Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

So, Good Calories, Bad Calories is my favorite book. It has certainly changed my life and possibly saved it. And this book is supposed to be the shorter and simpler version of it.

I'm not sure the summarization has done the book much good. Pretty much all of the argument is there, but the tone is more polemic and less factual, and for me that makes it less convincing. For instance, when he talks about the idea that fat is more fattening because it is more enengy dense, he does say that this idea is incredibly simplistic, but he does not mention the experiments that refute it.

On the other hand, the part of the book that covers what diet to follow once you are convinced there is something wrong with carbohydrates is expanded and improved compared to Good Calories. He is very precise about the comparative benefits of different diets, and also about where we just don't know yet what would be preferable.

Some of the other reviews seem to think this is a diet book. It is not. It is a book that investigates why most diets don't work, why some do, and what you should look for in a diet if your first concern is your health, not your weight.

In short, if you can handle Good Calories, Bad Calories, I would definitely recommend that one over this book. But if you find it too long or too difficult, by all means read this book.

This book did not add much to my knowledge base. It was a push for a carb-free (not just low carb) diet. He spoke a lot about insulin resistance, which is an issue my family deals with, as well as diabetes. He gave a lot of research proving that the eat less, move more plan promoted by doctors did not work in most cases. He even gave a shout out to Pennington Biomedical Research in my hometown for their research on insulin resistance and nutrition. However, he did not give enough research, in my opinion, to prove that a high meat and high fat, carb-free diet would not cause problems with heart disease. This is an area of concern for my family and I would have liked more research about that. He briefly mentions that cholesterol could increase temporarily, but should go down. Not factual enough for me.

What I appreciated most about this book was the comprehensiveness of Taubes’ assessment. He leverages multiple historical findings, complete with questioning about why modern researchers ignore some of the same. The arguments in this book also leverage biochemistry, empirical research, and basic logic. If lowering carbs isn’t a universal solution, there’s at least enough here to make the reader want to take a step in that direction and to expect medical researchers to do so as well.

In a nutshell: the author wants you to avoid all carbs and eat lots of meat and minimal fruits (because they'll make you fat like carbs) and minimal veggies. Sounds like a heart attack diet to me. This entire book had me wondering how much money the author was getting paid from the meat industry. I dog eared the pages of the book with every intention of writing about each problem in his theory, but I don't have the time. Let me just say, not every carb is created equal, obviously it's healthier to have a potato than a pastry, but according to the book it isn't even okay to eat a potato or corn or certain beans. This book gets zero stars from me, because it could be potentially dangerous for someone to follow this misleading book.

The Robert Atkins very high protein and fat with minimal carbohydrates diet was very popular in the 1960s. It was also one of the few under which I had some real success. Mr. Taubes provides detailed but understandable (and citation filled) documentation of why high consumption of sugar and other carbohydrates is what has caused today's obesity epidemic. The cause of overweight is neither inactivity nor overeating in general but the recent advice to cut down on protein and increase grains, fruits, and sugars.

I found this book highly persuasive, particularly given my own experience. This is Not a diet book per se, but there's little doubt in my mind that a change in my own diet (despite the greater load on the environment) is necessary if I'm ever to get off the pounds that continue to creep up on me.

Not a five star only because it's as simple as it can be, but it can hardly be totally lightweight as he goes into lengthy discussions about the lack of factual support for today's eating recommendations and why a practically no carbohydrate diet works far better for both weight and health.

This is a better-written and shorter version of Good Calories, Bad Calories.

I cannot stress enough how important this book is in our diet and weight-obsessed culture. This book takes the message from Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories and distills it to the basic concepts. That concept is that the diet advice we've been given over the last 60+ years is wrong. Not only wrong, but has had dire adverse effects on the health of our world.
With clear and concise words, Taubes demonstrates how our current advice came into being, tracing it from the beginning and explaining the science in easy to understand terms. From this, the reader clearly learns how carbohydrates, proteins, and fat interact with the endocrine systems and how they provide energy to the body. The science indisputably shows that when insulin works correctly, the body maintains a proper weight (based on genetics). But if the insulin processes in the body are damaged, then carbohydrates directly caused the accumulation of fat, leading to weight gain. It is the carbohydrates in our food, not the fat, that causing obesity. Taubes proves that using science.

The end result for the reader is the knowledge that the diet advice given by the government to prevent obesity and diabetes may be the very thing that has caused the epic rise of both in our society.
If you have every struggled with your weight, ever been confused by the difference between the advice and the results, ever doubted your willpower and blamed yourself for your failure to lose weight - READ THIS BOOK.

Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, none more damaging or misguided than the "calories-in, calories-out" model of why we get fat, and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin's regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers persistent questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat, and what foods should we avoid?

Excellent review of medical studies of obesity over the last 100 years in different cultures, countries,economic groups and proves that over eating. lack of exercise, are not the cause, rather carbohydrates, increased blood sugar and insulin resulted in the storage of fat. Borrow audio version of this book once per year to remind myself of what works and what doesn't. Taubes book "Good Calories Bad Calories" is too scientific to read comfortably. This audio version of Why We Get Fat is the best

Gave me a better understanding of how to use the stored energy in my fat, and I had a productive conversation with my new endocrinologist as a result. I can't see extreme low carb as a lifestyle for me, but I am inspired to make some changes.

A very interesting view of nutrition and why we get fat. I plan to aggressively follow the guidance in this book and see if it works. Calories in vs calories out does not work for me. Now I know why.

When you've been told for years that eating fat is what makes you fat, it takes quite an effort to undo all that conditioning. Gary Taubes's book is a good introduction to the physiology of weight gain and the history of scientific thought on the subject. It's also an important work in that he makes it clear that having a lot of fat makes people sedentary and makes people eat more, not the other way around.

It's easy to blame overweight people for their condition: what this book does is move the blame firmly back on to the types of food we are eating. Cheap, refined carbohydrates (particularly sugar) are the bad guys, not the humans who eat them. And it's the poorest people who are the most vulnerable. I had never thought of obesity as being a sign of malnourishment before, but this book spells out the reasons for it.

Taubes's writing style is clear (if a little humourless) and he has a firm grasp of a broad swathe of research on the subject. I thought he was rather dismissive of vegetarian and vegetable-rich diets, which troubled me a little. I'm not sure encouraging everyone to eat lots of meat is a sustainable way forward. And although I agree with him that exercise isn't much use as a weight-loss mechanism without dietary change, I think he could have made it clearer that it's still a good thing to do for other reasons. I can imagine a lot of people reading this book and taking it as permission not to do any exercise at all.

Extremely persuasive, although a more detailed eating plan would have been helpful.

I just skimmed the beginning and the book is due - basically no white flour, refined sugars and processed foods. It is just so much easier to eat a cookie than an orange!

Stupid library ebook time limits, also wish I could renew ebooks. IOW, I wasn't able to finish this. Anyway, as for the book, as much as I read: fascinating stuff, especially on the hormonal aspect of weight gain and loss. Good reminder for me, too, after gradually gaining back some of the weight I lost a few years ago, of what I did that worked, and how to go back to that. (Salad & steak FTW.) Definitely want to read it again all the way through.

Let's start with, I get his thesis, too much carbohydrates in our diet, and we need to move to a more protein based diet. To a large extent I agree. However the quantity of fat he espouses in a diet isn't compatable with my body. And this is why I'm not scoring this book higher. He's talking about a kind of diet that's a one-size-fits all type and that doesn't ring true with me. While on average this will work for many people, it won't work for everybody and this is something I find lacking in a lot of diet books.

As a gluten-intolerant person, who has to be careful that they get enough of certain vitamins in their diet, this diet is close to what would suit me, and I'm certainly going to be less guilty about changing the balance of protein to carbohydrate in favour of protein in my diet, however I like some carbs and find that they keep my system happy.

He basically lops the fat off the top of the food pyramid and inverts it, saying that carbs should be at a minimum and mostly from green vegetables, fruit should be minimised due to sugar, refined sugar should be pretty much eliminated, fat should be embraced and protein should be the bulk of your food.

Worth reading for the science behind it. Not for everyone.

I'm pretty impressed with the breadth and depth of the research presented here. Gary Taubes lays out a convincing argument about what carbohydrates do to our bodies. Considering how much research and analysis is assembled, I'm not one to argue with his conclusions. I wish certain individuals recommending health guidelines would be this thorough.

This is less of a diet book and more of an explanation about how our bodies deal with different types of food. It makes a good case to eat less carbohydrates if you want to lose weight.

I discovered this book from an article in Newsweek, and after reading Rethinking Thin earlier this year and being impressed by its scientific approach I decided to venture once more into the hotly-debated world of diet & nutrition where the potential for pseudo-science is high. Disclaimer: I'm not a nutritionist, nor a biologist. I read these topics with an open mind and a skeptical eye.

Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes spends the first 90% of the book explaining, with a higher-than-average amount of scientific detail, what happens in our bodies when we eat the things we do. The data is backed up by tested experiments and historical accounts. Many of the specifics are devoted to addressing and debunking some of the diet notions we hold to be true. Calories in, calories out is one example that is almost certainly false even though many still believe it.

The diet in question is a no sugar, no starch approached, and the reasoning is based on what our pre-history ancestors subsisted on for thousands of years before we started refining and processing everything. The book doesn't advocate hunting your own meals or anything like that, but it does recommend avoiding those foods which have only been around a short time on the evolutionary scale, which is to say not enough time for our bodies to adapt.

The last part of Why We Get Fat is instructional. This includes how to change your eating habits and some specifics on portions and meal recommendations. The science makes sense to me and I'm intrigued enough to try eating this way for a while.

Taubes has, in this short book, presented most of the information in The Diet Delusion (Good Calories, Bad Calories, in North America), but in a more accessible form for the lay reader, as apparently requested by many medics who had read the original book. The references and science aren't there to the same degree but as a result it is more readable.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone with even the vaguest interest into why the western world is getting fatter, though if you are interested in the politics, go to the original. As for a personal recommendation, I have weighed the same, give or take a pound or two and two pregnancies for 25 years, but I thought I would experiment and see what a low carb diet felt like: I only did it for 2 weeks, felt fine and not at all hungry, continued to drink wine, and lost over 2 kg! And I seem to be getting up the hills faster too, which can't be bad :-)

Substance: Contains useful information on why the "received wisdom" of dieting doesn't actually work; and why high-protein, high-fat, low=carbohydrate diets do.
Style: Accessible, journalistic but with references. About 3 times as long as it needed to be.

At my wife's recommendation, I read this book. I am not one for following fad diets, but have tried South Beach in the past. What I like about this book is Taubes doesn't present a diet. He presents research. Lots of it. I haven't seen a book this full of research since college. He explains things from the cellular level up and it really makes sense why things are the way they are. He discusses how a few flawed research studies in the 60's have led to the obesity problem in America. We have been following the wrong advice all along. This book is very easy to read, considering the depth of material covered. I was engaged all the way through and I don't like medical 'stuff'.