One of the things I love most about 90/10 is the community of members we have on Facebook. They encourage each other, answer each other’s questions, they post info they find that might be helpful, they share recipes, and they are just all around awesome.
I mention that today because one of our members, Irene, posted an article in the group that was an awesome share and also agreed to write a guest blog with her thoughts. The article is THIS ONE in the New York Times. I recommend you read it and then continue on to Irene’s comments below.
Here is what Irene had to say about the article:
I was very excited to see a New York Times article by Health Science reporter Anahad O’Connor on February 20, 2018, “The Key to Weight Loss is Diet Quality, not Quantity a New Study Finds.” The article was reporting on a JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association article study by Christopher Gardner, Jon Trepanowski, Liana Del Gobbo, et al (2018:319 (7): 667-679). Unless you are a medical professional, the JAMA article is fairly incomprehensible to the lay person. In brief, what they studied was a healthy low-fat diet versus a healthy low carbohydrate diet to see which was better for losing weight. The study involved 600 people and the duration was a year. The result was that both diets equally resulted in a 11-15 lb. weight loss. They had people focus on nutritious whole foods and found that while there was not mention of reducing calories, because the study participants were satisfying their hunger with these whole foods they ultimately did end up consuming fewer calories on average by the end of the study. The NYT reporter interpreted this as diet quality (more vegetables, more whole foods, whole grains and less added sugar and refined grains) as important for weight control and long-term well-being. As critics of the NYT article have pointed out, this was not what the study was measuring and to make this claim further studies would need to be conducted.
As a 90/10 participant since January of 2015 the NYT article interpretation resonated with me. Understanding that it is the conclusions of the reporter and not what the study was studying or proving is important to know. Still the study was about eating healthy, unprocessed foods, which is what 90/10 Nutrition is all about. I have found the freedom from calorie counting and thinking differently about what I consume, focusing on whole and unprocessed foods to be important. I am not surprised that eating in a 90/10 way leads to lower calorie consumption as you can eat a whole lot of cups of vegetables before eating a sugary treat that equals the same amount of calories. You get fuller faster and stay satisfied longer with healthy unprocessed foods and whole grains. I know I also feel better, so while not scientifically documented in this study, based on my and the hundreds who have joined in following 90/10 Nutrition, quality of what you feed yourself is important versus just focusing on quantity.
I have to say, I agree with Irene that it’s diet quality, not quantity that makes the biggest difference and should be our main focus. We’ve covered this subject in several other articles like THIS ONE. It’s so awesome to see our members resonating with this!
What do you think? Tell us in the comments below.
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I am so glad Irene shared this article & her thoughts on it!
It leads me to believe that even though I continue to make mistakes with my diet, I am on the right path this time.