Why We Eat (Too Much)

[TooExtraImmatureCheddar]

Has anyone come across this book? It's written by Dr Andrew Jenkinson, who is a bariatric surgeon in London. Basically, it's about how to lose weight by lowering your body's natural set weight point. This may take a long time but it's sustainable and doesn't fuck your metabolism.

The book goes into a lot of detail about the causes of obesity, because he says it's important to understand why people are getting fat in the Western world. It pretty much comes down to eating too much omega-6 fat and sugar. The overall volume of food people eat doesn't matter.

I'm trying to work out how you would cut that out practically and I wondered if anyone had tried it. It sounds like going lower carb but not low carb as in low carb diets. He suggests eating low-carb breakfasts and throwing out bread (and anything else baked). I eat toast for breakfast most days and sandwiches for lunch. I'm trying to work out practical alternatives that I actually like.

Porridge
Full fat unsweetened yoghurt
Bacon and eggs
Omelettes
Soup
Oatcakes and cheese
Salads

Other rules include no takeaways or fast food or crisps etc, and no snacks, mainly because most snack food is carb-based with vegetable oil in it.

The overall volume of food people eat doesn't matter

If this were true I wouldn’t have lost nearly 3 stone by reducing portion sizes, and therefore overall calories. I still eat crisps & chocolate when I feel like it but I weigh, portion and log everything I eat on MyFitnessPal. What I eat hasn’t changed, the amount I eat has. BMI is now 19.2
I have a snack in work & might even have a snack in the evening if I’m peckish too.

Weight loss is calories in v calories burned.

That's the point of this book, though - that calories in v calories out isn't true. People with healthy metabolisms will regulate their weight subconsciously and burn off any excess without even noticing. What matters is the nutritional value of the food.

Anyway, I wondered if there was anyone out there who had tried it, or who naturally ate like this.

Despite the dogma, calories in calories out is an oversimplified way of describing weight gain / weight loss

It absolutely matters what calories you eat. The different macros have a different pathways and processes in your body, setting off different hormonal reactions.

You can’t over eat protein for example. If you think about consuming ‘all your calories’ in steak or chicken breast....you just couldn’t do it. After the 4th steak you would be choking on it.

Same with fat. You can’t overeat it, again consuming all your calories with butter would make you gag eventually. This is fat on its own btw.

Carbohydrate otoh, is deadly. Mix it with fat and you are in trouble. Most people can eat a McDonald’s, then be hungry again a few hours later and go again. Same with pizza, crisps, chocolate, biscuits, pasta.

Cut the carbs, especially the highly processed carbs (so not necessarily potato etc) and you’ll regulate your appetite / feelings of satiety within a few weeks

Read The Diet Myth by Tim Spector. Microbiome research is the way to go. There is more going on than ‘calories in, calories out’ but that does impact things too of course.

Thank you, hamstersarse and BuffaloCauliflower! I’ve definitely eaten McDonald’s and then been hungry again very quickly! It’s ridiculous how easy it is to keep eating biscuits or Maltesers, too.

He does mention the microbiome in the book, but he says that the research is in too early a stage for him to draw any definite conclusions yet. However, he does say that the difference between humans and other primates is that we sacrificed the length of the gut in favour of a bigger brain when we discovered fire and cooking. So our guts are the smallest of any primate, because cooking pre-digests food.

I’ve had porridge for breakfast - cutting my bread intake isn’t going to hurt! I need to wean the kids off processed wheat-based breakfast cereal too. I’m overweight but not obese, and the kids are healthy weights. DH is probably pushing obesity. I think cutting our wheat and sugar intake a lot and trying not to eat stuff made with or fried in vegetable oil/trans fats will help a lot. Lockdown takeaway habit needs to be knocked on the head!

I found the book fascinating and a lot of it rang true for me - each body having a 'set point' weight and why once you get past a certain point it's extremely hard to lose weight and keep it off.

Obviously he's a bariatric surgeon so I tried hard to read it objectively and questioningly. I have actually come to the realisation that weight loss surgery is in fact the right decision for me to get to my 'set point' or whatever you want to call a consistent healthy weight but I'll certainly be incorporating a lot of the diet guidance afterwards.

I read the book during lockdown.

I got confused though and wonder if you can offer a different take on the part that confused me.

It's Chapter 15.
Step 1 is the 'Eat More' step. He says to avoid 'sugar, wheat, corn' and a few paragraphs later says 'anything containing wheat should go', but then in the same step when talking about lunch suggestions he mentions pasta salad is ok. There's no mention of alternative types of pasta which confused me because um, pasta is made of wheat?!
Then in the discussion about evening meals he refers to any ingredients being fine as long as there is 'no excess of wheat, corn, sugar'.

Is it just me? Wheat is ok to eat as long as it's not in excess and if it's pasta. Or not?

I gave up on reading it at that point , which is a pity as I'd enjoyed the book.

Hi OP
Appreciate this thread is a bit old now but wondered if you’d had any success with this approach?
Am reading the book now

i read this book in the past & the approach makes a lot of sense. I implemented some of the ideas & they worked for me...

(then I fell into a vat of wine & crisps)

Yes I fear I’d be the same!

I'm reading this book now and it makes a lot of sense - scientifically. Would really welcome anyone's experiences

I would also be interested in hearing if anyone has had success with this. I'm just at the beginning now and trying to lower my carb intake and eat better overall. Reducing vegetable oil as a vegetarian / almost vegan has been very challenging. Has this worked for anyone?

In the op, OP says that the reason we get fat is because we eat too much omega 6 and sugar.
I thought people were going out of their way to eat omega 6, you can buy it in supplements. Have I misunderstood?
I quit sugar and flour (including pasta, @DysonDiva) but I hadn't read his book to do it. Now I'm wondering if I'm doing it wrong, I eat nuts and seeds which are high in omega 6!

If I have understood correctly, we need both omega 3 and 6 in our diets but the current western style diet has pushed the ratio of those fats from a healthy range into an unhealthy range. This is mainly due to our increase in the consumption of vegetable oils. And whilst things like seeds and nuts are healthy, they are still something to be eaten in moderation. The book argues that we need to get the ratio back into balance and focus on eating fresh food that is in its natural state. We should lower our refined carb intake and stick to grass fed butter, olive oil for fats. In terms of carbs, he suggests starting at 150 grammes a day and trying to work your way back from there to 80 over time. Nuts and seeds are fine but in moderation so you don’t tip your omega 6/3 ratio out of balance. Someone please correct me I have misunderstood!

I read the book and have been following this way of eating - I've lost just over a stone so far in 2 months (I was 3 stone overweight to start with).

It's essentially what some people call 'eating clean'. I don't buy anything now with more than one ingredient and I cook from scratch. I've cut out all products containing flour (I've had a couple of bread-based lapses in the two months I've been doing this but nothing serious).

I've swapped margarine and sunflower oil for butter and extra-virgin olive oil to get rid of the omega six.

It has some things in common with a low carb diet but unlike with low carb you can still have rice, potatoes and 'carby' fruit/veg such as apples and tomatoes.

I really recommend it.

@Cinderella78 Extra virgin olive oil is the best swap for vegetable oil.

Wow it seems like I'm halfway there. The only flour I eat is in the gravy that I thicken with cornflour max once a week. I feel huge benefits from cutting our sugar, I'm not on an emotional rollercoaster! We Norpak and Danpak (the Aldi and Lidl Lurpak knock offs) although much less as I'm not spreading it on bread. Does anyone know how they stack up omega-wise?
I thought we weren't supposed to cook with extra virgin olive oil, it should be used for salads, with normal olive oil for cooking. Is that wrong? Or are we supposed to melt butter for cooking (feels wrong, I tend to think of solid-at-room-temp fats as bad for you, but liquid ones ok)
I've downloaded the book but not had time to actually read it properly!

Thank you @Cinderella78 and @Arbadacarba

I cook with extra-virgin olive oil - you just have to cook more slowly on a lower heat so it doesn't start smoking.

Lard is also a good cooking option, but obviously no use for vegetarians.

The solid/liquid fat rule is linked to saturated/unsaturated fat. Saturated fats are seen as bad because they are more likely to cause a cholesterol build up, but they are generally low in omega six, whereas many of the unsaturated fats promoted as healthy (vegetable oil, sunflower oil) are high in omega six.

Jenkinson's advice is based on what we are designed as humans to eat, in some ways similar to the 'paleo' diet. Without extensive processing, it would be impossible to extract enough oil from sunflowers to cook in, for example, but animal fats and olives can produce oil with minimal intervention.

Jenkinson links the obesity crisis to the point where fats, particularly butter, were labelled as bad for you - his research indicates that the sugar industry had a hand in this, but in fact added sugars are what is causing us to gain weight, and the ingredients in heavily-processed food are making our bodies hang onto fat (particularly if you have a genetic predisposition to over-eat).

@Arbadacarba or anyone else, how do you make roast potatoes or any other roast veg? Like parsnips and carrots? As in what fat do you use?

@love51 Lard gives the best results.

Ooh, just posting to bookmark and will come back later for a proper look!

Thanks @Arbadacarba.
I used some of the veg oil we had in today, I didn't want to try something new when trying to host a roast in the garden! I'll try lard when it is just my immediate family (and we can eat inside!)

@Love51 If you want to splash out, goose fat is another nice option. We have a goose at Christmas and I always freeze the fat for future use but it's quite pricey to buy off the shelf.