My journey to a LCHF lifestyle began a few years ago, actually. I went to visit my friend Nina once more and she had a book lying around her place. I started to read the book and got immediately hooked. The book is in Swedish, and its name is Hjärnkoll på vikten (a loose translation is "brain control of the weight"). What I loved of this book were two things: it was written by doctors (no health gurus) and every claim was supported by a reference to a publication in peer reviewed medical journals. In other words: science. I believe and understand science.
The book had a few novel ideas that struck me: the first one was that saturated fat is not that bad for you. The usual dietary advice is that saturated fat is a very bad type of fat, promoting cholesterol and therefore atherosclerosis and therefore heart problems. Well, the authors claimed in the book that the most recent research indicated that saturated fat was neither good not bad for you, and some studies suggested that it could be even beneficial. I was astonished. My thought was: "but surely the other claim had to have a scientific basis as well?". Well, the saturated fat story is far from finished and wikipedia actually shows the ongoing debate with snippets from different articles. This story is not over, but most importantly, not as a closed case as I came to believe earlier. The authors from the book go even further: they claimed that unsaturated fat was excellent when raw, but when cooking it, even at kitchen temperatures, you would start the process of hydrogenation of the oils, and therefore creating the evil trans fats in your own food. The natural consequence is that you should use saturated fat (butter) for cooking, because this fat cannot change its composition when heating it up. I didn't know what to make of such claims, as it was the total opposite of what I had been told all my life.
The other claim is that the brain loves sugar and it becomes addicted to it. Well, that wasn't so surprising. Years ago I had tried to quit putting sugar in my coffee (I took ridiculous amounts of it) and it took me several weeks of slowly reducing the amount to quit it. It was impossible to quit cold turkey. I knew then that sugar had an addictive quality to it, and that probably I was a sugar junkie.
Other idea the book gives is to work with the brain's reward system to go down on weight, not against it. It goes on to show that the usual "eat less, exercise more" dietary advice is actually going against the machinery of the body and that's why it is so hard to follow that advice and to maintain it.
The authors don't give dietary advice per se, but they praise the GI type of diets. This is the reason I bought myself two more books about GI diet and Patrick Holdford GL diet. I will review these in another post.
I recently re-read this book so below I discuss more "recent" memories.
The book starts with a discussion that sort of supports the paleo movement of eating: our body and brain evolved millions of years to adapt to a particular lifestyle (paleo) and agriculture and extensive farming made food available that otherwise would have been really scarce. The consequence is that our bodies are really "old" in a new environment, so all our instincts guide us to wrong habits when it comes to food.
Then it follows to explain that the main function of the body is to keep the brain working, and therefore, because the brain eats glucose, the brain loves sugar. Since early childhood we associate sweet taste and sugar with food to be eaten. We are programmed to be sugar junkies. It is actually the brain that makes you eat so much short chain carbs.
It claims that the way our body metabolises sugar makes you hungry for more very quickly after eating: that's why you can have a whole 1/2 liter cola and still be hungry afterwards. The reason for this is the central role insulin has on the control of blood sugar and feelings of satisfaction and hunger. When sugar is released in the blood stream (apparently is even earlier, when sweet taste is perceived by the mouth), a hormonal chain reaction triggers the release of insulin. This insulin reduces the amount of blood sugar. The release of ghrelin, the hormone responsible for the feeling of hunger, responds to the negative gradient of the blood sugar. This means that if you eat something really sweet and rich in short carbohydrates, the amount of blood sugar will go very high, to be later whipped out by insulin, and therefore have a substantial drop. This will trigger the feeling of hunger once more, and hunger for something that increases your blood sugar once more, therefore, more sweets.
The book continues with the fat apology that was what I remembered most: don't be so stingy with fat, avoid trans fats, eat more fish fats and meat fats of cows that are freely eating on the grass.
Afterwards the book focuses on what to do if you want to go down on weight. It tells you to listen to your body, to pay attention when and how you eat. In particular if you eat sweets of white breads (they call this hyper-foods): that afterwards you start your roller coaster of blood sugar and that like this is impossible to keep out from foods that make you fat. The policy they advise is that once you pay attention to your body, you can avoid the foods that make you go into the roller coaster to begin with. This is individual-based and there are no general recipes for anyone. Me, for example, is cookies. I cannot keep out, once I had one, I must have the whole package!
It continues to explain that traditional weight-loss strategies of eating too few calories go against the machinery of the body: that if your body feels undernourished, it will go into starvation mode and you will not spend any energy on anything. You will feel tired and sluggish, and cold, because the body will save energy on heating up the body. As most of our energy goes on heat, this is really counterproductive if you want to go down on weight. They argue the contrary: eat till you are satisfied (not full) and eat enough fats to keep you satisfied for longer. Don't eat hyper-foods (sugar, white breads, pizza, pancakes, quick pasta) and focus your carb intake in carbs with low GI index. Then the kilos will disappear, they claim. Afterwards they enter into the apology of exercising, and how good it is for the body's functions to move.That exercising should be incorporated into the daily routine, and preferably should be mild and every day of the week.
Then the authors analyze the social effects of obesity. That it is sort of "contagious" as it takes place into whole families. That children copy what they see, not what they are told, therefore good practises start at home and with the parents. It end with an analysis of the situation in the US and how it is correlated with Sweden.
It is a great book and was an eye opener for me.
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