Air turbulence: When can it become dangerous?
Flight turbulence like that encountered by a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday is extremely common, but there's one aspect of severe turbulence an aviation expert says can lead to serious injury.
With dieting, the conventional wisdom says a person needs to be in calorie-deficit mode to lose weight. If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you eat fewer calories, you lose weight.
But is that view really right? Doesn’t the kind of food you consume (keto, low-fat, vegan, etc.) and how often you eat (time-restricted eating versus six small meals) matter, too?
Many studies have shown the conventional wisdom — calories in, calories out — is mostly true.
“It is not the only thing, but it is the main thing. And it’s mostly diet, not exercise, because exercising makes you hungrier and you eat more calories,” Christopher Gardner, the Rehnborg Farquhar professor of medicine at Stanford University, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the podcast "Chasing Life" recently.
Gardner, who is also the director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, has spent decades studying nutrition and food patterns. He was the senior author of a November 2023 study published in the journal JAMA that looked at the cardiometabolic effects of a healthy omnivorous diet versus a healthy vegan diet in identical twins, which was made into the 2024 Netflix limited series “You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.”
Gardner said a very methodical and comprehensive analysis of approximately 20 different diets was published jointly by the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology and the Obesity Society in 2013.
“At the end of the day, they said, bottom line is on every one of these diets, people lose weight when there’s a calorie deficit. That was one of the main conclusions, and it was sort of as simple as that.”
But Gardner will be the first to say that there are many important nuances — such as the calorie deficit needed to lose a pound only grows as time on a diet progresses.
“People’s bodies react to that (deficit), and they become more metabolically efficient,” he said."That’s why people’s weight loss starts to plateau. So the longer you do this and the more weight you lose, the more discouraging it becomes, because it actually takes more effort to lose the next pound, which is psychologically demoralizing for some people.”
There’s another nuance to diets (based on his own research and that of others): Within each type of diet — keto, vegan, low-fat, etc. — some people will lose weight, and others will gain.
“The difference between the diets was just a few pounds. But the difference within each diet was 60 pounds,” he said, discussing his 2017 DietFITS study, noting somebody gained 10 or 15 pounds while another lost around 50.
“There’s this huge range of variation.”
So, what’s the secret to successful weight loss?
According to Gardner, there are two aspects. “(T)he key to this calorie deficit is it’s stopping your meal soon enough to not overeat and having a long enough space till the next meal, so you’re not making up for that calorie deficit in the next few hours,” he said.
He said he now believes a large part of weight loss success comes down to satiation, noting that what leaves people full can vary greatly.
“I often ask people in some of my talks, ‘Would you be more full and for longer on steel-cut oats with nuts and berries or with cheesy eggs?' I often get half the audience saying one (thing) and half the audience saying the other.”
What can you do to maximize your changes of losing weight and keeping it off? Here are Gardner’s top five tips:
Wean yourself off what Gardner calls “crappy carbs.”
“For most people decreasing or eliminating as much added sugar and refined grains will be the biggest bang for your buck,” he said via email, adding that the average American tends to get more than 40 per cent of calories from low-quality carbs and sugars.
You can’t just eliminate all those calories from low-quality carbs without replacing at least some of them.
“Shift to adding foods rich in fiber,” Gardner said, listing items such as beans and legumes (which he thinks Americans don’t get enough of), vegetables, whole intact grains and fruits. In addition to fibre, add “sources of unsaturated fat (such as) avocados, nuts, seeds, vegetable oils, fatty fish, whole fat yogurt.”
Practice mindful eating. Pay attention to what you are eating and how you are feeling.
“Experiment with satiety and satiation. Try the Hara Hachi Bu principle of eating until you are 80 per cent full, then stopping,” Gardner recommended, referring to the Okinawan practice of putting down your fork when you are slightly full rather than completely full.
In essence, it’s an easy way of restricting calories because it allows your body and brain to register how much you have eaten (it takes a moment for your brain to get the message from your belly that you have eaten enough).
Your food choices must be sustainable over the long run whether you pick a diet low in fat, low in carbs, high in protein or if you choose to follow a Mediterranean, vegan, keto or Paleo diet.
“Don’t think of this as a ‘diet’ that you are going ‘on’ (and) that you will go ‘off’ when you are done,” Gardner said in an email. “It needs to be a dietary approach you can follow FOREVER for the benefits to last.”
For that approach to work, he said, you need to feel satiated, not deprived and hungry all the time.
Acknowledge it’s not easy to change eating habits to lose weight.
“Be kind to yourself and patient,” Gardner said. “Most people struggle with this. If you beat yourself up psychologically, for setbacks it can be even harder the next time you make an effort.”
Gardner had one final bonus tip.
“You need to find joy and pleasure with what you are eating,” he said. “Allow yourself that for long-term success.”
Flight turbulence like that encountered by a Singapore Airlines flight on Tuesday is extremely common, but there's one aspect of severe turbulence an aviation expert says can lead to serious injury.
British Columbia serial killer Robert Pickton was attacked and sustained life-threatening injuries in a Quebec prison Sunday in what officials described as a 'major assault.'
In his latest column for CTVNews.ca, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair argues that if there's an unofficial frontrunner in the eventual race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, it has to be former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
The Toronto Blue Jays have offered tickets and a signed baseball to a fan who says she was struck in the face by a 110 m.p.h (177 km/h) foul ball at Friday’s game.
Members of a killer whale pod related to an orphan orca calf that escaped a remote British Columbia tidal lagoon last month have been spotted off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.
Ontario Provincial Police continue to investigate a long weekend fatal boat collision on Bobs Lake, north of Kingston, Ont.
An investigation has been opened into the death of Matthew Perry and how the “Friends” actor received the anesthetic ketamine, which was ruled a contributing factor in his death.
House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus is facing fresh Conservative-led calls to resign, this time over "very partisan" and 'inflammatory' language used – the Liberals say mistakenly – to promote an upcoming event.
As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues the 'Team Canada' charm offensive to U.S. lawmakers and business leaders, Canada's ambassador to the United States downplayed the effect of another Trump presidency on Canada.
Montreal photographer captured the moment a Canada Goose defended itself from a fox at the Botanical Garden.
Public libraries in Atlantic Canada are now lending a broader range of items.
Flashes of purple darting across the sky mixed with the serenading sound of songs will be noticed more with spring in full force in Manitoba.
Catching 'em all with impressive speed, a 7-year-old boy from Windsor, Ont. who only started his competitive Pokémon journey seven months ago has already levelled up to compete at a world championship level.
A sanctuary dedicated to animals with disabilities is celebrating the third birthday of one of its most popular residents.
2b Theatre recently moved into the old Video Difference building, seeking to transform it into an artistic hub, meeting space, and temporary housing unit for visiting performers in Halifax.
A B.C. woman says her service dog pulled her from a lake moments before she had a seizure, saving her life.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.