To Be Superstitious is to be Human
My mother grew up in guilt ridden Catholic Ireland.
So everything in life involved guilt and superstition.
She lights candles in the church in exchange for good luck.
She prays to St Anthony when she loses something.
One of her strangest beliefs though, involves the song Umbrella by Rihanna.
Ironically when the song debuted in 07, Ireland had the longest run of rainy days in over 50 years.
To her every time the song plays she expects bad weather.
Nothing else comes into the equation. Not the location, time of year or weather forecast matter.
Rihanna’s song umbrella controls the weather.
My mother isn’t alone in this. For humans, Traditions, superstitions and strange habits seem to be the norm.
I read the other day how a man was so crippled with OCD, if he didn’t flick his lights on and off three times, the world would end.
We believe everything from ladders, mirrors and saints make or break our luck.
Fitness isn’t immune to superstition.
Superstitious Dieting.
When you want to drop weight, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
Cut out sugar and carbs.
This is based on a plausible theory. We exercise far less than past ancestors therefore don’t need the carbs.
So carbs we eat convert to fat.
Everybody ‘knows’ this. Read a magazine and you’ll see “drop the sugar to drop the pounds.”
You’ll see documentary after documentary demonizing sugar and carbs.
It’s cliche to think carbs are the solution to diet woes.
But is this true?
Is it based on science or about as real as Rihanna’s power over the weather?
Carbs Make You Fat?
When you consume too many carbohydrates, the body can convert those into fat and store it in your body.
This is a process known as lipogenesis.
Technically I could now put the headline down “Too Many Carbs are packing on pounds around your waist”.
I can even add a compelling story to persuade you further. “Mary lost 10 pound in 10 days by cutting out sugar”.
Extra Carbs Not Extra Fat
For most, this is where the story ends. No more thinking needed. Drop carbs, drop weight.
But the body is a very sophisticated being.
Before making turning carbs to fat, the body stores carbohydrates in a different form. This is called glycogen.
Remember this is not fat but actual sugars/carbs.
You can store nearly a pound of sugars / carbohydrates in this glycogen form. If your body doesn’t use them straight away, your liver and your muscles store for later use.
If it’s not carbs then why do I lose weight when I cut out sugar?
These stored carbs also hold a lot of water.
Up to four pounds of water for every pound of glycogen in your body.
All stored for later use.
So when you hear about Mary dropping piles of weight in two weeks, this is why
Her body dropped stored water and carbohydrates.
Not one gram is body fat.
Does Rihanna Cause the weather to change?
Humans are always looking for explanations to things.
The Egyptians would pray to sun Gods.
The Romans believed comets were omens for previous emperors.
My mother hears a song, she relates it to the weather.
We have always looked for patterns.
But does Rihanna really change the weather? Do carbs really make you fat? My mother thinks the former Her brain associates rain with Umbrella, so every time it plays she expects rain.
But in actuality it was caused by excessive low pressure crossing over the country.
Umbrella just happened to hit the charts.
The case though for carbs can seem a no brainer for weight loss.
You stop eating them and you lose water weight.
And when you eat them again you regain all of the water weight.
There’s instant feedback on the scales telling you it’s carbs
So do Carbs Make Me Fat ?
However the feedback doesn’t tell the whole story.
It’s easy to miss the bigger picture when cutting out carbs
Like the way you can mistake a song being related to the weather. Or lights having an impact on the rest of the world.
Nobody goes on a diet and only cuts out carbs.
When you diet, you eat healthier overall.
Breakfast no longer consists of coco pops and orange juice. You give vegetables and higher protein meals a shot.
You also remove a whole food group with no carbs. When you remove an entire food group, you change the biggest factor for fat loss.
You reduce calories.
And its overall calories that are shown again and again to be the main decider in weight loss.
In studies done by Gardner (2018) and Veum (2016), individuals were placed on both very high and very low carbohydrate diets.
No matter the diet, people lost similar amounts of weight.
The only thing that mattered was overall calories.
Too many beliefs Gone awry
The brain is a pattern making machine that helped us survive as a species.
We could learn locations and behaviours of animals to hunt food.
In the modern world, the brain still seeks patterns.
These patterns can go awry though.
We believe a song can change the patterns of the weather and believe that carbs are the sole reason for all of our weight issues.
But looking deeper we find the actual cause.
For weather, it’s low pressure
For weight loss, it’s calories.
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