Tag Archive for: Ancel Keys

Lessons from the Starvation Study

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The analysis of data in the Minnesota Starvation Study was immense—1,385 pages in two volumes—but I found two fascinating quotes from interviews with the subjects and lead author Dr. Ancel Keys. Let’s begin with a quote from one of the subjects in an interview 40 years later.

Lesson 1: How You Know You’re Restricting Food Too Much

“I don’t know many other things in my life that I looked forward to being over with any more than this experiment. And it wasn’t so much . . . because of the physical discomfort, but because it made food the most important thing in one’s life. . . food became the one central and only thing really in one’s life. And life is pretty dull if that’s the only thing. I mean, if you went to a movie, you weren’t particularly interested in the love scenes, but you noticed every time they ate and what they ate.”
Harold Blickenstaff, Study Subject

If you try to restrict calories, and you’re obsessed with food all day long, you’re restricting calories too much. For most of us, lowering our intake 10% to 15% by making better choices should not be that noticeable. Yes, it takes a little time to get used to eating a different way, but it shouldn’t create an obsession with food.

Lesson 2: Post-Weight Loss Honeymoon Period

“Enough food must be supplied to allow tissues destroyed during starvation to be rebuilt . . . our experiments have shown that in an adult man, no appreciable rehabilitation can take place on a diet of 2,000 calories a day. The proper level is more like 4,000 calories daily for some months. The character of the rehabilitation diet is important also, but unless calories are abundant, then extra proteins, vitamins, and minerals are of little value.”
Dr. Ancel Keys, Lead Scientist

Caloric restriction is used to lose weight as well as to try and attain the many benefits of long-term caloric restriction. Eventually you reach a point of unity; you achieve your goal weight and that’s where you maintain.

But if you’ve ever reached a weight loss goal, chances are you’ve tempted fate: you experiment to find out if you can eat a little more of your favorite foods. You add little at a time, and you don’t see the scale move—at first. But eventually, the honeymoon period ends and you begin to gain back the weight. It’s happened to me several times. Be aware that it will happen to you. Remember, it’s always about the calories. Keep that in mind and you’ll abandon that weight permanently.

The Bottom Line

One more item from those interviews 40 years later: to a man, the subjects all said they’d do it again. In spite of the deprivation they went through, they knew the knowledge gained was important. I think it speaks to their character to know they would make those sacrifices again.

These two quotes provide us with guidelines. Keep them in mind so you know when you may be overdoing restricting or eating. We’re after the long-term benefits, so keep adjusting until you make it your way of life.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: J. Nutr. 135: 1347–1352, 2005.

The Science Behind the Weight Loss Cycle

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One of the tenacious problems with weight loss is that people don’t lose all the weight they want to lose and then don’t keep it off. In trying to find out why that happens, I narrowed it to two studies that pointed the way to a solution.

The first was a study that attempted to develop an app for people to provide help exactly when they needed it. In reviewing studies to create the app, they used data from four studies on weight loss and weight gain. While they couldn’t identify the precise point for every individual, they could identify a time frame in general where people start to hit a plateau: about week 11 of any diet. That’s the point where people begin to stop paying attention to their meal plan as closely as they did when they began, and their weight gets stuck.

Another study used was the Minnesota Starvation Experiment from World War II in which lead investigator Ancel Keys severely limited calories for a group of conscientious objectors who volunteered to be starved; much of what we know about calorie restriction and helping famine victims comes from that study. It’s the only study ever in which every subject lost weight in a linear fashion. How? Researchers adjusted the subjects’ calories the following week to keep weight loss on track.

Using those two studies, I developed the Weight Loss Cycle, a way to responsibly get to your ultimate weight loss goal and then maintain it, and as far as I know, this approach is unique. What makes the Weight Loss Cycle different is that it’s not a diet with good foods and bad foods, no meal plans or recipes. You can use whatever eating plan you want; the Weight Loss Cycle shows you how to use it to achieve your goals and stay there.

If you’ve hit plateaus in the past or gained back the weight you’ve lost, the Weight Loss Cycle in the Optimal Performance program could be your key to success.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

References:

1. Am J Clin Nutr 2014;100:787–95.

2. Keys A. The biology of human starvation. University of Minnesota Press, 1950.

The Link Between Fat Intake and Heart Disease

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The second batch of headlines I referred to Tuesday related to an article published in the journal Open Heart (1). The study was a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials done before the dietary guidelines on fat were put in place in 1977. The studies analyzed showed no reduction of heart disease when subjects were placed on a low-fat diet; therefore the current study’s authors concluded that the original low-fat recommendations in the 1970s had no scientific basis.

Sorry, but we didn’t need randomized controlled trials in this case—and here’s why.

In the late . . .

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