Excess Calories = Weight Gain? Not!!

I'm in the middle of reading Refined Carbohydrate Foods and Disease: Some Implications of Dietary Fiber by Burkitt and Trowell (1975). It clearly reinforces the notion that weight gain is not simply a result of excess calorie consumption, but just as much the result of poor bowel motility. Basically the argument is that increased consumption of refined carbohydrates during the last 150 years has resulted in a stunning loss of fiber from our diets. The authors compared an estimate of daily wheat fiber consumption in 1770 to that of 1970, showing that consumption of such fiber went from 6.26 grams per day down to .2 grams per day! Of course wheat constitutes a small portion of total dietary fiber (don't forget your veggies), but that is a very stunning difference. They also showed how the reduction of wheat dietary fiber and increased sugar consumption mirrored the increase in obesity.

I'm currently about half way through the book, but what I just read struck a chord with me, as it confirms my own experience with weight gain and loss during the past few decades. They point out that studies long ago established that most nutrients and calories are absorbed in the small intestine, and that the efficiency of the small intestine decreases as fiber increases. In effect, more fiber means a faster transit time and more calories being excreted as waste. This absolutely banishes the notion that weight gain is a result of excess calories - weight gain is as much a result of chronic constipation! Of course, exercise also increases bowel motility, which is why I was able to eat 5,000 to 7,000 calories of pure junk food every day (think of a six-pack of donuts for breakfast every morning) and maintain a healthy body weight in the mid-1980s while riding hundreds of miles per week (yes, that is a lot of miles, but probably not enough to soak up 7,000 calories per day - I certainly wasn't racing back then).

It is easy to see if you are getting a good balance of fiber in your diet by checking your (hopefully) daily output against the Bristol Stool Analysis Chart. It should consistently be 3s and 4s. It's interesting that the German's knew about the importance of stool analysis long before the Bristol chart came out, which is why the Platform Toilet is fairly ubiquitous in that country. It provides a shelf that permits close up examination of the day's efforts, which is invaluable if you have a large number of "sinkers" vs. "floaters" (the latter is caused by increased fat content, by the way). NOTE: There is one other major stool category - the "mixers," effectively the Type 7 stool shown on the Bristol chart.

The interesting thing is, if you are getting sufficient fiber from foods as opposed to supplements, you increase your satiety and it is much easier to resist overeating the calorie dense carbohydrate foods that cause weight gain for most people. And when you do eat these sorts of calories your body is less likely to absorb as much of them, a very win-win situation!