Today,
I modified the graphics and specifics of my current diet experiment....because I can.  See day-before-yesterday's April 10 blog for the graphics of my previous plan.

The reason for this modification was that when my (Down) Fast day turns into an (Up) Fed day, I need the following day to be a (Down) Fast day.   Otherwise, it seems likely that I'm going to wind up with weeks full of (Up) Fed days. 

At present I'm having too many unsuccessful Fast (Down) days to be able to predict exactly which days will be Fed (Up) days and which days will be Fast (Down) days each week.  So, for a while, it looks like I'll be jumping back and forth between Week 1 & 2 days at random.

See my April 10 blog to see details of my previous plan.

MY CURRENT PLAN:
My UP days are based on my own personal Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) which is close to 1,000 calories.  Adding 10% brings it up to a total of about 1,100.  My plan calls for 3 weekly UP days.

My DOWN days of about 300 calories are close to ¼ (25%) of my TDEE.  My plan calls for 3 weekly DOWN days.

1,100 plus 300 equals 1,400 divided by 2 equals 700 calories… Therefore a 2 week rotation of this pattern would result in a total Average calorie intake of 700 calories daily.

I have changed my plan to remove the MEDIUM day of about 700 calories from weekly rotation as I have decided to only include it occasionaly.

I am 71 years old, 5'0" tall, and an inactive, reduced obese female (high weight 271 lbs) who has been maintaining a normal BMI for 10+ years, and my individual TDEE of about 1,000 is low, but not “abnormally” low.

For ME, an average daily intake of 700 calories should create a daily deficit of about 300 calories, and … according to the 3,500 calorie rule… result in a weight-loss of about ½ pound per week.

FOR PERSPECTIVE:
To bring my calorie counts into proper perspective...
note that the well-known and frequenlty-used Mifflin formula gives an "AVERAGE" person of my age, size, and activity level, a TDEE of 1150 calories, and a BMR of 985. 

I've been keeping computer records of my calorie intake & weight every day now for about 12 years, and so I know that my own TDEE is about 100 calories or so below the "AVERAGE". 

Women who are younger, taller, heavier, and more active often have very little understanding or knowledge of how low the TDEE is for a short, light, inactive elderly woman... and of course, it is even less for a "reduced obese" one.

For those people who think my TDEE calculation is too low.... HERE's a little personal lesson.
Click this link to get access to one of the online calculators that use Mifflin to determine both BMR & TDEE.  If you are a female use it to run your own numbers. After you've done that .... try changing your own age to 71, and moving yourself to "Inactive"... Look at your numbers change.  Now, change your height to 5'0".... Quite a difference, right?...  Now give yourself ...as an elderly, short, inactive person... a BMI of around 22.5 (which is somewhere near the middle of a "normal"  BMI)  by setting your weight at 115 pounds.... Now, look at the resulting numbers.... which should be around 985 BMR, and 1150 TDEE.

Here is a picture showing my current diet experiment.  I’m using my own Alternate Day Fasting (ADF) eating plan which is based on Dr. Johnson’s Up Day Down Day Diet (JUDDD); and Dr. Varady’s  Every Other Day (EOD) diet; and Dr. Daugirdas’ QOD diet.

Dr. Fung’s blog, (see DietHobby’s RESOURCES, Links for a link to his blog, Intensive Dietary Management) inspired me to do additional experimentation with Intermittent Fasting.

Previously, I’ve written several articles about Intermittent Fasting diet plans here at DietHobby.  You can do a search of DietHobby for them, or you can go to DietHobby’s BLOG CATEGORIES, Fasting to find them. (Look near the middle of the right hand side of this DietHobby page to find the heading: Blog Categories.)

Much of the fasting research that is quoted by Dr. Fung in his blog and new book, The Obesity Code is from Dr. Varady’s research and experimentation of her Every Other Day diet.

The plan alternates “fasting” days with “eating” days.  Dr. Johnson refers to “fasting” days as “Down” days, and “eating” days as “Up” days.  Dr. Varady refers to “fasting” days as “Fast” days, and “eating” days sometimes as “Fed” days and sometimes as “Feast” days.  Dr, Daygurdas refers to the fasting - eating days as “On” and “Off” days.

During UP or FEAST days, total calories are to be a “normal” amount … ideally they will be no more than 10% above an individual’s Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). 

During DOWN or FAST days, total calories are to be only about 25% of  an individual’s Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).

For the mythical average woman whose TDEE is 2,000 calories, an UP day would be from 2,000 (up to 2,200) calories; and a DOWN day would be no higher than 500 calories.  Alternating Up days with Down days results in a 2 week pattern of rotation making a 14 day period in which the average calorie intake would be 1250 calories daily ….then repeat, indefinitely.

MY OWN PLAN:
My UP days are based on my own personal Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) which is close to 1,000 calories.  Adding 10% brings it up to a total of about 1,100.  My plan calls for 3 weekly UP days.

My DOWN days of about 300 calories are close to ¼ (25%) of my TDEE.  My plan calls for 3 weekly DOWN days.

1,100 plus 300 equals 1,400 divided by 2 equals 700 calories… Therefore a 2 week rotation of this pattern would result in a total Average calorie intake of 700 calories daily.

Each week I am including one MEDIUM day of about 700 calories in order to keep every week’s rotation of individual Up & Down days consistent.

My ADF Plan includes two alternatives to my “Basic” plan.  Alternative 1 has 2 consecutive UP days on Saturday & Sunday, and Alternative 2 is has 2 consecutive UP days on Friday and Saturday.  See picture above for details.

I am 71 years old, 5'0" tall, and an inactive, reduced obese female (high weight 271 lbs) who has been maintaining a normal BMI for 10+ years, and my individual TDEE of about 1,000 is low, but not “abnormally” low.

For ME, an average daily intake of 700 calories should create a daily deficit of about 300 calories, and … according to the 3,500 calorie rule… result in a weight-loss of about ½ pound per week.

FOR PERSPECTIVE:
To bring my calorie counts into proper perspective... note that the well-known and often-used  Mifflin formula gives an "AVERAGE" person of my age, size, and activity level, a (RMR) TDEE of 1150 calories, and a BMR of 985.  I've been keeping computer records of my calorie intake & weight every day now for about 12 years, and so I know that my own TDEE is about 100 calories or so below the "AVERAGE".  Women who are younger, taller, heavier, and more active often have very little understanding or knowledge of how low the TDEE is for a short, light, inactive elderly woman... and of course, it is even less for a "reduced obese" one. 

For those people who think my TDEE calculation is too low.... HERE's a little personal lesson. Follow this link to an online calculator that uses Mifflin to determine both BMR & RMR (TDEE).  If you are a female use it to run your own numbers. After you've done that .... try changing your own age to 71, and moving yourself to "Inactive"... Look at your numbers change.  Now, change your height to 5'0".... Quite a difference, right?...  Now give yourself ...as an elderly, short, inactive person... a BMI of around 22.5 (which is somewhere near the middle of a "normal"  BMI)  by setting your weight at 115 pounds.... Now, look at the resulting numbers.... which should be around 985 BMR, and 1150 RMR or TDEE.

Although I don’t intend to give up buying and reading Diet Books, I agree with much of the article below.  I consider myself to have some expertise on the subject, because during the past 60 years I’ve read many hundreds of diet books, and …as part of my Dieting Hobby… I read most ‘major’ diet books as soon as they are published.  I have, in fact, read all of the diet books mentioned in this article, and still own at least ten of them.

Diet books are full of lies.
But they're even worse when doctors write them.
by Julia Belluz on March 2016

One of the perks of being a journalist is that new books cross your desk weeks or months before they’re released.

One of the pitfalls of being a health journalist is that far too many of these books promise to eliminate belly fat forever with their one true secret for weight loss.

Diet books are a multimillion-dollar industry, and it's no surprise, since millions of people struggle with their weight and long for answers about what they can do to slim down. Books can provide valuable tips on healthful patterns of eating. Some are more outlandish than others. But the problem with all of them is what they promise when it comes to weight loss.

No doctor has ever uncovered the solution to permanent weight loss. If someone had found the fix for this immensely vexing and complex problem, we wouldn't be facing an obesity crisis.

But unfortunately, more and more respected doctors, despite their good intentions, are complicit with the publishing industry in confusing science and obscuring hard truths about obesity to sell diet books. It's one thing when actress Gwyneth Paltrow tells people to avoid "nightshade vegetables" on an elimination diet, and quite another when a highly trained and credentialed physician sells a weight loss lie.

Case study: Dr. David Ludwig's Always Hungry.

Recently, a book called "Always Hungry?" landed on my desk. Like dozens of books I've seen before, it makes big promises. The cover of this one said it would help readers "conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently." 

But this book wasn't authored by a woo-loving celebrity like Paltrow. The book came from Dr. David Ludwig, an esteemed endocrinologist and researcher affiliated with Harvard Medical School who has run dozens of clinical trials and seen thousands of patients in the 20 years he's practiced medicine. Like many doctor authors, Ludwig wants to share some of what he's learned with people desperate for help.

When I looked more closely at the actual diet he's prescribing for "permanent weight loss," I found that it was based on a pilot study of just 237 people followed for 16 weeks — a blip of time in a dieter's life.

People lost about a dozen pounds, and many reported feeling great. But every obesity researcher knows that many people following a new diet lose weight initially; the big question is what happens afterward. The data we have on this is sobering. Only a tiny percentage (estimates suggest about 5 percent) of people who try to lose weight on a diet succeed, and many more actually gain weight in the dieting process.

Ludwig didn't do any follow-up with his pilot patients, or run a publishable study, so he has no proof that his diet will lead to the kind of long-term weight loss he promises.

He even admitted as much on page 14:

This diet — like all other diets — hasn't been fully proven. The pilot project didn't include a control group and wasn't intended as scientific research. We can't be sure about how these outcomes would apply to the general public.

So why did he publish a book based on an unproven diet with a cover selling false promises just like all the others? I expected he'd say it was marketing spin, that he was pressured by publicists to exaggerate his findings.

He didn't.

He simply said, "Science is always evolving. But in public health you can’t wait for the final answer before deciding how to proceed." This suggested he had found the truth about weight loss before the science had time to catch up.

The truth is Ludwig was just doing what many, many doctors before him have done: He published a diet book filled with big promises, and used his credentials to back them up.

Diet books have a formula, and doctors use it all the time


When you read a lot of diet books, said Louise Foxcroft, author of "Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting Over 2,000 Years", a clear pattern emerges:

"You need to be a doctor. You need to be patronizing. You want a four-phase plan."


The typical book promise to reveal a secret about fat busting that no one has been telling you. It then guarantees that with an easy-to-follow and painless plan, the fat will finally melt right off.

Often, we hear a story of the author's personal struggle and transformation.

"Out of that darkness comes light, the Eureka Moment, when the author explains how he stumbled on the radical truth that inspired his diet," as Malcolm Gladwell writes. 

Celebrity endorsements are prominent, as are anecdotes from average people who have allegedly had success following this great new program.

In evidence-based medicine, though, anecdotes are considered the lowest form of evidence, since they may be cherry-picked or otherwise unrepresentative of a broader experience. In the world of diet books, they are presented as definitive proof.

"Wrap that all up in punitive, quasi-religious language," Foxcroft said, "and you'd be rich very quickly."

Indeed, if you can come up with a diet that's appealing enough, these books seem like viable get-rich-quick-schemes. According to Nielsen BookScan, about 5 million diet books are sold in the US alone every year — around half of the entire total health and fitness category in 2015. Gardening books, by contrast, sold about a million units in 2015.

It's just one segment of the dieting industry, which is valued at $60 billion in the US, equal to the pet and cosmetics industries.

We've been suckers for diet books for centuries.

People profiting off our weight woes is nothing new. As early as the 18th century, Foxcroft said, dieting was becoming a commercial enterprise. The public was already interested in celebrity diets, and doctors saw the potential to trade on people's desire to be thin.

"Doctors gave diets the authority of science, and people gave their diets more validity, more credence," she explained. And if diet gurus weren't doctors, like 1920s Hollywood nutritionist-to-the stars, Dr. Gayelord Hauser, they'd borrow the moniker anyway. 

More than a century later, they're still doing it. In 2015, the best-selling diet book was Dr. Phil's "20/20 Diet". Note that he is not a doctor or even a licensed psychologist.

The formula remains largely the same too. "Nobody ever comes up with anything new," Foxcroft adds. "They just redress what’s gone on before and package it slightly differently."

No one has the magic bullet for obesity, and there probably isn't one.


More recently, doctors have marketed diets through books with great monetary success.

There's the "Dr. Atkins low-carb" monopoly, 

Dr. Sears's "Zone diet", 

Dr. Davis's "Wheat Belly," 

Dr. Perlmutter's "Grain Brain," 

Dr. Dukan's “Dukan Diet”,

and Dr. Mosley’s  “5:2”.

Diet book critic and author of ”The Gluten Lie”, Alan Jay Levinovitz, argues

that these books contribute to scientific illiteracy, obscuring simple truths about how to live a healthy lifestyle with advice about superfoods and complicated recipes.

"They push through theories, hypotheses, plans that just haven’t passed scientific muster," he added.

These diets have been the subject of thorough debunkings, but not all the science in diet books is wrong.

Some doctor diet books are more sensible than others, like Dr. Yoni Freedhoff's “The Diet Fix”.  He doesn't prescribe a specific regimen but argues that the only diet that's likely to work is actually more of a lifestyle change that's sustainable over many, many years. (That's what nearly every weight loss and obesity expert I've ever talked to has told me.)

Ludwig's tome includes many reasonable recommendations too. His major point is that there are control systems in the body that very tightly regulate weight, and calorie-restricted diets cause the body to fight back by increasing hunger and hanging on to fat. He contends that if people would just forget calories and follow a wholesome, low-carbohydrate, higher-fat diet, they could eventually shed weight. (Even Ludwig's critics agree this plan would eventually lead to slimming.)

But here's the thing: Most people know they shouldn't eat a lot of doughnuts and cookies. They know they should eat more fruits and veggies instead. But many can't stick to that pattern of eating for a host of social and environmental reasons that most diet books can't and don't address.

"All these books are always marketed as, 'Here is the answer. We have now discovered the answer for obesity, and it’s this thing,'" said health policy researcher Tim Caulfield, who has studied celebrity diets for his books, including ”The Cure for Everything”. "But that’s problematic given what we know about how complex the obesity problem is. There are so many factors involved, and I don't think any researcher would deny obesity is a biological and social phenomenon."

Simply giving people a prescription for eating that they know they probably should be following anyway, no matter how sensible, isn't likely to change that.

Yet it's clear unscientific diet books aren't going away; they are a hugely lucrative enterprise. Nonfiction is a bigger book category than fiction, and lifestyle makes up about 80 percent of the nonfiction market. Diet books are part of that, and whether they are scientific or not isn't really a concern of publishers and agents.

As one particularly cynical publisher told me, he looks for the following when considering a diet book pitch: "Is she a celebrity, is it trendy, is it new, will he get on Dr. Oz, has he written a New York Times best-seller, has she helped a celebrity lose weight, and (lastly) does he seem adequately credentialed for this. But that last one isn’t super important: see Gwyneth Paltrow and The Bulletproof Diet."

Vote with your dollars: Stop buying diet books

Given the potential gains here, and the entrenched traditions, doctors are unlikely to stop writing books that sell weight loss lies. And given how the medical profession works, it's unlikely regulation will get in the way, despite the questionable ethics of diet books. Only a doctor's patient-physician interactions, and not his media speech, are governed by professional boards, which is why Dr. Oz has gotten away with his many outlandish claims over the past 10 years.

We humans are particularly vulnerable to diet books. As Matt Fitzgerald, author of the book "Diet Cults", explained to me, our beliefs about food are highly irrational, and when we struggle with weight, we long for neat solutions. "What people want is a pill," he said, "But if you can’t have that, you want a diet that’s a functional equivalent of a pill: simple, tidy, neat, certain."

Consumers need to be aware of this vulnerability. We need to think a little bit harder about what we're participating in before buying into the diet book industrial complex. We need to think a little more about what's really getting between us and a healthy lifestyle in the long term, instead of seeking out quick and unsustainable fixes. There's probably a lot more going on there than whether we've consumed enough coconut water or too much gluten.

Before crashing on an extreme diet, maybe we consider incorporating one or two of the very basics of a healthy lifestyle — more fruits and vegetables, going on walks — which fewer than 3 percent of Americans manage today. But even that's too simple: We must think about pushing policymakers to redesign our environments and social programs in ways that fight against rather than promote obesity — something the research evidence increasingly suggests might actually help.

"It’s remarkable people aren’t more skeptical, because these diets never pan out," said Caulfield. "Can you point to one that over the long term has panned out? The answer is no."



Let's not repeat history. Let's do things differently. Down with diet books.
 

Julia Belluz, the author of the article above, is a National Magazine Award-winning journalist covering medicine and public health for Vox.com.

She was a 2013-14 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Julia’s writing has appeared in Maclean’s, the British Medical Journal, the Medical Post, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Slate, the Times (of London), the Economist, and other publications.

She founded the blog/column ‘Science-ish‘ to examine the evidence behind popular health claims—and won a Gold National Magazine Award and a Canadian Medical Association Award.

Outside of reporting, Julia speaks regularly at health care and journalism conferences the world over. She is a fellow and guest lecturer at McMaster University and is co-writing a book about the misuses and abuses of science in policy, clinical practice and journalism. She holds an MSc. from the London School of Economics and a B.A. from Ryerson University’s School of Journalism.