Welcome

1. Welcome This is the online version of a presentation given by Dr Keith Merritt addressing diet, exercise and weight control for women. A great deal of the information in this presentation comes from the book “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan- a highly recommended, easy & enjoyable read.

2. At times during this presentation you may ask yourself “ what does this have to do with weight control”. I ask for your patience & hopefully it will make sense as a whole. If you want to jump straight to the rules go to slide # 171. Enjoy.

3. Human life is precious and fleeting Hard to obtain and easy to destroy -Kalu Rinpoche

4. “Be careful about reading health books, you may die of a misprint” -Mark Twain

5. It just is not fair!!! • Pregnancy related weight gain • Then more weight gain with menopause • Obesity related cancers • Women now burn the candle at both ends

6. What to do? • Cut back on something?- carbs, fats, protein? • Become a vegetarian? • Cabbage diet, Rice diet? • South Beach, Atkins, Glycemic impact diets? • Liposuction, gastric bypass? • Pills, pills and more pills? • Hcg injections? • I’ll just stop eating for a few weeks? • Eat more olive oil or maybe less olive oil? • Is soy the magic food?

7. I AM SO CONFUSED!!!!!

8. Remember

9. Weight is just an energy balance • Food- the only possible energy input • Exercise- least energy use in most people - will increase your basal metabolic rate • Basal Metabolic Rate- major user of energy

10. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) • Calories burned to keep your basic body functions running while you are at rest • Energy burned for such things as heart beat, body heat, brain activity, transport of materials into and out of cells, etc • However, the greatest user of energy at rest is the calories burned to maintain muscle • The lowest user is body fat • A low BMR was historically a survival advantage

11. From the very beginning of life on this planet, it has been all about having enough energy to make life run

12. 4.5 billion years of trial & error has produced the finely tuned machine known as the human being

13. Designed to be in complete balance and harmony with the environment from which and by which it was sculpted

14. This machine has thousands of enzymes, hormones and neural circuits designed specifically to prevent starvation

15. And absolutely none to prevent obesity (not an issue until modern times)

17. No other animal needs someone to tell it how to eat

18. So How did we, the most knowledgeable, wealthy and powerful group of mammals to inhabit this planet in the past 300 million years, get ourselves into such a mess?

19. We have become disconnected from a very deep well of wisdom that was accumulated through generations of trial, error, challenge and suffering. The repository of this wisdom has been mankind’s cultures, philosophies and religions.

20. Diet has been disrupted by • Science • Nutritionism • Food industry • Modern agriculture

21. Let’s start with the LipidHypothesis of heart disease • Based on observation of decreased heart disease during WW II • Original recommendation was simply to decrease meat & dairy consumption

22. This, of course, led to intense lobbying efforts by the meat & dairy industries • As a result, the simple and logical recommendation of decreasing meat and dairy consumption was changed to a war on fat (fat has no lobby)

23. The result was a 30 year effort to reform the nations food supply • REMOVED DIETARY AUTHORITY FROM CULTURE AND FROM MOM’S KITCHEN

24. However, Proponents of the lipid hypothesis seemed to ignore other WW II lifestyle changes • Decreased smoking • Decreased sugar • Decreased total calories • Increased fish, vegetables and fruit • Increased exercise

25. Now 40 years into this massive public health experiment It appears that the lipid hypothesis is most likely invalid (sorry about that)

26. Bulk of Evidence • Total amount of fat in our diet has little bearing on obesity & heart disease risk • Little evidence supporting any benefit of saturated fats being replaced with polyunsaturated fats -may actually be harmful

27. Mildly unhealthy saturated fats were replaced with lethal trans fats That margarine you were told to substitute for butter was high in trans fats Using vegetable oil for frying (fast foods) also produces trans fats As it turns out, not all saturated fats increase your cholesterol

28. Saturated Fats • Only chain lengths 12, 14 & 16 increase serum cholesterol • The worst is myristic acid (fat) (14) -high in coconut & palm oil (baked goods) • Stearic acid (fat) (18) lowers cholesterol -one of the fats in meat

29. What is certain The increased carbohydrates in low fat foods have increased obesity

30. Still The most important aspect of fat in our diet today may actually be the large change in the ratio of essential fatty acids in meat and dairy products due to changing the cattle’s diet from grazing to grain based feeds -omega-3 & omega-6 fatty acids The same is true for chickens and eggs

31. Next- Nutritionism • Food has been reduced to a mere delivery system for nutrients • There is a near priesthood of “experts” • Has caused a war of the macronutrients -fats vs carbs vs protein • Has given rise to a near endless stream of snake oils, diet gurus & confusion

32. Wild swings in the national food pendulum -created food fads and phobias -divided foods into good vs bad

33. Fake foods billed as being better for You • The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was repealed in 1973 - This act had required fake foods such as margarine to be labeled as fake • Otherwise, a very large number of foods in the grocery store would now be labeled as fake food -low fat, low carb, high fiber, heart healthy, etc

34. Finally, the past century in US food production has been devoted to quantity over quality However, cheaper food is building a very large unpaid health care debt

35. The greatest beneficiary of the $36 billion food industry The $250 billion pharmaceutical industry

36. Americans Have the Cheapest Food Costs in the World • Both in time invested in preparing the meals & in cost of the food • 1960 food 18% of our income health care 6% • 2009 food 10% health care 16%

37. The modern Western Diet supplies foods that are • Cheap • High calorie • Depleted of nutrition • KILLING OUR POPULATION

38. “When your gods die, you die. For you live by them.” -Antoine Saint Exupery

39. Historically diet has been a central part of every culture • Healthy diets evolved over thousands of years through a lot of trial and error • Only the foods and food combinations that maximized the health of the group were kept as part of the culture

40. Why Diet Should Belong to Culture

41. Even the most simple food is a complicated maze of chemicals that act in concert with each other and with those of other foods

42. How we digest, absorb and process the components of foods is incredibly complicated and mysterious

43. Whole foods and food combinations behave very differently than their individual components

44. Nutritionism and food science seek the magic nutrients • To fortify the refined foods they were removed from • To sell as supplements • Blind men describing an elephant

45. “I’m on two diets” “Just one doesn’t give me enough to eat”

46. Weight Loss Diets DO NOT WORK • Metabolic imbalance does permanent damage to you • No long term difference between low fat diet, low carb diet and no diet

47. Any weight lost will be regained when you stop your diet & resume your previous lifestyle (which you will)

48. Each cycle of weight loss becomes more difficult Metabolically demanding muscle that is lost with dieting is replaced by fat when the weight is regained (which it will be)

49. Any machine that is misused will break

50. The Human Machine Designed to