I’m often amazed at what counts for “new learning” in the mainstream medical community and the concepts upon which vast sums of money are spent to come by it.
Take for instance this “revelation” outlined in the February 20, 2018, issue of one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Researchers were surprised at what they learned while seeking to determine whether there were differences in outcomes between a healthy low-fat (HLF) diet — the mainstream standard for the last half-century — vs a healthy low-carbohydrate (HLC) diet regarding weight change at 12 months.
After spending $8 million to study weight loss for 600 people considered obese, researchers found that counting calories was not important to weight loss. What was important was eating a diet of whole, nutrient-dense foods: non-GMO fruits and vegetables; lean, free-range meats; legumes, nuts and seeds; and avoiding all processed and sugar-laced foods.
Researchers found — again, to their surprise — that the advice offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was wrong. The CDC recommends:…Whether you need to lose weight, maintain your ideal weight, or gain weight, the main message is — calories count! Weight management is all about balancing the number of calories you take in with the number …
… fat. Caloric balance is like a scale. To remain in balance and maintain your body weight, the calories consumed must be balanced by the calories used in normal body functions, daily activities, and exercise.
What researchers reporting in JAMA determined is that the number of “calories” didn’t matter, but the type of “calories” did.
Or, as The New York Times reported it:
The study found that after one year of focusing on food quality, not calories, the two groups lost substantial amounts of weight. On average, the members of the low-carb group lost just over 13 pounds, while those in the low-fat group lost about 11.7 pounds. Both groups also saw improvements in other health markers, like reductions in their waist sizes, body fat, and blood sugar and blood pressure levels.
Even though study participants — many of whom had undertaken one or more diet programs that involved counting calories — kept asking for the doctors to give them caloric limits, researchers kept telling them to focus instead on eating real food and avoiding processed foods.
Lead researcher Dr. Christopher D. Gardner, the director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, told The Times it is not that calories don’t matter. After all, both groups ultimately ended up consuming fewer calories on average by the end of the study, even though they were not conscious of it. The point is that they did this by focusing on nutritious whole foods that satisfied their hunger.
“I think one place we go wrong is telling people to figure out how many calories they eat and then telling them to cut back on 500 calories, which makes them miserable,” he said. “We really need to focus on that foundational diet, which is more vegetables, more whole foods, less added sugar and less refined grains.”
Of course, this is exactly what I’ve been demonstrating to readers of The Bob Livingston Letter® for more than 40 years.
What has changed since?
And has the mainstream altered its advice since the JAMA “discovery”? Hardly.
Unfortunately, it will take the medical establishment much longer to go from merely recognizing this as proper advice to giving it out as such. It will take years, if ever, for mainstream nutritionists and the like to stop insisting on following only low-fat diets.
Now, if you want a gem of weight loss advice, here’s something else science tells us: Golden oil, which comes from the black seeds of the Nigella sativa plant — also known as black caraway or black cumin seeds — may help you.
Black seed oil has been found to aid in the partial regeneration of pancreatic beta-cells, which synthesize and secrete insulin. In fact, the same study also showed that the oil helps to lower serum insulin concentrations and even decreases your serum glucose, and better glucose control is synonymous with controlling sugary cravings.
As if that weren’t enough reason to want to give golden oil a try, a study published in Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine found that it has a great deal of the antioxidant known as thymoquinone, which lowers the inflammation that both causes weight gain and prevents weight loss.
Black seed oil is not magic, but it could help boost your weight-loss efforts when you eat right and exercise.
You may be wondering if the seeds themselves are beneficial. The answer is yes. In fact, if you’ve ever eaten Indian or Middle Eastern food, you’ve probably had them before.
However, for most people, they taste too bitter. The golden oil extract is a much better option. It’s something you can enjoy taking long-term. It has a peppery, slightly spicy flavor. You can add it to salads, raw veggies or even a green drink.
Or if you really want to make it easy, golden oil can be found in easy-to-swallow capsules, just like fish oil. You can find it in Peak Golden Oil™, which has been generating buzz in the weight-loss world since a small study in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine showed that people who took black seed oil and did aerobic exercise showed better weight-loss results than people who did not take the supplement.
Bob Livingston
