Science vs. Anecdote: Case Study #1

So the other day I wrote a post talking about how science and experience both fit into our outlook on this whole “lifting weights” thing. Just to expand on that, I wanted to give a few examples to show where science and personal experience or anecdote would fit into the picture.

Case Study #1 – Diet Bro Magic

I figure that this is as good a place to start as any.

When it comes to diet, there’s just not that much to discuss really – you need to know about calories, you need to know about the three different macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat), and you could probably stand to know a little about the quality of different sources, mainly with regards to processing and how that can be a bad thing (vis a vis, things like transfatty acids, maybe some concern about processed sugars vs. the natural stuff from fruits and grains, etc.).

Otherwise, there’s just not much to a good diet. Unfortunately that’s not good enough; diet bro-dom is by far worse than the worst gym-bro wisdom you could ever imagine, subject to kookery that far transcends any weight-training dogma and overlaps with epic nuttery like homeopathy and astrology.

Diet and nutrition have a wide-ranging appeal outside of the fitness community, and as such that’s why you see this degree of kookery in play. It’s why things like “colon cleansing” and the idea that you can drink lemon juice and achieve something healthy.

Yeah. Let’s skip over the truly epic stupidity that’s out there at the fringe of…well, everything, and limit ourselves to the stuff that’s generally marketed at the fitness crowd.

The fitness crowd generally acknowledges that you have to control calories and may attention to macros. Most of the Diet Magic comes from two main areas: nutrient timing and supplements.

Nutrient timing is its own bag of issues. Six meals instead of three to keep the metabolic furnace going? Sounds nice. Too bad it doesn’t match reality. Time carbs right to control insulin levels? While the idea of manipulating insulin to create favorable body-comp changes sounds nice on paper, it doesn’t pan out.

Twenty-four hour fat metabolism doesn’t change according to the number of meals you eat or when you ate your carbs; what matters is how much you ate over the day, and how much of it was protein, carbs, or fat. Yes, you’ll see a short-term change in brief slices of time after a meal or a period between meals, but short-term changes that happen after a meal can’t overcome 24-hour calorie balance. That’s what science tells us.

The problem is that all your Diet Gurus assume that the rules they tell you to follow are fundamentals; when you cut out carbs after 6pm, it’s assumed that this is a Fundamental Principle of Physiology that manipulates insulin in a magical way so that you stop adding fat.

Yeah. Unfortunately that can’t happen; there is no way a hormone acting on your body, a glorified chemical reaction, can store energy from nowhere. You can’t add fat without the calories to put in the fat cells. Likewise, you can’t lose fat without an energy deficit that causes the body to release and burn it.

And there’s where the Bro enters the picture. Challenge someone on this and that’s when the bodybuilding pics of ripped abs start getting flashed around.

The thing is, I don’t even disagree that a good set of diet-rules can be effective. Eat low carb, avoid sugars, eat six protein-containing meals a day, cut carbs after 6pm – hell those are good rules! I have no doubt that somebody sticking to a diet like that would see good results.

But it’s not because those rules are special themselves; it’s because they have you eating less by default. There’s no magic to nutrient timing – except that it controls your appetite, limits your calorie intake, and provides the right macronutrients.

Magic!

In this case, the science is the diet itself: eat less food and focus on the important nutrients, and you’ll lean up. Experience comes in the form of the diet-rules that make you do that in the first place.

As usual, there is no conflict if you actually analyze what’s going on. Science isn’t wrong; you have to eat less to lose weight, and you have to get enough essential protein and fat if you want to lose fat weight while hanging on to lean tissue. The bodybuilders giving you diets aren’t necessarily wrong either; the way they suggest to eat results in you eating less food. It just happens that