Why Calories Don't Count and Most Diets Don't Work

How We Got the Science of Weight Loss Wrong - with Giles Yeo

Some facts.

Eating fats doesn't make you fat.

A calorie is a unit of heat in physics.

In dieting, it's the same unit of heat! They measure calories by burning food!

Your digestive system is not an oven - we do not burn anything.

So the calories we extract from the food through biochemical processes has little to do with burning it to a cinder.

So all those diets based on bad science are slowly starving people - and yet they bounce back to an extra-large size quickly.

The funniest thing about calorie-based diets is that the body perceives less food coming in and so it down-regulates itself - this is why people feel tired and miserable... and still fat.

The other issue is the time you give your body to process food.

Excess calories are stored as fat, so if you're snacking all day long, guess what happens.

The best weight-loss diet is to practice "intermittent fasting".

It isn't really fasting, it means leaving a long gap between your last meal of the day and the first meal of the next day.

Ideally this should be about 16-18 hours - with no calorific snacking!

This is how Buddhist monks eat - an early breakfast, lunch, then nothing else.

You don't need to watch the video now :-)

Actually, Giles Yeo does mention the process of fasting and pretends that it mainly relies on caloric restriction - not true - one can easily eat the same number of calories in 2 meals as in 3.

The huge dinosaur in the room is the garbage that passes as food in many countries and, related to weight, the amount of growth hormones in meat plus many other additives.

Yeo's final message is good - eat healthily - eat real food.