Good Calories, Bad Calories is “one of those books.” One of those books that ultimately changes the direction you are heading, one that you will always refer back to and remember on your journey through this life. For me, it is just that much more proof to cement that the direction I’ve been heading is the right now.
Although this book was ~500 pages, I just finished reading it in about two and a half days. It challenges basically every assumption we have had for the past 150 years about why we gain weight and how to lose weight and tells us why we have been so terribly wrong. I have tried to lose weight for many years and I can attest to the fact that I have tried just about everything. I am about 20 lbs overweight and have been this way most of my life, with brief periods of losing weight and one time weighing even 20 lbs more than now and most of the time spent hovering around the same weight.
I was a vegetarian almost all my life, I tried being vegan for about 4 years, I tried eating macrobiotic, which was too confusing and didn’t really produce results and the types of food didn’t feel right to me. I tried raw foods many times and sometimes got paltry results not matching my effort, that were difficult to maintain. I tried fasting (master cleanse 10 days, juice feasting 4 days, water only 3 days) only to eventually gain back what I lost during the fast and sometimes even more.
The only thing that seemed to semi-work was the near fruitarian 80-10-10 diet religiously for 8 months. Once I was finally able to master the 80-10-10 diet, which took many months of transitioning and falling off the wagon, it did allow me to lose some weight and keep it off for about 5 months. But to prevent from gaining weight, I had to remain at a certain amount of (restricted) calories and (much) activity and not fall off the wagon at all, or I would quickly gain again. (Plus, I was hungry all the time and I suffered from low blood pressure and vertigo from all the fruit. Plus many other ethical problems I had with the diet… but that’s another post 
When I stopped doing 80-10-10 and went back to eating a high-raw vegan diet, I did not change my activity level and barely changed caloric intake and gained back the 20 lbs I had lost and remained there. Why? Why is it that when we restrict our calories and exercise more, we can’t seem to achieve long-term weight loss? Why is it that some people (damn them) can eat whatever they want and not gain a gram and some people, if they as much smell a cupcake, will gain a pound? And why have all of our prudent government efforts to eat a “balanced diet low in saturated fats” just made us even fatter and sicker?
Taubes answers all these questions, with reference to research studies and trials done for the past 150 years. He also explains why this knowledge has been suppressed.
All along, I have been searching for the reason why processed modern food makes us sick. I wanted something that seemed intuitive and natural. How could hunter-gatherers populations remain so lean with little aerobic exercise and so much leisure time? The theory behind the 80-10-10 diet is that we were all tropical people at one time and all ate fruit before fire was invented. I am willing to entertain that this was true for a brief period of time before fire was discovered, even though there is no anthropological evidence to suggest as much. Meanwhile there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that we were primarily flesh eaters and hunter-gatherers for nearly all, if not all, of our evolution as human beings.
It makes perfect sense to me that our bodies want to be healthy, disease-free and lean, if given appropriate foods, and would maintain this level of health with little effort. And it makes perfect sense to me that which makes us sick has only been introduced into our diet within the past 10, 000 years, a relative blip on the evolutionary scale of humans, when agriculture began and high-carbohydrate foods such as potatoes, sugar and bread were available. We surely have not yet adapted to eating a diet high in carbohydrates. (Perhaps someday we will? However, even the conservative guesses say it will take another 10, 000 years for that type of evolutionary change.)
Here’s a summary of Taubes’ main points. Italics are mine.
1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.
2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis–the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and well-being.
3. Sugars – sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically—are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.
4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and the other chronic diseases of civilization. (I would add to this also that carbs are exacerbate or in some cases may be the cause of depression, anxiety, bi-polar and mood disorders due to the blood sugar swings.)
5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating and not sedentary behaviour. (Yay!)
6. Consuming excess calories does not cause us to grow fatter, any more than it causes a child to grow taller. Expending more energy than we consume does not lead to long-term weight loss; it leads to hunger.
7. Fattening and obesity are caused by an imbalance—a disequilibrium—in the hormonal regulation of adipose tissue and fat metabolism. Fat synthesis and storage exceed the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue and its subsequent oxidation. We become leaner when the hormonal regulation of the fat tissue reverses this balance.
8. Insulin is the primary regulator of fat storage. When insulin levels are elevated—either chronically or after a meal—we accumulate fat in our fat tissue. When insulin levels fall, we release fat from our fat tissue and use it for fuel.
9. By stimulating insulin secretion, carbohydrates make us fat and ultimately cause obesity. The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.
10. By driving fat accumulation, carbohydrates also increase hunger and decrease the amount of energy we expend in metabolism and physical activity.
