Something very strange happened on 30 Dec 2024. I stepped on smart scales the first thing in the morning when getting out of bed. That’s habitual. But the strange part was body weight reading which was exactly the same as on 30 Dec 2023, 366 days ago. 82.2 kg.
That may look a non-event but not to me. The body weight was up 11 kg in the last 8 weeks, from kinda of ideal point. Before that it was down 21 kg in 6 months. Having fluctuated between 92.45 kg and 71.30 kg in what was an exact calendar year (that’s 2024), the body weight on 30 Dec 2024 was at exactly the same value as 366 days ago.
I had to dig the data. I just couldn’t keep the weight down in December. I go to gym 3 times a week. I try to eat relatively clean and I’m fully aware when I slip on bad food. And in December I slipped on bad food a multiple more times than in November. I’m aware of trigger points and I’ve data.
For most of the days in 2024 I’ve body weight values and Y/N data if I’ve consumed any alcohol, bread or added sugar the previous day. No quantities, just ‘yes or no’ to indicate if such consumption took place. I don’t use added sugar as such, in records it’s marked as ‘Chocolate’ since that’s the product where it usually sneaks into my food. Some days have incomplete data – say, when I’m out on long hike (6 weeks in 2024), I have no body weight data. But there were 252 days with full data sets. All I had to do was to dig the data and that’s what I did.
The conclusions are astounding and statistically significant. As a disclosure, I’m very biased against consumption of bread (anything made of flour), added sugar and seed oils. I call them ‘idiot foods’ as consuming those substances have no upside (as confirmed by both empirical observations and scientific data). Yet, that stuff is so omnipresent and so widely consumed that, unless one lives like hermit in the jungle, it’s impossible to avoid it. Addictive nature of flour and sugar doesn’t help either. Childhood conditioning is the worst. I’m still on the journey to eliminate that bad stuff from my diet completely. But 2025 could be the year when I finally will achieve it. In fact, my commitment is not to touch anything of it (flour, sugar, seed oils) in 2025. And that commitment was done days before I looked at 2024 data. I knew already that it’s the main problem and weight gain may be just one of the symptoms.
But now to data. All 252 days worth of clean data. Here are the findings form statistically significant cases (whereas at least 30 data sets exist):
Consumed no bad stuff (no alcohol, no bread, no sugar): 143 days, average weight loss was 462 g/day. On 72% (103 days out of 143) of the days the weight was either unchanged or reduced.
Consumed bread but no other bad stuff (no alcohol, no sugar): 38 days, average weight increase was 301 g/day. On 61% of days (23 out of 38), the weight increased.
Bread was consumed (38 days) 1.7x as often as alcohol (23 days) and 2.2x more often than sugar (17 days).
Even if the weight gain stats look dramatic, it should be noted that the amount of bad stuff consumed on any particular day was usually low – like 2-4 small slices of wholegrain bread, one small chocolate or 2 pints of beer.
There are other data sets which give a hint but lack statistical significance due to insufficient number of cases:
Consumed all bad stuff in one day (alcohol, bread, sugar): 7 days, average weight gain a massive 1.04 kg/day with weight increase in 86% of cases (6 days out of 7)
Consumed just alcohol but no bread or sugar: 23 days, average weight gain 478 g/day with weight increase in 61% of cases (14 days out of 23).
Consumed just sugar but no alcohol or bread: 17 days, average weight gain 412 g/day with weight increase in 71% of cases (12 out of 17 days).
Consumed bread and sugar but no alcohol: 11 days, average weight gain was an eye popping 1.16 kg/day with weight gain in 91% of time (10 out of 11 days). Curiously, this is even more than when alcohol was in the mix.
Consumed alcohol and sugar but no bread: 4 cases, average weight gain 1.34 kg/day with weight gain in 75% of cases (3 out of 4 days). Well, this is the least reliable data set as there was one outlier day [4.5 kg weight gain] on very small sample size.
Consumed alcohol and bread but no sugar: 5 cases, average weight gain 620 g/day with weight gain in every singe case (100%, 5 days out of 5).
Looking at the data I see that in whatever combination to place alcohol, bread and sugar, it goes from very bad to worse. That makes me think that there is no useful dose of that stuff, just like there is no useful dose of cigarette smoking. Consumption is driven by addiction, conditioning and omnipresence of the product. Just look at what’s on offer in any big city in street cafes and bakeries – bad stuff everywhere, often sold with big pride about the locally made product. Alternatives scarce, if any. The same in airports, train stations etc.
I’ll stay off bread and sugar in 2025. Whatever it takes. I’ll unintentionally insult more people with my opinion, like it has happened before. But I trust my elementary math skills and empirical observations more than anybody who poisons people for profit or who lives in blissful lack of knowledge or subdues to childhood conditioning (those grandma homemade cakes … ) and is victim himself.
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