S.P.E.E.D. The Only Weight Loss Book Worth Reading!
by Jeff Thiboutot MS, CN and Matt Schoeneberger MS, CES
Reason Productions, LLC
S.P.E.E.D. stands for sleep, psychology, exercise, environment and diet. It is always dangerous to make acronyms like this because I will be tempted to provide my own words for the letters. I’ll try to resist this time. In chapter one we are told that studies show weight is strongly affected by genetics but that the recent, rapid gain many Americans have been experiencing is probably not genetic. I would agree that such a large increase in less than 50 years can’t be genetic.
Toward the end of the book is a discussion on critical thinking which brings up some good points. One example is ad hominem. Telling someone they are ugly and their mama dresses them funny may be emotionally satisfying but not a relevant argument. I would also say that age of a study (an argument we hear a lot) is irrelevant and betrays a certain naïveté about how much modern science has been corrupted by corporate agendas.
The authors eventually get around to talking about calorie restriction and tell us 20-40 percent restriction is necessary for weight loss. This is followed by a long list of benefits to calorie restriction. Lower insulin tops the list. There is no explanation of the fact that calories from carbohydrates tend to spike insulin levels while calories from fat tend not to. So, is calorie restriction a radically new idea? I don’t think so.
Calorie restriction has been tried from every angle for many decades now. It can give you short term results but unless you have the willpower to starve yourself for the rest of your life, those lost pounds will be back with their friends. Calorie restriction has been literally tried to death. Is the population thinner as a result? I don’t think so.
The advice starts to get really dizzy after this point. The authors mention the importance of sleep prominently on the front cover and elsewhere in the book. They also say caffeine is a good way to lose weight. Do they also mention it is a good way to lose adrenal function? And sleep? I don’t think so.
They go on to say stevia is the best sweetener and their second choice is a good, old-fashioned, traditional. . . artificial sweetener? We are going from dizzy to scary now. We are also led to believe canola oil is a good oil. Oh, and try the Zero Impact bars too. I never heard of them so I looked them up. The listed ingredients include yummies like maltitol, glycerin, low DE corn syrup, brown rice syrup and xanthan gum. Elsewhere on the same page they say the bar has no maltitol. Other sites say erythritol, which is a similar sugar alcohol. Are these things components of traditional diets? I don’t think so.
The appendix provides a list of other protein bars, which I looked over. Jay bars have agave syrup, hydrolyzed whey protein, xylitol and natural flavors. Elev8me bars have whey protein isolate, low fat and high fiber. Fuco Protein Chocolate Macadamia Nut Crunch bars have soy lecithin and so on. Should I give this book a thumbs up? I don’t think so.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2010.
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Rebuttal of the book view
Rebuttal of the book review by Tim Boyd
By Jeff Thiboutot & Matt Schoeneberger (authors of the book)
As confident as we are in the material that we have published we know that there will be people who disagree with varying amounts of it. In fact, we hope that others can find some weaknesses in our arguments so that we can continually improve our recommendations. But the errors in Mr. Boyd’s review are so egregious that you would think it was a joke or we were being punked. But it was not a joke and Ashton Kutcher did not jump out of a van. Again, a thoughtful critique is welcomed, but one that seems to be blatantly flawed in its facts and logic is not acceptable. The following is our attempt to set the record straight. The flow of the rebuttal will follow the flow of the review.
Because of the multiple factual and contextual errors, our rebuttal is fairly lengthy and will not fit in the comments section. To read the entire rebuttal go here http://speedweightlossbook.com…al-errors/. For now here a couple of key points.
First, the reviewer does not give a fair representation of the main them of the book, which is the Bio-Psycho-Social concept.
Second, Mr Boyd states that we do not mention fat or the need for a high fat diet; you must be kidding! This is probably the most egregious error in the review… We state multiple times that we recommended a high fat diet. The first page of the diet chapter (p.85) we state “Eat a low carbohydrate, medium protein, HIGH FAT diet” [emphasis added]. This is the second of nine bullets of the Do this… section. Does it get any clearer than that? Here are some more examples. On page 90 we state “We recommend a low carb, medium protein, high fat diet”. We then discuss the benefits and safety of ketogenic diets, which is, or should be, a high fat diet. We state “During a ketogenic diet…the body makes ketones in the liver from fats, which are a great fuel source for the muscles and the brain” (p.9smilies/cool.gif. Then in the Doing SPEED chapter our example diet plans are high fat. Based on the example for calculating the macronutrient needs of a person, the resulting diet is 49% fat (p.15smilies/cool.gif. For the week of example meals, the average intake has 49% fat (p.160). How does this information equate to “no mention of fat’?
We hope that if you read Mr. Boyd’s review you will also read our entire rebuttal so that you can make an educated decision about the quality of information we present.
Corrections
We have corrected the most egregious error mentioned in the previous post and I do apologize. That was pretty bad. Apparently there was also some erroneous information on the site I consulted about ingredients (I did mention the conflicting info in the original text of the review). As for the other “errors” we will have to agree to disagree.