Weekly Update

This week, I dropped another 2.6 pounds, bringing my total weight loss to 41 pounds. You can follow my weekly progress by viewing this chart. Another milestone is that I have been in Europe for one month now and during that time, I have dropped at least 9.2 pounds (there may be a small measurement error that could increase my weight loss by another two pounds).

More importantly, there are several non-scale victories (NSVs) worth mentioning. First, I have gone down from a 50-inch waist on my pants when I started in February to a 44-inch waist, which I just started wearing when my daughter brought me over a pair of jeans when she arrived last week. And those pants are now too large! I can pull them off without unbuttoning or unzipping them. Thank goodness for a belt.

Second, I have been walking a lot more lately and can do so without hunger. I am fully keto-adapted and so exercising does not make me hungry, as it does for people on a high carb regime. We walked for miles and miles (approximately 25,000 steps per day, according to my pedometer) while in Paris for the last few days. I got thirsty, but not hungry.

Third, we have been eating out a lot, some times all three meals per day, and by staying low carb, I am continuing to lose weight, in spite of all the eating out. This is important since, beginning tomorrow, we will be on a nine-day bus tour of Europe and will be eating out for every meal.

Fourth, my blood glucose levels are still falling. One hour after eating, they are consistently in the 100-105 range, and frequently they are in the 90-100 range. They should be below 140 one hour after eating and below 120 two hours after eating. So my one hour readings are quite good. My low carb lifestyle is effectively controlling my type II diabetes.

Finally, I am not really craving carbs anymore. When I do eat carbs, such as the blueberries I ate yesterday, they taste really, really good. And sweet. My palate is no longer in sugar shock, so I can fully taste and appreciate the natural level of sweetness in the berries I have been eating.

Life is good.

Research Update

Want to increase your odds of getting Alzheimer's disease?  Then eat a high carb diet. Of course, as I have mentioned before, Alzheimer's disease is sometimes called type III diabetes, and the best way to deal with diabetes is a low carb diet, combined with exercise, drugs, and insulin, where necessary. Thus, it makes sense that a low carb diet will help to prevent Alzheimer's disease.

This article follows 13 to 15 year old girls who exercise, and concludes that exercise increases causes these girls to work up an appetite and to eat more. As we have mentioned before, there are many good reasons to exercise, but exercising in an effort to lose weight is not one of them because people work up an appetite and eat more.  In fact, just thinking about exercise causes people to eat more.

Hat tip: Michael R. Eades' twitter page.

More Interesting Research Studies

A new study in the journal Obesity shows that those on a low carb diet were less bothered by hunger than those following a high carb, low fat diet.   This effect was particularly true for men.  I can attest that this is true, as I was always starving on Weight Watchers but not on my low carb diet.

There are several food studies from the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), a marketing journal.  But interesting nonetheless.

This study shows that thinking about dying causes you to eat more (this link opens up a Microsoft Word document with a press release from the journal).  If I had to contemplate staying on Weight Watchers for my whole life, I would think about dying, too.

Another JCR study shows that the more "healthy" options on a menu or in a vending machine, the more likely someone is to choose something unhealthy.  I guess the "healthy" choices are so unappealing it causes people, in near desperation, to choose the unhealthy options.  To quote Fox Moulder, "The air in my mouth tastes better than that" (in reference to a diet ice cream bar Scully was eating).

Yet another JCR study shows that if you put junk food, such as M&Ms, in a 100 calorie pack, people will think it is diet food. (this link opens up an MS Word document with a press release from the journal).  A second JCR study shows that if you put junk food in 100 calorie packs, dieters will consume a lot more of them (this link opens up an MS Word document with a press release from the journal).  Stupid dieters.

There are many more JCR food studies.  I will report on more later.

Just Thinking About Exercise...

...leads people to overeat.  I am a marketing professor, and this study, by another marketing professor from Cornell named Brian Wansink, was quite clever.  Participants were given written scenarios about exercise or shopping, then rewarded with a "thank you bag" into which they could scoop as many M&Ms and as much Chex Mix as they wanted.  Those who read about exercise scooped up 60% more of the M&Ms and 52% more of the Chex Mix than those who read a scenario about shopping.

So as I mentioned yesterday, exercise does not help people lose weight, since people tend to "compensate" themselves for their virtuous acts of exercising by consuming more.  Now I learn that you don't even need to actually exercise, you can skip directly to caloric compensation.

Exercise Won't Help You Lose Weight

The first time I heard someone claim that exercise does not help you lose weight, I scoffed at it.  But more and more researchers are concluding that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated.  The basic problem:  exercise makes you hungry.  There is an interesting article in Time Magazine this week on this very subject.  Gary Taubes has an extended discussion of the exercise/weight loss fallacy in his book, Why We Get Fat, and this Time Magazine article essentially makes all of the same arguments Taubes has made.

So why is the belief so ingrained in the public mind that exercise leads to weight loss?  Because lean people are more active than fat people, therefore, it MUST be the exercise that is making the difference.  This is a fallacy, similar to the belief that if we put books in more homes, we will produce smarter children.  Children who read do indeed become smarter and are more likely to be middle class, but it is not merely the presence of books in the home that leads to this.  It's because those homes that have a lot of books in them have parents and children who actually read the books.  Giving a book (or many books) to someone who doesn't read will not make a person one whit smarter.

There are many good reasons to exercise, but apparently, weight loss is not one of them.  Another thing on which Weight Watchers has misled me.