The good fat bad fat controversy!

I'll eat & cook with real butter in preference to a dubious chemical mix every time.

If I have the strength/energy/time/money I even make my own butter using a (thoroughly cleaned out) jam jar, cream & a whole lot of shaking - excellent cardio exercise!

I'm in my early fifties so the bits of childhood I can remember properly are cusp of 1960s and into 1970s - I was just about an adult as we moved into the 1980s.

I was once talking with a gym owner the exact same age as myself. He said; Remember when we were growing up? There was maybe one fat kid per class. And they were just a bit chubby by modern standards, not fat like you see now.

We're living in a world full of processed food spun from cheap carbs, cheap sugar, cheap vegetable oils and made palatable by copious amounts of salt, flavourings and kept from decay by lashings of preservatives. All this suits the food industry very well; you don't build transnational corporations on raising carrots or broccoli and selling them as raw veg.

Human beings aren't evolved to eat this processed carp and it's unsurprising that the consequences are to be seen in horrendous girth and appalling health outcomes like type 2 diabetes. If things carry on as they are, never mind worsen further, people will be burying their children not the other way around.:(

I'm low-carbing and eating a lot of vegetables, a small amount of fruit and as much meat, fish and cheese, with olive oil, avocado and dark chocolate as I like each days. And, like just about any overweight person on such a diet, I am losing 1-2 lb per week effortlessly.

Eating fat doesn't make you fat - your body turns carbohydrates into glucose and what the liver and muscles can't hold gets turned into saturated fat and stored on your person, to be drawn on when the hunt fails tomorrow and you and the tribe don't have anything much to eat for the next week or so.

We don't have periodic famines so we store fat which we don't draw down on, and add to it yearly.

A generalisation, of course, but for me low fat = messed with so a low fat diet isn't something that I go for. GQ I know you're a Mark's Daily Apple and I too lost weight, and got my health back on track following a primal way of eating so I fullly get where the messages about fats being beneficial.

Neither side seem to be backing down on this with the low fat side calling the fat side irresponsible. Personally I find the science behind fats fascinating plus, as a wholesome-and-not-messed-with eater I go for fats that haven't be modified, extracted, added to etc.

All this can be confusing but a diet that is close to what nature provides can't to too far wrong. For me it's field over factory that is important and by sticking to those principles I need not worry about headlines or research. Moderation.

I'm sad that your sister has been yo-yo dieting and has messed up her metabolism. This is unfortunately a common outcome for serial dieters. Being 1 stone up on your teen weight in your twenties is no biggie but imagine you're my age and have added a stone per decade, and thing start to look a little less innocuous.

I'm not a serial dieter. In fact, I am a never dieter, as I was formerly very active and had one of those hollow-legs types of metabolism and mostly ate the see-food diet.

In middle age, and menopausal, I was experiencing steady weight gain until I was 5 stone overweight. That was impacting most unpleasantly on my joints and general well-being. Exactly how unpleasant it was is definately TMI for the thread, but even 1.5 stone down in 3 months is reaping huge benefits.

If you diet by severe calorie restriction, it inevitably comes back when you resume whatever normal eating pattern lead you to the overweight in the first place.

There are apparently 3,500 calories secreted in 1 lb of fat on a human being, which is considerably more than a day's needs. There is also growing evidence that a body will want to re-set itself to the former (highest) weight and will aim to achieve that, meaning a person had to further restrict calories to achieve the same results, which you have noticed in your sister. This is miserable. And suggests that you don't want to allow your highest to be very high at all.

There is a growing body of evidence that the genetically-engineered dwarf wheat which came into consumption in 1960, is responsible for many many modern health woes, especially gross stimulation of appetite for other carbohydrate-heavy foods.

Until I reset my metabolism by carb restriction, I was a total sugar-fiend, a bit like thriftwizard's daughter, with an uncontrollable urge to stuff my face with sugary rubbish and bread. Once reset, which takes from a few days to a week or so, I am effectively burning my own body fat down. I also don't crave sweeties or get the wobbles and have to eat every 1-2 hours.

This isn't a diet in the sense of doing something for a while to achieve some weightloss, then back to business as usual, rinse and repeat ad nauseum (sic). It's a permanant change of lifestyle.

Typical breakfast chez GQ; 8-10 veg salad, heaping plateful, sprinkled with sesame seeds and containing two hardboiled eggs and a slug of cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. Lunch is a smaller version of same with a very small amount of protein such as cold cooked meat.

Snack at about 4 pm (timed meds with food requre this) was yesterday some celery sticks with camenbert. Evening meal, something like more fresh veg and a modest amount of meat or fish. Little or no spuds. Snacks not usually required but might have a few nuts if feeling peckish.