Devlin Brown at the water cooler: Don’t be a slave to your hormones or social media algorithms

Did Dr Tim Noakes really advise against exercise in efforts to lose weight? Surely you disagree? This is why I stay away from X, formerly Twitter. 

X, the great gift to humanity by the robot-like son of our soil who left for greener pastures, is a toxic cesspit of misinformation and lies.

Yes, there’s truth, too. But who is interested in that? In 2021, a box-office flop called Chaos Walking centred on a dystopian future where everyone could hear each other’s thoughts. Terrifying. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you ... X. A phone and some data is all it takes to enter a dark parallel world built on confirmation bias algorithms that suck you into your own dystopia.

Dr Tim Noakes said nothing of the sort. When jumping onto sports minister Gayton McKenzie’s timeline he actually said that exercise alone is an unreliable way to lose weight sustainably, and that by making dietary changes (and we know which changes he advocates) weight loss will be easier and, in turn, support exercise and exercise performance. 

First, McKenzie is doing a great thing. He is encouraging people to walk, run and move. He is documenting his own weight-loss journey. For that alone, he deserves applause.

However, we are talking about two people known for their penchant for courting controversy. Their fans and haters hover, waiting for the opportunity to attack. Obviously Noakes knew what he was doing by reintroducing the low-carb, high-fat diet (LCHF) into the zeitgeist.

It feels as though I have been sucked back into 2014 when I wrote, in depth, about the LCHF diet. No, I won’t call it Banting, as I hate the word. I hate trendy things that people discuss in Parkhurst. Fix your roads first. 

When I started this column five years ago an editor asked if I was “still Banting” because of the perception that I followed the diet. On the contrary, all I did was understand Noakes. You see, the pack of food pyramid cheerleaders don’t allow people to actually “hear” what he is saying.

LCHF changes how hormones are drawn into the equation — especially insulin but also leptin and a host of others. It forces the penny to drop that our hormonal environment is more powerful than our willpower, whether that’s avoiding insulin spikes or dealing with crippling ghrelin (hunger hormone) surges when eating less than we should. These are facts.

Have you ever been hangry? Irritable and angry because you are hungry? What Noakes was saying when he told McKenzie that in about nine months he would likely regain his weight and then some, is that he was likely to eventually succumb to hunger and the sweet, processed stuff.

Do I agree? Look, I have seen many people, including family, shed 20kg, strut their stuff, and a year later weigh 30kg more. I agree with Noakes, and everyone else, who calls sugar and processed carbohydrates the driver of our obesity pandemic. Sugar is highly addictive.

Unlike a LCHF adherent, I do eat natural unprocessed carbohydrates such as sweet potatoes and butternut. But, my blood-sugar levels are normal. In my life, irrespective of how I exercise, I have lost the most fat when I either cut out carbs completely, or cycle days of eating carbs such as butternut and days of avoiding them altogether. On the other hand, bodybuilders are proof that you can become dangerously lean while eating carbohydrates, but that sport is hardly the epitome of health and wellness.

Yes, exercise burns calories and you need to be aware of calories in versus calories out, but what are those calories, and what are they doing to your hormones? The big controversy, obviously, is cardiovascular health. Mainstream medicine has not shifted, so a doctor’s advice will almost always be the antithesis of what Noakes and many others advocate. That’s the crux: The role of fat and sugar in heart health, and it’s a topic that deserves more than two sentences.

What Noakes told McKenzie is true. Yes, he must exercise, but he should also consider changing what he eats, not just how much he eats. And a good starting point is dumping sugar and refined carbohydrates. Hormones are like social media algorithms — they pull the strings.