Cutting sugar and flour: nine kilos lost without counting calories

Cutting sugar and flour: nine kilos lost without counting calories

Can you lose weight eating more fat than before without ever looking at a calorie label? The case that started the discussion comes with concrete numbers: 1.70 metres tall, 30 years old, starting at 78 kilos and down to 69-70 kilos a year and a half later. No calorie counting and no going hungry.

The starting point was not morbid obesity, just a few extra kilos since childhood and a horrible job between 24 and 27 that left him ten kilos heavier. Getting back to normal had already shed eight kilos simply by changing routines. The experiment was the second step: no more sugar in coffee, bread cut down to once or twice a week, and three thirty-minute sessions of short intervals before work. Five kilos gone in the first month.

What stood out most was not the scale. It was that hunger disappeared. Meat, fish, salads, nuts, fruit, vegetables, olive oil, avocado and fatty sauces every day, with pizza and burgers on weekends at the usual bar. He quit smoking. He sleeps better. And the question he raises is whether this happens to many people or he is just a lucky exception.

Why 2,000 calories of bread are not 2,000 calories of ham

The short answer given here is that the first law of thermodynamics always holds and explains nothing. The body cannot abusa it, fine, but that is like saying a car burns fuel because it has a tank. 2,000 kcal as white bread and 2,000 kcal as Serrano ham do not produce the same hormonal effect, and that is the crux of the matter.

The mechanism repeated over and over is the insulin switch. A donut triggers an insulin spike, insulin blocks lipolysis (the body cannot tap its reserves) and activates lipogenesis. A steak barely moves insulin, and its fat almost not at all. The comparison doing the rounds to explain it: glucose are passengers and insulin the security guards shoving them into the metro carriage. With few passengers a couple of guards will do; with four sandwiches you need a whole squad.

On energy expenditure there is one figure that keeps coming up: basal metabolism accounts for around 85% of the total and physical activity for the remaining 15%. Hence the uncomfortable conclusion: a spinning class does not fix a week on the sofa, and what matters is keeping that resting minimum high, not piling up kilometres.

Around this axis the references have piled up: Dr Jason Fung's blog on the hormonal theory of obesity, fasting and type 2 diabetes, and the outreach posts on cholesterol and fat by Dr Jorge García-Dihinx. None of these theses is official doctrine. All are one click away.

The marker checked when it is already too late: glycated haemoglobin

One idea has been repeated insistently: by the time fasting glucose rises, you have spent a decade with high insulin. HbA1c measures average glucose over the last three months, so it is an indicator of damage already done, not early risk. By the time sugar shows up in blood work, according to this view, the body already needs very high doses of insulin to control it.

The profile considered reasonable looks at other numbers: triglycerides below 100 mg/dl and HDL above 50. The key, the argument goes, is that low triglycerides keep LDL particles from becoming small and dense, and low glucose keeps them from oxidising. There is one described case of someone whose triglycerides went from 193 to 80, with a low of 75, over six consecutive blood tests after changing their diet.

From there it jumps to a cheap marker defended with insistence: the erythrocyte sedimentation rate. With an ESR of 1 mm/h, its advocates claim, there is no inflammation of any degree, and without inflammation there is no insulin resistance. It is a reasonable hypothesis, not a validated protocol, and should be read as such.

The clinical case told trinc the same line: a 43-year-old woman, five failed IVF attempts, fatty liver, hyperinsulinemia, low LDL, elevated fasting glucose and vitamin D and folic acid deficiency. The picture points to polycystic ovary syndrome, and the recommended referral was to a trusted endocrinologist, not just any one.

High cholesterol with low triglycerides: the phenotype that makes people uncomfortable

Here things get technical, and this is where the tone has shifted most over the years. There is a label coined in 2017, LMHR (Lean Mass Hyper-Responder), for slim, athletic, metabolically healthy people whose LDL shoots up on a low-carb diet. The criteria are three: LDL of 200 mg/dl or higher, HDL of 80 or higher and triglycerides of 70 or lower.

The evidence cited is a five-year trinc-up in which no coronary plaque pogre was observed in that profile, with Nick Norwitz among the signatories. Against that, the clinical consensus still treats elevated LDL as harmful in any context, and the usual reply is the same: without inflammation there is no endothelial destruction, and without destruction there is no plaque.

The most repeated jab is aimed at statins: according to a calculation circulating in the thread, attributed to the drug companies' own data, the average life expectancy gain is around four days. The critique adds an important nuance: the primary prevention trials cited recruited people with risk factors, diabetes or hypertension, not healthy subjects with isolated high LDL. One group is studied, the other is treated.

From 86 to 71 kilos in ten months: the cases with numbers

The stories pile up and almost all start the same way. A man 1.80 metres tall, approaching 40: January 2017, 86 kilos; he quits sugar and goes on a conventional diet; May, 78.5; by October, after switching to an eating pattern without ultra-processed foods, 71 kilos. His body tends to settle between 69 and 70, exactly what he weighed at 18.

Another case: 19 kilos in twenty weeks, the lowest weight of his adult life, with the last month relaxed and still two kilos down. A year and a half later he had maintained the 20-kilo difference with 16-8 fasting, avoiding carbs and taking the stairs. The concessions he describes are specific: some bread only when there is something really good to dip, pizza once a month, an occasional dessert and full awareness that it is an exception.

The flip side exists too. A man of 93 kilos and 1.85 metres, after two years of neglect, started having heartburn and mood swings with nothing showing up in tests. And a couple who went from 68 and 45 kilos to 78-80 and 54-56 with office work, bloating and heavy digestion.

The most useful dissenting voice does not come from the other side, but from within: someone who ate once a day, trained two and a half hours four days a week and weighed 56 kilos. She increased meat, spread out her meals and gained a kilo while feeling better. Her conclusion: eating like a canary is also a mistake.

Pancreatitis, lazy gallbladder and hiatal hernia: where the consensus breaks down

Enthusiasm has limits, and the most cited one is pre-existing conditions: pancreatitis, removed gallbladder, hiatal hernia, ulcers, gastritis, reflux, intestinal surgery, slow motility or post-surgery recovery. There, the warning goes, a high-fat diet can be counterproductive, and the bland diet exists for a reason.

The counterargument is that many of these problems are a consequence, not a cause: a gallbladder that never empties because hardly any fat arrives ends up concentrating bile and forming stones. Some tell it in first person with a 10-millimetre stone and a lax cardiac sphincter, claiming butter has acted as their omeprazole since they stopped eating certain vegetables.

It should be said plainly: these are experiences and reasoning, not clinical trials. Anyone with a diagnosis should consult a professional before changing anything, and the debate on very low-fat diets and biliary stasis deserves more literature than fits in a comment.

The fibre that is surplus and the starch that cools down

In the final stretch the conversation has become more radical. It is claimed that the ideal amount of fibre in the diet is zero, arguing that there are controlled randomised experiments backing it up, though no link is provided in the thread. It is a minority position in open contradiction with conventional nutrition; the proponents themselves qualify that fibre works as filler and little else.

The most striking testimony: someone who since 2020 has eaten no fibre or starches and goes to the bathroom two or three times a week, with no pain, no gas and no feeling of heaviness. Their conclusion is that fibre only serves to increase transit and gas.

From there comes the most elegant objection of the whole discussion, about cooled and reheated starch sold as healthier: if you have to eat it cold to absorb less, the nutrient is suspect. Nature is scarcity, and a food that improves when the body cannot use it says a lot about itself.

The distrust extends to everyday things. Supermarket shredded coconut keeps for years in the pantry; an peine coconut spoils in the fridge within weeks. And on canned food, the rule of thumb given is clear: sardines and mackerel no problem, tuna with more caution, two or three small cans (100-150 grams) a week, on the assumption that canned tuna comes from smaller fish and accumulates less mercury than fresh.

Chile rolls out black warning labels and consumption shifts

While the scientific discussion stalls over cholesterol, there is a nationwide experiment whose results are cited in the thread. A Chilean senator who was a doctor pushed through a law requiring manufacturers to stamp visible warning labels on products high in sodium, calories, saturated fat and sugar. Chileans were consuming 140 kilos of sugar per person per year.

The industry first fought the labels with advertising and then bowed to pressure: it reformulated products to avoid them. It serves as a reminder that information on the package moves the market faster than any guideline.

One anecdote remains that sums up the level of the official narrative: every January the articles reappear recommending oranges to fight colds for their vitamin C, when there are foods with more vitamin C than an orange and a cold is not fought with citrus.

In the end, the figure that unsettles is not the one on the scale. It is that the percentage of obese and type 2 diabetics has kept rising worldwide while official recommendations kept placing bread, pasta and potatoes at the base of the pyramid. The industry reformulates so the label does not appear. The administration updates the poster. And the 1.70-metre man keeps having eggs for breakfast.