Chapter / Rule 10 - Fall back on veggies!

This chapter is short and sweet.  And it also makes sense, for the most part.

On this diet, you are allowed to eat an unlimited amounts of a long list of vegetables Harper provides you.  They are, for the most part, very low in calories but very satiating.  And when you're only eating 800 calories per day, if you want any hope of your stomach not rumbling all day, tons of vegetables are a good plan.  Have you ever tried to eat 500 calories of broccoli?  It's tough.

Harper takes note that if you are eating all these vegetables, you'll be taking in a lot of fiber.  While he comments on the benefits of fiber - feeling full, regular bowel movements, moving digestion along - it should be noted that if you are going from a low-fiber diet to a nearly all-fiber diet, you might have a bad time adjusting.

For some, too much fiber too quickly can result in cramping, bloating and constipation.  You'd probably get over this after 3 weeks though.

He also notes that some vegetables are "natural diuretics" as an extra benefit.  Considering he was very anti-diuretics in chapter 5, I find that worth mentioning.  Obviously any diuretic properties of a vegetable likely nothing compared to a concentrated drug, but it's still just another gimmicky way to lose unnecessary water weight.

Moral: Vegetables are filling.  They might help make a 800 calorie-a-day diet more bearable.  They can be pretty tasty too.  (If you follow me on facebook, you'll remember: FUCK YEAH ROASTED BROCCOLI!)

Chapter / Rule 11 - No fruit during week 3

I got a little depressed reading this chapter, I'm not going to lie.

Well it looks like Harper listened to that popular lecture by Dr. Lustig.  The gist of the lecture being, fructose is more harmful than other sugars like maltose or glucose.

Fructose is known as the "fruit" sugar since you can find it in most fruits like apples or berries.  In fact, Harper has an entire chapter in "The Skinny Rules" dedicated to you eating plenty of apples and berries everyday.  (Every. Single. Day!) He also wants you to eat simple sugars for this diet (see rule 3), of which fructose is a big one.

However, he wants you to cut out the fructose in week 3.  Why?

"[Fructose's] metabolic profile is different from that of sucrose (usually made from cane or beet sugar) in one critical way: over-consumption of it skews our metabolism toward fat storage rather than fat burning."

There is only one kind of over-consumption that drives our bodies to store fat rather than burn it: calories.  Whether those calories come in the form of fructose or sucrose or skinless baked chicken breasts and steamed broccoli, it doesn't matter.  If you are eating 800 calories per day (assuming you are not a 100 pound girl in a coma), regardless of where you are getting those calories from, you WILL lose fat.  (until the inevitable binge happens)

"Many believe that our stepped-up consumption of fructose, usually through ingestion of all that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in soft and "fruit" drinks, plays a key factor in America's twin scourges of obesity and diabetes.  That's why New York passed its ban on large soft drinks recently."

The attempted ban on soft drinks was not due to their HFCS content - it was due to their caloric content.  If it truly had anything to do with HFCS, they would have made the law to replace it with sugar.

I was also going to point out how HFCS is nearly identical to sucrose in terms of fructose content - it's only got about 5% more fructose.  But I'll let Harper explain with flawless logic why that's not good enough:

"Other researchers...believe that HFCS has been unjustly maligned, pointing out that the syrup contains only 5 to 10 percent more fructose than regular sugar.

I wonder what those guys would say if their mother's prescription for say, Lipitor, contained 10 percent more than she was supposed to take!"

This is a very bad argument.  When I originally typed that sentence out, there were so many negative adjectives that I just gave up trying to articulate how bad it was.

As far as we are aware now, fructose does not appear worse for human consumption than simple sugar.  The negative health effects of sugar result from eating a caloric surplus of sugar - and the nature of sugar makes it easy to do that.  However, many cultures have thrived off high carbohydrate diets (Japanese, for instance). Comparing fructose consumption (of which we can take in vastly varying amounts and be okay) to altering a sensitive drug that requires a doctor's permission to take is asinine.

He then cites a study and concludes that fructose consumption impairs insulin sensitivity and makes it difficult to bring blood sugar down.

Unfortunately in this study, they were limited by the fact it was not conducted in a metabolic ward.  Subjects were only required to log 3 days worth of food between visiting researchers (Which happened after 3 weeks).  While that's certainly something, we are notorious at counting and measuring our food, even with kitchen scales.   The fact that many foods contain high fructose corn syrup and sucrose outside of the sweetened beverages the participants were required to drink makes this study difficult to verify for accuracy.

"Does one week of [not eating fruit] really make a difference?  Yes.  It's one more way to cut calories, one more way to push your body into fat-burning mode, one more way to curb your sweet tooth.  And: it works for me and my clients."

If you're already counting out 800 calories a day, removing fruit will not cut your calories anymore because you'll make up for it with string beans or Persian cucumbers or something.  Is it the removing fruit that works for you and your clients, or is it the lack of calories?

Moral: Fructose has not been proven to be any worse for your health than sucrose.  Neither seem to be particularly bad.  There isn't a good reason given in this chapter to avoid fruit consumption in the last week of this diet.  Harper made 4 puppies cry this chapter.