Your Doctor is an Idiot. Especially if he’s one of these guys. Or Dr. Oz.
OK, that wasn’t nice. Or even accurate. But it drives me nuts when people say “My doctor said _______” regarding diet and weight loss advice. Fun fact: Some medical schools provide as little as 2 hours of nutrition training to students, the average being less than 24 hours. (National Institute of Health paper here) Well, at least they do teach med students to frequently repeat the phrase “make healthy diet choices and get some exercise.” It’d just be nice if they also taught them to admit that they don’t know exactly what that means.
Case in point – These two doctors (identical twins) had a little contest to compare two extreme diets and see which was better. What did they learn? That neither extremely low fat or extremely low carb are sustainable. What did I learn? That neither twin can read, because there is ample data already available telling us that eliminating any of the 3 essential macronutrients is a bad idea. But the guy that cut out carbohydrates lost 9 pounds in a month? Sweet! Breaking news (if 40 year old data is breaking news) – Yes, ketosis works, but what these guys apparently still don’t know is that most of his initial weight loss was water that will come back as soon as he eats a granola and a bagel for breakfast. You see, body composition management 101 tells us that every gram of carbohydrate stored in your body holds onto 3 grams of water. Thus, if the average person depletes their normally stored (ballpark) 500 grams of carbohydrates (which weighs 1.1 pounds), you’ll lose not only that weight but also eliminate the 1500 grams (3.3 pounds) of water that goes with it. That’s how I can literally pack on 6-8 pounds overnight if I have a carb-fest, and lose it over a few days with some hard work and discipline. The point is these guys don’t have the most basic understanding of managing weight/body composition. Perhaps worse, they don’t seems to be aware of the importance of differentiating between losing weight strictly watching numbers on the scale and losing fat while preserving muscle tissue and a strong skeleton. (let alone how to do that).
Why did I have to pick on Dr. Oz in the title? Because my impression is that he is more interested in his ratings/popularity than in sharing the most completely accurate information, and too many people believe everything he says. I recall his reaction/reporting on a one day diet experiment he did. One frikkin day. That’s not enough time to gather accurate data and his reported symptoms were unfairly attributed to the diet (which was a stupid way to try the diet anyway). He made all sorts of dramatic claims about the diet’s drawbacks, and I have to wholeheartedly disagree with the dietary advice he did give – I’ll have to come back to that. The parts of his TV show that I watched were like a bunch of mini-infomercials, where he ran from table to table showing products and telling us whatever the manufacturer claimed on the label. That’s not even bad science – that’s just being a sellout.
I do want apologize here for calling names…none of these guys nor your doctor are really idiots. Actually they are GANGSTERS. I completely respect their training and skill in their specialties, I only wanted to illustrate that nutrition is not it. One of the twins even admits:“He realized that while he and Chris were both doctors, they really didn’t know that much about nutrition and diet.”
So please take away from this is that your doctor is not the best source of diet/nutrition/fitness advice. Learn from people that manage their bodies for a living or lifestyle. Better yet, start with their advice but study how everything works for yourself.
