Low-carb diet gets more support from new analysis

Need2bfit918

It works for everyone, in the short term, but works for NOBODY in the long term, that is my point. Find me a healthy, thin, fit person who has been eating low-carb for 50+ years and I'll take that back, but I've never heard of anybody succeeding long-term on low carb nor spoken with one online.

If you read any of the low-carb diets, they're not ultra restrictive for life... You start very very low and gradually add them back in until you find a balance that is right -for you- understanding that people will have different thresholds that will help them maintain long term.

Very few people even attempt to go ultra-low for life. The reason there are so many failure stories on Atkins isn't because it doesnt work, its because people reach their goal and ignore the rest of the diet... The point isnt to treat the plan like a diet pill to be disgarded when you're done, but to find a balance between carbs and protein that will allow you to maintain long term and to stick with it. It can be done, and is done by a lot of people.

exactly! i used a low carb diet to get close to my goal and have now added potatoes and limited amounts of rice back into my diet. im currently netting about 2000 to 2500 calories a day with about 100 grams of carbs, and im still losing weight. then i come on here and get lectured by some 23 year old girl netting less than a thousand after you calculate in exercise. kind of comical really

PaleoPath4Lyfe

I wish I was 23 again and knew everything

Very funny

Read the science, people. I read books on nutrition in my spare time just because I find it interesting...high protein diets & people's misconceptions of what protein is, what it does in the body & how much we actually need...don't even get me started! Ahhh! :laugh: Night guys

you mean like those great books you read that cant even get cause of death correct? when those authors have so little intellectual honesty on that ,what else are they leaving out? by the way im low carb and im doing great.

I know, right??

lilacsun

i have always been a fan of the Atkins diet, ever since i first tried it back when Sky started selling the Atkins answer pack around 5 or 6 years ago. i totally bought into the philosophy behind it and it works!

i had so much negativity from anyone who heard i was doing it, oh that is so unhealthy... etc, i would always challenge them to tell me what was unhealthy about anything i was eating, and asked them what they based their opinion upon, usually it was scare mongering in the press

i am always sceptical when i see reports which are anti low carb, the press is full of propaganda from other affiliates, those whose diets follow low fat low calorie regimes. BUT, what i find really interesting is, those mainstream diets like sw and ww, now both have plans that follow a low carb regime if you want to, the sw red days etc and ww simply filling or filling and healthy as it is now called are pale imitations of the old Atkins plan, though they do have carbs but limit them to jacket potato and brown rice & pasta.

Dr Atkins book explained that triglycerides and lipids would improve on the plan and also blood pressure cholesterol etc so its not really new, just nice that other studies are at least coming on board..

HA. Dr Atkins died of a massive heart attack & was morbidly obese when he died, after following his own plan.

No Dr Atkins died when he slipped on an icy sidewalk and hit his head on the pavement.

ninerbuff

Low carbing works. There's not doubt about it. But so does calorie deficit. Personally I like ice cream, pie, rice, bread, etc. and low carbing would only work for me if I was doing a contest. So that stretch would only be about 6-10 weeks. After that, I eat pizza.
Some people can do it fine, however many of the clients I have have at one time or another tried low carb, and just had the weight return once they ate them again.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

lilacsun

Yeah, it obviously doesn't work for anyone long term.

Look at this wonderful woman who has been on Atkins for over 10 YEARS

http://www.sugarfreesheila.com/

Please be quiet, you don't have the slightest clue as to what you are talking about.

Low-carb diets ALWAYS fail in the LONG run...ALWAYS! Who eats low carb until they die? You'd want to be crazy to deprive yourself of your bodies natural brain fuel (every cell in the human brain runs on glucose!). I just don't get it. There is so much info out there on how detrimental these low carb bull**** diets are for your health. And the reason they lead to weight loss are actually terrifying when you look into the science behind it! It may have short term benefits, but seriously, who is going to limit FRUIT, bread, pasta etc etc for the rest of their entire lives?


NOBODY. Or crazy people, of course. :laugh:

Using any kind of absolute just makes you sound ignorant. (Absolutes are never, always, nobody, etc. Just realized you might not know that). Just because you don't get something doesn't mean it's wrong.. Maybe you haven't done any research on it and that's why you don't get it. If it doesn't work for you, that's fine, but it obviously works for others. You seem very uninformed. Here's some of the reasons why it may work~

--Stops the cravings cycle from eating sugar and other refined carbs, (ie, controls binge eating)
--Stops cravings so you eat less overall; just anotehr form of calorie reduction
--More protein leaves you fuller, so you eat less calories overall.
--More fat leaves you full and satiated, so you eat less calories overall.

I think most diets would say that cutting out sugar is a good step. Guess what? Sugar is a carb.

It works for everyone, in the short term, but works for NOBODY in the long term, that is my point. Find me a healthy, thin, fit person who has been eating low-carb for 50+ years and I'll take that back, but I've never heard of anybody succeeding long-term on low carb nor spoken with one online.

Ask type 2 diabetics. I have to limit carbs to 30g a meal. Not a choice if I want to live a normal life it is a must.

Sabine_Stroehm

By some accounts, I eat "low carb". (I probably average 120 grams a day). In reality I eat slow carb. It works for me. And has for about 13 years and counting.
It's funny how the pendulum shifts. In the 90s it was all low fat. Then low carb. Then the low carb backlash. I'd imagine, however, that upon closer inspection, many who declare low carb bad because "carbs are good for you!!!!!!" eat reduced fat foods on a regular basis. Even though, well, fats are good for you.

I dunno. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

Need2bfit918

Low carbing works. There's not doubt about it. But so does calorie deficit. Personally I like ice cream, pie, rice, bread, etc. and low carbing would only work for me if I was doing a contest. So that stretch would only be about 6-10 weeks. After that, I eat pizza.
Some people can do it fine, however many of the clients I have have at one time or another tried low carb, and just had the weight return once they ate them again.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

In my experience there are a lot of different diets that work and all the diets have one thing in common, once you go off them and return to your old eating habits, the weight will come back. No matter how you lose it, you need to find a healthy eating plan that you can live with once your goal is attained.

Sabine_Stroehm

Low-carb diets ALWAYS fail in the LONG run...ALWAYS! Who eats low carb until they die? You'd want to be crazy to deprive yourself of your bodies natural brain fuel (every cell in the human brain runs on glucose!). I just don't get it. There is so much info out there on how detrimental these low carb bull**** diets are for your health. And the reason they lead to weight loss are actually terrifying when you look into the science behind it! It may have short term benefits, but seriously, who is going to limit FRUIT, bread, pasta etc etc for the rest of their entire lives?


NOBODY. Or crazy people, of course. :laugh:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbohydrate_diet

by that description I eat low carb and have for well over a decade. I eat fruits. I eat vegetables. I eat bread I eat pasta.
Like many things, I think this is a matter of definition. Like "eat more to weigh less".

Sarauk2sf

If you click through on the link to the study - which is not an actual study but another article about studies, you will find:

The authors note a downside to the low-carb diet: It appears to raise some risk factors for heart disease.

Experts had different responses to the findings.

George Bray, an obesity researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge who has also studied this topic and who wrote the accompanying editorial in JAMA, says that other studies "show that you can do well on any diet as long as you stick to it. Adherence is the major key for weight loss and maintenance. There is no magic in any diet."

Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, says longer studies conducted among people in their own environments, not with such controlled meals, have shown "little difference in weight loss and maintenance between one kind of diet and another." More research is needed to show that interesting results like these are applicable in real life, she says.

"In the meantime, if you want to lose weight, eat less."

The thing that also needs to remembered is that lower carbs = lower water weight therefore lower total weight loss, not necessarily lower total fat loss. I cannot see body fat testing being mentioned or even total weight loss.

Also, if you look at the study, protein was not kept constant. In the low carb diet it was 30% and in the low fat diet it was 20%. So why is the benefit being attributed to having lower carbs and not the higher protein which has a higher TEF?

Plus, the study was of only 21 participants (who were young adults) who do not look to have been kept in a controlled environment so adherance is not assured.

ETA: There is no reference to the 17 different studies mentioned - the conclusion of "dieters lost an average of almost 18 pounds in six months to a year" - yes, because they were dieting.

AnvilHead

Experts had different responses to the findings.

George Bray, an obesity researcher at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge who has also studied this topic and who wrote the accompanying editorial in JAMA, says that other studies "show that you can do well on any diet as long as you stick to it. Adherence is the major key for weight loss and maintenance. There is no magic in any diet."

Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, says longer studies conducted among people in their own environments, not with such controlled meals, have shown "little difference in weight loss and maintenance between one kind of diet and another." More research is needed to show that interesting results like these are applicable in real life, she says.

"In the meantime, if you want to lose weight, eat less."

Both of those dovetail nicely with Lyle McDonald's findings. For those who don't know, Lyle authored the book The Ketogenic Diet, along with several other books relating to low-carb / carb-cycling diets. His take on it:

My opinion on ketogenic diets is this: ketogenic diets are one of many (ok, three) dietary approaches available. They have advantages and disadvantages (like all diets). They are appropriate under some circumstances, relatively neutral under others, and entirely inappropriate under still other circumstances. They are not magic but they work tremendously well for some people and absolutely horribly for other. There are still questions regarding their long-term effects.

Article is here, for anybody interested: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/comparing-the-diets-part-4.html

lisamarie2181

i have always been a fan of the Atkins diet, ever since i first tried it back when Sky started selling the Atkins answer pack around 5 or 6 years ago. i totally bought into the philosophy behind it and it works!

i had so much negativity from anyone who heard i was doing it, oh that is so unhealthy... etc, i would always challenge them to tell me what was unhealthy about anything i was eating, and asked them what they based their opinion upon, usually it was scare mongering in the press

i am always sceptical when i see reports which are anti low carb, the press is full of propaganda from other affiliates, those whose diets follow low fat low calorie regimes. BUT, what i find really interesting is, those mainstream diets like sw and ww, now both have plans that follow a low carb regime if you want to, the sw red days etc and ww simply filling or filling and healthy as it is now called are pale imitations of the old Atkins plan, though they do have carbs but limit them to jacket potato and brown rice & pasta.

Dr Atkins book explained that triglycerides and lipids would improve on the plan and also blood pressure cholesterol etc so its not really new, just nice that other studies are at least coming on board..

HA. Dr Atkins died of a massive heart attack & was morbidly obese when he died, after following his own plan.

Dr. Atkins didnt die from a heart attack he died from head trama from a fall. He was diagnosed with cardiomyopothy 3 years before his death, unrelated to his diet, from an infection. If u have ever looked into the diet, it is not a fad. Alot of people take the diet as phase one only, going under 20 carbs a day, and that is the dieters own fault for not following it properly. It teaches you how to add back in carbs to the point that your body will continue to lose.

It is not unrealistic to cut things out of your diet, i have cut out sweets and bad processed food, regardless if i like it, i know it isnt good for my body so i dont have a hard time giving it up. Your relationship w food changes and nor does it mean you can NEVER have them again. It just like cutting out the sweets, you enjoy them from time to time, same applies here if people choose. There are alot of low carb breads and pastas so you really aren't missing anything. I have PCOS and was told by every single doctor i've seen to go low carb. I do it the right way and feel no way deprived of anything. It may not be the right way for you but for diabetics, people with insulin problems or PCOS, it is a good lifestyle to lead to keep your weight down and maintain.

cuteazz1

EXACTLY!!!! The PROBLEM is that Most people who Say the Atkins Diet is Bad Have NO CLUE on how it actually works!Just to educate the Ill informed....

1.The Atkins diet does NOT Ban carbs for life! You start off eating 20 Net carbs or less for the first 2 weeks.During those 2 weeks your carbs should come from Veggies.After the first 2 weeks you add back carbs-5 more EACh week UNTlL you reach your CCLL..Critical carb level for Losing Weight..You dont STAY at 20 carbs or less..You add in things like beans,nuts,berries SLOWLY each week.Once you stop losing weight you will know what your CCLL number is and that is the amount of carbs that YOUR body can eat and still lose weight..If u want to lose slower u eat more-faster u eat less..MAintain u eat more.......REALLY simple.

I did Atkins before so I know that my CCLL is 90 grams of carbs per day or less.If I eat more than that I will just be comfortable losing slower or Exercise more to burn them off....

Besides Its basic 7th grade Biology...CARBS MAKE INSULIN...INSULIN IS THE FAT STORAGE HORMONE...Some people exercise to burn the extra Carbs,but how bout u just eat less in the first place? Carbs ARE our first source of energy,but the Body DOES NOT need a 50gram Carb meal unless you plan on doing something really physical.We eat too may carbs and they get stored as FAT UNLESS we burn them off through exercise...

Now,IMO..everyone should do what works for THEM! It looks really Silly for people to come on here and be all preachy and tell someone else what works in their own body.When I eat high carb I have NO energy,No EYEBROWS,and a FAT belly..When I'm low carb my hair grows back,My belly is smaller,and I have lots of energy..thats enough to convince me.I'll share my experiences of Low carb but I would never tell someone that low fat is bad for them because we are each different and NO one diet/lifestyle fits everyone.