Last September, the Williams College psychologist Susan Engel had an opinion piece in the New York Times on the value of standardized testing as a means of assessing the quality of a child’s education. Engel argued that there was scant evidence that these tests were of any value at all, and that they should be replaced by the many “promising techniques” that psychologists had already identified as valuable in assessing the learning of our children.
So what does this have to do with nutrition and weight control? Well, among the promising techniques, wrote Engel, was this one:
Researchers have also found that the way a student critiques a simple science experiment shows whether he understands the idea of controlling variables, a key component in all science work. To assess children’s scientific skills, an experiment could be described to them, in writing, and then they would explain how they would improve upon it.
So the value of controlling variables in a scientific experiment is something that a reasonably well-educated child supposedly understands. And what I want to know is why don’ t nutritionists understand it and those researchers out there doing diet trials and studying obesity and weight regulation. Because their failure to do so — and I would argue that it may be a willful failure — has led to what may be another of the great misconceptions in modern nutrition research. In particular, that carbohydrated-restricted diets are “valuable tools” in the arsenal against overweight and obesity, but they’re just one of the dietary tools.
This belief stems from the last decade of diet trials comparing carbohydrate-restricted diets (usually Atkins) to low-calorie, low-fat diets. Instead of thinking of low-carbohydrate diets like Atkins as deadly, which was formerly the case, nutritionists and dietitians (or at least most of them) now think of these diets as useful, just as other diets, low in calories or fats, are also useful. The idea now is that some people do well on carbohydrate-restricted diets and some people do well on low-fat diets, and maybe this is a result of whether they happen to be insulin sensitive or insulin resistant or maybe its just a product of their particular food tastes and preferences.
And this belief, of course, is based on the notion that we get fat for reasons other than the nutrient composition of the diet – probably because of some combination of our genes, our tendency to eat to much and our sedentary behavior – and so the diet that works best is the one that allows us to most comfortably restrict our intake of total calories.
This was the conclusion, for instance, of a 2008 article by Chris Gardner and his colleagues at Stanford, reporting on a subgroup analysis of their famous A to Z study. (The trial is famous, at least, in the low-carb world, because the Atkins diet resulted in twice the weight loss of any of the three other diets tested, and it also did a better job of improving heart disease risk factors). In this follow-up study, Gardner and his colleagues reported that in each diet group — from the Atkins diet on the high end of the dietary fat to carbohydrate ratio to the Ornish diet on the low end — the subjects who actually adhered to the diet lost the most weight. Hence, their conclusion: maybe adherence to a diet is more important than the actual nutrient composition of the diet. Here’s the concluding paragraph:
The main findings of this weight loss study, presented in a previous report, indicated that while all three diet groups lost modest amounts of weight, the Atkins group at 12 months lost approximately twice the weight of the other groups. The findings presented here indicate that weight loss in the lowest tertile [third] of adherence was negligible in all three diet groups, and more pronounced in the highest tertile of adherence for each diet group. It appears that substantial differences in proportions of dietary macronutrients play only a modest role in weight loss success, and that success is possible on any of these diets provided there is adequate adherence. Getting individuals to adhere to whatever diet they choose to follow deserves more emphasis. It remains to be determined to what extent there is a need for dietary weight loss programs that are easier to adhere to vs identifying and addressing individual barriers to adherence, or both.
So the nutrient composition of the diet is less important than whether or not the subject can live with the diet and is willing to do so for as long as it takes — ideally, a life time.
This concept of low-carb diets being good for some people and low-fat for others is invariably reinforced by the fact that most of us know someone who has lost weight and kept it off on Weight Watchers or after reading Skinny Bitch or some other popular low-calorie diet book. As a result, we assume that dieting isn’t a one-sized fits all endeavor and that everyone is different – perhaps metabolically and hormonally, as well – and that what works for me won’t necessarily work for you, and vice verse.
So what does this have to do with controlling variables or even understanding the concept of controlling variables?
What researchers like Gardner and his colleagues do in these diet trials (and it’s the same thing most of us do when we think about those people who succeed on conventional diets or after reading diet books like Skinny Bitch) is make the assumption that a diet that is described as a “low-fat diet” is low in fat only and that’s why it works. And they also make the assumption that a diet that restricts total calories works (if it does) because it restricts total calories. Another way of saying this is that we all tend to assume — researchers and lay people alike — that when someone embarks on a low-fat diet, the only meaningful variable that changes in their diet is the fat-to-carbohydrate ratio. The ratio gets smaller. Fat consumption goes down and carbohydrate consumption goes up. And, by the same token, when someone tries to simply eat less, the only meaningful variable that’s changing is the total number of calories they’re consuming.
The most extreme or perhaps egregious example of this thinking was the recent publication by Gary Foster and his colleagues, comparing low-fat diets, as they described them, to low-carbohydrate diets. The title was “Weight and Metabolic Outcomes After 2 years on a Low-Carbohydrate Versus a Low-Fat Diet.” And here was the conclusion as stated in the abstract:
Successful weight loss can be achieved with either a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet when coupled with behavioral treatment. A low-carbohydrate diet is associated with favorable changes in cardiovascular disease risk factors at 2 years.
So the way the media and the nutrition community treated this was as further evidence that nutrient composition of the diet makes little difference in weight loss — maybe low-carb works for some of us, but low-fat works for others — although, in this case, maybe low-carb had some modest advantage when it came to heart disease risk factors.
But if you read this article carefully, you’d have noticed that there was another significance difference between the “low-fat” and low-carbohydrate diets. The low fat diet was a low-calorie diet also — “A low-fat diet consisted of limited energy intake (1200 to 1800kcal/d; less than or equal to 30 % calories from fat),” the authors explained. The low-carbohydrate diet was not calorie-restricted. And if Foster and his colleagues were being either intellectually honest or good scientists, they’d have defined the two diets to make this clear. Not “low-fat” vs. “low-carbohydrate”, but “low-fat, calorie-restricted” vs, “low-carbohydrate, calorie-unrestricted.”In other words they’d have acknowledged that there was at least one other variable that was different between the two experiments and had to be taken into account when interpreting the results — the amount of calories the subjects were instructed to consume. As we’ll see, there were also other variables that were changing, but this one — how much food can be consumed if desired — is a whopper.
It’s a whopper because it begs this question: is it the total calories consumed that is the variable determining weight loss? And, by the same token, is it the calories consumed (or expended) that determines how much weight we gain?
In this case, both diets resulted in roughly equal weight loss but those subjects randomized to the “low-fat” diet were instructed and counseled to semi-starve themselves (eat a maximum of 1500 calories for women, 1800 for men), while those counseled to eat low-carb were counseled and instructed not to worry about how much they ate and, one hopes, as this was an Atkins diet being prescribed, eat until they were full. So if weight loss is the same in both groups, doesn’t this suggest, at least, that weight loss can be independent of whether dieters semi-starve themselves or eat to satiety? And, if so, of course, wouldn’t you rather get to eat to satiety?
Had Foster and his colleagues understood what school children are supposed to understand, according to Engels, “the idea of controlling variables, a key component in all science work,” they may have decided to control for calories and instructed both groups that they could eat as much as they want, rather than just the low-carbohydrate group. Or, had they had the money to spend, they might have cooked meals for both groups of subjects, say, 2700 calories a day – either low-fat or low-carb – and encouraged both groups to eat all the food prepared. Such an experiment would have gone a long way to “controlling” for calories consumed or for whether the subjects were allowed to eat to satiety or not. In doing so, it might have revealed something meaningful about whether the nutrient composition of the diet plays a role in weight loss or weight gain independent of calories, which is one of the critical questions here. I’d hazard a guess that it surely does, but I could be wrong. It would be an interesting experiment to do and I’ll write considerably more on that in a later post.
As for the other mistake Foster, Gardner and their colleagues make when they assume that a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet (defining it correctly) is restricted only in fat, it’s the same mistake we make when we assume that someone who lost weight following Weight Watchers or after reading Skinny Bitch did it merely because something about these regimens got them to eat fewer calories and maybe fewer fat calories in particular. And this is the other mistake that suggests a lack of understanding of the idea of controlling variables.
Virtually any diet that significantly restricts the number of calories consumed, even a diet that is described as low-fat (because the subjects are instructed to reduce the proportion of fat calories they consume), will cut the total amount of carbohydrate calories consumed as well. This is just simple arithmetic. If we cut all the calories we consume by half, for instance, then we’re cutting the carbohydrates by half, too. And because these typically constitute the largest proportion of calories in our diet to begin with, these will see the greatest absolute reduction. If we preferentially try to cut fat calories, we’ll find it exceedingly difficult to cut more than 400 or 500 calories a day by reducing fat — depending on how much fat we were eating to begin with — and so we’ll have to eat fewer carbohydrates as well.
Put simply, low-fat diets that also cut significant calories will cut carbohydrates significantly as well, and often by more than they cut fat.
Here’s the math: Imagine we want to cut our daily calories from 2,500 to 1,500, hoping to lose two pounds of fat a week. And imagine that the nutrient content of our pre-diet meals is what the authorities consider ideal — 20 percent protein, 30 percent fat and 50 percent carbohydrates. That’s 500 calories of protein, 750 calories of fat and 1,250 of carbohydrates.
If we keep the same balance of nutrients but eat only 1,500 calories a day, we’ll be eating 300 calories of protein, 450 calories of fat and 750 calories of carbohydrates. We’ll be cutting protein calories by 200, fat calories by 300 and carbohydrate calories by 500.
Now let’s make this a “low-fat” diet and try to reduce our fat consumption from 30 percent of calories to, say, 25 percent of calories, which is significantly less than most of us will tolerate. We’ll now be eating 300 calories of protein, 375 calories of fat and 825 of carbohydrates. We’ll be cutting our fat calories by 375 a day, but we’re still cutting carbohydrates by 425. So even though the percentage of carbohydrates consumed on this “low-fat” diet goes up — from 50 to 55 percent — the absolute amount of carbohydrates consumed goes down, and goes down more so than does the calories from fat. And if we increase the amount of protein we eat, we’ll have to eat still fewer carbohydrates to compensate.
If we start off eating enough fat, as I said — say, 40 percent of our calories — we can actually cut fat calories more so than carbs, but carbs are still cut significantly. Imagine our 2500 calorie per day diet is 40 percent fat, 40 percent carbs and 20 percent protein. That’s 1000 calories of fat and carbs each, and 500 calories of protein. If we now cut that to a 1500 calorie diet that’s 30 percent fat and 50 percent carbohydrates, we’ll be eating 450 calories of fat, 750 calories of carbohydrates and 300 calories of protein. So fat calories will have dropped by 550 calories, but we’ll still have reduced carbohydrate calories by 250. Not an enormous amount but an amount that might still have an effect on the regulation of our fat tissue and so fat loss.
Here’s an example of how this plays out in a real dietary trial. Consider an Israeli trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2008 by Iris Shai and her colleagues. This trial compared a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet to a Mediteranean, calorie-restricted diet to a low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, unrestricted in calories. And, you’ll notice here, too, having explained that the first two diets are calorie-restricted and the latter diet isn’t, Shai and company get lazy and shorten their labeling of the diets so that they leave out the critical variable of whether the dieters are instructed or not to semi-starve themselves.
Let’s concentrate on the low-fat, calorie-restricted diet and the low-carb, Atkins diet. The changes in dietary intake and nutrients for the “low-fat diet” are shown in the first column. As you can see after 24 months, the subjects eating the low-fat diet were supposedly restricting calories consumed on average by 572 calories. The reduction in carbohydrates consumed, though, was 330 calories (82.8 grams per day times 4 calories per gram), compared to only a 170-calorie (18.9 grams per day times 9 calories per gram) reduction from baseline in fat. So the “low-fat diet” reduced carbohydrates nearly twice as much as it reduced fat.
The low-carbohydrate diet, on the other hand (the third column), reduced carbohydrate calories by 520 calories per day (129.8 grams per day times 4 calories per gram) and fat calories by a mere 15 calories (1.7 grams/day times 9 calories per gram). So certainly the low-carb diet was correctly described as a low-carb diet, and the question we have to ask is maybe the weight loss seen in the low-fat diet was also due to the restriction in carbohydrates. It is quite possible that even low-fat, calorie-restricted diets work because they restrict carbohydrates and maybe the reason they don’t work as well as the low-carb diets is they don’t restrict them as much. Or maybe they don’t work as well, on average, because they also restrict fat calories when dietary fat has little or no effect on body fat accumulation. We don’t know if this is true or not, but it could be true, and until these researchers realize that another variable is changing significantly on these low-fat, calorie-restricted diets – the amount of carbohydrates consumed — they’ll never bother to test it or take it into account in their interpretation of these clinical trials, and we’ll never know.
Now, here’s yet another variable that’s changing on these diets, and this one the researchers ignore entirely and make no attempts to quantify — the quality of carbohydrates consumed. Any subject in these diet trials and anyone who tries a serious weight loss program on their own (the twinkie diet, perhaps, not included) will make a few consistent changes to what they eat. And they’ll do this regardless of the instructions that they’re given or the diet to which they’re randomized in the trial.
Specifically, they’ll get rid of or cut way back on the high-glycemic index carbohydrates and the foods or drinks with the high sugar or HFCS content. They’ll do so because these foods are the easiest to eliminate and the most obviously inappropriate for anyone trying to get in shape. (And because for a almost 200 years these foods have been considered uniquely fattening.) They’ll stop drinking beer, for instance, or at least drink less beer or drink light beer instead. They might think of this as cutting calories, but the calories they’ll be cutting will be carbohydrates and, more importantly, they’re liquid, refined carbohydrates that are exceedingly easy to digest and so, perhaps, exceedingly fattening.
They’ll stop drinking caloric sodas – Coca Cola, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper – and replace them either with water or diet sodas. In doing so, they’ll be removing not just liquid carbohydrates but specifically sugars — sucrose or HFCS. The same is true of fruit juices. An easy change in any diet is to replace fruit juices with water. Dieters will get rid of candy bars, desserts, donuts and cinnamon buns. Again, they may perceive this as calorie-cutting – and maybe even a way to cut fat, which it is – but they’ll also be cutting carbohydrates, and specifically sugars with their high fructose content. And if sugars with their high fructose content are uniquely fattening as significant evidence suggests, then this reduction in sugar content may be precisely why the diets work. Starches like potatoes and rice, refined carbohydrates like bread and pasta, may also be replaced in these diets — even “low-fat” diets — by green vegetables and salads or at least whole grains, because for the past 30 years, we’ve been all told to eat more fiber and to eat foods that are less energy dense and less processed.
Even the very-low-fat diet made famous by Dean Ornish restricts all refined carbohydrates, including sugars, white rice and white flour. This alone could explain any benefits that result. Ornish’s rationale, as he described it in 1996 is a familiar one: “Simple carbohydrates are absorbed quickly and cause a rapid rise in serum glucose, thereby provoking an insulin response. Insulin also accelerates conversion of calories into triglycerides, [and] stimulates… cholesterol synthesis.”
Simply put, anyone who tries to diet by any of the more accepted methods (i.e., Weight Watchers), and anyone who decides to “eat healthy” as its currently defined, will remove the carbohydrates from the diet that may be — if the carbohydrate/insulin hypothesis is correct — the most fattening. And if they’re trying to cut calories, they’ll be removing some number of total carbohydrates as well. And if these people lose fat on these diets, this is a very likely reason why.
The same is likely to be true for those who swear they lost their excess pounds and kept them off by taking up regular exercise. Rare is the individual who begins running or swimming or doing aerobics regularly with the goal of losing weight and then doesn’t make any concomitant changes in what he or she eats. Rather beer and soda consumption will be reduced; sweet consumption will be reduced, and easily digested starches and high-glycemic index carbs are likely to be replaced by green vegetables and carbohydrates with a lower glycemic index.
So here’s the lesson, the moral of this story: before we assume that low-carbohydrate diets are just one tool in the dietary arsenal against overweight and obesity, and before we assume that everyone is different and that some of us lose weight and keep it off because we eat less fat (and more carbohydrates) and some because we cut carbs (and so eat maybe more fat), we should make an effort to understand the concept of controlling variables and look to see which variables are really changing and by how much. Because it’s quite possible that the only meaningful way to lose fat is to change the regulation of the fat tissue, and the science of fat metabolism strongly implies that the best way to do that, if not the only meaningful way, is by reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed and/or improving the quality of those carbs we do consume.
Now, one note about comments that I should have made in my last (and first) blog. I appreciate everyone who comments, but time constraints (earning a living, participating in my family life, etc.) makes it necessary that I keep my responses to a minimum. So I am going to thank everyone in advance for their comments. I will be reading all of them (up to the point, at least, that they degenerate into arguments between two or three particularly vociferous and contentious individuals), but I will be responding only to those that raise particularly interesting questions or issues, or point out any bone-head mistakes I may have made that need to be fixed.
Thanks, Gary for your insightful posts! I look forward to reading them!
Hi Gary and thanks for your time doing this blog. We talk about cutting carb vs. fat, but has anyone cut protein?
The reason I ask is that I have been eating a high-fat diet for years, with initially good fat loss results, but these results peaked after several months and fat loss stopped. I read this and started to cut protein, WITHOUT changing fat intake (carbs were already low):
http://knol.google.com/k/ron-mignery/protein-cycling-diet/2s3nmvrwklbxs/1?domain=knol.google.com&locale=en#
Fat loss resumed and I reached my goal bodyfat in a few weeks, after years struggling with simple low carb-high fat, which exercise didn’t seem to help much.
If low carb’s results are due to low insulin, I suppose low protein (which raises insulin too) would also yield the same results as low carb. Possibly better results with regards to fat-loss since studies show protein raises insulin for LONGER than carbs, though carbs do spike insulin more.
Basically the question is: if you’re buying into the insulin argument for fat storage, do you go low carb, or low protein? One could conceivably go both low carb and low protein, but that would only leave you with fat to eat and I doubt there would be long-term adherence with that.
Thanks for your thoughts in advance.
There’s such a thing as “fat fast”, introduced by Atkins, that intstructs one to eat only 1000kcal that consist of 90% fat a day; that’s four 250kcal or five 200kcal meals. This is only recommended for 3-7 days and only for obese and very insulin resistent patients that don’t get results by just changing to a low carb diet, or any other diet for that matter. It’s designed to shock the patient’s metabolism into using fat as a fuel.
thanks for your post; ive been looking into cutting back on protein for weight loss reasons, and i have read a few studies indicating that protein consumption contributes to quicker aging.
you raise a great question, but i feel carbohydrates are definitely more to blame for obesity levels we see today as they spike insulin, as you mention, and carbohydrates do not satiate like protein does. with carbs, you not only have the sugar spikes, but you crave more and more. its like that potato chip commercial where they say you cant have just one. with protein, i find that i get tired of it or satisfied by it much more easily than with carbs.
According to Ron Rosedale, you should be careful not to overeat protein. You should eat only enough protein to account for your growth and repair needs. He gives rules of thumb for figuring how much protein that is for a given individual. If I remember correctly, protein beyond that amount gets converted into glucose.
The thumbnail sketch of Rosedale’s advice is: just enough protein for growth and repair, enough healthy fats to make up the bulk of your calorie needs, as much non-starchy vegetables as you like, and no (or very little) grains, sugars, etc.
I’m surprised how Mignery’s book is so completely off the radar of these nutrition/paleo bloggers. What’s even more off the radar is his own blog! Only 3 reader comments in its existence.
http://proteincycling.blogspot.com/
I love it when a blog post points out something that should have been obvious to me, yet I had never thought of it before.
I had noted the “stacked deck” approach in recent studies where reduced calorie diets were compared to unlimited consumption for low carb diets. I always thought the human element was missing (i.e., satiety, and how well people tolerated the diets), but I never tumbled to the fact that all the restricted calorie diets also reduced carbs more than they reduce anything else.
Nice blog post about the way so many nutrition researchers don’t seem to know how to do a scientific study. Perhaps they are just trying to follow in Ornish’s footsteps, since he never learned to do a scientific study with controlled variables either.
I’m interested in gunthergatherer’s comment about cutting protein in addition to cutting carbs, and wondering if that might work for me. I’m one of those women for whom just cutting the carbs only works to a limited extent. I lose for a while and then stall, with my body quite happy to chug along on 1500/1600 calories with Atkins induction level carbs. I hope that someday you might do a post on the problems faced by many women for whom LC doesn’t completely solve the problem.
Thanks again for writing this blog. Looking forward to many great reads.
It sounds like you are not eating enough calories. You should do some more reading on the subject. Its ironic but you may need to eat MORE fat in order to lose weight. With that few calories your body is in starvation mode.
While I don’t disagree with the Basic dieting philosophy of this post, I feel a need to comment about a couple of statements here that “push my buttons”.
1. The above reference to “starvation mode” as though it were a TRUTH from on High.
partly because…
Even the “calories-in/calories-out experts” disagree about whether or not “starvation mode” is a dieting myth.
2. The above statement “it sounds like you are not eating enough calories”..
partly because…
While I understand that when bodybuilders, who are already in excellent shape, work to get “shredded” for a competition, this advice has extremely limited value. For the rest of us “normal folk” who are engaged in a battle against obesity, it is likely that any weight-loss which comes from following that particular advice is a matter of Association, not Causation.
I’ve been a frequent recipient of the first suggestion…the advice to “eat more calories” to lose weight…, by well meaning fellow dieters and alleged “experts”. I am one who has personally exhausted all possible experimentation of that option, which always personally resulted in only a negative effect—i.e. weight-gain. After my own experiences with that concept, I consider the statement: “it sounds like you are not eating enough calories” to be generally ignorant, frustrating, and even offensive advice…even when it is well-meaning.
I am sorry that comments made you upset that much. You are fighting your battle and know what you are doing. Each food combination and each medicine affects everyone with different result. It is just that people who listen to you or read your comments never know for sure, are you at the end of your rope or if you are strong, well equipped and almost enjoying the fight. We all mean well. Although, I do believe, that excessive hunger may interfere with he easiness of maintaining your weight loss through increasing levels of stress hormones. But all in a life is stress, exercise is stress, excitement is stress. Only you can see how it affects you.
Sorry, I meant JOEL Salatin!
Hello, Lee242,
I am just like you.You are not alone. 50 years old female, lost on the low-carbing 20 lb three years ago, then stack for 2 years on almost pure stage I Atkins (ones a while I ate some fruit). Then 6 months ago I eliminated all snacks, eating only 3 meals a day ( 2 eggs+butter as a breakfast, hand-size piece of meat + cabbage, green salad+some raw veggies for dinner) and weight started to move slowly at the rate of approximately 1 lb a month. Who knows, it may be wouldn’t last. Next step – “6 weeks cure for a middle -age middle” by Drs. Eades. (I am sure you will find their site http://www.proteinpower.com to be very educational).
Sometimes I think that it is good enough just not to gain.
If low carb has stopped working for you, I think you may benefit from the Protein Cycling Diet link I sent. Remember that both carbs AND protein raise insulin. Also, limiting protein seems to mimic the effects of starvation, causing cell autophagy and boosting of glutathione.
Low carb has been taken by many to mean all-meat. I think this overstresses the kidneys and liver, and supplies too much methionine and tryptophan, two amino acids which have been shown to reduce life span in rats and flies.
From what I get from this post, calorie content in the diet and carbohydrate amount are often correlated, so how to distinguish between those two effects when dieting?
One way is to not restrict calories while restricting carbohydrates, but it seems that carb restriction helps regulate hunger, so people eating this way seem to eat less (reported in GCBD and personal experience). Another way would be to eat very high carb but low calorie diets (e.g. a twinky diet) but this seems difficult because carbs increase hunger. Anyway, would there be an ideal mixture of micronutrients and calories that would allow to separate these two effects?
The Shai study that you report on comparing the low fat, mediterran and low carb shows that even the low carb restricted a lot of calories, so it is still not clear what the effect of a low carb diet with no calorie restriction would do. Anyway, some thoughts to ponder.
Jorge
Weston A. Price and Sally Fallon, Mel C. Siff (author of “Supertraining”), Ian J. King and Gary Taubes. This is where my list of most influential people in my life currently stands! I feel privileged, as many others surely do, to finally read your wise words of wisdom on a more periodic basis… Thank you Gary!
I thank you Gary for taking the time to share such excellent information. I have truly learned something.
In this article you mention replacing regular soda with diet soda. I am wondering if you (or anyone posting here) are aware of any decent studies on the effect of this. I ask because I recall you mentioning in GCBC that the sensation of sweetness can trigger an insulin response. Does the consumption of diet soda and other artificially sweetened food diminish the benefits of carbohydrate restriction?
I’m enjoying the blog so far, particularly the length of the posts. I’ll gladly take >weekly updates in exchange for quality.
a lot of low carb dieters use artificial sweeteners with no ill effect–by ill i mean weight gain.
As far as I know, artificial sweeteners likely produse small stage one insulin response without stage two. It may slightly diminish the effect of insulin restriction. I am afraid, no research will predict personal reaction for each individual.
These studies still only go to the 2 year mark. Almost any diet can work for the short term, but what percentage of these people were still maintaining their weight loss after five years? That’s what I want to know.
Ask your question on the Active Low-Carber Forums (http://forum.lowcarber.org/) on the LC Research/Media forum. I know that there are several ladies that have been “low-carbing” for five or more years. I my self have been LCing (Protein Power Lifeplan by Dr, Eades) since February 2002. While I never weighed more than 155, I got back down to the 143 range (+- 5) but more importantly halted my prostate cancer by restricting the available glucose (from lots of carbohydrates) that is the only energy source most cancer cells can use (Warburg effect) and supplementing with known cancer antagonists.
I might be a case of this point.
When low fat got really raging, I went to 25 grams of fat a day. Period. The book I read didn’t say anything about restricting calories, which was probably why I jumped on it; I was tired of running out of whatever I was supposed to count by 2pm.
I also started working out… and it took me working out 1 1/2 hours a day to get results. But I finally got them!
However, I got sick and couldn’t exercise at all anymore. That’s when this plan turned disastrous. I believe I was burning up so many carbs it had the result of restricting them.
I never could get back on this particular horse. I’ve been low carbing for six years with happy results. NO exercise. And… I’m a size smaller than I was on low fat.
If you haven’t already seen it, I recommend Gardner’s lecture on his study “The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?)” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo. The best part is when he admits he’s a 20-year vegetarian even though he recognizes Atkins dominance in certain health metrics.
Awesome job pointing to the ignored elephant in the research room. Essentially, all commonly tested reduced calorie diets are reduced carbohydrate diets, begging the question, is it the reduction of calories or the reduction of carbohydrate that produces the result?
In the Shai study the “Low Carbohydrate” dieters were consuming 40% of calories as carbohydrate at the end of 24 months. This is far from an Atkins prescription…i.e. they weren’t even actually testing a truly low carbohdyrate diet, which would certainly have less than 30% of calories from carbohydrate, and could have even less than 10% of calories from carbohydrate. In other words, one way to show that a “Low carbohydrate” diet performs no better than a “high carbohydrate diet” is to let the “low carb” dieters eat a high carb diet, then call it a low carb diet when you publish the results. Shoddy, shoddy “science.”
Any studies comparing high vs. low carb with fixed protein intake? No? Yeah.
In the 1950s, Charlotte Young of Cornell did studies on young men, where she kept calories and protein fixed — 1800 calories total, 460 calories of protein — and varied carbohydrate and fat content. As she put it in 1973, when she discussed these results at the first obesity conference held at NIH, Over the course of nine weeks, she reported, “weight loss, fat loss, and percent weight loss as fat appeared to be inversely related to the level of carbohydrate in the diets.”
Where is this data published? I wouldn’t mind a look at her results and conclusions.
You write a blog post about controlling for variables within clinical research and you post the Young dataset as backing for a claim? really?
My, my testy. I didn’t make any claim. I was asked if anyone did any
experiments holding protein constant. This is the only experiment I
know. Did I find it compelling. Not particularly, but she did it and
she published it.
Using her conclusions to promote a view point… sounds like a claim, but either way.
That is the only experiment you know? Golay had two pieces of data published ~15 years ago examining a fixed protein with two levels of carbohydrate in each trial. Neither are overly magical publications, but are still published.
And in terms of the reply to the other guy, 9 subjects (actually 8 in the end) for a parallel designed comparison examining bodyweight, or bodyfat, is substantially underpowered. Never mind the 3week period at the beginning of the 9weeks for spring break…
Here’s another one (one that wasn’t starving its subject on 1000 kcal/day):
http://www.jacn.org/cgi/content/abstract/29/3/198
One could argue poorl;y that they were clinically relevant, but considering the wide variability, it shows little benefit.
Your ‘another paper’ doesnt appear to be examining anything like what is being discussed, so I am unsure what you see the relevance as?
One of the most surprising things to me since you started this blog Gary is the behavior of those who disagree with you. I was excited to see rational, thoughtful debate. Instead we get folks behaving like cornered animals. It’s very disappointing and discouraging.
Anyhow, kudos to you for remaining above the fray. I’m sure it’s not always easy…
This cuts both ways. There have been plenty of ad-hominems from people who agree with Gary.
Please LEARN what ad hominem is. My blog has a post about this. You are using it wrongly.
It seems like new thought feels like an attack on that person’s bible. Why is a new idea threatening?
Nutrition should be based on science backed up by evidence from good quality studies, not beliefs & opinions based on the writings & lectures of “TOP EXPERTS” (to quote Razwell).
I would add to the list your personal experience. Check what is working for you. You may be suprised.
But what works for me (or you) may not work for others. That’s why anecdotal evidence can’t be used.
My point is,there is no fit for all solution. Your anecdotal evidence will work for you, no matter what is helping the next person. There is a lot research carefully design to illustrate somebody’s preexisting hypothesis. If some research indicates that Mediterranean diet works better for majority of diabetics , would I trust the date more than record of Dr. Bernstein? No. But no matter what I would trust,if I get a diabetes II, I would adjust my diet to BS levels.
I’m all for self-experimentation. On the subject of research, did you know that there are 33 publications written or co-written by Bernstein? See
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Bernstein%20RKAuthor
No. 2 is a good study and No. 1 is a review of the evidence. Therefore, I trust Bernstein as well.
No, I didn’t, just read his “the Diabetes Solution” book and listened his lecture on line. I plan to get his book for a weight loss.
Sorry, but your link didn’t work.
Try the link again. I’ve converted it into a shortened form.
Thank you very much, I will read it. I don’t believe that the doctor may have any side agenda .
So true! But why does the low carb community seem so dead set against acknowledging that the ELMM approach does work for a lot of people? I never had any problems losing weight, it was always keeping it off. And LC really threw me for a loop because the rebound from attempt 1 was more than the weight lost (lost 40, gained 100). I was used to yo-yo rebounds having done that so many times, but never before did I bust through some ceiling and become truly obese.
And, to the title of GT’s post, why go through such contortions to try to support a theory that it is carbs? I’ve often wondered how extreme low carbers can even live with their families “killing themselves with rat poison” and other such approaches to LC.
I’ve been told I did LC wrong this last time. Ummm. OK. If by wrong you mean I’ve gone from a 20/22W to an 8/10 and maintained while losing/recomposing (fitting smaller tops) for 2-1/2 years and counting. … again … ummmm OK. My weight has been going down or stable for going on 3-1/2 years now.
I’ve spent the past several months freeing myself of my “carb cripple” crutches and losing a teensy bit to boot.
I guess the point of this post is that GT’s mission is to convince us that the accepted science is wrong and we need some alternate hypothesis. I simply find his version of science sorely lacking.
What do you call “the acceptable science”? The are a lot of science around? Looks like you are too kind to the acceptable science.
How did you regain your weight after the low carb diet, how do you eat now? What is your trigger? I am just curious.
Since low-carbing is not my religion, just the way of eating that works for me, I have no problem serving carbohydrate to my family, mostly complex kind or add vegetables on side. I don’t keep any chips, candies, sodas at home, deserts served only on special occasions, very little sugar. My family cooperates.
Peer review, properly controlled studies.
Basically anything newer than a textbook version of the science from 1965. The GCBC Fact Check label over at my blog contains a wealth of information on this that I won’t repeat here.
I will challenge anyone here to read just the three following posts on my blog because they deal with books GT referenced in GCBC and conclude he represented their content accurately.
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/gcbc-reference-check-part-i-of.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/gcbc-reference-check-part-ii-of-insulin.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/gcbc-reference-check-part-iii-of-is.html
As to my personal story? I don’t have triggers any more, and I do credit LC for that. Food wasn’t my issue in the end. I can eat just a little of anything these days!
I just read the first link. Not terribly impressed yet. If G.T. choose some citation with which he agreed and left behind the part, where the author of citation puts on the same level red meat and pastry, is it a crime? I will read the rest very carefully a little bit later, right not I have to fulfill some family obligations and log out. Thank you for your posts.
Thank you for the links, it was very interesting.After reading, I was glad I was not in Harry’s shoes interviewing scientists for 5 years and trying to sort out all that information and choose how to represent the whole picture in his book. I wish G.T. put all the material he collected in the single book, I don’t believe it would be possible And I don’t understand why you decided to include in your links the subject of the glycerol phosphate? Gary admitted he made that mistake, you mast be aware of it. It looks like your prejudgment made that decision.
I have to admit, that what Keith Frayn sad about the effectiveness of weight loss through creating energy deficit,doesn’t ring with me. All his credentials can not overturn my personal experience.I am , indeed, on of those people who was glad to find out in GCBC the theory why we (or some of us) overeat. When I read his book, I had a feeling that pieces of a puzzle were falling in places. I am truly fed up with the “exercise more, eat less approach”. From my perspective, It is the road to hunger, fatigue, sport injuries, guilt (because you feel that no amount of exercise is enough), and eventually weight gain after weight loss. We mainly are discussing here a weight loss subject because it is the obvious theme of Garry’s blog. Lets not forget, that the weight gain is just the tip of an iceberg for the most. If I can temporarily loose weight while exercising more while starving, and not resolving any of my health issues, why I should consider it a reasonable option, when I can go low-carb and resolve my health issues(at least 5 in my case). Even if weight loss is also temporary (I hope not) , if carb elimination puts me in a better health, what else to desire?
One more thing. I appreciate the effort you are making seeking the truth about the weight issue, but you open hostility toward GT sometimes makes it a less enjoyable reading.
I don’t understand why you decided to include in your links the subject of the glycerol phosphate? Gary admitted he made that mistake, you mast be aware of it. It looks like your prejudgment made that decision.
Firstly, because I don’t believe GT has come fully clean on this. Even his two audio mea culpas conflict and he holds that the only error in GCBC is the absolute need for carb but the rest still is true. In his interview with Jimmy GT lamented not having a way to communicate his error in a blog. I await the “print” correction on that.
But, the point of the G3P reference check is that it never WAS true. By his own reference (Newsholme and Start) there was no evidence to support the theory that G3P was rate limiting or any of the whole more carbs = more g3p = more fat accumulation. He apparently made it up and claims that all of the texts were wrong. But his own reference got it right.
My point with Keith Frayn extends far past Metabolic Regulation. It has to deal with Taubes’ professed exhaustive research. Not only did Frayn at least give reason to question Taubes’ theory on the causes and progression of insulin resistance, but he’s just done so much in that area years prior to even the 2002 NYT article. This is also someone with whom GT has had personal communication. The thing is, there’s simply no excuse for GT’s inaccurate presentation of fat metabolism in GCBC, and it is proveably grossly inaccurate.
I have made a deliberate effort to try to keep my blogging on point with the science, but there’s something about dishonesty that just rubs me the wrong way. When someone cites a reference that clearly states “there’s no evidence to support X, and here are three observations that support the opposite” and then goes on to write that X has been established as a fact beyond any reasonable doubt since the mid 60′s, how can one trust anything else he says or writes?
As to weight loss being temporary because folks return to former habits, how does that counter calories in = calories out? When one decreases CI or increases CO they lose weight. When they reverse it, they gain. On low carb when one spontaneously decreases CI, they lose weight. If that does not occur (as happens for many), they don’t. Otherwise you would have long term low carbers wasting away to nothing when indeed we have many reports of regain despite keeping carbs low. If this were true, the obesity epidemic should have been solved because as we all know the only thing that makes us fat is carbohydrates. That’s what GT would have you believe.
The theme of this particular post was that LF approaches really work because they restrict carbs. Why does GT insist on such intellectual contortionism? Oh, that’s right. Because his theories don’t explain the lean cultures eating high % carbs or the millions who have lost weight on traditional CRD’s and kept it off (yes 5% is paultry, but x 100′s of millions …).
When I started to read the GCBC, I didn’t expect the author to give 100% accurate answer on all 100% of questions because our body is too complex, we all different because our ancestors got adjusted to different environments,and, in general,there is no final truth in science. It is a good thing that people like you keep asking questions because seeking for answers makes the knowledge deeper. I will continue to read your blog and I am waiting for further clarification on the glycerol phosphate too. I don’t believe that GT tried deliberately mislead his readers into something. He reputation of a well respected scientist is his very valuable asset. To risk that much it too stupid for somebody that intelligent.
I said enough on the subject of CRD. I feel too strong about it in order not to get too angry. Almost each of us has something to hate.
Yes. Leibel RL et al did. http://www.ajcn.org/content/55/2/350.full.pdf
Nevermind, I found what you were talking about:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5548734
A quick glance at the paper says eight male subjects, varying from 19% to 37% bodyfat.
Weren’t you just complaining in this post about shoddy research and drawing conclusions from that? This might as well be anecdote. I’ve dieted more people down using “high carb” diets than this paper tested.
I was complaining in the post about shoddy interpretation of the
research and a lack of awareness of how the different variables are
changing. Do you see me drawing a conclusion below that I might have
missed? I was asked a question and I answered it. This is literally
the only example I can think of offhand of an experiment in which
someone held protein constant. If you go to GC,BC, where the quote is
taken, you’ll also see I drew no conclusions from it. I used it as
anecdotal evidence that studies had been done implicating
carbohydrates in weight gain/loss, but that the authorities in the
field of obesity — mostly George Bray, at the time — were
uninterestested in following up on this possibility.
One thing to keep in mind, by the way, is you do not need dozens,
hundreds or thousands of subjects to do good nutrition research. You
just need well-controlled experiments. Don’t scoff at nine subjects
just because there were only nine. The issue is whether the experiment
was well-controlled.
I’m more worried about the fact that the subjects were so diverse in bodyfat. 37% is a whole different ballgame from 19% as far as rates of losses will go. Combined with a sample of only eight young men and it isn’t exactly inspiring confidence that this result is in any way due to the carb intake, even if the trial was well controlled.
I’d be much more interested in seeing a larger study that controls for protein with respect to total calories and CHO intake. One point I do agree with you on is that nutrition research is largely inadequate.
I would have thought that with nine subjects you could do interesting indicative research, but in order to do statistically significant research, you would need a larger sample.
Regards,
Mike Ellwood
Absolutely. My brother is a professional ( natural) bodybuilder ,Gary. He won the whole show, and only has 4 shows he has done (4th show).
His diet was that of very low carbs. Very, very strict diet. There was a reason for that. These “calories are everything ” people do not understand that diet composition matters very much for fat loss. The quality of your diet composition can lower body fat setpoint, or at least oush it along in the right direction. Fat loss is very specific. Weight loss can levae people with very bad builds. FAT loss is what we want, but we also do not want to get too low. 4% bodyfat is not healthful.
Dr. Stephan Guyanet has some posts about this.
I am glad you are blogging because this is a beneficial experience, and progress can be made. The human body is not a train, it is a chemistry set. The substances we eat absolutely have varied effects on our body fat levels. Composition is very important especially for long term FAT loss.
What you say has a lot of merit. I realize no one is omniscient on this, but the bank account model of obesity just has too much evidence against it . Too bad not many realize this yet.
WOW That was alot of info. I will have to re read this to “get it all”. But thanks for the great start!
hi gary! i am thrilled that you are now blogging. how refreshing it is to have a thought provoking, intellectually stimulating “conversation” with you on a regular basis:D I love your style of writing….looking forward to more great posts!
Gary, do you have an editor for this blog? I’m a big fan of your work and would love to recommend this blog to friends and acquaintances of mine on Facebook, but many of them are schoolteachers and tend to really cringe at silly spelling mistakes (e.g. you have ‘desert’ instead of ‘dessert’). I’m embarrassed to say it, as I’m concerned I may be acting somewhat pedantically here, but I’m not sure where blog-writing falls on the spectrum of ‘polishedness’. If you do not have an editor, may I send you a copy of this blog post with Track Changes edits on some of your typos? I’d love to be able to help out.
No editor, obviously. But I’m willing to accept all the help I can get. Apologize to the school teachers for me and send along it anyway. And feel free to contact me through the contact section and maybe we can work something out.
Good points. I have recently lost a lot of weight that I attributed to calorie counting, and it occurred to me that I might have cut mostly carbs instead. The goods news is that I have the data (2 years, 60 pounds) to address this. The bad news is that – as far as your argument goes – the knife cuts both ways. In other words, if calorie counts and carbs are correlated in most studies (as opposed to independently modulated), the authors can’t make their claims about the amount of calories, but you can’t make yours about sugar/carbs, either. Because they *are* correlated/confounded/conflated/inseparable.
That’s precisely the point. If these variables aren’t controlled, you can’t conclude anything about anything! The study is worthless and these guys doing the research are wasting huge amounts of time and money! And, even worse, these “scientists” are making recommendations about our health! Yikes!!!
Absolutely true. One of the key points I’d like to get across about doing science is that valuable evidence is evidence that refutes one of the competing hypotheses. That’s why it’s so important to know all the different variables that are changing in any particular diet. All to often in this world, the evidence can be used to support any or all of the hypotheses, but refutes none of them. One of my later posts (I hope) will be about tests of the carb/insulin hypothesis, and the goal of these tests is to assure that at least one of the two hypotheses — calories-in/calories-out or carbs/insulin — are refuted by the results.
Agreed, Gary. Good scientists who are unbiased and in search of truth are genuinely delighted to find strong valid evidence that refutes their own hypothesis.
The bank account model of obesity has far too much evidence aganist it already. Composition of the diet is one factor among many – but it most certainly matters.Obesity is most certainly not “all about the calories”. I have discovered this myself. Many of my own assumptions about obesity were wrong back in 1998.
I will never ever diet again in my life. Gone are the days of these farcical 1,000 calorie diets and moving and moving. I do reasonable exercise , a few sprints once a week consistently and just general life living and perhaps lifting once a week. I pay attention to satiety and honor my body and balance the hormones.
A ( healthy) body whose fat regulation systems are not ruined by dieting , has the ability to sort a lot of this out. Admittedly though I am not an obese person and never was. I realize the situation for some of the most obese people in the world is one of fat cell disregulation.
Please have a look at the first 11 pages or so of comments on Urgelt’s obesity video from YouTube. He is a huge supporter of yourself and your message that the caloric hypothesis is wrong.
“Obesity is most certainly not “all about the calories”. I and CarbSane have never claimed that it was, but that’s a lovely strawman you just built there. It’s not all about calories, but calories do count. Are you saying that calories have nothing to do with weight loss?
“I will never ever diet again in my life.” You are dieting, right now. Diet means “way of life”. That’s another mistake that people make, thinking that once they’ve got down to a reasonable weight, they can go back to the way of eating that made them fat in the first place. Like, duh!
Your lack of understanding is unmatched. You obviously have not read a word of my blog, took the citations and read the studies. Read the blog thoroughly. All the evidence needed to debunk the caloric bank account theory of obesity is there.
It is nearly impossible to read your blog thoroughly or over vise because of the loud color.
So when acknowledging that reducing calories is associated with losing weight, and noticing that this causes a commensurate reduction in carb intake…the conclusion is the less likely hypothesis? That makes me el-oh-ol.
Nothing like a little confirmation bias and self-reported food intakes to brighten our days and tell people it’s not their fault they won’t stop eating.
What do you consider the less likely hypothesis and why?
It’s calories that are harder to measure, and more dubious from methodological point of view. A human body is not a calorimeter.
A calorimeter oxidises stuff put in it by burning it. 1g of fat yields ~9kcals of energy. A calorimeter has no BMR/RMR, TEF, TEA & NEAT/SPA. A calorimeter has no brain.
The human body oxidises stuff put in it by using enzymes, hydrogen ion transporters & molecular motor-generators (look-up “ATP Synthase” on YouTube). 1g of fat yields ~9kcals of energy.
However, the human body has BMR/RMR, TEF, TEA & NEAT/SPA, all of which affect the right-hand side of the energy balance equation. The human body has a brain that makes the body eat stuff that it shouldn’t, which affects the left-hand side of the energy balance equation.
Reply for linking purposes.
I’m not worried about *measuring* calories. I’m worried about what’s more likely to be the causative factor given the choice between CHO intake and calorie intake.
Cum-hoc reasoning in Taubes’ post aside, CHO intake in the absence of sufficient energy isn’t going to cause fat. Using the example somebody else raised in the last thread, if you’re trying to build a house you need workers to build it and bricks to provide material.
The low carb approach takes away the money to pay the workers. Calorie restriction takes away the bricks to build the house, at least superficially. The more accurate analogy would be that calorie restriction is the bank cutting off your funding — you can’t pay for the workers or the bricks.
If you’re being parsimonious and looking at the causes of this sequence, it might seem intuitive that no workers means no house. At least if you’ve got the bricks, you’re okay, right? There’s a problem with that. If you aren’t watching the funding source and the bricks keep showing up, then you can go out there yourself and put it together.
In the body, protein stimulates insulin and protein in sufficient amounts turns into CHO. If you don’t regulate the amounts of energy coming in to the body, then it doesn’t matter that you aren’t paying the workers. It’ll find new workers.
“CHO intake in the absence of sufficient energy isn’t going to cause fat.”
Nobody is disputing this. The crux of the argument for low-carb, as I perceive it – perhaps wrongly – is that CHO consumption, however, makes it very, very easy to ensure the presence of sufficient energy to cause fat. This may work via psychological modes (addiction to sweets or the like), hormonal/psychological modes (the insulin/hunger roller-coaster), purely hormonal/metabolic modes (inducing insulin resistance), ease of consumption, relative profit margins of foods — nobody knows for sure, because nobody has bothered to investigate this hypothesis, because everybody was fixated on the “trivially true” argument of calories in = calories out.
Blaming the patient all the time is well debunked. That is a favorite tactic of the % 100 BILLLION dieting industry and proponents of the farcical bank account model of obesity. How about asking the effectiveness of their FAILED method? It is time to CHALLENGE that method.
DEBUNKED HERE:
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/30
Turns out there is NOT a lot of validity on the CLAIMS of weight management research. Just a bunch of BELIEF SYSTEMS among researchers running roughshod……..
OPEN YOUR MIND. Let’s start getting to the bottom of obesity.
“Blame” is a harsh word, but let me ask you the same question: if behaviors are out of our metaphorical hands and solely due to the action of physiological signals telling us to EAT, then at what step in the causal chain does “work to change your behaviors” become less useful than “we overeat because carbs, therefore eat less carbs”?
Eating a low-carb diet still requires conscious intervention in your behavior and steps to change habitual eating patterns. It doesn’t remove hunger or cravings, although it can help regulate them. Then again, for equal protein intake and behavior interventions (appetite control via coffee & tea, for example), there really isn’t any difference between LC and HC diets.
So why does this suddenly become easier? Magic?
Because losing fat on a calorie restricted standard diet requires that you expend more energy than you consume. This results in a constant state of hunger. With a low carbohydrate diet, energy needs are being met but fat is still being lost. So there’s no constant state of hunger. This is why it’s easier. No magic needed
There’s no constant state of hunger on a low-carb diet?
*blink*
Any diet I’ve ever done that resulted in weight loss had hunger come along for the ride, LC, HC, and whatever else. Dieting isn’t and has never been easy of fun. Tolerable, manageable, yes. But not hungry? I have to wonder about the experiences people have with these things to say that.
Appetite and hunger signals aren’t coupled to “idealized” energy intake, and you can and will still have cravings on LC diets. Again: if sugars are the culprits and they drive uncontrollable behavior, why would the LC dieter not eventually snap and go back to eating crap?
Appetite control from high protein intake I’ll buy — but note that this is a function of protein intake, not carbs. The behaviors are what matters, not this ambiguous slippery-slope of “why” we overeat. Controlling appetite through a variety of methods is useful, but ultimately you still have to exert willpower and deliberate control over your behaviors.
The “carbs make you eat” hypothesis absolutely does not explain why or how people can abandon high-carb intakes in favor of low-carb diets. If anything, it makes it all the more unlikely.
At least the calorie restriction approach acknowledges that behavior modification is a cornerstone of the process, rather than telling people that they can eat low-carb and see magic happen.
Yeah, that’s the critical difference Clark. Folks on low carb diets lose weight without hunger. If you had the experience of hunger eating LC before, then the easiest thing to do is increase your fat intake. One of the problems, which has been mentioned already, is people talk of low carb as a “diet”, when it should simply be seen as how we should eat for optimal health. Once you remove the “diet” baggage, the negative connotations go away.
I personally eat “low carb” as well, but the decision had nothing to do with weight. I’ve always been thin (though the melting away of those 15 pounds of abdominal fat I’d accrued since high school was a nice added bonus). I also enjoy eating more than ever before now – little did I know that grains and sugar were causing significant reflux, and so I was actually consuming considerably less food (and calories) before switching my diet. Plus, it’s just so much more satisfying way to eat it’s easy to stick to – I’ve never had any desire to go back to my old habits. Not to mention the boost in energy levels, the absence of the post-lunch sleepiness, etc… It’s freakin fantastic – I just wish Gary’s book had come out a few decades earlier!
Everyone is different. You are almost certainly insulin-resistant, which is why a low-carbohydrate diet suits you, as well as the other health problems you mentioned. Insulin-sensitive people are less hungry on high-carbohydrate diets. There is no one diet that suits everyone.
On the contrary, I’m about the last person you’d worry about being insulin resistant. I also don’t have any health problems, just switched to low carb to maximize health. Didn’t think I’d feel quite this good, though!
“absence of the post-lunch sleepiness” That’s a classic sign of insulin resistance. I had that for most of my life. I’ve been low-carbing since 1997 (thanks to Atkins). Thin people can be insulin resistant, although being fat tends to make it worse. Just out of curiosity, what latitude do you live at?
Increasing fat pushed up calories and stalled my weight loss.
How does this model account for that? Less than 50g of carbs per day from incidental sources, diet of meat + green veggies, and weight loss stalled. Adding fat put weight back on.
I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen?
Go to less than 20g of carbs per day. Report your results back here after six weeks.
When I tell you that I’m eating a diet of meat and green veggies, and the response is “eat less carbs”, my reaction isn’t “take this advice seriously”. My response is “did he really just tell me to lower my carbs on a diet of meat and green veggies?”
One is almost tempted to respond with sarcasm, but let’s go the positive route: where exactly would I remove carbs from a carb-free diet? Should I breathe less to avoid inhaling the smell of bread on the street? Looks like sarcasm crept in there anyway. Oops.
This is a perfect example of why this particular hypothesis is flawed. Not to say that any ideology is free of hammers looking for nails, but this is an exemplary case given that there is a more logical solution: eat less food
When presented with a problem, when it fails to work as advertised, this model is unable to provide solutions. Instead the believers just repeat the dogma as if it’s a solution.
I’m willing to concede that there is something to LC eating in as much as it does help control appetite and other related behavioral benefits, but this kind of mock-quote ‘troubleshooting’ destroys credibility.
You said you got 50g of carbs a day. Regardless of *what* you’re eating, this is the number to focus on.
So with just meat and green veggies, where are the carbs coming from? Is it cured meat made with a bit of corn syrup? Do the green veggies you eat have significant starch in them?
As for your “more logical solution”, I’m afraid it doesn’t follow, especially if you reduce the food amount, but start eating the wrong foods (i.e., carbohydrates).
Now, I’m not sure what you thought was “advertised”, but if you believe that it was “eat 50g of carbs of day and we promise you will lose weight”, I think you’ve misinterpreted the point. There is significant difference between people as to what their critical carbohydrate level will be, and it very well may be the case that your level is less than 50g.
Seriously, you calculated 50g somehow – do you have a more detailed breakdown? Now, granted, if you were at 0g of carb a day, and still stalled at an abnormal weight, I’d ad hoc explain that as some sort of other hormonal dysfunction…which I’ll grant you, isn’t quite fair.
So let’s see, what would convince me the model is wrong, and that carbohydrate/blood sugar/insulin isn’t the mechanism for weight gain? Well, anecdotally, it’s difficult -> any single situation could be subject to some sort of ad hoc explanation, but here’s a try:
Given) 50g carbs, meat and veggies only + fat == weight gain
Given) 50g carbs, meat and veggies only == stalled weight
1) 20g carbs, meat and veggies only + fat == ?
2) 100g carbs, similar calories == ?
No, what I said verbatim: “Less than 50g of carbs per day from incidental sources, diet of meat + green veggies”. Less than is not equal to, last time I looked in a math book.
The rest of your post is built on false premises, like the rest of the logic that swarms these parts.
I thought you meant that as an upper limit. Do you have an exact number? Or even a range? I’ll correct my premises if you make more specific assertions.
I didn’t think I had to really sit down and count the carbs in beef and spinach.
Never mind about weight-loss. I am still trying to get my head around the idea of two people consuming ice-cream on a regular basis (either with sugar or aspartame), drinking cola on a regular basis (with sugar or aspartame and/or with rum), and eating fast-food on a regular basis (with or without the bun) and expecting us to believe that they take their health seriously.
“Only in America”, I suppose.
And to add, the reasoning is hilariously specious from the outset. Troubleshooting in practice would have you consider other alternatives, like “maybe I’m wrong”, not blindly seek out narrower and narrower interpretations of a broken thought process in hopes that if you flail around long enough, you’ll get a result.
By all means, keep focusing on the carb intake as if that piece of trivia is the problem.
(For the record, this happened over a year ago, and I did wind up dropping about 9kg over eight weeks….by dropping the fat intake, which lowered total calories, upping the protein, and — wait for it — coping with the hunger. A year later and I’ve stabilized at the lower weight. Go figure.)
I’m still not clear what you think was “false advertising”. Let me see if I’ve understood you correctly, please point out any misunderstandings:
1) at < 50g of carbs per day, on meat and veggies, your weight loss stalled
2) at < 50g of carbs per day, on meat and veggies adding fat, your weight increased
3) at < 50g of carbs per day, on meat and veggies, removing fat and enduring hunger, your weight dropped
If I'm reading you right, you're now convinced that, say, reducing carb intake to < 20g a day, but keeping calories high would have not worked, but keeping carb intake at < 50g a day, but semi-starving yourself, did work?
Now that you've stabilized at the lower weight, have you increased the calories again, or are you still starving yourself?
I eat ice cream almost daily and McDonald’s 3-5 times a week, if that answers your question.
Nope, that didn’t answer even one of my questions. If you wish to be understood, I think you’re going to need to try harder to explain yourself.
I eat no sugar added ice cream daily, eat fast food (sans bun, diet coke only) 3-5 times a week, and even have two shots of rum in diet coke just about every week day. I’m stable at -50lbs from my maximum weight, and have been for the past two years. None of that tells you whether or not I’m starving myself and feeling hunger. None of that tells you whether or not I believe that carbohydrate restriction will work. None of that tells you whether or not my retelling of your points accurately reflect what you’re trying to say.
I’m not looking for solutions. I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but as I said, I’ve found a solution, and I didn’t find it by adhering to a dogmatic viewpoint.
What worked for me was not the belief that carbs were driving fat and/or weight gain, but that I had to eat at a sufficient calorie deficit for weight to move. If I stuck blindly to the model of ‘carb casuation’, then I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Break out of that pigeonhole, consider the larger model, and bamm, changes. Yes, it means dealing with hunger. Hunger can be controlled through external and internal means, like any discomfort (or addiction). Yes, it requires willpower, and perhaps even the right kind of brain chemistry (or sufficient changes to induce the right kind of brain chemistry, but that’s getting way off topic).
Point being, model A loses its power and has no remedy besides zooming in further and finding nits to pick — and still fails. Model B, certainly less attractive in some ways, has prescriptive power, empirical results, and is the simplest solution that accounts for all the phenomena.
From my POV, which is more likely?
Okay, so I think I understand you better now, but I’m still not sure if I agree with your conclusion, especially since it seems that a *combination* of carbohydrate restriction and calorie deficit is what it took for you to get over a stall (I’m assuming carbohydrate restriction alone did work for you for a while?).
Maybe what we’re really disagreeing on is what “Model B” is -> is it strictly caloric restriction, or is it caloric restriction in *addition* to calorie restriction? The latter doesn’t seem to be a contradiction to the insulin driven model of fat accumulation, but merely a refinement for specific people.
I know you may not believe it, but my weight loss was completely without hunger. If you accept that at face value, I think it at the very least that confounds your theory that hunger *must* be dealt with. It very well may be that this is an individual difference (brain chemistry, etc).
Put more simply, Model A had prescriptive power, empirical results, and was the simplest solution that accounted for all phenomena for me. I accept, at face value, that Model A, without further refinement, didn’t work for you. If your Model B is simply caloric restriction without carbohydrate restriction, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of its prescriptive power, etc, etc. (I haven’t heard anything from you to indicate that you ever went unrestricted on carbs). If your Model B is simply a temporary caloric restriction on top of carbohydrate restriction to overcome a stall, I’ve got no problem accepting that as a refinement to Model A.
“Maybe what we’re really disagreeing on is what “Model B” is -> is it strictly caloric restriction, or is it caloric restriction in *addition* to calorie restriction? The latter doesn’t seem to be a contradiction to the insulin driven model of fat accumulation, but merely a refinement for specific people.”
As far as I’m concerned, this is almost there; the only difference is that it’s not so much the carb restriction but the availability of protein. Protein satiates and controls appetite more than fat and certainly more than CHO. Protein is expensive to metabolize and works to spare LBM (amino acids replace protein which is turned over, and also work as a signal to stimulate the synthesis of muscle mass, among other things). Under conditions of calorie restriction, high protein intake has any number of advantages over low protein (vis a vis, “high carb”) strategies.
I think these factors are more than sufficient to make a case for the efficacy of LC eating. The effect is more from what people are adding, versus what they’re removing, as it were.
Well, thank you for clearly explaining yourself, although I’ll still respectfully disagree with your “Model B” -> my experience when I was eating carbohydrates was that even when I ate protein, I still felt almost continuously hungry, even when my stomach was so full it felt distended.
Upon further reflection, it sounds like you’re describing a different part of the curve with your model -> for perhaps, 80% of the carbohydrate related weight one might have, simple carbohydrate restriction might work. For the last 20%, caloric restriction and a higher protein ratio might be required for people to get over stalls towards their target or ideal weight.
I have a lady friend who says she will gain weight on a meat and a fat. May be she is right and knows her own body better. She is almost opposite then me physiologically , you reacted quite differently then me on the low carb diet, so I am telling to you what works for her in assumption that it may help you.
Her husband is a biochemist and he advised her to to keep insulin sensitivity at the best possible level by spacing her meals as much as possible in order to prevent long-time insulin elevation. Especially he asked her to stop eating after 5 or 6 pm. So she eats her first substantial mostly complex carb meal at 10 -11 am, then eats anything she wants at 5 pm. Then nothing at all exept green tea with lemon without even sugar substitute. At the beginning she lost some weight, now it is her maintains program.Her mother even lost 40 lb this way. I tried, it didn’t affect me at all.
It is a very inconvenient regiment, but may be it will give you some ideas.May be the Intermittent fasting will work for you. I also want to add that I feel your pain. It is awful to be immune to other people best remedy.
So you ignore what he had said and restate that low cabr results in no hunger. Why am i currently hungry, really hungry? even though I have just eating nice fatty chicken? on top of all the other meat I have eaten today. Or are wild assumptions only valid when defending low carb?
Maybe the more specific statement should be “you can satisfy your hunger on low-carb (avoiding carbohydrates), by eating more protein and fat, and still lose weight”. The whole low-fat/low-calorie trope requires one to be hungry all the time for it to work. While you *can* decide to remain hungry on a low-carb diet, and eschew eating more protein and fat, you don’t have to.
Except those who do have to
Hmmm…why didn’t you just eat more? When eating low carb, you should be eating until you’re no longer hungry. If you’re still hungry, that just means you didn’t have enough food – it’s nothing to do with the low carb approach. It’s only on a calorie restricted diet where you’re often leaving a meal hungry, as you’re no longer eating to satiety.
Of course if you’re trying to fill up on less food, chicken, being the lean meat that it is, wouldn’t be the best way to go. Get yourself a nice hunk of pork belly and you’re good to go! Man I love eating like this
You are still making 2 fundamental errors.
1) Conflating hunger with calorie restriction.
2) Assuming that what works for you works for everybody else.
Did you not see where JC Carter wrote “nice fatty chicken”?
I did see what he wrote. He needs to eat more food – perhaps another chicken.
And no conflation. Hunger with caloric restriction is well documented (especially well in a fantastic book called “Good Calories, Bad Calories”, which I highly recommend). Or you could just hang around someone who’s on a caloric restriction diet. My wife used to do weight watchers, and was completely miserable all the time thanks to hunger. Thank god I read Gary’s book…she was able to reach her goal with no misery once switching to low carb.
You’re still making the error that what works for you (and your wife) automatically works for everybody else. How come there are studies showing that insulin sensitive people lose more weight on a high-carb diet than on a low-carb one? You keep ignoring this fact.
I did ask you below what latitude you lived at but you didn’t answer. It’s relevant to insulin resistance.
“How come there are studies showing that insulin sensitive people lose more weight on a high-carb diet than on a low-carb one?”
Because the nutrition data is awful. See Gary’s post above as well as “Good Calories, Bad Calories”
You can find any data to support any notion because it’s bad science.
roughly 33 degrees north.
Who decides what’s bad data and what’s good? Did you watch the Chris Gardner video that scottshapiro linked to below? Gardner refers to 4 studies at 39:39 , 41:18 , 42:15 and 42:52. Can you say that they’re all bad?
How much sun exposure do you get on average per day? Sun exposure through window glass doesn’t count.
lol, I love this classic. Science that supports me is good, science that disagrees is awful.
Never mind the empirical evidence, just cherry pick over research until you’re right. Throw in some supporting anecdotes and win!
Eat until I am no longer hungry, or eat pork belly until i am no longer hungry. Been there, gotten fatter with that. You may enjoy eating like that, but I just get fat. Whch is something I would prefer not to do. Cheers.
“So you ignore what he had said and restate that low cabr results in no hunger”
Well, I did not ignore it. If he said there was “no hunger” I missed it. Are you sure you quoted that correctly? I said that a low carb diet results in a decrease in hunger.
” Folks on low carb diets lose weight without hunger.”
…
Without knowing what you have been doing or your history, it’s impossible for anyone to know why exactly you specifically are hungry. We also don’t know how your meats were prepared or what they were served with.
But leaving aside theory for a minute, and just talking about meats, I’d say that chicken, even when fatty, is vastly overrated; turkey even more so.
I personally have found that fatty beef is somehow always more satisfying than anything else. Something like rump steak or ribeye. Lightly pan fried in beef dripping with all the fats and juices consumed.
I try to avoid all processed meats.
When I’m eating low carb I can fast for roughly 24 hours without hunger. When I’m not low carb hunger happens much quicker. Low carb definitely leads to less hunger.
I’ve been low-carbing for three years now, unrestricted calories, and I simply don’t have a constant state of hunger anymore. I still snack a lot out of habit, just for taste, but sans-carbohydrate. Lost 50 pounds the first year, and have kept it all off since.
So yeah, no hunger, go figure. On the flip side, when I did eat carbs, I can remember waking up at night to eat something because I was hungry, having my stomach completely full and distended to the point where I felt like I simply couldn’t force another bite of food down my gullet, but I was still starving. I had no idea what to make of the phenomenon until reading GCBC, and realizing that all the calories I was shoving down my throat were being shunted to my fat cells by insulin -> my muscles were starving, even when my belly was full beyond capacity.
So maybe it’s not magic, but once you understand how the machine works, it’s a viable model for making better decisions.
When I’m eating low carb I can fast for roughly 24 hours without hunger. When I’m not low carb hunger happens much quicker.
“There’s no constant state of hunger on a low-carb diet?
*blink*
Stop blinking. A long term low carb diet does indeed result in a diminution of hunger. Sorry you have not yet benefited from this effect. I sure have.
So the low-carb magic isn’t infallible? You don’t say.
Clark, you’re being too scientific and objective. Don’t ask question. Don’t question the dogma. Never mind the scientific data out there showing that the metabolic advantage is BS. Just believe. It works. Someone wrote a book about it. There’s tonz of anecdote. It has to work! Who cares why? It works! I ate 5000 calories on LC and I lost weight, I was eating 1300 calories on moderate carbs and I was not loosing anything… LC is some serious stuff man… you can make energy disapear while you’re on it…you can eat a full bowl of whipped cream and that cream just disapears, like it never exist! (as long that there is no carbs around!)
GCBC is the bible after all… you can’t question the bible.
You’re conflating expending more energy than you consume with hunger. Insulin-sensitive people lose more weight on a high-carbohydrate diet than on a low-carbohydrate diet. How can this be?
The fact is that you are expending more calories than you consume if you’re losing weight. The magic is that a low-carbohydrate diet reduces your hunger more than a high-carbohydrate diet.
I am certain that you are wrong in the hypothesis that “a calorie is a calorie”. The human body, for a fact, metabolizes protein, fats and carbohydrates in different ways, consuming different amounts of energy for each.
A calorie is a calorie. A calorie is a unit of energy.
Discussing the energy content, and physiological efficiency, of different nutrients, that’s up for discussion. Claiming that energy vanishes into thin air because you don’t understand the difference is stupidity.
Your certainty is based on poor data. Read my other posts. There are studies by people who have measured calories in & calories out accurately (i.e. not by using self-reported food frequency questionnaires) and found that weight gain/loss is determined by calories in & calories out. In the meantime, see http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-equation.html
Why do you insist on using words like “determined”? Weight gain/loss is certainly _associated_ with caloric balance. It’s the arrow of causality in real life scenarios that is being disputed.
It’s possible to show in a lab setting that lowering calories leads to weight loss, but it’s a fact and intervention that is useless in real world application and dieting scenarios, as evidenced by long term failure of low calorie diet plans.
“Why do you insist on using words like “determined”?”
Because it is.
People who are losing weight on a low-carb diet have achieved a caloric deficit even if it feels like they haven’t. Low-carbing is one method for achieving a caloric deficit without excessive hunger. It doesn’t work for everybody. If it works for you, great.
The problem with trying to get people to merely “eat less, move more” on their existing diet is that it doesn’t take into account human behaviour or the fact that their existing diet may be encouraging them to eat too much and move too little which is why it fails.
Bingo.
Hello, Clark,
Still looking for somebody to blame instead of searching for answers? If the bigger reduction in carbohydrate content provides more weight loss, If a person can stop eating to excess on a low-carb diet without being hungry, is it not the reason to ,at least, take notice? Is it better to lose less weight while being hungry, them more weight while being full? What is your point? To make that fat jerk suffer more for less result?
Galina L.
If the environment is triggering physiological signals that “cause overeating”, then what makes you think the obese person can stick to the low-carb diet in the first place?
The obese will still have to exert willpower in order to eat low-carb. Or do you think that appetite regulation and eating behavior begins and ends with “fullness”?
Taubes’s own argument — that dysregulation of fat mass alters behavior in a vicious cycle — abdicates the conscious agent’s responsibility, ironically making it unlikely that an obese person could thrive on ANY diet. Low-carb dieting isn’t magic. It still requires changes in eating habits, it still requires avoiding “trigger” foods that will signal cravings, it still requires conscious intervention in daily behaviors — all the things that people like Razwell say don’t work.
So where’s the low-carb magic coming from? It’s almost like this works because you people believe in it, rather than through the articulation of clear physiological mechanisms or understanding of the interaction between physiology and psychology.
Well, now I understand what you think.Despite on the research results, you don’t accept the results.Somehow it is you who knows that because of the wrong psychology influence on physiology that obese person is doomed because he or she is just lacks willpower to exercise healthy lifestyle choices. What makes you so sure?
I argue with you because I am the proof that your are wrong. I don’t know anything about your personal experience, may be it is you who can’t resist temptations in a fast food environment, or you know somebody who fits your perception of a standard obese person.I understand,one person is not enough, it is a limited pool of data, so do your data is limited. Please, except me as a legitimate case of observation. I fit the requirement because four years ago I was obese -198 lb at 5’6″. Now I am 28 lb lighter, still not a Barby, but I am very fit and fit looking.
So, like other people with abnormal insulin sensitivity, after consuming food with more, than I can tolerate, amount of carbs, I get hungry very quickly after my meal. The amount of food doesn’t matter, in 1 hour or 2I am really hungry and don’t feel full any longer. If I eat potato with my stake and salad, I will be hungry, if I skip potato, I will be full(for 3-4 hours). The same story with breakfast , if I eat just 2 eggs and butter, I am full, if I add piece of bread or fruit, or sugar in my coffee, I am hungry.
It goes without saying, when I am hungry and look around with hungry eyes, my environment looks quite different than when I am full, loaded with temptations. So, my physiology has some influence on my psychology. I cook and serve food for my family, that I myself avoid without exercising much of willpower because I am not hungry any more.When we went to a trip and hotel served only danishes and bagels, I choose not to eat at all without difficulty.Ability to experience hunger depends on the amount of insulin, on blood sugar fluctuations (on physiology).I doesn’t depend on my believes. It happens from time to time that I eat soothing that I thing is fine, but then go hungry too soon and could see, that my assumption was wrong.I am not claiming that my case is 100% reflection of other obese people situations, so do you can’t claim that you know how others feel and what they experience
Again, what is your point? And, please, don’t overuse the word like”magic” and try to be more friendly. I hope you don’t think that you the only one who understands what is going on.Sorry for a long post.
Galina L.
All I’m asking is this:
If the argument is that CHO -> insulin -> overeating, then the implicit statement is that “people can’t control their eating because physiology won’t let them”
So if they can’t control their eating bc of physiological causes, then why can they suddenly adhere to a diet that gets rid of all “bad” foods?
What stops the low-carb dieter from heading to the supermarket and picking up ice cream and potato chips?
It’s not that they aren’t hungry; I can point to plenty of people that either 1. eat to their fill on LC diets and don’t lose weight or 2. reduce calories to trigger weight loss and have to deal with hunger in the process.
What I’m saying is that the GCBC hypothesis is inadequate as an explanation because it doesn’t account for actual, you know, results.
I don’t know how to start, because you obviously didn’t read GT’s book and I don’t think I could successfully retell it to you. There are a lot of information there that you requested. For example, there are whole chapter about a hunger. At least one very well designed research trail ,mentioned in the book, proved that even prepared and selected people were unable to tolerate hunger (1800 K cal/day) for more than 6 month in controlled environment. On the subject of insulin and desire to eat,I can tell you that hyperinsulinomia increases appetite. GT mentioned in his book numerous facts about it, like insulin use for treating anorexia.The mechanism of insulin response is described in many sources, researched through and trough . You will find it on internet without any trouble.It is trough controlling insulin through controlling carbs intake people on low-carbs diets control their desire to eat. I am not hungry and not craving carbohydrates.So, there is no reason for me to go to the store to buy an ice-cream. I just not had a sweet tooth before and was always preoccupied with food and eating in general.It took some trails and errors to find out what works for me.It also took time for my body to readjust.The only thing I try to control is my desire to use the food as an entertainment.I am loosing weight very slowly, but it is not a problem for me.Tell me if you are interested, and I will give to your some suggestions.
The mechanism of weight loss through low-carb eating is not GT’s hypothesis. Trere are a lot of scientists who did work in the area.He is a journalist with specialization in science and described in hes book numerous research and findings. It looks for me that you will definitely benefit from some reading.
Its not just a matter of being hungry. For some reason, the feeling of the hunger that I get when I eat refined carbs is qualitatively *different* than the hunger from low carb foods. When I stay away from carbs, I can be hungry and yet I dont feel like I’m going to perish if I don’t get something to eat and I can resist eating something until mealtime, plus, when I do eat, I am satisfied with a normal amount of food and I don’t over eat. But when I eat carb-y stuff, its exactly the opposite and some sort of viscious cycle starts where eating carbs begets more eating of carbs…especially if its highly refined carbs like wheat flour and/or sugary stuff.
p.s. I have lost 50lbs since early October 2009 by eating low carb. I used to weigh 205lbs on a small-boned 5’8″ frame. I went from squeezing into a size 18 jeans down to a size 8, and I am very, very happy with myself
People with impaired glucose control get wild fluctuations in their blood glucose level after eating high-glycaemic load carbohydrates. The dips in blood glucose level trigger intense hunger pangs. That’s why low-glycaemic load carb diets help by preventing wild fluctuations. See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.com/2008/12/blood-glucose-insulin-diabetes.html
“But when I eat carb-y stuff, its exactly the opposite and some sort of vicious cycle starts where eating carbs begets more eating of carbs…especially if its highly refined carbs like wheat flour and/or sugary stuff.”
I couldn’t have said it better. Carbs begets the “pull” for more carbs.
Ah, excellent. Our very first “Knowitall Contrarian With An Internet Attitude Problem”. Welcome to the blog. You’re probably sweet as pie when discussing things like this face-to-face.
Looks like you’ve spent at least half your day today in Gary’s comments section. I’m sure he’s honored. We look forward to your continued attempts at being clever and snarky rather than simply discussing the issues at hand in a mature fashion. When you eventually get bored in a couple months and move on, rest assured you will be missed.
Oh look, a flamepost with no substance.
JamesK is a stirling example of content-free posts that prove the weaknesses of the argument. No facts, no rebuttals, only vitriol.
Regarding this paragraph:
“The same is likely to be true for those who swear they lost their excess pounds and kept them off by taking up regular exercise. Rare is the individual who begins running or swimming or doing aerobics regularly with the goal of losing weight and then doesn’t make any concomitant changes in what he or she eats.”
This idea seems to be falsified by people in endurance sports, who carbo-load on purpose and, at the highest level, must actually strive to eat as much carbohydrates as possible. In the extreme cases, such as multi-day cycling races such as the Tour de France, it even takes form of loading up glucose by intravenous injection, because digestion is not fast enough.
I think a better explanation of exercise’s relative effectiveness in weight loss – when it is really regular and strenuous – is that it deplenishes glycoged stores sufficiently that any carbohydrates consumed go first to rebuilding them, rather than go to the fat tissue and wreak further hormonal havoc. Exercise also makes tissues, esp. muscle tissues, more insulin-sensitive, so perhaps less insulin needs to be released in response to carb-heavy meals.
I hope Mr. Taubes, to whom I am thankful for his books and articles, makes some time to address these edge cases that seem to weaken the carbohydrate hypothesis. I am aware of his articles about exercise being an insufficient driver of weight loss, but this may only be true at the general population level, not about the seriously dedicated enthusiast level.
Hi Tomasz
I would say that exercise helps because it affects fat cell regulation, more so than just the caloric burn.
. However, professionals like Lance Armstrong who carbohydrate load are naturally lean people to begin with.
Most professionals be it Marathoning, Swimming etc had the sport picked for them by their natural builds. In other words people who are prfoessional sprinters naturally looked similar to what they look like and therefore have the best bodies for that particular sport. People built like Emmit Smith usually do not go into the NBA. People naturally built like Reggie Miller do not go into the sport of Strongman and compete against Magnus Ver Magnusson LOL !
Many people seem to think if they sprint they will look like Asafa Powell. Asafa Powell looks like he does because he just looks that way. That is his natural build. Thinner people go into Marathoning because they cannot produce the sprinter’;s power and different muscle fibers .
You will see a surprising amount of fairly fat AMATEUR Marathoners, Triatholons and even 100 meter sprinters etc, but you will never see a fat professional ( of those sports mentioned above) because the elite are weeded out.
I hope that helps.
Yes, at the professional level it’s the selection effect that you observe.
But a seriously dedicated sports enthusiast can get in the vicinity of 10-20% of professional-level performance – it’s that last 10% which is the genetic gift. If you train like Asafa Powell, you will eventually look like Asafa Powell and run 100m dash in maybe 11-12 seconds. Even if you start from very low fitness level. Human body is very malleable by serious training.
The fat amateur marathoners, triathlonists etc. are simply not dedicated enough
i cant remember where, but i read that aerobic exercises can cause the body to kind of cannibalize muscle, which is supposedly why marathoners appear less fit than sprinters. something to do with hormone response i think.
Excessive aerobic exercise raises serum cortisol which does “cannibalise” muscle to generate blood glucose. Note the use of the word excessive. Everything that’s good for you in the right amount is bad for you when done to excess.
Marathon runners have less muscle than sprinters, as any excess “baggage” is not conducive to winning marathons. Less fit? Ha-ha!
appear. helps to mind the syntax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
Interesting, in cycling, sprinters tend to be powerfully-built men. They use their arms and shoulders as well as their legs, as well as needing plenty of volume in their chest cavity to allow their lungs to function well. Of course they are also lean where it counts.
Chris Boardman, the British gold-medallist was perhaps notable in not looking like a naturally skinny cyclist (I expect he had to work at keeping his weight down), and once he had retired from racing began to look distinctly chubby.
it isnt–more like verified rather than falsified. athletes carbo-load to maintain their bodies, a balance. this is what gary is referring to. when most people take on exercise, they eat to compensate–thats natural. thats exactly what athletes do; they eat more to compensate for all the exercise they do. they exercise to maintain performance levels, not to lose weight. they eat to maintain their bodies, not to gain weight they lost from exercise.
We have to differentiate between people who engage in endurance sports and are lean and those who do it to lose weight and who might not be. Although the evidence for runners, surprisingly, suggests that even lean runners and those who log the most distance weekly, gain weight and fat with the passing of the years.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16314878
I agree that the benefit of exercise, if it exists, and intense physical labor is in burning up the carbohydrates consumed, and increasing insulin sensitivity. The insulin sensitizing effect, though, lasts only for about 36 hours or until the subject eats his or her first carb-rich meal. Once glycogen stores are replaced, insulin sensitivity reverts to whatever it would have been without the exercise.
Final note and a plug for the new book: I discuss all this directly and indirectly in the new book — Why We Get Fat. All the ore reason to read it.
Hi Gary,
I’ll be ordering your book on Kindle the day it comes out. Will there be a Portuguese translation of “why we get fat”?
Yesterday I reread chapter 21 of GCBC, “fat metabolism”. It’s my favorite chapter. It’s scary how something so wrong as the positive-caloric-balance/overeating hypothesis or the thrifty gene hypothesis could become so universally accepted and go unquestioned for so long. It makes me wonder what other ideas are out there that society unquestioningly believes to be true are really not and are doing us harm.
Keep up the good work.
Hi Mark,
I don’t know yet if there will be a Portuguese translation of
WWGF. I think there is going to be one of Good Calories, Bad Calories.
gt
Hi Gary
I wish you nothing but the best in exposing this nonsense for everyone to see.
This is for the bank account model proponets.
“Counting calories “, “energy balance” “calories in /calories out” – all industry buzz words. The concept is wrong. There is very little peer reviewed science demonstrating the caloric bank account belief to be true, if any. It is DOGMA, NOT scientific knowledge.
Our bodies weight regulatory systems are long term – over years- not meal to meal , day to day or month to month . We take in MILLIONS of calories over a decade. NO ONE can CONCIOUSLY balance all the MILLIONS of calories we take in to all the calories we expend . Calorie labels are not accurate either a lot of the time. Even if they were, our bodies are far more accurate than we are. Practicing energy balance is an absurd belief . The diet industry is full of pseudoscience.
These bank account model proponets do not realzie body fat is regulated through complex feedback loops and if soemthing is off by even 1% someone can possibly can 100 pounds, as Harvard researcher Dr. Kaplan showed. My blog has a post about this.
The laws of thermodynamcis do NOT and NEVER WILL explain the chemical behavior of fat cell receptors. To say we do not understand them is a massive understatement.
Please use any and all information to provide more black swans against the prevailing wisdom, Gary.
http://razwell.blogspot.com/2011/01/obesity-is-indescribably-complex.html
http://razwell.blogspor.com/2011/01/all-things-that-contradict–caloric-bank.html
The caloric bank account people get angry with us because something they have believed in all their lives is just a steaming pile of cow crap.
In the words of Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, one the world’s premiere obesity research pioneers ” it’s time to move on from the ineffective often repeated nostrum to eat less move more in favor of 21 st century medical science advancements”.
Great Sean Croxton podcast. Sean is a great guy who I have supported since 2006
Take care, and keep exposing this.
Razwell
here are two articles you might like:
Obesity is truly indescribably complex
He says obesity is NOT energy in and energy out and if it were that simple we would have solved it many years back.
said if it were true than obesity would hjave been solved yeats back.
My computer caused some of my message to be disconnected.
Anyhow, there’s no question the caloric bank account people will get angry reading my comment because what they have believed in all these years is nothing more than a steaming pile of cow dung.
My blog has links to numerous scientists in the field of obesity who are on record as saying obesity is NOT calories in/calories out. They are definitely critical of the useless advice to eat less, move more, and think we can do much better than that.
No one carefully keeping track of the work of researchers in the field of obesity could ever come to the conlusion that the caloric bank account model is valid. It’s NOT.. Hopefully the public and doctors will catch up to what real researchers already know.
Dr. Jeffrey Friedman has numerous articles showing how the prevailing wisdom is wrong.
caslories in/.calories out
Mr. Taubes,
could you, please, tell what happens if the after one’s hard exegesis/hard labor a carbohydrate reach meal is not consumed? What are yous thoughts about a glycogen stores replacement on a low-carbohydrate diet?
Thank you very mach for giving your valuable time to the blog.
I (and many other sports enthusiasts, I am sure) can tell you from personal experience what happens. If you don’t consume carbohydrates after a strenuous training session, your recovery will be very much impaired. With carbo-loading, it’s possible to do 30-60 min. training at lactate threshold for 2-3 days in a row. Without replenishing carbohydrates, it will only be possible once every 3 days or so.
Metabolically, if you don’t consume carbohydrates after training, your glycogen stores will be replenished, albeit slowly, via glucose produced in gluconeogenesis, which is slow and inefficient.
In dogs, who are carnivores, this process is probably much more efficient.
Thank you very much for your answer. Do you think it is possible for human body to readjust in time? I trust your experience, but from from the logical point of view it is difficult to understand why humans who don’t consume carbs are in a disadvantage in comparison with humans who do carboloading while people were not evolved eating carbs? What if athletes conditioned themselves to thrive on a such regiment? Did you notice, maybe effectiveness of carboloading gets increased in time?
“Do you think it is possible for human body to readjust in time? I trust your experience, but from the logical point of view it is difficult to understand why humans who don’t consume carbs are in a disadvantage in comparison with humans who do carboloading while people were not evolved eating carbs?”
My best explanation, which is really an evolutionary “just so” story, is that strenuous training day after day is an “unnatural” activity for which we have not evolved. So unnatural measures, such as carbo-loading (or glucose injection in extreme cases) are beneficial in order to cope with that unnatural burden on the body. Even if your body runs healthier every day without carbs, in this highly artificial context its performance will be better with carbs. This is why athletes do it, as they do many other things that are unhealthy in the longer run.
I don’t know if effectiveness of carbo-loading increases or decreases with time, but in endurance sports, recovery time needed for full recuperation from hard training or race lengthens with age, even as endurance itself gets better. In cycling, for example, typically younger racers will have better sprint and recovery, and will gain endurance as they get older. Average age of Tour de France winners is something like 29 years old — a Methuselah’s age in many other sports.
May be it sounds primitive, but in my guts I feel there is something else.Body usually has means to reach the same result through different pathways. Glycogen stores are important for survival because are used during emergency responses and during activity that require endurance . It is difficult to imagine that our ancestors were less prepared for those occasions than modern athletes. Probably, pathway to create glycogen from glucose is more effective and because carboloading is the standard after and before any physical activity, athletes do not have the necessity to develop well-functioning alternative pathways for the glycogen.May be, the reliance on the pathway that needs exclusively glucose for creating glycogen is a disadvantage for somebody living a primitive life because glucose sources are not widely available.. Athletes who “hit the wall” look like they are unable to function.
Probably, trough that alternative pathway functioning it would be possible to explain how some people manage to get fat while eating meat. May be it is some mechanism that we share with carnivores, who can became fat while eating fat and meat.
There are just a half-baked thoughts. I don’t expect you to give me the answer on anything that comes into my mind. You already kindly gave me the most satisfying explanations .
Thank you for the prompt answer.
The evidence about runners getting fat with age is only somewhat surprising (everybody is getting fatter with age, so why runners wouldn’t), but I was reacting rather to the postulated diet changes correlated with taking up exercise. It is quite common for these diet changes to be for the “worse” from low carb perspective. I cannot quantify this effect, but most everyone getting serious about training gets to hear very quickly about the necessity of carbo-loading, especially right after training and before races. And yet people who get serious about training will most often get their weight down, often radically — at least at first.
I was more surprised by the insulin sensivity petering out after 36 hours or carb-rich meals. On one hand, it makes sense, because if glycogen stores are full, how exactly can insulin sensitivity manifest itself? On the other hand, just quickly trawling PubMed, I found some abstracts that seem to indicate there is some kind of a long term effect. I found quite a few more supporting no long term effect, so maybe these are just outliers.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921216
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19196913
Hi Tomasz,
Two points: one is everybody isn’t getting fatter with age. Some
people are, some aren’t. Worthless anecdotal evidence: I used to be
getting fatter with age, then I stopped eating carb-rich foods and I’m
no longer getting fatter with age. As for the carb-loading and
athletics, I disagree there, too. Sure serious endurance athletes
learn about carb-loading for races, and we all learn about the
necessity to replenish our electrolytes, etc., but whatever carb-
loading is done is done within a reasonably short time of the event
itself. That’s an entirely different thing than eating carb-rich
diets, drinking beer, sodas, etc., day in and day out. My take on
insulin sensitivity as a 36 hour effect after exercise comes from
interviewing researchers who study insulin resistance — for an
article I did for Science last year on mechanisms of insulin
resistance. I did not go through the literature to see if the research
supported their view as I assumed that they would always prefer the
effect was more beneficial than they were telling me it was.
gt
Your article on insulin resistance:
“Hormone replacement therapy seems to double CRP levels in postmenopausal women, which may help explain why hormone replacement therapy seems not to help stave off heart disease, as originally thought. ”
Are the hormones natural, bioidentical or synthetic?
In one of Barry Groves’ books and on his website, he cites the case of a famous British Olympic oarsman whose exertions did not prevent his developing Type II diabetes.
On the other hand, my grandfather was an amateur medal-winning runner and cyclist in his young days, and remained slim all his life. He did do a hard manual job and also walked a lot, well into old age. If my grandmother were ever to put an extra potato on his plate, he would sternly refuse it. He always knew when he’d had enough. One of his 3 sons (my uncles) seemed to inherit the “lifelong slim” gene, while the other two had a tendency to run to fat in later years. (That gene never came my way unfortunately).
Regards,
Mike Ellwood
Sir Steven Redgrave probably developed LADA. See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.com/2008/12/blood-glucose-insulin-diabetes.html
Gary said…”Or, had they had the money to spend, they might have cooked meals for both groups of subjects, say, 2700 calories a day – either low-fat or low-carb – and encouraged both groups to eat all the food prepared.”
If I ate 2700 calories a day in any combination – low-fat, low-carb, whatever – I would gain weight! The USDA nutrition recommendations (which aren’t really that good) are only based on an average 2000 calories a day. Good grief!
Also, any calorie restricted diet reduces carbs, especially grain-based and sugar laden carbs which are an easy target due to their high calorie content per serving. I think everyone gets donuts, soda, beer, cakes, cookies and so on, but a couple of slices of whole-wheat bread adds 200+ calories to a meal. I can eat a HUGE salad with some chicken and a nice vinaigrette dressing and be far more satiated for longer with about the same amount of calories as the average lunch sandwich (less than some of them). Trust me, I’ve counted the calories. The nutrition profile in the salad is better too. So OF COURSE paying attention to total calories will result in lower carbs. It will also result in lower fat, because of the calorie content in a steak or pizza or a loaded chili-cheeseburger. It also encourages us to leave the pasta and potato salad, cheese and other high-calorie, fat-laden foods OFF the salad and just load up on fresh crispy vegetables.
I think that what is missing for a lot of people now is a good idea of how many calories they REALLY consume in a day, how many they actually NEED, what a good nutrition profile looks like and how to eat for good nutrition. Throw in some movement every day because it’s good for your body and a lot of people would drop some weight pretty quickly.
We don’t live in the stone age any more. We live in a world full of every delightful, high-fat, high-sugar food imaginable, and really comfortable furniture. The amount of cheap food that the developed world has access to is like nothing our bodies and taste buds have ever seen before! But just because it’s there doesn’t mean we have to eat it. The human body isn’t prepared to handle it. We need to learn how to eat nutritious foods, incorporate modest amounts of treats since no one likes to feel deprived, and move.
Healthy lifestyle = healthy body.
You might consider doing an experiment and seeing if it’s true about your belief that 2700 calories a day will lead to weight gain, regardless. Do an Atkins-style induction diet — eggs, bacon, sausage, meat, fish, and some green vegetables — and see what happens. You might be surprised.
If you haven’t eaten low carb before, 2700 calories might seem like a lot. Doesn’t sound like a lot the low carbers around here though…
Nice challenge I suppose, but I’m not really convinced that it’s all that good for my body to eat that much meat and a fairly small amount of plant-based food. I actually do eat eggs every day, bacon or sausage several times a week, along with other meats on a daily basis – just not 2700 calories worth. I eat a lot of vegetables and some fruit every day as well. What I don’t eat much of is sugars, grains/breads (probably only one or two servings a day at most and some days none) and dairy (I’m lactose intolerant and so tend to avoid it rather than use the tablets).
What I think I would really be interested in is keeping a food diary for a while and trying to quantify my carb intake. It may be that my lower-calorie diet and established eating habits fall within the range of a lower-carb diet as well. I think it’s important to add that while I refer to a “lower-calorie diet” it is a satisfying diet. I don’t starve myself – the foods that I eat are satisfying, filling and enjoyable. That’s probably the biggest factor in maintaining a healthy weight anyway. And when there’s cake, and I want cake, I definitely have cake – and a good beer when I want it as well.
I strongly suspect that what is low-carb diet for one person in excessive carb for another. Probably the criteria is the insulin response on the consumed food and blood sugar levels. I don’t expect you do go through medical testing, anless you start to gain weight or developa blood pressure problem.
Is it possible that the low carb/low fat issue is much ado about nothing? If you observe the spectrum of diets that exist, let’s say, from Vegan to Paleo, they all include many of the same foods and exclude many of the same foods. Yes, a huge overlap.
So, in reality, to maintain a healthy lifestyle requires the exclusion of … fast food, highly processed food, sugar (minimize) and the inclusion of fruits, vegetables, and exercise. Yes, an over-simplification, however, I’m not here to write a dissertation.
The fact that some include/exclude meat or grains is of minimal importance.
The reason for most diet failures is because people feel deprived (hungry) and feel that they must use willpower to sustain a diet. There is a solution to that problem.
Instead of concentrating on fat or carb content, always include protein and fiber in your meals and snacks. This will provide the feeling of satiety – the most important factor in long-term success.
So, for those folks who get stuck in a particular “diet camp”, loosen up. There’s a wide spectrum of healthy diets that will assist with long-term health.
Ken Leebow
http://www.HighSatiety.net
I’m a big fan of all kinds of highly processed meats and cheeses, fast food (sans-bun/sugary soda), and I simply stopped eating fruit and vegetables (in fact, I’m generally terribly allergic to fruits, but I used to force myself to eat them anyway because they were “healthy”).
Since going low-carb, no-fruit/vegetable, and lots of processed meats and cheeses, I’ve lost 50 pounds, by cholesterol got better, my blood pressure got better, and I’m simply not hungry anymore. The fact that I exclude grains is of critical importance, and hand-waving about protein and “satiety” doesn’t refute that.
Hi, Gary. Love your blog so far. Loved GCBC. Looking forward to Why We Get Fat. Have lost 46 lbs by cutting my carbs by about 2/3 (clocked), changing what carbs I did eat, and exercising. Generally followed Kurt Harris’s advice (Kurt writes the PaNu blog). I hope you’re right about most of what you write, ’cause if not I’m doomed.
On the other hand I think the results speak for themselves. Please keep up the good work, and know that many people are hoping that you and Kurt and Mark Sisson and people like you can turn the carb tide that is the Standard American Diet. /fanboy
To some people spelling errors are like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Dieters will get rid of candy bars, deserts, donuts and cinnamon buns.” You wanted “desserts”.
Spelling errors have been duly noted. And my wife made me get a life insurance plan a few years ago in case I’m wrong, because I’m doomed, too. The problem is one of anecdotal data. I could have a massive heart attack tomorrow — knock on wood — and I still wouldn’t know (or my next of kin wouldn’t) whether I’d have had the heart attack two years earlier if I’d been eating a low-fat diet, rich in fruits and vegetables. On some level we have to decide who to trust and which interpretation of the data we find most compelling.
I know that ,as far as myself, when I eat a diet that is too rich in carbohydrates the fat tissue comes on for sure. I get smooth, and waist girth increases.
There is much more to fat gain and loss than the farcical bank account model. The regulation of fat cells is complex and there is much to learn. The people who think it is “all about calories” are plain misinformed. My own blog disccues feeding times, viruses, and other things.
Google ” Dr. Turek mice sleeping hours”
What would a top notch physics professor say if you asked him if the Laws of Thermodynamics adequately explain the biological phenomenon of obesity?
I would bet they would say : ” There are major problems using a measurement of heat output from burning to predict what happens when substances are consumed by humans”.
Keep on exposing this Gary !
I had read your post, so I went up the corridor to the physics department to ask them that question. Looks like your bet did not achieve a good outcome.
Maybe they weren’t “top notch” as Razwell required
Unfortunately, ‘top knotch’ in razwells opinion = those who agree with him, regardless of their actual academic pedigree.
To believe that the human body utilizes calories in the same fashion as a bomb calorimeter is ludicrous, almost laughable in its scientific naivete.
Proteins, fats and carbohydrates are metabolized in very different and distinct manners. To lump them all in with the simple combustion of a bomb calorimeter simply reveals some lack of scientific education.
What does that have to do with my comment? Did I make said claim? Either way, do you understand what the Atwater factors represent, or are you simply revealing your own lacking scientific education?
A bomb calorimeter doesn’t “utilise” calories. However, it generates the same number of calories from macronutrients as the human body. See http://www.garytaubes.com/2010/12/calories-fat-or-carbohydrates/#comment-111651246
WE need to learn how to LOWER the SETPOINT. That is one of the aeras where further research needs to be done.
Good scientists are not 100 % certain. They admit unknowns. Obesity is only certain to the dieting industry and the various proponets of the bank account model on the Internet, who are part of the dieting industry.
The time has come to STOP dieting and DITCH the chronic caloric deprivation. This method FAILS long term.
Gary,
Hellow from Rochester, NY (very cold and wintery today).
Loved the post. It is amazing how researchers can ignore confounding in their design and then make so called meaningful comparisons. BTW- really liked GCBC. Keep up the work. Hopefully your insight, in conjunction with others, who are willing to take a truly critical look at the weight gain issue will be able to bring out true meaning and help those in need.
Hi Jim,
I lived in Rochester until I was 12. And one reason I can happily live in California is because I saw enough snow by that time to last me a lifetime. Thanks for the kind words. (And it’s been raining here in Berkeley for about two weeks straight, so…)
gt
Hi Jim,
I lived in Rochester until I was 12. And one reason I can happily live in California is because I saw enough snow by that time to last me a lifetime. Thanks for the kind words. (And it’s been raining here in Berkeley for about two weeks straight, so…)
gt
Mr. Taubes,
Thank you for your blog articles and for the job you are doing fighting nutritional ignorance.Your have a gift is to deliver your message in the form that is impossible to ignore. Your logic is just perfect. After reading your article, I felt ashamed, because you said something that I knew, what Dr. Eades already talked about, but somehow it was in the back of my mind. In the front it was “we are different, what works for you may not work for me” notion. Probably, such approach helped to keep peace between individuals who follow different diets.You know, the degree of animosity during such discussions is unbelievable. You mention that now low-carb diets are treated like just another group of diets. Probably, it allowed some health lifestyle advisers to keep their dignity – it is easier to advice low-carb diet after failed low-fat one on the ground that low-carbing may suit better your metabolic type (as opposite to admitting that low-fat diets are just plain wrong). It reminds me about that ridicules fig leaf covering private parts of some marble statues. They are still naked, but the fig leaf provides the illusion of dignity. Do you know who are you, Mr.Taubes ? You are the fig leaf eliminator.
Jokes aside, I think it is important to clarify the criteria of having a healthy blood sugar level(right now it is too wide) and criteria for low-carb diet. For some people it is 50 gram a day , for others it is 200. The lack of the definition contributes to the confusion.Or Is it that a person could have as much (or as little of) carbs, in order to provide a particular blood sugar curve (and insulin level curve)? May be that clarification will create the common ground for different dieters.What if it is necessary to declare that any diet must provide the sense of satiety?
English is my second language, please excuse me if sometimes my sentences are slightly awkward. I try my best.
One point I should have made in the blog is that there are some ways we are all different, and one of them is in our ability to tolerate the carbs in the diet. So some of us are lean and burn them, and some of us are predisposed to get fat and store them. So yes, individual variation is key. It’s just important to know how that variation manifests itself.
One point I should have made in the blog is that there are some ways we are all different, and one of them is in our ability to tolerate the carbs in the diet. So some of us are lean and burn them, and some of us are predisposed to get fat and store them. So yes, individual variation is key. It’s just important to know how that variation manifests itself.
In my experience you just have to cut calories to reduce body fat if your otherwise a normal healthy person and dont have an underlying illness.
I have found this to be true even on strict ketogenic diets of 0 carbs.
I don’t know if I ‘get’ the insulin to blood sugar to glucose stuff better than the next person, but theres a lot of variables in consideration if one wants to say ‘fat causes fat storage’ vs ‘carbs cause fat storage’ vs ‘insulin causes fat storage’ vs ‘calorie excess’ causes fat storage. THEY ALL CAUSE FAT TO BE STORED. you overeat ANYTHING and yes, your going to gain weight. more slowly with an excess of fat grams b/c of water storage and more ‘quickly’ with carbohydrates because of the same reason. but the weight you gain will be lean mass vs fat mass. it remains to be proven which excess leads to the best long term results.
it is the difference in the soft look vs the depleted look. that aspect in and of itself is NOT fat gain or fat loss. the theory of lipotoxicity holds true, and I do not think an excess of fat grams eaten by anyone is a good thing, just as an excess of carb grams is not a good thing. over-fatting via food leads to physiological insulin resistance, the ol dawn phenomenon, and higher fasting BS. an excess carb consumption(especiall with unreal food) will give you insulin resistance because your pancreas and liver do not communicate with your brain correctly. the wrong signals are sent out and the wrong consequences happen(you get fat or you fail to get fat). usually people are on one bandwagon or the other. insulin IS A GOOD THING YOU WOULD DIE IF IT WAS ZERO. I don’t know why it is so shunned. maybe instead of looking at insulin as the cause of all this, one should look at what is causing the insulin to malfunction, and it is not real food dietary carbohydrates.
if your already broke and insulin resistant(eating UNREAL food) then you need to fix it, and high fat low carb will fix the insulin resistance. however, I don’t think that it is the cure in anyway because once it IS fixed then insulin levels should regulate themselves appropriately. when your insulin resistant you have a dysregulation of glut4 which helps the clearance rate of glucose in the blood by communicating with the liver/pancreas through a signal given by the hypothalamus. something is giving the ‘supply it now’ signal and glut4 isnt released when you are resistant to insulin thus it is stored as fat as the body’s way of ‘clearing’ the glucose.
For a type 2 diabetic, their chronically raised insulin leaves glut4 acting in ‘emergency’ to expand fat tissue as it is the quickest way to clear the glucose(but in normal society people have chronically raised levels, then they keep eating and its not real food so it just gets worse). some peoples body’s also pee it out too. when you are insulin sensitive, the liver responds with the pancreas and when glucose rises, insulin secretes and glut4 clears it(uses it to transport aminos and stuff). when you go ‘zero carb’ you stop or extremely lower your production of glut4(which maybe is why people say you starve your body but your body is starving you of glut4). the fact that adding back carbs after a zero carb diet leads to an impaired glut 4 because, I am guessing that it is impaired in the muscle and the tissue at this point(im talking prolonged no carb) and now you’ve pretty much given yourself diabetes or at least blood sugar problems(or lost the ability to handle carbs). a lot of people on extended low carb diets have very malfunctioning glut4. I am thinking that when one it fat adapted, glut 4 shuts off but triglycerides are used as the replacement cell energy mover because something has to compensate low glycogen. this is only relative in figuring out WHY the body malfunctioned to begin with. I have an idea that it has nothing to do with carbohydrates in and of themselves(again, real food carbs).
if you overfeed long enough your glut4 just becomes overworked, usually due to fake oils and refined foods. but the same should hold true of fat and its processes. something is downregulated and something else is raised.
chronically raised BS levels(through bad food choices, not primal or carb related AT ALL) obviously means your eating more than your body can handle and process(your overeating plain and simple). overworking your liver and pancreas is essentially overworking your entire body from your brain to your gut which will also lead to screwed up cortisol levels and burnt adrenals, which then lead to insulin dysregulation.
This is what I think people mean when they say ‘calories in DO NOT equal calories out’…if you think about it, an 8oz rib eye has a good chunk of calories(in the mainstream sense) but a piece of toast with margarine and jelly carry much less ‘calories’. BUT, BUT when you eat the steak the CORRECT processes in your body occur. because you ate REAL food your body processes it and signals are delivered, hormones released etc. storage is only put into perspective, IMO, depending on the season and the body’s mental history(have you counted calories in the past? do you worry about weight? are you a blood sugar fanatic?).
So, my point is that the steak has MUCH LESS CALORIES because your body goes into NO ‘abnormal’ functioning state nor are you feeding it anything unreal. now, when you eat toast with fake butter and sugary jelly your body stresses and it goes through a lot more ‘calories’ so to say dealing with it and much more synthetic processing. I hope that makes sense. I think calories should be equated with what the body does with the food. a unit of heat tells me nothing about how my liver/brain/pancreas/hormones/gut all deal with a steak.
I think the first step toward a healthy world would be to look at food as food, not as macro composition, not as percents or grams or fat carbs and protein. REAL FOOD IS REAL FOOD IS REAL FOOD and your body will essentially act in a ‘low calorie’ sorta way by destressing and repairing your overworked organs/brain/gut when your diet consists of real food. when you add ‘unreal’ food(anything conventional…I think we know the difference by now) your body acts in an unreal way, and thus, you have modern society, full of over-caloried people, but not numerical calories…synthetic, altered and enhanced calories. there is too much misfiring and unsignaling or oversignaling going on in the body. I think calories should be accounted for by the stress, signaling and hormonal changes/gut necessity in a particular food. look at a brussel sprout…real food, real handling in the body. look at a cut of cow heart. real food real processing. look at a sweet potato…real food real processing. ALL SHOULD BE CONSIDERED LOW CALORIE REGARDLESS OF THAT IT IS….. THEN, look at modern food. toast…high calorie along with wheaties, bran flakes, fiber one etc. GMO enlarged fruit, more calories than it should have b/c its not 100% real. margarine… VERY high calorie(think about what you body goes through or fails to go through eating veggie oil..)
just a thought. I became to low carb with a background of anorexia, and have literally felt the nutrition a real foods diet can offer. I no longer buy the ‘carb’ hypothesis because it just does not make sense. at one time it did, I spent a year eating just meat. anorexics actually suffer hyperinsulimia, so, if insulin causes fat storage and obesity, then anorexics would be fat and that is simply not the case. but they are actually very resistant to insulin and serves as a physiological adaption to the stressed out body.the whole insulin theory, in my opinion, should have NOTHING to do with obesity nor should it be focused on weight loss/fat loss or anythign like that. the bigger picture is looking at how conventional food alters the functioning of the body’s organs via its connection from the brain to the gut.
I have wondered if obesity and anorexia are based on the same thing. You mentioned anorexics suffer from hyperinsulinemia, as do us fat people. Perhaps the reason anorexics are not fat is only because they don’t eat; otherwise, anorexics would be fat. I am assuming that insulin makes us fat mostly in the presence of carbs (like a catalyst).
In other words, I cannot help but to wonder if anorexia and obesity come from the same core problem: insulin, even though their outward manifestations are at extremes.
i have thought the same thing
Yes, I’ve wondered the same thing, myself. In fact, until I read something in GT’s book (“Good Calories …”) I didn’t even know there was such a thing as anorexia that *wasn’t* connected w/ mental problems (nervosa anorexia); that a person could be anorexic by some *purely physiologic* cause.
Since spring, 2008, I’ve had a devil of a time trying to re-gain weight I lost (12 lbs. in one month). With lost employment and low unemployment insurance checks, there was a lot of stress; so I assumed that’s what drove my weight — and appetite — down. However, it’s 2 1/2 years later, and I’ve only gained back 5 pounds. To get back to my normal size (at least 110 lbs.), I need to put on 7 more pounds. Am having a very hard time of it. Yes, I DO work out [Gary T. says that that can increase your appetite] — Pilates 3 days/wk. and strength-training 2 days/wk. One time I even took 4 months off from the gym just to see if a lot of lounging would increase my weight; but that didn’t work, either! Wonder what I’m doing wrong.
It sounds in a contradiction with the treatment anorexics received in the past. According to GCBC, they were given insulin in order to increase their weight and appetite.
Injecting anybody with insulin, whether they’re insulin resistant or not, results in a drop in blood glucose due to inhibition of hepatic glucose production & increased uptake of glucose by muscle & fat. A drop in blood glucose triggers intense hunger pangs.
I was injected with 10 units of fast-acting insulin (to test my pituitary’s GH response) and the low blood glucose made me ravenously hungry. Luckily, I was given food at the end of the test!
Thank you, it completely makes sense.
Too many people blame unreal food too much, because it is very easy to blame. I don’t eat it myself on general principle. It didn’t helped me to avoid the weight problem and became insulin resistant. Yes, it is important to eat healthy and do exercise. It is not enough for many people. When we get concentrated on something that is on surface (like junk food and chemicals) , it easy to miss something that is deep. Let people who chose eat fast food alone, nutritional science is wider than that. The theme of the blog is “why diets work”. No one claim that being overfed is healthy. GT’s point that in order not to overeat you have to start with carbs(especially the refine kind), than you have less chances to overdo fat and calories.
May be for some people not laying on coach is a change in a healthy direction, for others it is walking around the bloc one time a week a big thing.Not eating donuts is on the same scale. I am sure for some individuals nothing will help.
I think that one of the biggest problems that has to be overcome in the quest to both firmly establish the carbohydrate hypothesis’ accuracy and relevance, and to gain its acceptance both by the establishments that generally minimalize it and by the general public as a whole, is the continuing misconception that “a calorie is a calorie no matter what the source”. (An additional serious challenge exists in the form of the huge size of the vested interests whose profits are directly derived from preserving this misconception.) Coupled with the “calorie is a calorie” issue is the common attitude that “diets are for losing weight”. I note that some of the most vocal adherents of going low-carb (and staying there) have been making a point of emphasizing that low-carb shouldn’t be treated as a “diet” (which implies that one only does it temporarily), but rather as a permanent change in eating habits.
It is in addressing this seemingly minor linguistic nuance surrounding the term “diet” that I found the crucial obstacle in handling the issue within my own household, where the resistance to anything labeled as a “diet” was nearly total. Many people regard any and all things labeled as “diets” (with the single exception of “a balanced diet”) as being fads, onerous regimes, and/or outright quackery simply due to the presence of the term itself. Unfortunately, there’s really not a good way to get around this problem when discussing the shortcomings of the common diet or the fallacy of the “balanced” diet as it is generally constituted.
The embedded cultural bias against “diets” (probably reinforced by the common observation that they usually do not work in the long term) is working against us in any attempt to modify what people eat, and why. Until people come to grips with the fact that much of the promulgated “wisdom” as enshrined in the concept of the “balanced diet” is based on nonscience (if not outright nonsense), and until we have the hard evidence in hand to prove otherwise, it will remain difficult to convince most people that fats in general are not the problem, and that carb overconsumption is what they need to address.
Much of the art of persuasion relies for success upon the careful choice of terms. When the only ones presented are those which have been precharged against understanding, the task is made more difficult.
Russ Ault
werehatrack.blogspot.com
hi Russ,
One reason I call the new book “Why We Get Fat” is because of exactly the point you make. It’s not about dieting, as far as I can see, it’s about avoiding the foods that make you fat. In the same way that someone with a corn allergy or a milk allergy doesn’t talk about going on a corn-free or milk-free diet, they just don’t eat corn or don’t drink the milk.
gt
You gotta love it… these studies are these scientists’ life work and they can’t even design them properly or control for obvious variables, no wonder the USA has such a weight problem… where do they find the guys to fill these “nutritionist” jobs? on Craigslist under ETC?
I did my master’s up in Canada, and I know first hand that a lot of the research that’s done up here is done by graduate students, many of which are just executing some game plan from their supervisors, often based not on advancing the field but rather on securing additional funding for future students. That leads to research that is often redundant or useless in the context of the field.
I’ve often thought that an organization that helps guide research on a national or global level would be a good idea, similar to how Michael J. Fox’s organization is helping to guide research into Parkinson’s. Right now I think too many schools and research facilities are operating in their own little silos, and not really advancing the field in any capacity. Obviously the danger with that approach is having people who are biased in the organization, but I think it would produce more meaningful results than the haphazard way most research is conducted, at least in Canada.
And you think that a centrally located “Research Directorate” would be better? Thst is, in many ways the problem now.
Outside the space program, have you an example of government directed research that produces quantifiable results.
The only institution not connected with government and interested in the real solution for obesity related health issues mast be some group of health insurance companies. I don’t understand why they are pushing up to nine fruits a day like our Aetna and support statins application.
Hello Mr. Taubes! I have been a fan of your work for a very long time, so it is nice to see you blogging.
I do have one question that has always plagued me about the whole insulin/ fat/ blood sugar theory, and that is in the case of someone such as myself. Maybe you or someone in our discussion can address this. My doctor has proven to me that my blood sugar is normal and responds normally to food intake,yet I am obese. Meaning, I am not insulin resistant, yet it takes an act of congress for me to lose a pound. I don’t carry fat in my abdominal area, either (which, I may be wrong here, is a sign of insulin resistance). Would someone like me benefit weight wise from a low carb diet? Meaning, if the point of the low carb diet is to control insulin, therefore, control the amount of fat storage, and my insulin working fine, would I even benefit from a low carb diet? How does someone with seemly normal blood sugar amounts and ability to regulate blood sugar then store fat if is not excess calorie consumption?
Thanks! I look forward to many wonderful blog post from you!
Absolutely it would work for you. In no way is insulin resistance required for it to work. It may be more critical for your overall health to eat low carb if you’re already insulin resistant, but it is in now way required for fat loss to occur.
You could have a normal blood sugar level and abnormal insulin (I hope you do not).Also, doctor’s definition of normal usually is too wide. Dr. Bernstein consider normal fasting sugar should be less than 90 mg/dl. If you are too hungry compare to other people, or hungry too soon after meal – it is soothing what points in the direction of not perfect sugar regulation. I wish my doctor told me that my fasting BS was out of a good range 4 years ago (it was 99 mg/dl), but he did’t.
Hi Gary,
So, although we may label a diet as “low fat” and make that the focal point of our observation, there are other variables at play which do not receive the same attention, like carbs. In other words, we may put less butter on our bread (low-fat), but we are also eating less bread (low-carb).
Gary,
Thought you might like this article:
“This Paper Should Not Have Been Published”
http://www.slate.com/id/2276919/
Gary
Have you considered the research that has emerged recently concerning prolonged sitting and decreased lipase activity? Could this be playing a major role in the obesity epidemic?
I agree with you that sticking an obese person on a treadmill for an hour a day is likely a waste
of time. In that sense, no, exercise doesn’t seem to solve obesity. But sitting in front of television and computer screens, or at a desk, with little to no sun exposure, at ALL TIMES, is completely unnatural. We did not evolve to do that.
I spent many years in the construction industry, where people spend 8-12 hours a day on their feet, engaged light and vigorous tasks. And it’s striking how much thinner construction workers are compared to office workers. Most are relatively thin, and even the heaviest are not overly heavy. And that’s all the more interesting, considering that construction workers classically don’t give a hoot about what they eat. In fact, I haven’t met one yet that tried to “eat healthy”.
And have you considered how vitamin and mineral deficiencies might be contributing to this? I think I read that magnesium deficiency can lead to decreased insulin sensitivity.
Do you ever worry that our intolerance to carbohydrate is the result of some other underlying disorder caused by any of the countless noxious influences we’re exposed to in the modern world?
Surely you’re aware of the many non-industrial cultures who suffered no metabolic syndrome whatsoever, in the face of primarily carbohydrate based diets.
Two words: Pima Indians
Gary does a whole section in GCBC about them, and it pretty much addresses all of your questions.
Two words: One example.
Also, two things changed when the Pima were forced to live on reservations. Diet and activity.
You think activity was less for them on the reservation? In any case, by any stretch of the imagination, they weren’t sitting at computer screens, with little to no sun exposure, nor were they previously running 8-12 hours a day on their feet before they became poor and eating rations.
Two words: Good example.
“You think activity was less for them on the reservation? With no more farming, hunting and gathering, what do you think? From Wikipedia “For comparison, genetically similar Pimas in Mexico have virtually no type 2 diabetes.”
My guess is that their brutish life, without luxuries like electricity or running water, was probably quite active.
Were the Pima in Mexico also put on sugar and coffee rations? If not, I’d argue there’s a good indication that the real difference wasn’t activity, it was diet.
They didn’t have those luxuries before they were institutionalised, so no change there. After being institutionalised, all they could do was chop wood for trading (according to wiki).
I would guess that the Mexican Pimas lived a more natural life without the “displacing foods of civilization” as Weston Price called them. You can’t argue that the real difference for the Pima Indians was diet. Both diet and activity changed.
I think the problem is that we *know* how diet changed, but we’ve got pretty weak speculation on how activity changed. “I would guess” and “a more natural life” aren’t helpful in either a qualitative or quantitative manner.
Do we know how the Pima Indians’ diet changed with much accuracy? From GCBC. “By the mid-1890s, the Pima were relying on government rations to avoid starvation…” and “…the Pima diet already included “everything obtainable that enters into the dietary of the white man…” and “…the Indians took to buying “sugar, coffee and canned goods to replace traditional foodstuffs lost ever since whites had settled in their territories.”
That’s as qualitative as me saying that getting food hand-outs instead of farming, hunting & gathering reduced their activity.
Not at all -> farming, hunting and gathering can be no more strenuous than chopping wood, walking long distances to get water, and playing with sticks in a field. Furthermore, you’ve got another confounding problem -> causality. If indeed the Pima of Arizona reduced their activity, was it because they were on a reservation, or was it because their diet stripped their muscles of energy?
In any case, the activity is a red herring -> by any stretch of imagination, their activity levels would be generally considered much more “healthy” than typical activity levels of sedentary computer programmers of today.
But here’s a question -> what experiment would you design to determine whether or not increased carbohydrate intake, or decreased activity, has a more deleterious effect on weight and health?
Nobody measured their activity so we can’t say for sure. They would have been walking to get water before they were institutionalised. Why would a diet high in refined carbohydrates have “stripped their muscles of energy”? They would have had loads of muscle glycogen.
The effect of sedentary behaviour on health has already been studied. See http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/files/2010/12/Published-Paper.pdf
A diet high in refined carbohydrates causes blood sugar levels to spike, which causes insulin levels to spike, which causes fat cells to accumulate fat (as opposed to returning fatty acids to the bloodstream). The dearth of fatty acids in the bloodstream starve the muscles of energy, leading to lethargy and a subsequent lack of activity.
From your cite:
“The definition of sedentary behaviour is at present inconsistent in the research literature, and comparable definitions and measures are rare.”
Also interesting:
“The changes in carbohydrate metabolism were particularly
pronounced, with participants experiencing a 67% greater
insulin response to a glucose load following the 5-day intervention.”
It seems being sedentary is particularly problematic if you eat carbs
What muscles burn for energy varies with fitness level, genetics, exercise intensity and muscle glycogen fullness. See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.com/2008/12/everyone-is-different.html
A diet high in refined carbs keeps muscle glycogen stores full. Therefore, RER=1 which means that muscles burn 100% glycogen & 0% fatty acids at rest. Muscles also have IMTGs to fuel them when necessary.
Sedentary behaviour & high-carb diets don’t go well together. Oh, wait….
…A diet high in refined carbs keeps muscle glycogen stores full. Therefore, RER=1 which means that muscles burn 100% glycogen & 0% fatty acids at rest…
Is that right? For that to be true, your muscles and liver would have to hog the glycogen indefinitely. Or you’d have to eat carbs in perpetuity. But I’m pretty sure that once you wake up in the moring from this glycogen fantasy, you’re pretty much burning fats, unless your Krebs cycle is miswired.
I should have written “full during the day”. Carbohydrate intake fills muscle & liver glycogen stores. Activity (also the brain & red blood cells indirectly) burns it. If carb intake equals carb burning, glycogen stores never empty. If carb intake exceeds carb burning, that’s when the excess passes down the lipogenesis pathway & raises serum triglycerides (bad news).
After a night’s sleep, liver glycogen is quite depleted (as it’s used to provide blood glucose for the brain & red blood cells) but muscle glycogen is less depleted (unless you were thrashing around in bed all night). If you look at the RER histogram in my blog post, you’ll see that first thing in the morning, resting fasted RER varies from 0.71 to 0.93 which equates to fat-burning of 93% to 20%. So you’re not necessarily pretty much burning fats.
I see that in order to justify your point of view, which is quite apparent and immoveable, you have to use the word “if” thrice. Three big ifs. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to rely on ifs? Good luck to you.
You’re quibbling over my use of the conditional word “if”? Does that mean you don’t have any evidence to support your point of view? I can support my point of view with evidence from a peer-reviewed study. Have you looked at the RER histogram in my blog? I didn’t like to presume that you had, hence the “if”.
I did, and I’m familiar with RER as I’ve done work in this very area in university (we did the RQ in my days) and had mine tested when I swam competitively. So I know what we burn at rest and at different VO2 levels and what it is based on. And I know when anaerobic and aerobic metabolism kicks in. And I know how after a meal, once the insulin levels get back to basal levels and the excess glucose has been stored in the fat cells, how your RER ratio starts dropping away from 1.0, where quickly you start burning fats predominantly (especially if you aren’t an athlete–re: your histogram). So, since one is in basal insulin levels most of the day, one would expect to be burning fats predominantly at rest, which is what your histogram shows whether you like it or not, or wish to acknowledge it or not. You like to concentrate on the 20% value, I’ll look somewhere between the 20 and 93%. Cheerio.
The histogram was for fasted RER. Meals high in carbohydrate top-up glycogen stores which raises RER. As glycogen level falls between meals, RER falls. Therefore, average RER during the day is higher than in that histogram.
Increasing fitness reduces RER (which is why trained marathon runners can run 25 miles at 12m.p.h. without draining muscle glycogen stores too quickly). Unfit people get a higher % of energy from carbs.
Burning both carbs & fats aerobically uses Krebs.
Over…
Indentation is a pain! To see the effect of a high-carb meal on RER, see http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=789552&jid=PNS&volumeId=54&issueId=01&aid=789544
RER is raised for several hours.
I’ll answer your last comment here, since there’s more horizontal room.
As you know, I did research in the area and was a competitive athlete back yonder, so I know what’s going on (and I currently design clinical trials, so I’m pretty versed with fast versus fed states). You are merely interpreting the data as you see fit–the fringe aspect of it to support what you want it to support. I can do that too, but I look at the data itself. Best of luck to you. This has nothing to do with Gary’s post, so I’m done.
“…so I know what’s going on…” Self-praise is no recommendation. I cited a study below showing that RER is raised (fat-burning is reduced) for several hours post-carb consumption. How is that misinterpreting the data? Your Krebs cycle comment also makes no sense. But yeah, we’re pretty much done.
I’m reading more of your cite (particularly the conclusion section) – the authors seem to be decrying a lack of objective study on sedentary behavior and its effects on our health:
“It seems likely that it
will be feasible to induce people to shift some proportion of
their sedentary time into higher volumes of light- or moderate-intensity physical activity. However, this needs to be determined empirically. In populations where most adults are
physically inactive, the feasibility and acceptability of such
changes needs to be examined carefully in rigorous studies
using objective measurement methods.”
Did you read the piece before citing it?
Yes. I hope you weren’t expecting me to remember all of it! Studies usually end with “More rigorous studies required (i.e. more money, please!).
Ah, I see your point
Thanks again for the cites, they’ve been very informative! I think I’m beginning to understand some of what you’re trying to say, and appreciate your patience
You’re welcome. I enjoy researching & discussing diet, nutrition & human metabolism – it’s a fascinating subject.
BIOLOGY dictates that we REGAIN the fat, Nigel.
People REGAIN DESPITE, DESPITE MAINTAINING their DIET and EXERCISE programs. read that again.
THIS is what the studies SHOW.
The caloric model is a FAILURE. The bank account model of obesity is dead WRONG.
So, what do you do to stay slim & healthy?
Nigel, I am actually trying to help you. Don’ ever diet. I did that back in 1997. There are only negatives. Dieting raises your fat storage enzymes. Dieting raises your setpoint little by little. Learn from my mistakes. Paying attention to signals of fullness and hunger is better. ( assuming they work right) Gone are my days of dieting and deprivation. People do NOT fail diets . Diets fail people. This is what science has shown.
*Dieting is a strong predictor of future weight gain.
*Overwhelming evidence documents that people who diet are much more likely to gain weight than people who don’t.
References all included in this link :
http://razwell.blogspot.com/2010/10/failure-of-dieting-myth-of-will-power.html
Please read that article and check those studies. Science backs what I say.
I’m touched that you’re trying to help me. Are you aware that diet means “way of life”. Therefore, whatever you’re doing, you’re dieting.
That said, I’ve been low-carbing since 1997. I lost weight easily, which is why I’m all in favour of a low-carb diet. Taubes is proposing a low-carb diet for obesity. Why aren’t you shouting at him?
I used to believe that calories didn’t count, so I ate too much and gained some weight back. I now know that calories still count, even when low-carbing. I now also know that moving more is essential for good health. Luckily I have found a way to move more without making me eat more.
So, what’s your secret for having a slim & healthy body?
What if you are dieting without being hungry? It is one thing to be deprived because you are hungry and not full and quite another to feel deprived because you are not eating an ice-cream or bread. Sometime you eat in order to replenish your nutrients and sometimes for hedonistic pleasure.Some foods make you more hungry. If you are avoiding such foods, is it the dieting in your sense?
AWESOME points your bring up, Robert. Malnutrition, hormones all important parts in the complex subject of obesity. And good points about formal exercise not solving obesity and being overrated. Construction workers live more naturally.
You are also correct about it being bad to live unnaturally in front of a computer, no sunlight etc. . Sitting for long time is not what we evolved to do and I am sure it contributes . Standing is good for us.
Urgelt of YouTube would like your comment a lot.
Good stuff!
Hormones control the distribution of bodyfat around the body (arms, boobs, belly, bum, thighs etc) but they don’t create bodyfat out of thin air! There has to be an excess of fuel that’s not being burned to create more bodyfat i.e. calories in > calories burned.
Sedentary behaviour reduces the activity of lipoprotein lipase leading to elevated serum cholesterol & triglycerides. I should know, as I have elevated serum cholesterol & triglycerides due to sedentary behaviour. Exercise is necessary for health even though its effect on weight loss is minimal unless you’re an athlete.
.
Second as far as lipodystrophy, I guess they ate less and exercised more for their ( very emaciated)upper bodies, while they ate more and exercised less for their lower bodies, huh Nigel ?. Get real.
Your explanation fails. The caloric model fails.
What part of the word “distribution” did you not understand, huh?
You fail. The caloric model works. I am making it work. See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.com/2010/12/eat-less-move-more-solutions-to.html
What science has uncovered directly contradicts your deeply held belief system about obesity. You cannot handle this.
The idea that if we would just “eat less and move more ” we would lose fat and become lean is WRONG. Numerous studies from my blog show how that turned out……..
Composition of the diet, meal timing are all important. Dr. Linda Bacon is NOT a defeatist at all. She is a realist. We will get better results if we just listen to our bodies.
Obesity is NOT solved. To you it is simple and certain. To real, genuine scientists it is very complex and full of uncertainty. The TRUTH is we are still figuring obesity out.
Your bank account “eat less, move more” fat loss method has NEVER been proven to work successfully long term in ANY study . This is 100 % incontrovertable fact.
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/30
Read that good.
DIETING RAISES FAT STORAGE ENZYMES
DIETING RAISES THE SETPOINT.
Dieting is a great way to GAIN WEIGHT long term Nigel……..
NOTHING is out of thin air. We ALL eat.
The body can keep you fat on a low calorie diet. The idea that we would all lose weight LONG TERM if we just cut the calories is FALSE. The idea might seem like common sense to you, but it is dead WRONG.
I cannot spell it out for you anymore Nigrel.Please read my blog carefully and read the REPUTABLE studies I cite.
My latest post is a podcast from Dr. Linda bacon. All these things I have said are disccussed on my blog. I am tired of typing them all over again. My blog will you show you the failure of the caloric model.
Again see here:
http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/30
You do not seem at all to be intersted at all in searching for the TRUTH about obesity, only defending a failed bank account model. To you it is simple and all figured out. To the diet industry it is simple and all figurd out.
The truth is we have more to learn. There are more unknowns than knowns. No one’s advice on losing weight long term has ever been proven.
We have not figured this fat loss thing out yet.
Why should I bother reading your “TRUTH” (could you please stop writing in capital letters as it looks like hysterical ranting) when I have already addressed the problems that I & other people face when trying to lose weight & be healthier and found workable solutions to them?
I do not advocate just cutting calories. If you’re too thick to understand that, this discussion is at an end.
Good point. The only time we buy sugar and biscuits (cookies) is when we have builders in (the sugar is for their tea). And you’re right, they are rarely overweight, or significantly so.
See Barry Groves’ website (SecondOpinions) for lots of stuff about sunlight and other things.
Regards,
Mike Ellwood
Good point. The only time we buy sugar and biscuits (cookies) is when we have builders in (the sugar is for their tea). And you’re right, they are rarely overweight, or significantly so.
See Barry Groves’ website (SecondOpinions) for lots of stuff about sunlight and other things.
Regards,
Mike Ellwood
I posted this elsewhere, but two things that contribute to insulin resistance are:-
1) Hypovitaminosis D due to lack of UVB (which can’t penetrate window glass). See http://phlauntdiabetesupdates.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-evidence-that-vitamin-d.html?showComment=1291728699509#c1224945468171543953
I take 5,000iu/day Vitamin D3 and now have a completely normal OGTT result.
2) Prolonged inactivity. See http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/files/2010/12/Published-Paper.pdf
Mr. Taubes, your first book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories”, has arguably saved my life. Thank you for your work, and I’m glad to see you out on the blogosphere!
Typo in 5th paragraph; beginning with, “And this Belief…” The sentence should read, “…our tendency to eat too much…”
Seems to me that even a low-fat, calorie restricted starvation diet is technically a high-fat diet during weight loss because the body is feeding on it’s own fat stores. Physiologically, as fat stores diminish, leptin signaling changes and hunger eventually becomes a problem.
One possible explanation for EXTRA weight loss with increased fat calorie intake is the fact that gut microbes utilize digested fat for both energy and cell structure. The more favorable the nutrient profile of the food, the more the gut microbes are able to multiply.
Mr. Taubes,
Could you , please, give me your definition of a low-carb diet?
Gary, thanks for setting up the blog. Let’s hope your new book helps get the message out about carbs.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on why the 2003 Atkins craze appears to have faded out like all other diet trends. A reflection on the nature of all fads? Too difficult for folk to stick to? Delivered in the wrong format (too many crap tasting low carb nutrition bars) or maybe Atkins’s untimely death?
PS: I love the look i get from folk when i try and explain why my morning eggs n’bacon is better than their plain bagel and fat-free spread….
I think it might have a lot to do with the scare tactics employed by the mainstream media and health/nutrition community.
The British Guardian newspaper recently did a holiday-filler piece about various celebrities and their breakfasts. Not one of them would admit to bacon and eggs, let alone a “full English” breakfast.
It was a right old “healthy” carb-fest.
I hope at least some of them were lying through their teeth.
The British Guardian newspaper recently did a holiday-filler piece about various celebrities and their breakfasts. Not one of them would admit to bacon and eggs, let alone a “full English” breakfast.
It was a right old “healthy” carb-fest.
I hope at least some of them were lying through their teeth.
Gary, great post. I’ve noticed in recent studies researchers have failed to comment on the noncaloric restriction of the low carb diets, I suspect they believe” the low calorie in disguise” theory as fact, so don’t comment on it. Darrol
I am 57 years old and have been basically eating low carb for more than 15 years, ever since I discovered I have a sensitivity to wheat. While I’ve never maintained a food log, my general experience is that if I hold my carbs to under 50 per day, I can pretty much eat whatever I want without gaining weight. However, my weight will go up fairly quickly if I go to as much as 100. My experience has also shown me that if I want to lose weight, it doesn’t matter how low I go in carbs if I don’t create a caloric deficit. It wasn’t always this way, and I suspect my length of time on low carb, plus my age, have something to do with it. I have also found that it is more difficult to lose weight without exercise, especially the older I get. Unfortunately, a bum knee won’t let me do a lot of things I used to love, like distance running.
I am 57 years old and I have eating low carb for at least 20 years, ever since I discovered I have a wheat sensitivity. While I have never maintained a detailed food log, my experience has been that if I hold my carbs to 50 or so, I can pretty much eat whatever I want without gaining weight. I will start gaining weight fairly quickly if I go as high as 100. I have also discovered that if I want to lose weight these days, I have to create a caloric deficit. It doesn’t matter how low I go with carbs if I don’t create the deficit. It wasn’t always this way. When I first did the Atkins diet, I could stuff myself until I couldn’t stand up if it was meat, cheese or whatever, and the weight would drop off. I suspect the change may have something to do with the amount of time I’ve been eating low carb, or perhaps my age, or both. It’s hard to say. I have also found that it is easier to lose weight now if I can exercise fairly vigorously.
Could you, please, tell,when you cat calories, what to you limit? Fat in your diet or proteins or snacks? Or just the size of the total meal?
With everything being equal, it may be that your basal insulinergic ceiling (I just made that up, but I think you’ll understand what I mean) is 50 grams of carbs (it also happens to be mine). Below 50 grams, you aren’t riling up insulin to get a rise out of it. So, you ain’t putting on the weight. I too can loose weight by limiting my calories, but you don’t want to be around me when I’m empty-bellied. So I don’t limit them. What you could try is what someone else suggested earlier–try lowering your protein intake. That may also blunt some of that insulin response. Or, if that doesn’t work, try INCREASING your protein intake, which might speed up your metabolism (this works for me if I only do it once in a while–about once a fortnight). If none of that works, I hear amphetamines work pretty good, but they’re a bitch to get off of…I’m told.
As far as exercise, two words: Tabata sprints. Most economical workout ever. Faster than it takes to read a Clark Dixon thread.
I wonder about the high carb cultures or subcultures where people tend to be skinny, like Japan till recently, or vegans. Why do you think?
Firstly, since carbs contain calories, there is no way to separate the two out fully as you attempt to do. If one does, control for protein and total calories and compare LC vs. LF for the remainder of the calories in a controlled setting then meaningful conclusions can be drawn. But …
…. as you state early on that the dietary records of Shai are to be taken with a grain of salt, and the diets were not matched for calories and protein, clearly this study and the results thereof are fairly useless for determining the cause of weight loss. I agree about the records, so then why base evidence for your theory on the results of this study? We’re talking a couple of days records from differing numbers of participants in each study at three time points over a two year period.
But, if we are going to look at the records, we see that you continue to misrepresent unrestricted calories to mean there is no caloric deficit. This is not the case, the caloric deficits are greater for LC vs. LF in the first 6 months and 1 year, and slightly less over the last year. Your logic would jump on that and say “See! It’s the carbs”. But not so fast! Why do you ignore the third group in the study? The Mediterranean dieters. This group actually reported consistently lower average caloric deficits than either LC or LF as well as the LEAST carbohydrate restriction and lost the same amount of weight as did the LC group in the end. So what does this tell us? That ultimately, the control/reporting accuracy in Shai was lacking sufficiently to render any conclusions on the basis of intake analyses moot.
Shai offers some insight, however, into the most healthful weight loss method, that being one that produces consistent losses that are maintained. And the prize there goes to? Mediterranean again. In most diet comparison studies, weight loss is greater early on followed by a rebound bounce in LC. I propose that this is not an optimal strategy either. And the improvement for the diabetics in the study? Med once again.
Lastly, however, how do you explain the weight loss trajectory for the LC group. They claim to have maintained a rather significant reduction in both carbs and calories at each time point. Although not significant, the LC group reduced calories a bit more from 6 months to 1 year, and carbs slightly too, yet they regain pretty consistently over the year from 6-18 months before finally plateauing out. And what of the plateau? They ate a few more calories, but even fewer carbs. Again, these records are not to be trusted as accurate, and the differences are not likely to rise to a level of statistical significance, but if you’re going to use this data for one purpose, you will need to explain ALL of the results, not just those that fit your theory.
…clearly this study and the results thereof are fairly useless for determining the cause of weight loss…
For someone who said that the results shouldn’t be taken seriously, you clearly seem to be taking them earnestly and using whatever information from them that seems to fit YOUR theory. Is it cherry picking season?
I’m doing a hypothetical analysis (or perhaps “devil’s advocate” is a better term). IF one is to draw any conclusions from comparing the reported intakes to weight losses in Shai, then one has to look at ALL of the evidence, not just LC vs. LF. Pretty much all we can state is that the groups all lost some weight maintaining some sort of caloric deficit over a period of time.
That said, when one looks at the standard deviations on the reported intakes for LC and LF vs. Med, the variability is far less for the Med group. They also had a preferable weight loss trajectory w/o regain. So if we’re to get anything from Shai it is that moderate approaches might be better than the extremes.
But you said the paper was useless, yet you still present the evidence in it that points in YOUR favor. You claim Gary Taubes is taking bits and pieces of the paper to support his claims, but can’t you see you’re taking different bits and pieces (and dismissing Gary’s bits and pieces) to make your own claims? Under your scenario, neither of you is “looking at ALL the evidence.” If Gary is biased, defacto you are biased too since you are using the exact same strategy that you are accusing Gary of utilising.
The bottom line is that people have been banting since before Bant and getting results. It works and you can’t get around that. No one can. Gary might have some things wrong (and I think he does and I think he knows he does) but overall, he’s on the right path. I think his mission is not for Gary Taubes to be right, but for Gary Taubes to right science. If he does, whether he is right or not, we will all benefit, especially overweight and obese folks. That’s all I’m saying.
OK, so we default to “LC works so what if Taubes perpetuates flawed theories as to why”.
Let me say this in no uncertain terms. The reported dietary intakes in Shai are useless to prove anything regarding carb or caloric restriction. Since GT chose to again highlight this study (as he did in his most recent lecture available online) however to support his position, I’m just pointing out that there is evidence to counter that position in the very same data. I am not using it to support any position other than noting the least extreme of the three approaches led to the best overall result: steady and maintained loss.
Maintained? Can you point out where the yellow dots dip below the blue dots?
Steady? Three cheers for the Med group. Their weight loss was steadier. However, three cheers for the low-carb group whose weight loss was more.
Regardless, all that graph tells us is that most subjects were non-compliant by the end of the first year…in all groups. While compliant, though, I think it’s obvious which group lost more.
Heart health? Low carb comes out ahead again.
Inflammation? Low carb breaks the tape first.
For diabetes? Low carb did dang well. Best at lowering glycated Hb.
But it’s all for naught. The data was poison.
We don’t have to default to GT, but you don’t personally have to gainsay default the other way just because it’s coming from GT. That’s not science…and as John Cleese would point out, it’s not even an argument. Good luck to you and your beliefs.
I’ll continue to bant the old fashion way until GT and his numerous predecessors are proven wrong. Or until I reach my target weight.
The LC weight loss was not more than the Med group except at earlier time points. At 2 years, it is not significantly different. In all parameters the LC vs. Med group are similar, the diabetics did better on Med. I blogged on that here.
I didn’t state that the outcomes were for naught, I said trying to draw conclusions on calories and macronutrient compositions over a 2 year period of “free living” based on a few days of self-reporting is pretty useless … as GT said himself in this blog to be taken with a grain of salt!
What does this have to do with how any of us choose to eat? In case you missed it, I eat low carb myself. For the better part of 2 years <20g/day probably 90% of the time, and only recently at carb levels more akin to those reported for the LC group in this Shai study (if anything I've lost a little since upping my carbs a bit).
As far as low carbers gaining on it? Two names for you: Jimmy Moore, Dana Carpender
Again at 2 years the low carb people were above what most low carbers maintain at; 100g a day.
I think Jimmy Moore might be gaining because he eats so much franken food. There might be other issues too. He might be sensitive to gluten and the bread he’s been eating.
mikepol you are reading the data table incorrectly. I linked elsewhere to the actual intake at 6 months the average was 87.4g carb. The table in GT’s post is for change from baseline, not intake. So at 2 years the LC group was eating an average of 81.2 g/day carb … fewer, not more.
CarbSane… her username alone is an ad hominem attack… So she’s sane and the rest of us who dare to disagree with her are crazy…
from her blog “…I found the LC community on the web and began reading all sorts of crazy theories.”
Your evidence that a calorie isn’t a calorie where weight is concerned is……?
A bathroom scale would be a good place to begin…
A bathroom scale measures calories in & calories out how exactly?
I sure do. LIPODYSTROPHY. Also, all the evidence from my blog.
You are wrong about not listening to ” top notch experts” . Nigel. When someone is an acknowledged top world expert such as Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, on the subject of obesity ( a subject we are talking about) you SHOULD heed his lectures and writings. They ARE based on scientific studies. They ARE appropriate. They ARE acceptable. They ARE verifiable.
Your argument holds no water. You and several of your heroes consistently MISUSE logical fallacies such as ad hominem and appeal to aithority.
Personal attacks and name calling are NOT, NOT ad hominems.
Deferring to nobel level scientists over NON experts on the Internet who write cute diet books and are your heroes) in their appropriate disciplines is NOT an appeal to authority and perfectly appropriate. The experts I cite such as Dr. Friedman and Dr Linda Bacon all have citre numerous reputable studies.
The angel of ad hominem comes to save you and let you win all arguments completely unscathed, so you do not have to actually use your mind to enegae your opponents.
Nice tactic, but claiming logical fallacies for your defense is the adult equivalent to saying ” na nana nana na”. Whether you misuse or even use logical fallacies correctly says NOTHING about the VERACITY of your opponents argument.
You, James Krieger, Anthony Colpo ought to stop misuing the word and get an education on what it actually means and how to apply it. You also should start using your own skills to debate properly, instead of misusing the angel of ad hominem. OK?
My blog has a post about this here, and I think you should read the article I link to :
http://razwell.blogspot.com/2010/12/ad-hominem-misused-often-by-internet.html
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/10/of-pseudonyms-blog-names.html
IMO there are all sorts of crazy theories. GT had to retract one such theory that you needed dietary carb to store fat. Never was true. Calling theories crazy isn’t the same as calling a person crazy.
At two years, no one in any of the groups was eating the macronutrient or caloric distribution they claim to be eating (well, maybe a few were) or else they never would have put on weight at any time during those two years (i.e. the slopes never would have been going back up at any point). I see this every day in the studies I oversee (I supervise clinical trials for BigPharma–three jeers for me!). Patients fill out those surveys the way they think you want them to fill them in (no one wants the investigators to find out they’ve sneaked in that square or two of baklava at the office Christmas party). It’s easy to spot these things when you see them often enough. So, if you now think the data wasn’t so poisonous, all this study shows is that while the subjects were motivated (up to 6 months, maybe), the low carb group lost substantially more. But because of its shoddy design, it’s easy cherry picking for those who like to pick cherries. You can take whatever you want from the study to make a blog post to agree with whatever position you want it to agree with (it appears you’ve already done this). But it doesn’t matter how many times your resident stalker likes your posts, it doesn’t make your interpretation of the study any more correct. The main point of what GT had to say still stands: why did they neglect to emphasize, or address in their analysis, the other variable?
At two years, no one in any of the groups was eating the macronutrient or caloric distribution they claim to be eating (well, maybe a few were) or else they never would have put on weight at any time during those two years
So we can draw no conclusions from this study specific to exact macronutrient intake or calories.
Why did they neglect to address the other variable? Probably because calories and carbohydrates aren’t independent? But IF they addressed the other variable using the dietary records as GT has done, they would have needed to address ALL the data, not simply LC vs. LF. It remains that the Med group lost as much weight as the LC group in the end restricting both calories and carbohydrates the least.
So, when GT uses the data to make his point, it’s worthless data. When you use it to make your point it’s a panacea. Well, you tell me what conclusions can be drawn.
…It remains that the Med group lost as much weight as the LC group in the end restricting both calories and carbohydrates the least…
You might see that from the data (probably the panacea component). I’m not so convinced that’s true (based mainly on my experience in clinical trials and food survey validity). I feel the first six months are more telling–while the subjects were still compliant. You may feel different.
So you believe the data comparing LC to LF and that this supports the carbohydrate hypothesis, but you don’t believe the data comparing LC to MDTN because this directly counters the carbohydrate hypothesis.
In a blog post chastising scientists for poor controls and analyses, GT has displayed far more egregious behavior than he accuses them of.
I am NOT saying the paper is useless. I’m agreeing with GT that the dietary records are to be taken with a grain of salt. So then why did he go on about them?
If you’d read GT’s blog post without your rose-tinted glasses, you’d have noticed that he wasn’t using the post to justify low-carb at all, but to question why these authors did not give ink to the “other” crucial variable.
The dietary records are the only raw data there is (excluding demographic data), so if you question the raw data, then you have to question everything. But you don’t. You even posted a blog post to show how the Med diet is superior to LC for diabetics based on this raw data you find so objectionable. Raw data is where it’s at, man.
It’s okay. Bloggers like you who live off others fame are a dime a dozen and those rose-tinted glasses are a necessity. Good luck to you and your minions.
This will be my last response to you on this topic. If you cannot understand the concept of *IF* you accept something you have to look at all of it, you’ll just continue to misrepresent what I’ve written.
You simply didn’t read GT’s post in full, but you don’t need to … just look at the title: Calories, fat or carbohydrates? Why diets work (when they do). Are you saying that he didn’t use Shai to support his thesis that carb restriction was responsible for the weight loss?
GT has not, and likely will not, address the gross inaccuracies in GCBC. He has a blog now so the clock is ticking on when he’ll come clean on alpha glycerol phosphate, unequivocally, in print.
Nah. That won’t sell
non-fiction books.You and Nigel use a lot of conditional clauses, so I’ve noticed. I do accept that GT has some things wrong or is on the fringe of right on others (and have stated that before), but I think his message is rock solid. Not obsidian-like–more like granite and sorts. He has his reasons for sticking to his guns and I respect that and believe this is the right approach to take for what he is attempting to accomplish (which is more than making a buck). The fact that carb reduction works irrespective of the mechanism by which it does so speaks volumes.
Life is full of IF x THEN y ELSE z. Get used to it. Carb reduction doesn’t work for everybody. Get used to that as well. No further comment.
Oh, while you’re at it, Carbsane, can you explain to me, as it deals with the ironclad calories in/calories out dogma, what you meant in your Sept 10th post (Gary Taube$, Shai-ster) when you said, verbatim: To repeat: MDTN restricted BOTH carbs and calories significantly less than the LF group, but lost more weight. MDTN being the Med group.
lol. Carbsane did not made a blog post based on this paper, did he? He’s not using it to prove anything. Taube did. He’s just pointing out that his paper does not mean anything.
The bottom line is that carbophobic are running around blaming insulin for everything and bringing very probably false mechanistic as to why LC works, and then saying non-sens as calories don’t matter. People are confused enough like this, let’s not perpetuate bad science.
I’ve seen many individual in the LC-community plateauing, and then starting to count calorie and having a steady weight loss.
LC works because
1) it’s highly restrictive, and taking out food that are easy to overconsume, thus reducing caloric intake
2) is high in protein, which has a high TEF and is very satiating, thus reducung caloric intake.
Sure, it’s a quick fix if you’re overweight and you don’t want to count calories, by default it shall reduce your caloric intake. But you won’t get ultra lean just by cutting out carbs. At some point you’ll need to control your caloric intake.
If calories don’t matter and insulin is all that matter, how did the twinkie and the potatoes diet work?
It defies all the LC logic.
plateauing, meaning they lose weight and then come to a stop at some point. were you under the impression that eating no carbs would reduce ones body to that of a skeleton with skin? because thats not how it works, and i dont think anyone would expect that.
most low carb diets are high fat, not high protein. many who lose weight on lc diets consume more calories than they did before they started losing weight. who said insulin is all that matters? it is an important factor when it comes to regulating fat retention, but it is one factor.
many who lose weight on lc diets consume more calories than they did before they started losing weight.
There’s simply no evidence of this other than unverifiable anecdotes.
thats a lie.
Do you have any evidence where intake was monitored and documented where a person ate more calories on low carb and lost weight? It is possible if someone has a serious fat absorption issue, but that would not be a healthy way to go for such a person either. Atkins claims and internet “experiments” that cannot be verified are interesting but not sufficient.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129158/
well, i think the whole point of cutting carb intake is inducing a fat absorption issue of sorts. perhaps puts strain on the kidneys. i dunno.
“i dunno.” Correct!
lol, pretty sad when all you have left is blatantly taking someone out of context.
Then you’re hopeless, Nigel. You need to learn to use appeal to authority and ad hominem correctly. These are used incorrectly so often on the Internet. My blog has a post.
I defer to REAL, WORLD RENOWNED EXPERTS like Dr. Friedman and Dr. Linda Bacon . That is perfectly appropriate. These experts cite the research which I have provided.
My blog is VERY good, Nigel. Quality information. Numerous lectures by Dr. Friedman. My blog clearly demonstrates all the failures of the caloric bak account model of obesity.
There is no hope for you.
The magnitude of all those things that Manninen discuss are completly irrevelant when it comes to real world fat loss. It’s mental-masturbation. Anyhow, a review is not consider a very high level of evidence. Here something more talking.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16685046
The non-ketogenic diet actually resulted in more weight loss. Protein was kept constant, and all the food was provided during the study.
Essayiste,
Why do you dismiss the Manninen review as “not a very high level of evidence” and “mental-masturbation”. Here are some excerpts:
Samaha et al. randomly assigned 132 severely obese subjects to a low-carbohydrate or calorie and fat-restricted (low-fat) diet [17]. Seventy-nine subjects completed this six-month study. It should be noted that the difference in consumption of energy from carbohydrate was quite narrow: 51% in the low-fat group and 37% in the low-carbohydrate group. Total energy intake at the 6-month mark was 1567 kcal/day in the low-fat group and 1630 kcal/day in the low-carbohydrate group. Thus, the low-carbohydrate group consumed 54 extra kcal/day. Nevertheless, the low-carbohydrate group lost 5.8 kg (and was still losing weight at 6 months) vs. 1.9 kg (leveled off) in the low-fat group. Both groups were given an exceptional number of contacts with “experts in nutritional consulting”, so the possible placebo and nocebo effects would be even more intense here [18]. Greene et al. found that people eating an extra 300 kcal a day on a very-low-carbohydrate diet lost a similar amount of weight during a 12-week study as those on a low-fat diet [19]. Over the course of the study, subjects consumed an extra 25,000 kcal that should have added up to about a 7 pounds weight gain; it did not. The study was unique because all the food was prepared at an upscale Italian restaurant, so the researchers knew exactly what they ate, and one could not argue that diets were not palatable. Finally, a recent randomised, balanced, two diet study compared effects of isocaloric, energy-restricted ketogenic and low-fat diets on weight loss and body composition in overweight/obese men (n = 15) and women (n = 13) [20]. Despite significantly greater calorie intake (1855 vs. 1562 kcal/day), both between and within group comparison revealed a distinct advantage of a ketogenic diet over a low-fat diet for weight loss/fat loss for men. In fact, 5 men showed more than 10 pounds difference in weight loss. Majority of women also responded more favourable to the ketogenic diet, especially in terms of trunk fat loss. Furthermore, the individual responses revealed that three men and four women who did the ketogenic diet first, regained body mass and fat mass after the switch to the low-fat, whereas no subjects regained weight or fat mass after switching to the ketogenic diet.”
These studies report facts, not opinions. All of them demonstrate a difference in weight loss between low carb and low fat diets which cannot be explained by calories alone.
The theory that all types of calories are metabolically equivalent is an empirical hypothesis, not to be confused with the first law of themodynamics. It is a generalization and as such can be proven false by a single piece of credible counter-evidence. Of course, one can challenge whether or not the studies were performed perfectly with all the correct controls, etc. But the same point can be made for any of the other studies you, CarbSane or others cite.
So what specifically is wrong with the studies cited in Manninen?
they dont agree with him. lol
Hi Jonathan. All of this was explain by Anothony Colpo already on his website. Alan Aragon also reviewed many of them in his Research Review, but you need to subscribe.
Please read this with an open mind.
Part 1: http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=94
Part 2: http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=99
It’s a bit long, but should gave you enough matter to at least question if a metabolic advantage exist. Colpo is harsh and that is not an advantage to have his message heard, but his critics still stand.
Lyle McDonald wrote a very good article considering the calories-in/out. Very worth reading.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-equation.html
I’ll be the first to say that LC works very well in loosing weight, and that macrocomposition can influence body composition. Mostly the protein level, though. Denying calories is a mistake though, and I just don’t get why the LC crowd hold so much onto that idea.
All the revelant studies are discuss by Colpo, and if you find any flaws in his reasonning, please feel free to point it out. I’m all open to reconsider my stance, but I once believe that low-carb was magic and that calories did not matter. I’ve changed back my mind though. There are good reasons to this. I’m into this for science and for my clients, not to promote anything. I’m going with the evidence and with what works.
Cheers!
lol, you will only be satisfied with something that fits your opinion. and no one denies calories–the atkins website even says calories still matter… instead of trying to work on arguments, you should probably slow down and really try to understand what it is youre discussing.
James
If you agree with me that it is calories in/out that dictate if there is mass gain or mass loss, not carbohydrate, and if you agree with me that it is the protein content of the diet, not the carbohydrate, that favorably affect body composition and hunger, then we are indeed arguing agasint each other for nothing. If you agree with this, I guess you’ll agree that going low-carb is absolutly not necessary to have a sucessfull weight loss, since you can easily be higher-carbs and higher-protein.
its not just calories–thats the relevant issue here. thats why people have lost weight without reducing their caloric intake and exercise habits. taubes isnt saying calories dont matter, you are misunderstanding. he is criticizing the calories/in-calories out model because it is far too simplistic.
The calories in/calories out model is far more complicated than you think which is why you just don’t “get it”. See http://www.ajcn.org/content/20/11/1223.full.pdf
“In conclusion, ample evidence has been suggested to show that in calculating calorie balances from
calorie balance = calories in – calories out
care should be taken to account for the influence of caloric intake on calorie output.
And this is exactly the ineffective advice/nostrum that does NOT work LONG TERM. That is what everyone is missing.
Many different diets produce SHORT TERM weight loss. That is completely irrelevant and useless observation.
What we want is LONG TERM weight loss, specifically FAT LOSS.
Low calorie diets/caloric restriction bank account model advice does NOT work for long term fat loss . Your own body is better able to regulate your weight than you are.
Nigel, you and other fat loss gurus are not realizing we do not have anywhere near the control over our weights you mistakingly think. The quality information from reputable scientists like Dr. Friedman and Dr. Lind Bacon , and other scientists Dr Stephan Guyanet shows this to be true.
Razwell, Eat Less, Move More does work. It just has to be applied in a way that’s workable and sustainable for life. That’s where most “diets” fail. The failure has nothing to do with calories in/calories out.
By an amazing coincidence, I’ve just blogged about solutions to the problems that stop people from losing weight (which, if done properly is fat weight, not muscle weight). See http://nigeepoo.blogspot.com/2010/12/eat-less-move-more-solutions-to.html
In 9), I advocate avoiding eating carbohydrates that disrupt blood glucose levels. Happy?
Wrong, Nigel. You obviously have NOT read Dr. Linda bacon’s book, nor my blog. People will FAIL at diets long term EVEN WHEN DIET AND EXERCISE ARE MAINTAINED.
Address that. I have the studies on my blog.
I’ve already looked at your blog and the writings of Linda Bacon. As I already said, I’m not impressed. Hysterical shouting, appeals to authority and defeatist attitudes don’t impress me much.
It’s not rocket science that if someone eats a diet/does an exercise regime that doesn’t suit them, they won’t be able to maintain it for life.
1. Since the new book now contains a diet, can we presume you will be shouting and railing against GT anytime soon? He’s now officially in the diet INDUSTRY!
2. I am very confused at your defenses of GT as he does not seem to have much if any agreement with Bacon etc. He basically claims that if we keep carbs low, we won’t get fat, and if we’re fat, we’ll get lean when we restrict them. The long term success rates of low carbing are no more impressive than traditional CRD’s so I can’t figure out what your defense of GT’s theories is all about.
And the failure has EVERYTHING to do with calories in/calories out. That model is simplistic and WRONG.
Ask Dr. Jeffrey Friedman. He said “21 st century medicine will allow us to do MUCH BETTER than reiterate the nostrum to eat less and move more , which is no more liekly to work today than 2,000 years back”
READ my blog.
And lastly, Nigel, you and CarbSane are always accusing Gary of cheery picking. Well guess what? No one misrepresents and chery picks science more than the DIET INDUSTRY.
James Krieger, Anthony Colpo et al CONSISTENTLY misrepresent the what the evidence has shown with regard to obesity and body fat regulation.
Dr. Stephan Guyanet , Dr. Linda Bacon and Dr Jeffrey Friedman are real scientists and far more edcuated on this topic than Krieger and Colpo.
As incomplete as Gary ‘s own theories might be, it does NOT change the FACT that THEIR adviced has NEVER been proven true and is ineffective LONG TERM.
THEY consistently cherry pick. In fact ,Krieger is the boiggest cherry picker I ever saw.
We have a nobel level scientist ( Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, the discoverer of leptin) who has a deep understanding of obesity at the cellular level saying that the often repeated nostrum to “eat less and move” does NOT work as a long term effective solution to obesity.
We have the studies- no matter how many times scientists refine their methods, repeat the experiment, etc., the results is always the same . Dieting ( cutting calories) does NOT work long term and is NOT effective as a solution for solving obesity.
You do not have that much control , Nigel. Your body sorts thing out.
NO ONE can conciously and deliberately balance the MILLIONS of calories in to calories out over a decade . A HEALTHY body does this for you. Our fat regulatory systems are measured over YEARS- they are VERY LONG TERM. Obesity research for the future needs to DITCH the false bank account model and research how to LOWER OUR SETPOINTS. THIS IS THE FUTURE.
You and CarbSane just do not get this……..
You keep making the assumption that they don’t reduce their caloric intake when
1) there is ample evidence that LC/high-protein diet is very good at spontanuesly reducing caloric intake. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18175736
2) you have no data whatsoever to back this up. all the studies where calories and protein are kept constant show no greater weight loss for LC. Only in the studies where protein are not controlled there is a difference.
You also should read this one
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20565999