{"id":5754,"date":"2013-07-18T20:38:53","date_gmt":"2013-07-19T02:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=5754"},"modified":"2013-07-18T21:55:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T03:55:35","slug":"review-the-poor-misunderstood-calorie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2013\/07\/18\/review-the-poor-misunderstood-calorie\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The poor, misunderstood calorie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Over the past couple of weeks, I had the pleasure of reading (slowly, when I had time) an excellent book about calories, nutrient partitioning and (yes) fat loss:\u00a0 The poor, misunderstood calorie<\/a> by Dr. William Lagakos.<\/p>\n

Dr. Lagakos has a Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry and Physiology.\u00a0 He\u2019s done quite a bit of research in the fields of energy balance, lipid metabolism and insulin resistance, and writes frequent posts on his blog<\/a>.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t aware of his work until recently, when for some reason he started showing up in my Twitter feed.\u00a0 (I have no idea how people I don\u2019t know end up in my feed.)\u00a0 I was intrigued by his tweets, so I checked out his blog and was pleased to discover that he writes for a lay audience.\u00a0 So I bought his book (which, by the way, he didn\u2019t ask me to review).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for a how-to book, this isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 There\u2019s no diet plan inside.\u00a0 But if you\u2019re looking for an explanation of the science of energy balance and weight loss that\u2019s clearly written and easy to grasp, this is definitely one for your bookshelf.<\/p>\n

As the book\u2019s title suggests, Dr. Lagakos isn\u2019t a big fan of counting calories.\u00a0 In fact, here\u2019s the first paragraph after the table of contents:<\/p>\n

Counting calories is an ineffective means to determine energy balance or lose weight.\u00a0 The calories in food are not the same as those expended by the body.\u00a0 The poor, misunderstood calorie<\/strong> explains the concept of calories in the context of nutrition, obesity, and appetite.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s exactly what the book does.\u00a0 In the opening chapters, Dr. Lagakos explains what a calorie is and how calories are measured, both in food and as energy expended in clinical settings.\u00a0 Then he devotes a couple of chapters to explaining why your body doesn\u2019t work like a bomb calorimeter.\u00a0 Strangely enough, your body works like a body.\u00a0 It makes decisions about what to do with the calories.<\/p>\n

I suspect that a few calorie fanatics out in cyberspace won\u2019t bother actually reading the book but will nonetheless insist that Dr. Lagakos is trying to deny the laws of thermodynamics.\u00a0 He isn\u2019t.\u00a0 Nowhere in the book does he claim that calories magically disappear or that a particular macronutrient ratio will allow you to overeat and still lose weight.\u00a0 His main point is that the tendency to either accumulate or shed body fat is driven by the relationship between nutrient partitioning, energy expenditure and appetite.\u00a0 What we eat \u2013 not just how much \u2013 affects all three.<\/p>\n

As he explains, if you simply restrict calories, you may (depending on which foods you\u2019ve restricted) ramp up your appetite, reduce your resting energy expenditure and partition nutrients in the wrong direction \u2013 away from building or maintaining lean muscle mass, for example.\u00a0 That\u2019s a prescription for failure.\u00a0 If, on the other hand, your diet has the effect of moving you away from fat storage and towards fat burning, nobody will have to tell you to eat less.\u00a0 You\u2019ll naturally want to eat less.\u00a0 If your diet also builds helps muscle, your metabolism will rise.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly in a book largely dedicated to explaining nutrient partitioning, Dr. Lagakos mentions the effects of insulin several times.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a sample:<\/p>\n

Water quenches thirst.\u00a0 Food should satisfy hunger.\u00a0 Calories should satisfy hunger equally if they are providing the same amount of energy to the body.\u00a0 But calories from fat and protein satiate better than calories from carbohydrates.\u00a0 This logic supports that all calories are not the same, due to their effects on appetite.\u00a0 If the focus were to shift from strictly energy balance to weight loss, this may be the more important interpretation of the energy debate.\u00a0 Combined with the fat-storing effects of insulin, the conclusion must be that all calories are not the same.\u00a0 Biochemists believe that obesity is caused by positive energy balance.\u00a0 Nutritionists believe obesity is caused by excessive fat storage.\u00a0 A suitable compromise might read as follows:\u00a0 carb-rich foods are easily over-eaten, producing a positive energy balance.\u00a0 The accompanying elevations in insulin cause net fat storage \u2026 Maybe all calories are calories, but not all calories are equally obesogenic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not all calories are equally obesogenic, and on the flipside, not all calories are equal when it comes to weight loss.\u00a0 Throughout the book, Dr. Lagakos cites studies showing, for example, that people on higher protein diets lose more body fat than people on lower protein diets \u2013 even consuming the same number of calories \u2013 and then offers possible explanations for the results.\u00a0 (I say “possible explanations” because as a scientist, he’s careful not to state his case in terms of absolutes.)<\/p>\n

There are chapters on the effects of dietary protein, different types of fats, fructose, other carbohydrates, leptin and other hormones.\u00a0 Nutrient partitioning is mentioned throughout, but there\u2019s also an entire chapter on the subject.\u00a0 Here are some quotes:<\/p>\n

Nutrient partitioning is probably the single most important factor supporting the most positive possible outcome in a long-term weight loss strategy (and it is one of my favorite concepts in nutritional biochemistry and physiology).\u00a0 \u201cBuild muscle and burn fat.\u201d\u00a0 Essentially, nutrient partitioning is the antithesis of \u201cgetting fat without a positive energy balance.\u201d\u00a0 [In an earlier chapter, he explains how we can get fatter without a positive energy balance.]<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It only takes a little bit of insulin to completely inhibit lipolysis.\u00a0 On the other hand, insulin has anabolic (muscle building) effects on skeletal muscle.\u00a0 Thus, we want to minimize the effects of insulin on fat storage in adipose while maximizing it on anabolism in muscle.\u00a0 To put things in perspective, however, the effects of insulin on fat storage are quantitatively more robust than its effects on muscle anabolism.<\/span><\/p>\n

[After recounting a study involving growth hormone]:
\nFurthermore, this demonstrates that a particular hormonal milieu, in this example elevated growth hormone, is capable of regulating fat mass independent of energy balance<\/em>.\u00a0 This is one of the main principles of The poor, misunderstood calorie.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is not a Good Calories, Bad Calories<\/em>-sized tome.\u00a0 The book is about 300 pages with fairly large text and, like I mentioned before, it\u2019s easy to read.\u00a0 I hope you do just that.<\/p>\n

In the meantime you can follow Dr. Lagakos on Twitter at CaloriesProper<\/a>.\u00a0 (Unlike me, you’ll know why you started getting his tweets.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past couple of weeks, I had the pleasure of reading (slowly, when I had time) an excellent book about calories, nutrient partitioning and (yes) fat loss:\u00a0 The poor,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5754"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5760,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5754\/revisions\/5760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}