Low carb diet versus Low calorie

phitme

Late to the post so this may have been covered but of course you're going to lose weight if you eliminate an entire food "group". But your body wasn't meant to function that way.

Like one person said, less calories in than out. Plain, simple.

July24Lioness

Late to the post so this may have been covered but of course you're going to lose weight if you eliminate an entire food "group". But your body wasn't meant to function that way.

Like one person said, less calories in than out. Plain, simple.

No one doing a low carb plan is cutting out an entire food group. No one has said NO carb, but LOW carb, major difference.

And its not as simple as calories in, calories out..............If it were that simple for a lot of us, I would still be thin as a rail.

2BSuccessful

Have a deficit of 3500 calories, lose a pound. Fact. Be it by low carb, high carb, low fat, high fat, only eat when standing on a chair, just eat in direct bright sunlight, only use a fork with two prongs ... 3500 calories is 3500 calories.

July24Lioness

Have a deficit of 3500 calories, lose a pound. Fact. Be it by low carb, high carb, low fat, high fat, only eat when standing on a chair, just eat in direct bright sunlight, only use a fork with two prongs ... 3500 calories is 3500 calories.

I no longer believe that............There is a difference in the type of foods we eat and how you gain or lose weight. It's not as simple as calories in / calories out.

I used to believe that Conventional Wisdom and then my eyes were opened and I see the bigger picture.........

With doing a very low carb eating plan I was eating upwards of 2,200 calories per day and the weight was dropping off me........

Eating 1,200 - 1,400 calories, low fat I didn't lose weight like that and in fact started gaining.

PJilly

Interestingly, I've been losing weight easily eating 1,800 to 1,900 calories composed of 45 to 50 percent carbs.

sara_cogumelo

Unfortunately, 3500 is not always 3500 calories, because our bodies metabolize different nutrients in different ways. I don't know much about low-carb diets, so my comment is not specific to those, but eating very few carbohydrates can be harmful if done without proper guidance from a specialist.

The problem is that the main 'fuel' our body uses is glucose (our brain uses it almost exclusively), and if it is not available in sufficient quantity, say in a very low-carb diet, our body has to metabolize the stored fat in a way that it can be used to 'replace' glucose: it forms ketone bodies, from which the brain can also get energy. When these are formed, most of the energy from the stored fat is not used, so calories basically go down the drain - that is why the weight loss is so fast. Small amounts of these ketone bodies don't do much harm, but too much and they make the blood acidic, and this can be *very* dangerous.

I am not a specialist in the subject, but I hope I was able to explain some points and highlight the importance of proper guidance when attempting a low-carb diet. As I said, I am not aware of how Atkins, for example, works, and it probably incorporates enough carbs as to not be dangerous, but I still thought the explanation could be useful. And just to conclude, if you eat less calories that you spend while maintaining the usual nutrient proportions, you *will* lose weight, maybe not as fast, but probably in a safer way

Sorry for the huge post,
Just a medical student passing by ;D

July24Lioness

Interestingly, I've been losing weight easily eating 1,800 to 1,900 calories composed of 45 to 50 percent carbs.

I am willing to bet that if you were to compare our food diaries that they would be similar.............

If you are a clean eater, then you are pretty much eating a controlled carb eating plan without it being dubbed a particular plan.

The whole point is for the clean eaters - it is still pretty low / controlled carb due to eating natural foods.

The problem is, no one wants to admit that in the grand scheme of things that when we get to maintenance we are pretty much eating the same...........no one wants the "low carb" stigma attached to them.

MrsNeuman

Bump

PJilly

Interestingly, I've been losing weight easily eating 1,800 to 1,900 calories composed of 45 to 50 percent carbs.

I am willing to bet that if you were to compare our food diaries that they would be similar.............

If you are a clean eater, then you are pretty much eating a controlled carb eating plan without it being dubbed a particular plan.

The whole point is for the clean eaters - it is still pretty low / controlled carb due to eating natural foods.

The problem is, no one wants to admit that in the grand scheme of things that when we get to maintenance we are pretty much eating the same...........no one wants the "low carb" stigma attached to them.

I get the vast majority of my carbs from oats, whole-wheat bread, and whole-wheat pasta — occasionally from wild/brown rice or potatoes. I just changed my ratios this morning from 45/30/25 to 55/25/20. I'm so close to having my body fat percentage where I want it to be (20% or lower) that it's interesting to see what changes happen from small adjustments. I had lowered my carbs to 45 a few months ago, against the recommendation of my favorite health and fitness expert. Since then, I have lost some lean. I met with him yesterday, and I agreed to try his suggestion of increasing carbs to see what happens. He believes I wasn't eating enough to provide the energy to fuel my workouts. It's not a huge adjustment, and I'll be able to tell before long if it's a good change or a bad change, but the truth is I was getting better fat-loss results at the higher carb ratio. I was just trying to get those results even faster by increasing protein and lowering carbs, but that seemed to backfire on me (nothing drastic — I lost 4 pounds total, 2 of which were fat, and 2 of which were not). I'm not worried about any stigma being attached to me and don't care what label someone wants to put on my diet, but I'm pretty sure no one would call what I'm doing low-carb. (My diary is public.) I'm just interested in fine-tuning the eating plan that works best for me, which is much more about how fit and healthy I feel than what I weigh, but getting my weight to a healthy place sure has made me feel better.