Graeme Thomas: Sports Nutritionist and Weight Loss Coach » obesity

Bread: The Root of All Evil?

GT — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:50:30 +0000

Last week I was forwarded a Maclean’s news story entitled “On the Evils of Wheat“. The story was an interview with Dr. William Davis, a preventative cardiologist who has recently written a book entitled Wheat Belly.

Now to be fair, I have yet to read the book so can only comment on some general points raised in the the article itself. Although I found Dr. Davis’ position a little extreme, I do believe his message of “ditch wheat for better health” is the right one.

As any regular reader of this blog will realize, I’m no big fan of bread myself. This isn’t to suggest I don’t think bread tastes great (because it does) but I think there are way better foods to put in our mouths if we are interested in optimizing our health or performance.

That being said, I don’t view bread as “evil” or an equivalent societal ill on par with cigarettes (sorry Dr. Davis).

I can count on one hand the number of clients I’ve worked with where increasing their wheat intake led to superior outcomes. The common thread for these three individuals: they were young, still growing males who needed a ridiculous number of calories in a day (4000+).

Bagels are some serious mass builders…

And as Dr. Davis alluded to, bread does seem to have the ability to allow people to consume quite a few calories in a day.

Conversely, for almost any other client I’ve worked with, dramatically better body composition and health results have come from limiting (or downright avoiding) wheat products.

Now I don’t think superior health outcomes from limiting wheat occur because “wheat will kill you”. According to our general scientific consensus, only about 1% of North Americans has coeliac disease (a severe gluten-allergy).

However, just because eating wheat might not cause your airway to close or lead to the sudden onset of crippling stomach pains, there is similarly no compelling scientific or health reason to centre a diet around wheat-based products. In my experience (take it for what it’s worth) I think a lot of people do show signs of gluten-intolerance (general malaise, fatigue, skin issues), signs that resolve when you pull gluten from the diet.

Yes gluten intolerance is highly subjective, so I’m not about to debate this with anyone who cares to argue. You have your opinions, I have mine.

To date there is ample published literature showing that human health improves after 1. eating more vegetables, 2. eating more protein, 3. eating more fruit, 4. eating more of the right kinds of fat, and 5. eating more legumes.

So essentially, if you aren’t eating any (or enough) of the following, adding these foods to your diet typically leads to better results.

Whereas the data on whole grains is always “eating more whole grains in the place of refined grains” leads to better health outcomes. This is not at all the same thing as saying that going from eating zero whole grains wheat to some whole grains wheat leads to superior health…. because that data doesn’t exist.

Better DOES NOT equal good!

Unfortunately, just because whole grain bread does less damage to your health, it still doesn’t make it a great choice.

Of course, just because something isn’t actively promoting health, doesn’t mean you can’t eat it. We are adults and can make our own decisions. Not everything foodstuff we eat needs to represent the pinnacle of health.

However, wheat is definitely something I think works best showing up in 10% or fewer of someone’s weekly meals (i.e. treating wheat more similarly to junk food or as a treat).

Unfortunately, I’m still in the minority as there continue to be a mind-blowing number of “health” experts who continue to recommend bread (and bagels, cereals, muffins, pitas) as staple foods, which literally makes ZERO sense.

Humans cannot readily digest wheat in it’s natural state, therefore, wheat (like many grains) requires substantial milling to release the nutrients contained within. This doesn’t means humans should never eat wheat, but it’s strongly suggestive that the human genome isn’t designed to predominantly fuel itself with wheat-based calories…
And wheat does seem to have an addictive quality about it. It’s rare that I hear a client suggest that “oh, I could eat 4 cups of rice or quinoa no problem” or “man, oh man – those baked potatoes, I just had 6!”. But when it comes to wheat-based foods the number of times I’ve been told something along the lines of “I just couldn’t help myself, I ate the entire loaf of french bread…”

Basically, my advice on bread consumption is simple: if you are currently struggling to portion control your consumption of wheat-products, given that bread is not necessarily for survival, you are probably better off ditching it from your diet.

No amylopectin A, gliadin, or small particle LDL reasons necessary… just common sense.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Your Parents Made You Fat, Do Something About It

GT — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:30:01 +0000

As we move into the latter half of January, the initial rush of the New Years resolution crowd is already starting to slow in gyms everywhere. This yearly phenomenon of “gym dropout” coincided eerily well with a new article published in the Globe and Mail entitled, “Skinny Genes: How DNA shapes weight-loss success“.

The entire piece centered around the role played by genetics in our struggles to lose weight and how misguided universal weight loss recommendations tends to be.

Although the entire piece was well written (a rarity these days when it comes to diet/weight loss reporting by the mainstream media), I would like to highlight one particular part. The point that really caught my eye, was a quote of how genetics may account for anywhere between 60-85% of an individual’s BMI.

Like Father, Like Son

In case numbers aren’t your strong suit, that is a huge amount to attribute to genetics… and a number I would agree with 100%. However, I do feel there needs to be a caveat added to that claim: genetics account for 60-85% of BMI in the absence of a structured physical activity and nutrition program.

While an innate capacity for weight gain might be largely due to genetic factors, attributing weight loss failure to “bad genes” is a serious cop-out. Also mentioned in the article was a point about how as many as 50% of all people of European decent carry a particular gene that predisposes them to excess fat storage.

In other words, crappy genes really aren’t an exception at all!

Think about that for a second: if other people with crappy genes can get their act in gear and figure out how to drop weight and keep it off, surely you can as well.

Is this glass half prone to getting fat or prone to staying lean?

The importance of nature vs. nurture will always exist when discussing weight loss. Although genetics clearly play a strong role in determining whether you will have an easy time or a difficult time managing weight over the course of your lifespan, the reality remains that you alone are responsible for your health and your physique.

Admittedly, you may need to work harder than a peer to look lean year round, but that’s the luck of the draw. Not everyone is as bright as Stephen Hawking, nor is everyone blessed with being 7 feet tall like NBA legend Shaquille Oneal.

While advanced physics, NBA stardom, or year-round washboard abs might be out of our grasp, we can all become more intelligent by studying, better basketball players by practicing or much fitter by following a properly constructed exercise and diet program.

Remember, genes are merely a predisposition, not a death sentence. But even the best genes in the world can’t make a couple weeks worth of exercise undo 30 years of bad diet decisions.

Now stop browsing the web and go do something positive for your health!

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

There are still several spaces in the online version of my small group coaching program, The Final Diet. The Final Diet is a 60-lesson fat loss coaching program covering the critical fat loss strategies and behaviours necessary for long-term success. As part of this program, you’ll receive expert guidance and support, making sure you come out of it markedly more successful than you ever have been before! Check it out today: The Final Diet.

Rethinking Weight Control

GT — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:09:45 +0000

In preparing my “Why calorie counting is making you fat” talk, I came across tons of great data that I simply couldn’t include due to time constraints. One particularly enlightening study I left out dealt with identifying risk factors in the development of adult obesity. It was a six-year prospective study done in Quebec¹, as part of the Quebec Family Study (QFS).

Now you might be thinking, “Oh great, another obesity study that confirms what we already know; obese people eat too much and exercise too little.” However this study was different. Unlike the typical obesity study, which involve subjecting overweight individuals to a battery of tests and questionnaires in an attempt to identify common obesity traits, this particular study sought to identify what behaviours precipitate the development of obesity.

In order to do so, the researchers tracked hundreds of participants between the ages of 18-64, having a wide range of BMIs for a six-year time period. As you can imagine, this approach to research is pretty damn time consuming and expensive, which is why you rarely see studies like this. However, unlike the typical “study some people for 3 months, then make a grandiose claim about the mechanics of weight control” crowd, at the end of the day, these researchers can actually make educated statements about how long-term weight control might work in the real world.

So what did they find? Unsurprisingly, during the initial stratification, overweight individuals (BMI over 25 kg/m²) were found to exhibit 9 traits in common:

short sleep duration
high disinhibition eating behaviour
low dietary calcium intake
high susceptibility to hunger behaviour
nonparticipation in high-intensity physical exercise
high dietary restraint behaviour
nonconsumption of multivitamin and dietary supplements
high dietary lipid intake
high alcohol intake

These results are quite similar to other obesity studies as even a quick scan at this list reveals all our usual “fattening” culprits. However, the problem with this list is that it consists of only correlational data. In other words, it doesn’t tell us if any of those behaviours cause obesity. So the question remains, are fat people fat because they eat too much and don’t exercise enough… or do people eat too much and avoid exercise because they are fat? It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one if we hope to design actual effective interventions.

After tracking the individuals of various BMIs for six years, these researchers discovered that only 3 of those 9 traits actually predicted which formerly non-obese individuals became overweight over the course of the study. Can you guess which ones?

If you guessed nonparticipation in high-intensity physical activity, high dietary fat intake and high alcohol intake, you are 100% incorrect.

What?!?! A lack of exercise and overconsuming fatty foods and alcohol aren’t prime predictors of long-term weight gain? Nope, at least not according to these data.

Had you asked me this same question several years ago I, like you, would have identified those 3 areas as the most important predictors of becoming fat. I mean, that’s the message that had been drilled into my head over the course of countless hours of undergraduate kinesiology and nutrition courses. However, it turns out that consuming fatty foods, drinking too much and not exercising are among the weakest predictors of future weight gain!

Damn that $15,000 dollars I spent on undergraduate education learning that weight control is a simple matter of “calories in = calories out”… McGill, I’d like my money back.

It turns out that three traits that predicted weight gain were (ranked in order of importance):

short sleep duration (< 6 hours/day)
high disinhibition eating behaviour
low dietary calcium intake (< 600 mg/day)

And the first two were by far and away the strongest predictors.

If we stop and think about this for a second, a couple of conclusions come to mind. Firstly, none of our predictors for future weight gain have a direct caloric value. This is both surprising and troubling, since it runs counter to everything we like to preach about weight control.

Secondly, our strongest predictor, a lack of sleep, has nothing to do with our energy balance equation at all… at least not directly! Although sleep isn’t a huge calorie expending activity, we know that a lack of sleep has catastrophic effects on hormonal control (insulin, leptin, growth hormone, cortisol… etc).

How significant you ask? Well sleep is so critical to the maintenance of proper hormonal regulation that even a few nights of compromised sleep can result in blood sugar dysregulation comparable to what we’d see in a pre-diabetetic!² Clearly, missing out on sleep can cripple even the best designed diet and exercise program.

The ultimate in body composition control

Keep in mind that manipulating hormone levels is the surest way to manipulate body composition. Hormonal changes are why teenage boys can gain substantial muscle in the absence of physical training, why post-menopausal females accumulate belly fat “all-of-a-sudden” and why professional bodybuilders will take insulin, testosterone and growth hormone in the pursuit of imposing musculature and minimal body fat. Proper hormone regulation can make or break body transformation.

But excess fat gain is not strictly about hormonal dysregulation. Predictive traits number two and three are more reflective of a negative relationship with high-quality food. Obviously “high disinhibition eating behaviour” is indicative of a binge-eating pattern, which we can all agree is a recipe for failure.

Although we tend to think of all high-calorie foods as “bingeable”, I’ve yet to encounter any individual who gets an insatiable craving for olive oil or steel-cut oats. Clearly, binge eating is only possible in the presence of synthetic high-sugar, high fat foods that are both high in calories and low in nutrition.

And predictor #3, a low calcium intake, again suggests a lack of quality food. Although everyone knows that milk, like all dairy products, is an excellent source of calcium (300 mg in an 8 oz. glass), calcium is also found in abundance in foods like broccoli (150 mg in 2 cups), sardines (370 mg in a 3 1/2 oz. can) and almonds (100 mg in 1/4 cup). Possible food allergies aside, all of these foods can go a long way to not only helping you meet your calcium needs, but also to provide you with a host of other key body building nutrients.

Although this was just one study, I found it interesting that none of the commonly assumed major risk factors ie. eating fatty foods, drinking too much or a lack of exercise, showed much predictive power for future weight gain. Only time will tell whether this was simply an isolated finding, however, for the moment it makes us question if we’ve been demonizing the wrong causes.

Before I sign off, I don’t want you to interpret this article as giving you carte blanche to go drink your face off and never exercise again. Although they may not have been the strongest predictors of your chances of becoming obese, practicing caloric restraint and making exercise a part of your daily routine are still the key tools in your efforts to build a killer physique.

Rather, this article was written to underscore the need to expand our definition of the causal factors of obesity and highlight the need for updated approaches to dealing with excess body fat. Only once we stop pretending the solution is simple, will the answers to what needs to be done become apparent.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean.

Chaput et al. (2009. Risk Factors for Adult Overweight and Obesity in the Quebec Family Study: Have We Been Barking Up the Wrong Tree? Obesity, 17, 1964–1970.
Spiegel et al. (1999). Impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function, Lancet, 354, 1435-1439.

Striving for Obesity?

GT — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:32:39 +0000

I’m pretty opinionated when it comes to exercise and nutrition, after all it’s what I do. But every once in a while, I come across a story that leaves me speechless…

My sister dropped me a note about this woman, Donna Simpson, who is rumoured to be trying to become the world’s fattest woman. That’s right, she current weighs 600 lbs and wants to gain another 400 lbs to earn a place in the Guiness Book of World Records. If you haven’t seen this story yet, check it out:

World’s Fattest Mom

Going for the record…

After reading this story, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or vomit. I’m all about accepting individual differences and supporting diversity, but this is too much. What worries me the most about this whole ordeal is the impact her behaviours will have on her children. I personally don’t much care if your self-destructive behaviours ruin your own life, but when they start to ruin the lives of your children… well that’s just something that sickens me.

If you are like me and reading this story kind of made you feel unwell, I strongly urge you to cleanse yourself by joining hundreds of other healthy people at the 5th annual Community Exercise and Nutrition Symposium. This conference is taking place tomorrow, March 20th, at The University of Western Ontario from 9 AM – 5 PM.

Featuring a dozen top notch speakers, including yours truly, this symposium offers a little something for everyone! I’ll be discussing “Why calorie counting is making you fat”, which might come as quite the shock to a number of people. Other topics include some talks of the particulars of body transformations, a critical appraisal of interval training, a look into some new training modalities and much, much more. For more information on the symposium or to sign-up:

Exercise Nutrition Symposium

Ticket prices go up at the door, so if you are planning on coming I suggest you book a ticket online.

In the off chance you won’t be able to make (and really, unless you don’t live in London you should be there), I’ll arrange for my newsletter subscribers to get both an audio copy and transcript of the talk. So if you have yet to subscribe, I encourage you to do so below.

Till next time, train hard and eat clean!

Sugar: More Addictive Than Crack?

GT — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:48:23 +0000

Many people like to downplay the significance of consuming a diet high in sugar. Despite loads of research to the contrary, people don’t want to admit that high sugar consumption can be extremely dangerous for your health. Thankfully, mainstream media is starting to highly some of the dangers. Recently, ABC ran a report on junk food and addiction. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend spending 5 minutes watching the clip:

Good Morning America: Junk food may be as addictive as drugs

Although many of us experience cravings for junk food, what we don’t realize is that for certain people the need for junk food can be as intense as for a heroin junkie needing a fix. Scary stuff! What I find particularly fascinating, although not surprising, is that the addictive properties of junk food are far more pronounced for people struggling with obesity.

What does this mean for weight loss? For starters, it’s apparent we need to do away with the belief that people who struggle with their weight are necessarily “lazy” or “weak willed”. Weight loss isn’t easy at the best of times; factor in brain chemistry changes on a par with heroin addiction and combating obesity takes on a whole new level of complexity.

Secondly, simple calorie counting or basic advice such as “eat smaller portions” is woefully deficient. Effective obesity treatment must involve cognitive behavioural therapy, the avoidance of junk foods and possible pharmacological intervention. Although I’m loathe to endorse drugs as a treatment of choice, I appreciate the effectiveness of methadone for treating heroine addiction. To think obesity treatment would entail any less extreme interventions is quite narrow-minded in my opinion.

Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, my support for pharmacological interventions in the treatment of obesity in no way suggests we remove personal responsibility from the weight loss equation. Fat may not be your fault, however fat remains your responsibility. Although, there are some people who can eat all the refined sugars, high-fat snack foods and alcohol they want and stay remarkably lean (I’m not suggesting this is healthy), this clearly isn’t the case for most of us.

If you carry the unfortunate genetic predisposition for excess body fat and a stronger than normal response to high sugar/high fat foods, you need to avoid junk foods like the plague. No “sweets are ok in moderation”, no “cheat days”, no “forgetting your lunch so you’ll just grab something quick at that burger place”. Recovering cocaine addicts know they can’t have have “a little hit from time to time”; the same strategy should apply to junk food. Is this the “sexy” answer? No. But it is the correct one.

Ridiculous weight loss plans or relying on artificial sugar- or fat-substitutes will never produce sustainable weight loss. Unfortunately, rewiring our brains and behaviours takes time, effort and is replete with ups and downs. But just as any addiction can be overcome with the proper plan and support, breaking free of a junk food cycle is within everyone’s means.