In a 26-year follow-up, Dr. William Castelli, director of the Framingham Heart Study, identified being overweight as an independent risk factor for hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. That means that just being overweight alone can significantly increase your chances of developing severe medical conditions like hypertension, heart disease or diabetes. In food and beverage, we call that a critical control point where attention to one thing can help solve many problems at one time. In my opinion, reducing weight warrants a place at the top of just about every individual’s medical issue priority list. In the great medical Whac-A-Mole game, shedding some weight is like whacking ten moles simultaneously; it is that important!
There are many ways to lose weight. One of the best ways to lose weight is to become a drug addict. I have seen many friends and family members become addicted to amphetamines or amphetamine-like substances and lose tremendous amounts of weight exceptionally quickly over my lifetime. Drugs have also been used legally for weight loss before. Those of us above the age of 50 will remember something called fen-phen. This is a drug combination of fenfluramine and phentermine, which was shown to be a very effective weight-loss agent in a 1984 study presented in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Some (not all) in the medical community latched onto it, and the public loved it because it was fast, very effective, and didn’t involve any lifestyle changes at all; plus, it had a cool name. It enabled you to bypass the physiological, instinctual, and social hurdles you have to overcome to lose weight naturally. Heck, show me a safe way to do that, and I’ll do it too! The problem is that fen-phen isn’t safe. Fen-phen isn’t a lasting and healthy weight loss strategy at all.
I wasn’t paying attention at the time, but through subsequent research, I have found some voices that objected to the fen-phen approach at the time. They are the same voices that still advocate lifestyle modification in 2020. Their message in the 1990s was that by using the fen-phen sidestep, one failed to learn the diet and exercise habits that ensure lasting and healthy weight loss. They were 100 percent correct then, and they are still 100 percent in 2020. I freely admit that I was born at the very tail end of what Tom Wolfe dubbed the “Me” generation. Like my peers, I enjoy immediate gratification, and if there is an easy way out, I will find it. That isn’t all bad. I have learned to use this professionally as a quite effective efficiency tool. I rely on it every day to help me do more with less. When I did my initial research into heart disease on June 23, 2003, I looked at all of the options, including medical intervention and medication, and one of the things I noticed was that some solutions did not deal with what got me into the heart disease mess in the first place; lifestyle. The only solutions to heart disease that provided lasting and healthy recovery involved lifestyle modification.
I noticed that one of the ways to lose weight was to restrict carbohydrates while increasing protein and fat severely. Several medical voices were backing this strategy. It seemed to offer a fast way to reduce weight, and it didn’t cut into my Cherry Garcia ice cream habit; in fact, it encouraged me to eat it! That’s pretty darn appealing for a “Me” generation dude! What bothered me was that it seemed counterintuitive because I was learning about the roots of heart disease. The Framingham Heart Study identified certain habits that all people with heart disease share. These they called “risk factors.” The first one discovered was smoking. High blood pressure was discovered next and then elevated cholesterol next, and so on. Lifestyle habits like smoking, lack of exercise, and eating too much cholesterol and saturated fat are the things that got me into the heart disease mess, and I had to eventually deal with those lifestyle issues in order to regain my health. It was apparent to me at the time that what appeared to be the fastest way to lose weight might not be the best way in the long run. I decided to use the plant-based whole foods diet coupled with heavy exercise, and as it turned out, that was an even faster way to lose weight than limiting carbohydrates, and I learned healthy lifestyle habits along the way! The plant-based whole foods diet limits oil (not fat) and meat, which is the only source of cholesterol and the primary source of saturated fat. This seemed a more intuitive approach to me at the time, and it still does in 2020. It provides weight loss that is Lasting and Healthy.
Short-term low-carb diets can be highly effective for a very specific segment of the population that is significantly overweight with a body mass index (BMI) approaching or over 40 and for whom other options have been exhausted. But long-term low-carb diets for anyone can be dangerous. New research suggests that low-carb diets may not be the best way to achieve lasting and healthy weight loss. A meta-analysis of pooled data from nine prospective cohort studies with 462,934 participants found an increased risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality associated with long-term low-carb diets. The researchers suggest that the reduced intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fiber and the associated reduction in vitamins and phytochemicals along with the increased intake of protein from animal sources, cholesterol, and saturated fat, all of which are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular event and cancer may be mechanisms for the study results. “Further, it has been proposed that vegetables, fruits, cereals and legumes, which have been found in several studies to be core components of healthy dietary patterns,” but missing from the low-carb diet must be a contributing factor.
Carbohydrates are what fuel our body. Limiting them is not a great idea, but being selective about what types of carbohydrates we consume is a great idea! The Healthy Eating Tip post entitled Understanding Carbohydrates is a short but comprehensive explanation of carbohydrates and Healthy Eating Tip posts. Choose A Diet That Is Right For YOU! and What Do I DO With New Low-Carb Diet Information? offer some practical carbohydrate diet advice. All three posts would be useful to read if you are interested in carbohydrates.
To achieve lasting and healthy weight loss, limit the right food group!
In next week’s healthy eating tip, I will let you know what exactly I am eating during the diet reset I am participating in right now. I am 15 pounds down right now on my way to losing what I hope will be 20 pounds in 60 days. Make sure you check that out to see what I am limiting and what I am not!
Until then, Eat Well – Be Well!
Here is the reference for today’s Healthy Eating Tip:
Hubert HB, Feinleib M, McNamara PM, Castelli WP. Obesity as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease: a 26-year follow-up of participants in the Framingham Heart Study. Circulation. 1983 May;67(5):968-77.
Weintraub M, Hasday JD, Mushlin AI, Lockwood DH. A double-blind clinical trial in weight control. Use of fenfluramine and phentermine alone and in combination. Archives of Internal Medicine. 1984 Jun;144(6):1143-8.
Kannel W.B., T.R. Dawber, A. Kagan, N. Revotskie, J.I. Stokes. 1961. Factors of risk in the development of coronary heart disease six-year follow-up experience; the Framingham Study. Annals of Internal Medicine. 55:40.
Mazidi M, Katsiki N, Mikhailidis DP, Sattar N, Banach M. Lower carbohydrate diets and all-cause and cause-specific mortality: a population-based cohort study and pooling of prospective studies. European Heart Journal. 2019;40(34):2870-2879.