Fat-loss Fact Faux pas Friday

The New York Times ran a fascinating, easy-to-understand question-and-answer this week with Dr. Jules Hirsch, emeritus professor and emeritus physician in chief at Rockefeller University. Dr. Hirsch - whom you should not confuse with beloved sitcom actor Judd Hirsch (of Taxi fame) - has been studying obesity for nearly 60 years. Oddly enough, he has an opinion on the subject. Odder still, I have an opinion on his opinions. Admittedly, I feel a little funny pointing out the logic flaws of a man who has studied nutrition since the Milton Berle era of television, but whatever. That's how I roll, so let's do this.

Starting off with a warm fuzzy, I like what he had to say about why high-protein diets appear to promote more fat loss off the starting line.

They report that people on the Atkins diet were burning off more calories. Ergo, the diet is a good thing. Such low-carbohydrate diets usually give a more rapid initial weight loss than diets with the same amount of calories but with more carbohydrates. But when carbohydrate levels are low in a diet and fat content is high, people lose water. That can confuse attempts to measure energy output. The usual measurement is calories per unit of lean body mass — the part of the body that is not made up of fat. When water is lost, lean body mass goes down, and so calories per unit of lean body mass go up. It’s just arithmetic. There is no hocus-pocus, no advantage to the dieters. Only water, no fat, has been lost.

That's cool. He uses logic and science and junk to state his case. But then he kind of loses it with his belief in "calories in, calories out."

Perhaps the most important illusion is the belief that a calorie is not a calorie but depends on how much carbohydrates a person eats. There is an inflexible law of physics — energy taken in must exactly equal the number of calories leaving the system when fat storage is unchanged.

That's fascinating and all, except for the fact that it's simply not true. I could get nit-picky and point out that various foods work differently thermogenically (meaning things like caffeine and spicy foods cause you to burn more calories), but instead I'll point out something the Good Doctor mentions later in the interview regarding why some people have a hard time losing weight.

What your body does is to sense the amount of energy it has available for emergencies and for daily use. The stored energy is the total amount of adipose tissue in your body. We now know that there are jillions of hormones that are always measuring the amount of fat you have. Your body guides you to eat more or less because of this sensing mechanism.

He goes on to explain that these hormones can influence how much fat your body thinks it needs to maintain. He claims "genetics and external factors" influence these hormones.

Hmmm... Ya think maybe diet could be one of those external factors? The foods you eat play a role in hormone production and stimulation. Well-known examples include chocolate, which stimulates the release of "feel good" seratonin; and proteins such as oysters, red meat and beans, which stimulate testosterone. What other hormones might be influenced - and by which foods?

Of the hormones that control weight loss, I don't know which ones can potentially be controlled by diet, but I'm also not the guy who's been wearing a lab coat for over half a century. So instead of categorically stating an absolute that could be disproven at any given second, I suggest that Dr. Hirsch pop back into the lab and look into it.