave another comment answering his points. That ain't ever gonna happen. I'll just leave comments with links to this post, or links to other comments. I know a cholesterol denialist when I see one. I know cherry-picked studies when I see them. I know a shite blog when I see one.

Are we done now, Zahc? I can continue this, ad infinitum. This blog post is all about you (& Allen I. Branson). You're just making yourself look like a total pillock. Have you "debated" with Dr. Dayspring or Dr. Edwards, yet? Somehow, I think not.


Blatant lies are worse than Straw man fallacies, as such fallacies are usually caused by my opponent being ignorant of my argument and confabulating.

Blatant lies work on the assumption that the opponent can't or won't ever see them. This is a risky strategy, as if the opponent does see them and calls the liar out on them, the liar's credibility is destroyed. This is what happened with Fredrick Hahn, after I blocked him on Facebook for repeatedly tagging me in Here are the results after one month on my high fat, lower protein, SAME carbohydrate intake. The main differences are: , after I told him to stop tagging me.

He posted Nigel Kinbrum is a coward. He enjoys poking fun at people, but blocks them from commenting. He has blocked me. Someone give this guy what for please. , thinking that I'd never see it. I had a tip-off from a friend, who PM'ed me a screen-shot taken from a logged-out browser (as they had been blocked by Fred and couldn't see him or his content when they were logged-in to Facebook). The rest, as they say, is history!

The Facts of Life.

No, not those Facts of Life!

From http://www.clipartbest.com/stork-carrying-baby

It's becoming painfully obvious that there's a lot of ignorance about certain dietary "Facts of Life". This post will dispel the myths - backed up by evidence, where necessary.

1. Everyone is Different: This has been a recurring theme on my blog, starting in 2009 with the aptly-named Everyone is Different. What this means in practice, is that:-
a) You can't calculate your Energy Expenditure exactly, using one of those fancy equations (e.g. Harris-Benedict).
b) Weight change is proportional to caloric excess/deficit ± inter-personal variation.

2. CALORIES COUNT: If there's zero caloric surplus, there's zero weight gain. There can be water balance shifts due to glycogen shifts, hormonal shifts, electrolyte shifts etc. Somebody fitted a lovely straight line to the weight gain data in Bray et al shows that a calorie *is* a calorie (where weight is concerned), but their line didn't pass through 0,0. Duh!

3. Glycaemic Index (GI) has NOTHING to do with calories: A low-GI carbohydrate still has 4kcals/g. GI is a useful hint as to whether a carbohydrate may disturb blood glucose levels, but it isn't as useful as Glycaemic Load (GL = GI x grams of carbohydrate in the serving). Watermelon has a very high GI, but 100g of watermelon contains only ~5g of carbohydrates, so the GL is less than 5 i.e. watermelon is as safe as houses.

4. Exercise DOESN'T burn as many calories as you think: Exercise is for fitness, not weight loss (unless you're a professional sports-person, who can expend 1,000's of kcals a day in training).

5. Weight loss doesn't ALWAYS result in reduced Basal Metabolic Rate: Whether or not Basal Metabolic Rate reduces with weight loss depends on the degree of Adipocyte Hyperplasia that occurred during weight gain. Humongous weight gain, also weight gain in childhood, increases adipocyte hyperplasia, which is protective against developing T2DM, but makes the subsequent loss of significant amounts of FM more difficult.

6. For Muscle Hypertrophy, a STIMULUS is required: Eating too much food and/or swallowing loads of protein without hypertrophy training doesn't make muscles grow significantly bigger. See http://hillfit.com/. Chris Highcock knows what he's talking about.

7. Yo-yo dieting isn't ALWAYS a bad thing: Bodybuilders (BB'ers) do cycles of "cutting" and "bulking". Cutting is Fat Mass (FM) loss with minimal Lean Body Mass (LBM) loss. Bulking is LBM gain with minimal FM gain.

Non-BB'ers tend to get it the wrong way round. They go on crash diets with insufficient protein intake and lose loads of LBM (which increases weight loss, due to the lower Energy Density of LBM relative to FM). They then eat way too much, gaining weight way too rapidly for much (if any) of it to be LBM, even if they are doing hypertrophy training.

8. FM loss CAN be rapid: See The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook. A Scientific Approach to Crash Dieting.

9. LBM gain CANNOT be rapid: See What’s My Genetic Muscular Potential? to find out how much LBM you can gain and how quickly you can gain it.


Finally, see http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/. What Lyle McDonald doesn't know about fat loss, general nutrition, muscle mass gain and training fits on a postage stamp. He also explains things in language that the sort of person who reads my blog can understand. Just don't leave a comment asking him a question, that's already been answered elsewhere on his site!

Variations in weight change for a given Calorie change - An Engineer's Perspective.

Another techie post, inspired by Insulin Doesn't Regulate Fat Mass. Consider the inverting amplifier using an Op-Amp, below:-

From HERE

As the amplifier is inverting (i.e. a ↑ input on V_in results in a ↓ output on V_out), the feedback from V_out via R₂ opposes V_in via R₁ at the - terminal of the Op-Amp.

If R1 = R2 and V_in changes from 0V to 1V, the change in V_- (the voltage on the - terminal of the Op-Amp) varies with A (the magnitude of the Op-Amp gain) as follows*:-

A_____________Change in V_-(V)
∞_____________0
1,000,000_____~0.000001
1,000_________~0.001
100___________~0.01
10____________~0.08
8_____________0.1
5_____________~0.14
3_____________0.2
2_____________0.25
1_____________~0.33
0_____________0.5

As the body operates on biochemical principles, slopes of input/output transfer functions aren't steep at their steepest points. E.g.

Therefore, the gains in the various parts of the Leptin "adipostat" NFB loop are not very high. Therefore, there will be a significant variation in weight change vs Calorie change, and there will be significant variations in the variation due to loop gain variations from person to person.

Insulin Resistance makes the slopes of  the above input/output transfer functions shallower, reducing the gain in the system. This increases the variation in weight change vs Calorie change. For ways to reduce Insulin Resistance, see Insulin Resistance: Solutions to problems.

*In case anyone thinks that I've made the numbers up, here's the maths:-
Current in/out of the - terminal of the Op-Amp = 0.
∴ I_R1 = I_R2
I set R1 = R2 to keep the maths simple. By Ohm's Law, V = I * R.
∴ V_R1 = V_R2
With a 0V input:-
All currents & voltages = 0.

With a 1V input:-
V_R1 = 1 - V_-
V_R2 = V_- - V_out.  As V_out is negative, - V_out is positive.
- V_out = A * V_-
∴ V_R2 = V_- + (A * V_-)
∴ 1 - V_- = V_- + (A * V_-)
Rearranging:-
1 = (2 * V_-) + (A * V_-)
Dividing both sides by V_-:-
(1/V_-) = 2 + A
∴ V_- = 1/(2 + A)

I never expected THAT to happen!

Hat-tip to Melissa McEwen for https://twitter.com/melissamcewen/status/502553259224338432


As I clicked on the video, I was thinking "I bet those instant Ramen noodles disintegrate instantly, causing a big surge of glucose into the blood".

Watch and learn. Well, did you expect that to happen? If instant Ramen noodles are a heart health risk, it's not because they digest too quickly. BPA? Something else?