As part of my background research for this book, I made it my goal to uncover the true scientific facts behind weight loss and nutrition.
Now, I’m not talking about the scientific facts that are thrown around every day by food companies and marketing gurus. You know, the ‘eat this, not that’ facts or the ‘recent research has shown’ facts. I wanted to find the cold, hard, truths. I was looking for the nutritional equivalent of death and taxes.
My first step in this quest was to read every nutrition and diet book I could get my hands on. In one short year, I read and re-read the following books:
The Atkins revolution, Protein power, Body for Life, The Zone, The South Beach Diet, French Women Don’t Get Fat, The Warrior Diet, The Metabolic Diet, Volumetrics, The Obesity Myth, What to Eat, the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Real Foods, Food Politics, as well as various ‘ underground’ books on diet and nutrition like Dan Duchaine’s Body Opus.
On top of this, I also reviewed hundreds (not an exaggeration) of research papers, and re-read several of my nutrition textbooks. I even went so far as to enroll in graduate school to study Human Biology and Nutraceutical Sciences, and let me tell you, it took an almost unhealthy desire to uncover the truth to
drive me to re-enroll in school after a seven year hiatus, with a pregnant wife and a busy consulting job!
So what did all of my research uncover? Well I can tell you that there are indeed two absolute truths when it comes to nutrition and weight loss.
1) Prolonged caloric restriction is the only proven nutritional method of weight loss and
2) Human beings (nutritionally speaking) can only be in one of the following states: fed or fasted.
That’s it. In my opinion these are the only two facts that are undeniable. Everything else is open for debate.
This is the problem with nutrition today - it’s made out to be so complicated and confusing that nobody knows what to believe.
