I try not to be too evangelical about going paleo, because diet really is a very personal choice and what works beautifully for me doesn’t work for everyone. But I feel I need to write about this book, which is not a book about paleo or is even a “diet” book of any kind, because I was really moved by it.
Yes, moved — as in emotionally gut punched.
The book is Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. The author is someone you will hear talk about if you do any reading in the paleo blogosphere, but while I had heard of him I had not done much to find out why he is considered important. Well, now I know.
The heart of this book is not instructions on how to eat right, for both weight loss and health, although those instructions are included in an appendix. No. Taubes, who is a respected science journalist with a degree in physics from Harvard, instead looks critically at the state of modern nutrition science and the prevailing theories of why we get fat and how we are supposed to lose fat.
Basically, he spends most of the book calling out bad (by which I mean, terrible) science studies and research of the last century. In the end, he blows apart the myth of “calories in/calories out” theories (aka “eat less, exercise more”) and explains WHY it is all so much nonsense. He explains why the First Law of Thermodynamics does apply to fat gain/loss, but not in the way you have been taught that it does.
The reason this was such a gut punch to me is that not only have I spent my entire adult life losing and regaining weight, but I have seen around me people who have amazing willpower and persistence in every other aspect of their lives fail when it comes to “eat less, exercise more.” And according to the popular paradigm, that just shouldn’t happen.
Taubes shows the science of how and why exercise is great for your overall health, but kind of pointless for losing fat, and why cutting calories seems to make so much common sense but is actually profoundly stupid in practice.
He ALSO provides the science, however grudgingly shared by scientists (and they are definitely full of grudges about it) which proves that low carbohydrate diets are not only better for fat loss, but better for overall health.
Nothing he presents here is, actually, controversial. Over and over again he presents known facts about nutrition, and then shows how those facts have been covered up, twisted, or dismissed by the mainstream nutrition industry.
For instance, we all know that a good way to work up an appetite is to work out — play a round of soccer, go for a run, etc. Science has proven this over and over. Yet, the advice to dieters is that when they get hungry, to go for a walk to curb their appetite. WTF? If you’re hungry, eat less? Who in their right mind thinks these admonitions make any sense?
In the end, Taubes recommends a low-carb approach, not necessarily a paleo approach. I think the real message here, though, is QUESTION AUTHORITY. All our lives we’ve been preached the “eat less, exercise more” solution (and I use that term loosely) for fat loss, but seriously ask yourself: how many overweight people do you know whom that has worked for, long term? Who have lost 30+ pounds and kept it off? Do you really believe that everyone you know is slothful and gluttonous and lacks self control? Does that even make sense?
No, it doesn’t, and Taubes explains why. I recommend this book highly, even for those who are not looking to lose weight.
