The Dieting Dilemma: The Truth Behind the Low-Sugar vs. Low-Fat Debate

Don't live in this world starving.

The first two chapters describe three triggers for eating: hunger, external food cues, and emotions, and introduce methods to reduce eating caused by the latter two factors. However, they do not discuss the most pressing questions for most dieters: what to eat and what to avoid eating.

To enhance your physical intelligence, you must choose your food, but you must avoid reverting to the old mindset of dieters. Based on physical intelligence, no food is completely forbidden; you can guide your food choices according to your needs, deciding how much to eat to satisfy them. While this still requires conscious effort at first, it will become second nature with repeated practice.

This chapter aims to explore the psychological basis of dieters so that you can understand why controlling weight has been so difficult in the past. Without the psychology typically found in dieters, you are free to develop a more rational approach to deciding what and how much to eat.

What went wrong with the dieting craze?

Dieting is a widespread social phenomenon. Last year, at least 55% of women and 29% of men participated in dieting. The participation rate is even higher among girls aged 11-16. Dieting has also become popular among children. Approximately 25% of 11-year-old girls have tried at least one weight-loss program. Surprisingly, dieters are not necessarily obese. One study found that dieters of normal weight were more likely to diet than obese dieters, and about 10% of underweight women were also dieting (all figures refer to the United States).

Americans aren't the only ones focused on dieting; they're also exporting the concept to the world. Studies show that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pacific island nations, having increased contact with American society and becoming wealthier, are more likely to have young women who are dieting.

Despite the aforementioned diet wars, Americans are now fatter than ever before. More than 20 years ago, William Bennett and Dr. Joel Gurin wrote a book called *The Dieter's Dilemma*, reviewing the scientific evidence on dieting. This evidence showed that dieting is an ineffective means of controlling weight. However, diet books continue to sell well, and the latest diet trends remain a sensation; *The South Beach Diet* alone has sold over 7 million copies.

When friends discuss their experiences with different diets, and when you pick up any newspaper or magazine and see debates for and against dieting, it's hard to ignore them. But if you look at the overall state of dieting and understand the psychological processes involved, you can be more willing to ignore the media hype surrounding the latest diets and continue focusing on improving your physical and mental well-being.

The debate surrounding low-sugar and low-fat diets

In my workshops and clinical work, the first question I encounter is whether low-carbohydrate (or low-sugar) or low-fat diets are better. It seems like everyone has tried the Atking diet or the South Beach diet, and everyone seems to be able to give examples of people who have lost weight using these methods.

At a government-sponsored forum in 2000, Robert Akin and Dr. Dean Ornish debated the best way to lose weight. Akin's high-protein, low-carb diet clashed with Ornish's preferred low-fat, high-carb diet. Low-carb diets included the South Beach Diet and the sugar restriction method, while low-fat diets included the method proposed by the American Heart Association and Dr. McDougall. Both diets agreed on the following conclusion:

Americans are too fat;

Exercise is beneficial for weight control;

Sugar and white bread (bread made from refined white flour) are bad.

Although Dr. Arkin passed away in 2003, the debate continues, with newspapers reporting studies comparing the pros and cons of low-sugar versus low-fat diets almost weekly. Unfortunately, the debate is often tinged with religious overtones, with believers condemning non-believers as food rebels. According to Dr. Gary D. Foster, director of the Weight and Dietary Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania, "These people are believers...and so the gospel has come unnoticed." Even the cause of Dr. Arkin's death has become part of the debate, with non-believers claiming that he weighed 258 pounds at the time of his death and that they had not followed his diet.

To understand the significance of this debate, it is perhaps helpful to recognize that it has been going on for so many years that a clear winner is unlikely to emerge anytime soon. As early as 1825, a French lawyer named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin championed a low-sugar diet in one of his published books. To those who criticized his low-sugar diet plan, he warned:

Okay, go ahead and eat! Get fat! Become uglier and thicker, become breathless, and eventually die in the fat accumulated on your body.

Around the same time, Sylvester Graham (who invented and promoted the "graham cracker," a whole-wheat cracker named after him) prayed for gluttony, condemning it as "the most important cause of all sins," and championed the most extreme form of low-fat vegetarianism as a cure for obesity. Obesity, disease, and mental disorders were all attributed to the consumption of meat and other animal products.

The perception that sugar and fat are the devil has spread from dieters to the entire population. In the 1980s and 90s, consumers avoided fat because it was generally considered unhealthy. (Remember how popular low-fat diets were back then!) Conversely, now 40% of consumers, regardless of weight, are trying to cut back on their carbohydrate consumption. More than 700 low-sugar products have been introduced (including low-sugar syrups), and are projected to capture a $25 billion market share. This is a huge market. 80% of Arkin's shares were sold for $533 million after his death, but the New York Times reported that by the end of 2004, half of low-sugar dieters had stopped dieting, and the company had laid off 40% of its workforce.