Yet another study shows no weight loss benefit for low-carb
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If thats true @lemurcat12 then its the same type of thinking from those who believe you can digest more than 30g of protein at once and like that, its a myth. Layne Norton did a good video on that a few months back.
https://youtu.be/CTF9YR6BU9k 1 -
WinoGelato wrote: »
In Attia's case it was very significant. I think for people with IR it can be very significant.
What does "significant" mean? What about those who aren't IR? Why come into every thread and get so worked up about this when it is irrelevant or insignificant for the majority of the population? You are probably excreting more calories tilting at this windmill arguing about this than you are because you chose a LCHF diet...
Contrarians gonna be contrary.1 -
More science being debunked by #alternativefacts I see. A day in the life of MFP.4
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WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »rainbowbow wrote: »...You have to lose as much as a deficit demands due to conservation of energy (the energy has to be come from somewhere) but that does not mean you can't lose more than that (due to excreting with exhalation being a mode of loss of fat mass). I have issues that people will not even consider this possibility...
Anybody who knows anything about physiology would not discount the fact that exhalation is a mode of fat loss. That's commonly known. If anything, people may be disputing your belief that IF/Keto is somehow unique or magical in that regard. You lose fat through exhalation regardless of the macro composition of your diet or when you eat your food.
Taubes has very strong opinions indeed, and they're not backed by science. He's not a scientist and has no training in nutrition or physiology. He studied applied physics and aerospace engineering, and has a Master's degree in journalism. In short, he's a tinfoil hat crackpot with some crazy ideas and just enough intelligence to know how to cherry pick scientific studies and twist the logic enough to sound convincing so he can sell books and get paid for speaking engagements. He's been solidly discredited by numerous scientific researchers, yet he refuses to relent on his dogma because it would just make him look like an even bigger fool at this point.
I don't know how many times I need to explain it isn't magical. Your belief that loss without a deficit would be "magical" shows me you are not considering excretion as a mode of energy loss. I don't know what else to say.
Applied physics and aerospace engineering isn't science? Those people (I'm one of them) have more math, stats, and physical system dynamics training than a nutritionist or physiologist every thought of having. It allows them to thing of things in terms of energy a lot better than the nutritionist or physiologist. You have your opinions about Taubes and his ideas but I KNOW your idea that a loss without a deficit does not break any themo, energy laws which I've studied quite a bit. Both camps need to learn from each other (the life sciences need more math and the math guys need more life sciences). Together much more can be learned. My background is in engineering with a BS in mechanical engineering (lots of thermo) and a MS in electrical engineering (lots of physical systems dynamics modeling). I think you are cherry picking because I've provided references that back up that lc/if/keto helps.
am I the only one not understanding what the heck you are trying to say here?
Someone explain to me what he's saying, because he's going on about his background in engineering now and still avoiding the question.
There seems to be this inherent desire to identify some ADDITIONAL benefit above and beyond a calorie deficit for weight loss that can be attributed to a particular way of eating (in this case LCHF) and the purported mechanism for this additional benefit is via excretion.
What this ignores is that the entire energy balance model is based on estimates, and that even if it were possible to burn additional calories and expel them via excretion simply from eating a certain way, it would be impossible to quantify that impact as it would be negligible in the grand scheme of things.
It's similar to people who bang on about the TEF and how certain foods burn more calories during digestion than others. I don't remember the exact numbers from the study off the top of my head but I believe it was something like an estimated 7 additional calories in an overall caloric intake of 2000. Yeah, that would fall into the category of "majoring in the minors" for me, and not at all worth the effort to try to consume more of those foods.
I think it was @lemurcat12 who pointed out upthread that if people find a certain way of eating easier to adhere to, and easier to maintain a calorie deficit eating that way - that is far more valuable from a mental standpoint than agonizing over trying to find foods that you can eat that will result in bigger poops or more sweat or heavier breathing... to me it seems like a way to try to "game the system" rather than just focusing on the areas that are likely to have the largest overall impact - calorie deficit, a balanced nutritious diet, managing any medical conditions, satiety, and enjoyment.
Figuring out how to eat to make more calories come out in my poop?
I think you partially are getting what I'm talking about but not completely. If the body has to make glucose out of fat because your not eating carbs or too much protein, then that conversion of fat potential energy to glucose potential energy isn't 100% efficient. I don't know the efficiency, but please people don't say these ideas violate the laws of thermodynamics. I'm not talking about poop!
And what do you believe the impact of this thermodynamic effect is? A bump of 1%? 5%?
In Attia's case it was very significant. I think for people with IR it can be very significant.
What does "significant" mean? What about those who aren't IR? Why come into every thread and get so worked up about this when it is irrelevant or insignificant for the majority of the population? You are probably excreting more calories tilting at this windmill arguing about this than you are because you chose a LCHF diet...
In the case of Attia, significant means in two years going from 195 to 170, 20% bf to 7% while increasing calories and not working out any more! I don't think I've gotten very worked up but it does get tedious when people say ridiculous, rude, or dismissive things. I've had people e-mail me and tell me I'm clueless and an idiot. I've asked for an explanation and they said, "I will leave that up to others who could explain it better". This general board is very hostile to anything but CICO and many falsely believe losing more than CICO is a violation physics when it is not! A lot of people seem to be incapable to having a civil conversation. I've said many times, CICO is sufficient to lose weight but other things can help (especially for those who would have to have ridiculously low cal intake to get a deficit). That seems to fall on deaf ears. I'm pretty open minded. A lot of people are not. Also, IR people are people too. What if a person has extreme difficulty losing weight and these ideas can help. A lot of people are so dismissive anything other than CICO that the ideas are not even given a chance or considered even though there is a lot of evidence other things can help.
I was trying to be generous thinking that you were looking for ways to increase calorie burn and this accelerate weight loss above and beyond what would be achieved through a standard deficit, but if you are citing someone who was eating in a calorie surplus and still lost 25 lbs of measurable weight then I too am going to call BS on the principles of thermodynamics... do you have other examples besides this one, someone who had more rigorous controls?
I didn't say that people with IR are less important, simply that even if your statements are accurate that these methods are beneficial for those who are IR, that is not relevant for the majority of the population.
And just to reiterate, do you acknowledge that a calorie deficit is required for weight loss? if a person is in a 500 cal deficit on a 2000 cal diet to lose 1 lb/week, what additional benefit do you think they may get from following your LCHF "excretion bump"? Burning an extra 15 cals? 50 cals? Wouldn't it be easier to simply not eat those calories, then to try to game your thermodynamic system?
I'm sorry but you do not understand the thermodynamics in the context of these processes (I'm sure you understand more life sciences than I do).
For a caloric surplus, thermodynamics requires that fat gain must be less than 100% of what the surplus is since the energy for the fat storage must come from somewhere and also because all conversions of energy have losses (entropy losses from converting potential energy in food to potential energy in fat, there are other efficiency losses as well [incomplete digestinon, etc]).
For a caloric deficit, thermodynamics requires that there must be at least, and some more, fat lost equal to the deficit (the deficit must be covered since the energy has to come from somewhere and also there will be losses from converting the fat potential energy to cover the deficit. There could be other losses for other reasons).
Thermo does not limit that all the CI be used and it does not limit more fat being used up than the energy demands of the body. PERIOD!
If a body doesn't consume carbs or excess protein, fat will need to be metabolized for gluconeogenesis to provide the bodies glucose needs. This conversion will not be 100% efficient (due to thermodynamics). I don't know what this inefficiency is.
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@blambo61 You might find Feltham's self experimentation interesting. He tries different diets at 5000kcal per day for 21 days and logs his results. I know he has done LCHF and HCLF vegan diets. Of course his experiences will not prove true for all others. It's his own n=1, but I found them interesting. http://live.smashthefat.com/why-i-didnt-get-fat/
Thanks!0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »WinoGelato wrote: »rainbowbow wrote: »...You have to lose as much as a deficit demands due to conservation of energy (the energy has to be come from somewhere) but that does not mean you can't lose more than that (due to excreting with exhalation being a mode of loss of fat mass). I have issues that people will not even consider this possibility...
Anybody who knows anything about physiology would not discount the fact that exhalation is a mode of fat loss. That's commonly known. If anything, people may be disputing your belief that IF/Keto is somehow unique or magical in that regard. You lose fat through exhalation regardless of the macro composition of your diet or when you eat your food.
Taubes has very strong opinions indeed, and they're not backed by science. He's not a scientist and has no training in nutrition or physiology. He studied applied physics and aerospace engineering, and has a Master's degree in journalism. In short, he's a tinfoil hat crackpot with some crazy ideas and just enough intelligence to know how to cherry pick scientific studies and twist the logic enough to sound convincing so he can sell books and get paid for speaking engagements. He's been solidly discredited by numerous scientific researchers, yet he refuses to relent on his dogma because it would just make him look like an even bigger fool at this point.
I don't know how many times I need to explain it isn't magical. Your belief that loss without a deficit would be "magical" shows me you are not considering excretion as a mode of energy loss. I don't know what else to say.
Applied physics and aerospace engineering isn't science? Those people (I'm one of them) have more math, stats, and physical system dynamics training than a nutritionist or physiologist every thought of having. It allows them to thing of things in terms of energy a lot better than the nutritionist or physiologist. You have your opinions about Taubes and his ideas but I KNOW your idea that a loss without a deficit does not break any themo, energy laws which I've studied quite a bit. Both camps need to learn from each other (the life sciences need more math and the math guys need more life sciences). Together much more can be learned. My background is in engineering with a BS in mechanical engineering (lots of thermo) and a MS in electrical engineering (lots of physical systems dynamics modeling). I think you are cherry picking because I've provided references that back up that lc/if/keto helps.
am I the only one not understanding what the heck you are trying to say here?
Someone explain to me what he's saying, because he's going on about his background in engineering now and still avoiding the question.
There seems to be this inherent desire to identify some ADDITIONAL benefit above and beyond a calorie deficit for weight loss that can be attributed to a particular way of eating (in this case LCHF) and the purported mechanism for this additional benefit is via excretion.
What this ignores is that the entire energy balance model is based on estimates, and that even if it were possible to burn additional calories and expel them via excretion simply from eating a certain way, it would be impossible to quantify that impact as it would be negligible in the grand scheme of things.
It's similar to people who bang on about the TEF and how certain foods burn more calories during digestion than others. I don't remember the exact numbers from the study off the top of my head but I believe it was something like an estimated 7 additional calories in an overall caloric intake of 2000. Yeah, that would fall into the category of "majoring in the minors" for me, and not at all worth the effort to try to consume more of those foods.
I think it was @lemurcat12 who pointed out upthread that if people find a certain way of eating easier to adhere to, and easier to maintain a calorie deficit eating that way - that is far more valuable from a mental standpoint than agonizing over trying to find foods that you can eat that will result in bigger poops or more sweat or heavier breathing... to me it seems like a way to try to "game the system" rather than just focusing on the areas that are likely to have the largest overall impact - calorie deficit, a balanced nutritious diet, managing any medical conditions, satiety, and enjoyment.
Figuring out how to eat to make more calories come out in my poop?
I think you partially are getting what I'm talking about but not completely. If the body has to make glucose out of fat because your not eating carbs or too much protein, then that conversion of fat potential energy to glucose potential energy isn't 100% efficient. I don't know the efficiency, but please people don't say these ideas violate the laws of thermodynamics. I'm not talking about poop!
And what do you believe the impact of this thermodynamic effect is? A bump of 1%? 5%?
In Attia's case it was very significant. I think for people with IR it can be very significant.
What does "significant" mean? What about those who aren't IR? Why come into every thread and get so worked up about this when it is irrelevant or insignificant for the majority of the population? You are probably excreting more calories tilting at this windmill arguing about this than you are because you chose a LCHF diet...
In the case of Attia, significant means in two years going from 195 to 170, 20% bf to 7% while increasing calories and not working out any more! I don't think I've gotten very worked up but it does get tedious when people say ridiculous, rude, or dismissive things. I've had people e-mail me and tell me I'm clueless and an idiot. I've asked for an explanation and they said, "I will leave that up to others who could explain it better". This general board is very hostile to anything but CICO and many falsely believe losing more than CICO is a violation physics when it is not! A lot of people seem to be incapable to having a civil conversation. I've said many times, CICO is sufficient to lose weight but other things can help (especially for those who would have to have ridiculously low cal intake to get a deficit). That seems to fall on deaf ears. I'm pretty open minded. A lot of people are not. Also, IR people are people too. What if a person has extreme difficulty losing weight and these ideas can help. A lot of people are so dismissive anything other than CICO that the ideas are not even given a chance or considered even though there is a lot of evidence other things can help.
The reason we argue against his blog is because it seems like he's trying to pin it as the magic bullet that everyone has been waiting for. It makes it seem like "I can eat way more than my calculated energy expenditur and lose weight" which is why we keep saying you're trying to make it seem like keto is somehow magical. We got fat by eating too much and it seems he's saying it's because we eat too many carbs that we got fat. For some, like women with PCOS, diabetic patients, or anyone with IR, yes, keto can be life changing (also those with epilepsy). I recommended to a coworker the other day that his wife try keto because she has PCOS. But I'm sorry, one guy's blog (with noted inaccuracies) is not going to make me switch up my lifestyle and think that I can eat way more calories than what my body needs and lose weight.
If you believe so heavily in his work then please, by all means, try it for 6 months; making sure that you are not in a calorie deficit, and show us your weight before and after. Sometimes scientists have to try things out on themselves to get the world to listen (see the discovery that H. pylori causes ulcers). I'm halfway tempted to try it myself but first off I
carbs, second when I did try keto (3 times) my liver HURT, and third I don't buy that I can eat more and lose and I've worked too hard to lose the weight.
I've not been stating the things that you are saying I have. I will repeat it again. A calorie deficit is sufficient for fat loss. Other things can help. I do believe a calorie deficit should be the foundation of most if not all diets. For some, that might be eating an incredibly small amount of calories. If you have a deficit too long or have other health issues, your metabolism might be incredibly slow and other things like LC/IF could make all the difference in the world (that's not majoring in the minors for them!). There are a lot more people that claim this it ins't a N=1 experiment only. Also I provided some actual scientific study references.spinningmadlyon wrote: »Keto is not just about appetite suppression (ie calories in calories out). Its about improving insulin sensitivity. Most overweight people have higher than optimum AC1 numbers approaching prediabetes or may even have T2 diabetes already. If you are a "sugar" (carb) burner, you need to eat fairly frequent. Each time you have that low calorie high carb rice cake or piece of healthy fruit your insulin spikes. These frequent insulin spikes from low calorie but high glycemic index foods contribute to a progression of hormonal malfunction of insulin (increasing your blood sugar levels). So long as you have higher than normal blood sugar levels you will not break down fat for energy. Your body doesn't need to. Calories in calories out do count, but not nearly as much as how your food choices impact the release of insulin in your body. Its in the carb macros and the protein macros. Too high of protein will convert to glucose so that is why a well constructed Keto Diet is Low Carb Moderate Protein with the fat simply filling out the calorie to bring you to your overall calorie goal. All foods spike insulin to some degree, but the lower you can keep those spikes, the more you can burn body fat and if you do it long enough, you can even reverse insulin resistance and reverse Type 2 Diabetes. Look up Dr. Jason Fung . . . he sites all sorts of research on this.
Thank you!1 -
Why this isn't in the debate section is beyond me. After all, is that not where people who want to argue go? This is not "help" nor is it asking for "help" and shouldn't be posted under "General diet and weight loss help." SMH.,.... That being said, what do you hope to accomplish here? Do you hope to get people on a low carb plan to change? Some people follow a low carb plan for medical reasons, or maybe they like the way they feel on low carb. Your "study" is irrelevant.2
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »You keep bringing up Attia. I see nowhere on his site other than him mentioning DEXA and VO2 max scans what kind of testing he did.
A point I tried to make somewhere else you brought up Attia that got ignored is that people increasing their calories increase their exercise intensity.
I saw how he measured things like his VO2 max and things like that, but absent putting himself in a metabolic ward, he didn't prove anything about a metabolic advantage to what he was doing.
There is a very simple explanation for what Attia did, and people here on these forums experience it all the time. I stated it above. You don't need to exercise more to burn more.
He didn't defy physics because of how he was eating, in spite of what he thinks.
Edit: I will also add that everyone here giving anecdotes (and this includes Attia) of this supposed advantage of quicker loss wasn't losing under controlled conditions like in this study. Study after study done under either controlled conditions or long term shows NO difference between higher or lower carb. Riddle me that one.
Attia doesn't think he defied the laws of physics. What is the simple explanation you mention. The DEXA showed accurately what him BF% was. He said he didn't increase his exercise intensity and was a little less when he lost the weight. He proved something because he lost weight, improved %BF while increasing calorie intake and not doing more exercise.
Your statement, "He didn't defy physics because of how he was eating,.." makes me believe you didn't read what I wrote. Him losing weight, improving %bf, with no more exercise, and while increasing calories isn't defying the laws of physics if you include excretion into the model. I'm not talking about poop either. The majority of fat metabolism by-products are exhaled which is a form of excretion (http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30494009). If the macro-content causes this fat to be liberated, then it can be excreted (through breathing).
Read down in the article (http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v67/n8/full/ejcn2013116a.html) a little about benefits of ketosis and weight loss (not due to calorie restrictions). Also studies where mice (or rats I forget) lost more fat through IF dieting although that group and a control group ate the same amount of cals for the whole week. Riddle me that!
He demonstrated something we already know. IR + carbs is not a good mix. He is not an examplar for other people out there who don't have IR. IR and PCOS has already been demonstrated to have lower metabolic rates and the prolong periods of insulin would decrease CO. So when you tailor back the carbs, you have shorter periods of lipogensis which enables more energy to be burned which increases CO.
@nvmomketo and most PCOS people experience the same thing.
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1307008/slow-metabolism-maybe-related-to-pcos-or-insulin-resistance/p1
Trying to apply science as it relates to a disease state, to non disease state is not beneficial.
ETA: Hell, I have a study or two that would compare those with IR vs IS (insulin sensitive) and varied carb rates. Those with IR responded better to low carb. Those who were IS, responded better to a moderate carb diet.
There is a good chance I believe that a lot of fat people could be IR.
You can believe it, but doesn't mean it's true. And honestly, I do not understand why you are trying to justify a response or have an argument based off an N=1. At best, in the first study, there was a short term increase in EE while transition to ketosis, but there also wasn't fat loss and by the end, total fat loss was equivalent. I haven't found it, but there was a discussion between KH and I believe Attia or Volek, where KH suggested that the reason for the increase in EE was the initial metabolic cost of producing additional Ketones.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10436946/are-all-calories-equal-part-2-kevins-halls-new-study#latest
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/83/5/1055.full
Now, if you wanted to argue compliance or other factors, I could many understand that. Personally, if a person is obese and non active, there probably would be a benefit from reducing carbs. But I would also recommend reducing carbs to increase protein and fiber, and then modifying fat and carbs based on satiety and energy requirements. I personally cycle carbs/calories. My low carb days are a bit rough, but this technique has allowed me to have greater compliance. My high carb days (320g+), I struggle often to get enough carbs, as they tend to fill me up.
Wouldn't the metabolic cost of producing keytones and gluconeogenesis support what I've been saying?
Please take a look at the full thing i said. The short term increase was due to the initial metabolic requirement to incresse ketone production. But also at the same time fat loss did not occur and the increse energy did not increase overall fat loss against a low fat, higher sugar diet.
Also, if people are pm'ing you please send me a pm with their message and name. The admins will address it.
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lemurcat12 wrote: »spinningmadlyon wrote: »Keto is not just about appetite suppression (ie calories in calories out). Its about improving insulin sensitivity. Most overweight people have higher than optimum AC1 numbers approaching prediabetes or may even have T2 diabetes already.
That's overstated, and of course lots of people who do get their numbers back to normal just by losing weight. Another great way to increase insulin sensibility for most people is exercise.
Also, does keto actually improve insulin sensitivity (outside of weight loss)? Or does it reduce the need for insulin (with respect to carbs anyway) so that IR is less of a problem? The test would be whether one can do keto for a while, without weight loss as a contributing factor, control blood glucose levels that way, and then reintroduce carbs and respond as an IS to them. I don't think that's normally the case. If it leads to weight loss, of course, that often cures the problem.If you are a "sugar" (carb) burner, you need to eat fairly frequent.
I don't get this idea that people are "sugar burners" or "fat burners." People burn both, in percentages consistent with what they eat (and with body fat being used to make up for any deficit). You don't have to be on a low carb, let alone keto diet to burn fat. We all burn fat, especially when sedentary or exercising at a low level (walking, sitting, sleeping).
And no, you don't need to eat all that frequently. People did fine on three meals a day with typical diets with carbs as the largest source of calories. People follow similar eating patterns on high carb diets all over the world in various cultures. I personally always found that they easiest diet, even when eating higher carbs--I think the need to eat a bunch is cultural, we have food offered all the time, not about macros. And even without being on keto it has never been that big a deal to me to fast for a day (and others do various forms of IF without doing low carb).Each time you have that low calorie high carb rice cake or piece of healthy fruit your insulin spikes. These frequent insulin spikes from low calorie but high glycemic index foods contribute to a progression of hormonal malfunction of insulin (increasing your blood sugar levels). So long as you have higher than normal blood sugar levels you will not break down fat for energy. Your body doesn't need to. Calories in calories out do count, but not nearly as much as how your food choices impact the release of insulin in your body.
This is just wrong. People lose fine on high carb diets. When you have a deficit you burn the carbs, but then still need to burn fat when they are gone -- there's no difference, that claim that you can't lose eating carbs makes no sense and is part of keto rhetoric that is a lie. Also, blue zone diets and lots of other very healthy diets are higher carb than the US diet, and yet people are normal weight and don't have problems with IR or T2D. So scaremongering about fruit makes no sense.
They were not saying you can't lose eating carbs. Only that some things help burn fat more than the deficit requires. Insulin has been shown to inhibit fat formation.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »I've been sick so have been away from MFP for the past few days. I'm still not feeling very well, but let me see if I have this straight:
Has blambo been saying that it theoretically doesn't violate any thermodynamic principals for more fat to be burned than would be accounted for in the CICO model given the correct substrate ratio and is offering Peter Attia to back up this theory while ignoring the fact that in controlled conditions, such an effect has not been observed?
I think the notion is that in certain foods not all calories are turned into energy and just wasted (i.e., if you eat 1000 cals of nuts, not all 1000 calories would be converted into energy). But who knows because actuals studies confirm otherwise.
My reading is that he's claiming that this happens not so much with certain foods (although it could be that our usual counts are somewhat off on some things, like nuts, and will be corrected eventually), but with certain ways of eating. Some months ago I remember he was off on the theory that if you ate a huge amount of calories in one sitting you would excrete a lot of them without using the calories (hmm, a theme?), and now it's supposedly keto does this. But like you say, the studies haven't supported this, and I still don't see a logical mechanism whereby the body would do this. I mean, sure, initially converting to ketones might require a bit of excess output (which is what the studies seem to show) and maybe making glucose from fat takes some extra (as does making fat from carbs, actually), but that is unlikely to be meaningful--mostly you don't need to make glucose from carbs when on keto (you need a little bit of glucose for the brain, but usually you aren't that low and anyway it's not that many calories).
Beyond that, the idea that your body would, in essence, waste calories when in keto probably seems appealing if one needs to lose weight or wants to eat more than maintenance, but it would not be an efficient or useful thing for the body to do, so why would it have evolved to do this? Indeed, the body tends to interpret keto as starvation or food scarcity, so the idea that it starts wasting calories in keto makes no sense to me.
Might there be more energy to fuel food search or some such or diminished hunger? Sure, that could make sense. Might IR people have impaired energy output with higher carb diets (since they are not able to effectively convert the carbs to energy properly)? Yeah, that makes sense to me. But a major wastage of calories as suggested? Don't see it.
I also think wanting that reads as messed up to me, but this could be my own food biases. The idea that there's some desirable state of eating a lot and having calories go through us feels wrong to me (even if it were possible to achieve, which I don't believe). How would that be different in kind from that horrible stomach pump device that has been talked about in the forums?
I hate being misrepresented which seems to happen a bit. I have previously said that all CI don't get used which makes total sense. I've never proposed that we should try to not digest our food. I made a point that for long IF where most calories are eaten at once, digestion is probably not as efficient (not as good of mechanical mixing or any other process being saturated or rate limited so can't use all the food) as it would be if the calories were consumed in a spread out manner.2 -
ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Why this isn't in the debate section is beyond me. After all, is that not where people who want to argue go? This is not "help" nor is it asking for "help" and shouldn't be posted under "General diet and weight loss help." SMH.,.... That being said, what do you hope to accomplish here? Do you hope to get people on a low carb plan to change? Some people follow a low carb plan for medical reasons, or maybe they like the way they feel on low carb. Your "study" is irrelevant.
My one hope would be that people stop saying that losing more fat than a deficit requires is breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Then we can maybe consider if other things have an effect or not! Many here believe that losing more than a deficit is impossible because of the laws of thermo (it's not) so their minds are totally closed to anything and any investigation to see if things work or not.
And if some do have some metabolic issues, they might try LC/IF, etc to see if it helps since a lot of people have had success there when they haven't been able to lose otherwise (metabolism so slow maintaining a deficit is near impossible). I've been experimenting with LC just the last 5-days. I'm not trying to get to keto. I'm doing it to help control morning blood glucose levels. I love carbs and don't plan on being LC for ever. I also want the mircro-nutrients in fruit, gains, etc. I'm only a keto/LC advocate if its the only way a person is able to have success losing weight or if they need it for some medical condition.1 -
Or you could stop wildly speculating and taking what was actually shown in controlled environments to be true time and time again.7
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ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Why this isn't in the debate section is beyond me. After all, is that not where people who want to argue go? This is not "help" nor is it asking for "help" and shouldn't be posted under "General diet and weight loss help." SMH.,.... That being said, what do you hope to accomplish here? Do you hope to get people on a low carb plan to change? Some people follow a low carb plan for medical reasons, or maybe they like the way they feel on low carb. Your "study" is irrelevant.
It's not really a debate, except for those who choose to make it so.
On the topic of fitness and health, there is a huge amount of misinformation on the internet and in the media. One could argue that the majority of information available to the average person in these areas is wrong.
The idea in posting research results like this is to inform the undecided and help them to make informed choices. So, yes, it is "help".
I have certainly never, in 33 years of professional practice, told anyone who wants to follow a low-carb eating plan that they need to change. I don't think there is one serious comment in this thread that has attacked anyone following a low-carb diet for their choices.
But the fact remains that many of the most strident and public advocates of a ketogenic diet make claims that are contradicted by science and by research. It is my opinion that many of them are also more interested is self-promotion than in facts and actually helping people. That misinformation has filtered down to the general public to the point that there is this pervasive belief that carbs are inherently evil and that insulin automatically leads to fat gain. It also leads people to make radical changes in their eating habits in the belief that there is a unique way of eating that will, in and of itself, cause them to lose weight, regardless of the calorie content.
This is wrong. And it needs to be pointed out. The more randomly and radically one changes one's eating habits in order to loose weight, the higher the chances that that weight will be regained in two years or less. In fact, I would argue that it is almost inevitable. (It should be obvious that I am not referring to everyone who follows a low-carb diet).
Facts are always "relevant". So is science.7 -
stevencloser wrote: »Or you could stop wildly speculating and taking what was actually shown in controlled environments to be true time and time again.
Or you could also look into the success people have had and see if there is anything to it. You are cherry picking your studies. I don't know how much LC / IF , etc help, but I do know that there is a lot of evidence that they do and also they are not an impossibility due to laws of physics (thermo).2 -
ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Why this isn't in the debate section is beyond me. After all, is that not where people who want to argue go? This is not "help" nor is it asking for "help" and shouldn't be posted under "General diet and weight loss help." SMH.,.... That being said, what do you hope to accomplish here? Do you hope to get people on a low carb plan to change? Some people follow a low carb plan for medical reasons, or maybe they like the way they feel on low carb. Your "study" is irrelevant.
It's not really a debate, except for those who choose to make it so.
On the topic of fitness and health, there is a huge amount of misinformation on the internet and in the media. One could argue that the majority of information available to the average person in these areas is wrong.
The idea in posting research results like this is to inform the undecided and help them to make informed choices. So, yes, it is "help".
I have certainly never, in 33 years of professional practice, told anyone who wants to follow a low-carb eating plan that they need to change. I don't think there is one serious comment in this thread that has attacked anyone following a low-carb diet for their choices.
But the fact remains that many of the most strident and public advocates of a ketogenic diet make claims that are contradicted by science and by research. It is my opinion that many of them are also more interested is self-promotion than in facts and actually helping people. That misinformation has filtered down to the general public to the point that there is this pervasive belief that carbs are inherently evil and that insulin automatically leads to fat gain. It also leads people to make radical changes in their eating habits in the belief that there is a unique way of eating that will, in and of itself, cause them to lose weight, regardless of the calorie content.
This is wrong. And it needs to be pointed out. The more randomly and radically one changes one's eating habits in order to loose weight, the higher the chances that that weight will be regained in two years or less. In fact, I would argue that it is almost inevitable. (It should be obvious that I am not referring to everyone who follows a low-carb diet).
Facts are always "relevant". So is science.
Misinformation can go both ways. Both are bad. Is there no middle ground? I think there is. A lot of folks here apparently don't think so.4 -
ThatUserNameIsAllReadyTaken wrote: »Why this isn't in the debate section is beyond me. After all, is that not where people who want to argue go? This is not "help" nor is it asking for "help" and shouldn't be posted under "General diet and weight loss help." SMH.,.... That being said, what do you hope to accomplish here? Do you hope to get people on a low carb plan to change? Some people follow a low carb plan for medical reasons, or maybe they like the way they feel on low carb. Your "study" is irrelevant.
A moderater him/herself has participated in this discussion, and if anything needed to change, it would have been changed.1 -
Amongst all this thermodynamics and insulin discussion, we must remember that the body naturally wants to be lean if you let it. If all the men in this world were active 6-8 hours a day hunting the meat, and all the women were harvesting the fields, it wouldn't even matter. Our bodies evolved to be active, and advancements in technology in terms of what we do and how we eat have been in opposition to what our bodies are built for, which are also what many other bodies are built for as well: moving. Animals we see today have evolved because of natural selection. Our omnivore sapien species evolved from those that once were mostly herbivores, and we evolved because we became bipedal (our arms were never meant to be feet, indicated by the species from which we came).
Naturally, our bodies aren't meant to be bodybuilders, but we do need proteins to sustain muscle. The ability to chase animals and eat meat granted us that ability. So, whether we eat carbs or fat, or a combination of the two, the body will naturally shed the fat as it loses the calories. It wants to be in equilibrium, as any other system does in the universe, and it knows where that equilibrium is: having lower fat stores. If the body did not know what it needs, babies would be thin and cold. Alas, babies come out chubby and warm.
Every body is different in how it metabolizes food. Some have slower metabolisms, some have faster ones. Some have defects (or lack of development, as in the case of dairy intolerance), some are perfectly fine. But I think as long as we consume protein to allow for synthesis, the body will do what it needs to do to drop the fat. And, in my opinion, the only thing necessary to do that is to get the body back to equilibrium (or, not "back to" in my case), and that is where the true argument is: how do we do that? How do we not overeat when the demands of our body are different on a daily basis?0 -
Amongst all this thermodynamics and insulin discussion, we must remember that the body naturally wants to be lean if you let it.
No, it doesn't. The body wants to have enough fat to serve as "insurance" against future famines. We evolved to survive cycles of feast and famine. That doesn't mean the body wants to be obese, but it's not going to "waste" calories; that's not what it evolved to do.8 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »Amongst all this thermodynamics and insulin discussion, we must remember that the body naturally wants to be lean if you let it.
No, it doesn't. The body wants to have enough fat to serve as "insurance" against future famines. We evolved to survive cycles of feast and famine. That doesn't mean the body wants to be obese, but it's not going to "waste" calories; that's not what it evolved to do.
^ Exactly. No, the body does not naturally want to be lean. It wants to keep a certain level of fat stored in case of famines/food scarcity. That's why the body fights increasingly harder against fat loss as you get progressively leaner. Getting from 15% BF to 10% BF (or leaner) is a hell of a lot more difficult than getting from 35-40% to 15%.4 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »Amongst all this thermodynamics and insulin discussion, we must remember that the body naturally wants to be lean if you let it.
No, it doesn't. The body wants to have enough fat to serve as "insurance" against future famines. We evolved to survive cycles of feast and famine. That doesn't mean the body wants to be obese, but it's not going to "waste" calories; that's not what it evolved to do.
Well, if that is the case, why do people who store fats become more prone to diseases and abnormalities within the body because of it? The body performs its best and is healthiest when at its ideal weight with bmi's in a normal range. It has less metabolic defects, less overall health problems, better reproductive health, and better stamina.
If getting fat because we overeat is true, and losing fat because we undereat is also true, then isn't there a reason for that ebb and flow? The body won't store food just because it wants to, or "starvation mode" if you will. It will conserve energy expenditure at some point, and if we don't catch up to it, it will cause us to overeat. I agree with you on that. But it is rather a mechanism to not lose more fat, rather than gain it. That just makes more sense to me.
People of past times chose to overeat in the fall to make it through winter, though, didn't they? But it isn't the body's natural behavior when we are active people. When we are active, the body wants more fuel because of what it needs to function. That is what I mean by how the body naturally wants to be at an ideal weight and bmi. It is harder to allow the body to do what it can do with extra weight. Being overweight cannot be the natural state of the body, in my opinion. If it were, then the diseases and disorders we have today that are strongly linked to obesity wouldn't exist. Yes, its an uphill battle to lose weight, but that has more to do with the pleasure systems in the brain than it does bodily function, I think. Which is why people have different rewards for themselves and it leads them to eat in a way that benefits them the most (LC/LF/etc). Some could even argue that certain types of foods allow the body to do more without eating more, and be perfectly fine. For me, that is fat. I am much more productive between meals when I have higher fat meals than the alternative, protein and calories controlled. I have no clue why that is, but I think it has something to do with how the body processes those nutrients.
Our ancestors (apes, if you follow that logic) also live in a land that is plentiful with food, temperate year round, and one in which they must fight gravity to obtain meals. Although, you may be right in that we naturally want to be fat. It just might not benefit us in the long run:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/the-fattest-ape-an-evolutionary-tale-of-human-obesity/0 -
crzycatlady1 wrote: »mjames1319 wrote: »Didn't read the study .....but my theory on Keto is that maybe you don't lose more on the scale but I feel like those on the diet lose more inches. I realize there's the loss of water/bloat weight, but even longer term keto dieters always look like they have lost a ton of inches compared to when I look at cico dieters' before and afters.
I haven't seen a lot of before /after pictures of keto and low carbers because so many of them don't actually have pictures of themselves in their profile areas? Maybe their sharing them in the low carb group that I don't have access to or something. I'd be curious to see this difference that you're talking about though.
u can look at my profile pic.. thats all keto right there. 100lbs gone.. now im plant based and weightloss stalled. only way i got the scale moving was by doing a keto vegan way of eating which is difficult. mainly lots of avocados.. but yeah i swear by keto.. its awesome.. only for short term tho.. cause bacon will literlaly kill u0 -
SusanMFindlay wrote: »Amongst all this thermodynamics and insulin discussion, we must remember that the body naturally wants to be lean if you let it.
No, it doesn't. The body wants to have enough fat to serve as "insurance" against future famines. We evolved to survive cycles of feast and famine. That doesn't mean the body wants to be obese, but it's not going to "waste" calories; that's not what it evolved to do.
Well, if that is the case, why do people who store fats become more prone to diseases and abnormalities within the body because of it? The body performs its best and is healthiest when lean (that term is loosely used...there is allowance for body fat as you state). It has less metabolic defects, less overall health problems, better reproductive health, and better stamina...
There are both upper and lower limits where that doesn't hold true. No, obesity is not a good thing and I haven't seen anybody say we're better off being obese, or that we were designed to be that way. But being very lean can create health problems and hormonal disruptions as well. As for "better reproductive health", I've seen plenty of guys in bodybuilding-related forums complain about their sex drive (and "abilities") plummeting to zero when they're cutting and getting pretty lean. Many women lose their periods and have all kinds of screwy hormonal issues when they get lean. A little further over on the spectrum, anorexics, many of who are very lean, have just as many or more health issues than obese people do.
Maybe your thought holds water if you're defining "lean" as loosely as "being something less than obese" - say maybe the 18% - 25% BF range (for males), which is generally categorized as "Average". But in the terms of people into fitness, that's not lean at all. "Lean" would be somewhere around 10% - 12% or less (for males), and no, the human body doesn't naturally want to be that lean. It's pretty easy to get into the "average" range and maintain it, but getting down into that "lean/ripped" territory is a battle and it takes a lot of effort, restraint and self-discipline to maintain it. Ask any guy at 10% BF if he got that way just by letting his body do its thing and be where it naturally wanted to be.
(I'm excluding the discussion of third world countries where food scarcity/malnutrition is a fact of everyday life. I don't imagine there are a lot of fat dudes wandering around Burundi or Eritrea. It's not hard to maintain extreme leanness when you have nothing to eat most of the time, and that's an entirely different topic with plenty of attendant health problems.)5 -
Yes, you are correct. Maybe I am too liberal with that word. I do mean somewhere in the 15-25% range, or ideal weight ranges as health organizations define it. My (5'9") ideal weight and bmi would be 155 lbs and 23%. I might want to be leaner than that, with a little bit more muscle mass, say 19% and +3-5%.
Thank you for correcting me. I made those edits.0 -
Blambo - I have completely lost track of your point, it reads to me like a few disparate ideas being conflated.
I understand there is an energy cost in both storing and retrieving enerygy as/from fat.
I would imagine it is something of a constant, IE - it happens regardless of diet type.
I would also imagine this is essentially factored into the average CICO calculation. IE, if you are losing weight you are using more energy than you consume, and the fat storage/retrieval plays part of that.
I lost weight right on que, as per projections. All of this "extra" burn was happening but didnt make me lose weight any faster.
Are you saying that keto/low carb diets somehow make the "cost" of retrieving energy from fat higher? Consequently increasing the CO part of the equation?
If so, why?1 -
stevencloser wrote: »Or you could stop wildly speculating and taking what was actually shown in controlled environments to be true time and time again.
Or you could also look into the success people have had and see if there is anything to it. You are cherry picking your studies. I don't know how much LC / IF , etc help, but I do know that there is a lot of evidence that they do and also they are not an impossibility due to laws of physics (thermo).
First, and please lets get this straight. No one on this site, regardless of how biased they are, will deny that there are benefits of lchf to people. But this us no different than any other diet. All diets work. It really us that simple. If it enables compliance and adherence, and addresses any medical issue, it will work. But in terms of science, like actual studies, when protein and calories are constant, there is zero additional benefit. All the other studies that dont maintain prrotein benefit from more protein. That is why there is that article from authoritynutrition on 23 studies that low carbers frequently promote. To me, it demonstrates the effectiveness of increased protein.
If you look at this site, a large portion of the more lean and fit people mainly follow moderate to higher carb diets. There are a lot of benefits from a moderate carb or even high carb program if you goal us muscle gain in a deficit... something muscle harder to achieve in keto or lchf. Dont get me wrong there are other factors such as exercise programming, newness to lifting, genetics and nutrition.
And honestly i am trying to give you a benefit of the doubt but all of your arguments are based off of anecdotes and not studies that are controlled. And for every one that you can find showing huge metabolic advantage for one person, you will find another blog saying the opposite.
Personally, i low carb 3 days a week and and high carb 4 days a week. Right now, as painful as the low carb days are, it has given me a but more vigor for compliance and staying on track with calorie counting. Because at 16% body fat, i have a lot less room for error.4 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »spinningmadlyon wrote: »Keto is not just about appetite suppression (ie calories in calories out). Its about improving insulin sensitivity. Most overweight people have higher than optimum AC1 numbers approaching prediabetes or may even have T2 diabetes already.
That's overstated, and of course lots of people who do get their numbers back to normal just by losing weight. Another great way to increase insulin sensibility for most people is exercise.
Also, does keto actually improve insulin sensitivity (outside of weight loss)? Or does it reduce the need for insulin (with respect to carbs anyway) so that IR is less of a problem? The test would be whether one can do keto for a while, without weight loss as a contributing factor, control blood glucose levels that way, and then reintroduce carbs and respond as an IS to them. I don't think that's normally the case. If it leads to weight loss, of course, that often cures the problem.If you are a "sugar" (carb) burner, you need to eat fairly frequent.
I don't get this idea that people are "sugar burners" or "fat burners." People burn both, in percentages consistent with what they eat (and with body fat being used to make up for any deficit). You don't have to be on a low carb, let alone keto diet to burn fat. We all burn fat, especially when sedentary or exercising at a low level (walking, sitting, sleeping).
And no, you don't need to eat all that frequently. People did fine on three meals a day with typical diets with carbs as the largest source of calories. People follow similar eating patterns on high carb diets all over the world in various cultures. I personally always found that they easiest diet, even when eating higher carbs--I think the need to eat a bunch is cultural, we have food offered all the time, not about macros. And even without being on keto it has never been that big a deal to me to fast for a day (and others do various forms of IF without doing low carb).Each time you have that low calorie high carb rice cake or piece of healthy fruit your insulin spikes. These frequent insulin spikes from low calorie but high glycemic index foods contribute to a progression of hormonal malfunction of insulin (increasing your blood sugar levels). So long as you have higher than normal blood sugar levels you will not break down fat for energy. Your body doesn't need to. Calories in calories out do count, but not nearly as much as how your food choices impact the release of insulin in your body.
This is just wrong. People lose fine on high carb diets. When you have a deficit you burn the carbs, but then still need to burn fat when they are gone -- there's no difference, that claim that you can't lose eating carbs makes no sense and is part of keto rhetoric that is a lie. Also, blue zone diets and lots of other very healthy diets are higher carb than the US diet, and yet people are normal weight and don't have problems with IR or T2D. So scaremongering about fruit makes no sense.
They were not saying you can't lose eating carbs. Only that some things help burn fat more than the deficit requires. Insulin has been shown to inhibit fat formation.
Yes, he or she was were suggesting that even at a deficit you will not lose if you eat carbs too frequently. You have claimed that in the past too, and that you will lose a lot more if you low carb or fast -- I recall psulemon explaining in detail why you were wrong (I think it was him, could have been stevencloser, or both).
It is true that while insulin is high you won't be burning as much fat (but you also won't be adding it if you are burning it or need to fill glycogen stores, both of which are going to be true if at a deficit, most likely). But the bigger point is that amount of carbs doesn't affect overall fat burning, as you will either have lots of short spikes followed by fat burning or fewer longer periods of high insulin followed by periods of fat burning. In neither case will you be unable to ever burn fat but still have a deficit -- that makes no sense, as you can't be active/alive and burning nothing, and with a deficit by definition you will run out of carbs to burn (and plus everyone tends to burn fat when sedentary/asleep).0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »I've been sick so have been away from MFP for the past few days. I'm still not feeling very well, but let me see if I have this straight:
Has blambo been saying that it theoretically doesn't violate any thermodynamic principals for more fat to be burned than would be accounted for in the CICO model given the correct substrate ratio and is offering Peter Attia to back up this theory while ignoring the fact that in controlled conditions, such an effect has not been observed?
I think the notion is that in certain foods not all calories are turned into energy and just wasted (i.e., if you eat 1000 cals of nuts, not all 1000 calories would be converted into energy). But who knows because actuals studies confirm otherwise.
My reading is that he's claiming that this happens not so much with certain foods (although it could be that our usual counts are somewhat off on some things, like nuts, and will be corrected eventually), but with certain ways of eating. Some months ago I remember he was off on the theory that if you ate a huge amount of calories in one sitting you would excrete a lot of them without using the calories (hmm, a theme?), and now it's supposedly keto does this. But like you say, the studies haven't supported this, and I still don't see a logical mechanism whereby the body would do this. I mean, sure, initially converting to ketones might require a bit of excess output (which is what the studies seem to show) and maybe making glucose from fat takes some extra (as does making fat from carbs, actually), but that is unlikely to be meaningful--mostly you don't need to make glucose from carbs when on keto (you need a little bit of glucose for the brain, but usually you aren't that low and anyway it's not that many calories).
Beyond that, the idea that your body would, in essence, waste calories when in keto probably seems appealing if one needs to lose weight or wants to eat more than maintenance, but it would not be an efficient or useful thing for the body to do, so why would it have evolved to do this? Indeed, the body tends to interpret keto as starvation or food scarcity, so the idea that it starts wasting calories in keto makes no sense to me.
Might there be more energy to fuel food search or some such or diminished hunger? Sure, that could make sense. Might IR people have impaired energy output with higher carb diets (since they are not able to effectively convert the carbs to energy properly)? Yeah, that makes sense to me. But a major wastage of calories as suggested? Don't see it.
I also think wanting that reads as messed up to me, but this could be my own food biases. The idea that there's some desirable state of eating a lot and having calories go through us feels wrong to me (even if it were possible to achieve, which I don't believe). How would that be different in kind from that horrible stomach pump device that has been talked about in the forums?
I hate being misrepresented which seems to happen a bit. I have previously said that all CI don't get used which makes total sense.
Which is what I said you said, so no, not misrepresenting. You also said that if doing keto we are for some reason going to use less of our food, which makes no sense (fat is one of the more efficiently used macros, especially when you are talking about adding fat (if not at a deficit), and the body tends to perceive keto as starvation, so why would it waste calories as you keep claiming).I've never proposed that we should try to not digest our food.
You keep arguing that it's valuable to try to eat in ways that would lead to food being excreted or otherwise wasted by the body without the calories being used. Seems to be the same thing to me.4 -
@blambo61 You might find Feltham's self experimentation interesting. He tries different diets at 5000kcal per day for 21 days and logs his results. I know he has done LCHF and HCLF vegan diets. Of course his experiences will not prove true for all others. It's his own n=1, but I found them interesting. http://live.smashthefat.com/why-i-didnt-get-fat/
Thanks!
just want to butt in and say 3 weeks, when accounting for the glycogen and water depletion associated with getting into ketosis, is a long enough time frame to make any meaningful comparison.0 -
The article actually contradicted itself. It said that the fat is burned and gives off heat and then said all fat loss isn't due to cico. They could have clarified that a bit I think. I'm raising the possibility that stored fat can be burned independent of energy requirements. I don't know if it can be excreted without giving off heat or not. If the macro composition of what you eat drives a set point in your body, then it could possibly be telling the body to burn off stored fat independent of the bodies energy needs. I think LC moderate protein could do this, probably due to the low insulin levels that result from that kind of macro comoposition. This would be fat lost in addition to what the traditional CICO model would say you would lose due to energy requirements.
So now we're assuming that (1) set points are a real scientific thing, and that (2) evolution designed a species that would have to avoid starving to death, but that would waste food for no reason?2 -
Its a bad idea to restrict carbohydrate when dieting because when you come off the diet, you will binge/become obsessed with thinking about carbs. When dieting think: is this something you could do everyday for the rest of your life? If it isn't, then once you stop dieting the weight will more than likely pile back on. What I did that worked for me is still having carbohydrate BUT the carbs that I had are low-glycemic index carbs. That is, carbs that have a more stabilizing impact on blood sugar levels and that keep you fuller for longer. These are things like grainy/whole wheat/brown breads, high-fibre low sugar cereal, brown rice, brown pasta etc and minimizing the inclusion of white carbs i.e. white bread, rice, pasta or combining white carbs with a good serve of lean protein and vegetables.0
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