why don't the low carb folks believe in CICO?

ndj1979 wrote: »

Kruggeri wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

JPW1990 wrote: »

MrM27 wrote: »

JPW1990 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

blktngldhrt wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

yarwell wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

So I guess in conclusion, a low carb diet is completely arbitrary and meaningless.

as is a "high protein diet" or any other subjective choice of words. Always best to define ones terms.

I don't know...it seems like those folks actually have more guidelines than what you seem to be suggesting. I mean, I'm on like 45% carbs right now...guess I'm low carb...even though that's about 225 grams per day.

From here on out, I will simply dismiss low carbers as simply not knowing what they're doing or what they're talking about.

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

Weren't you doing so already?

Point being, if it's completely arbitrary and meaningless as your buddy yarwell agrees that it is...then how can I actually take someone who says they're "low carb" serious...I can't take them any more seriously than I can take a "clean eater" or a person who follows paleo, but only certain parts of it and only when they want to.

Srsly...it's just hard to take most people srsly in general when they're just flinging around arbitrary and apparently meaningless labels and what not...

Because in the majority of cases, whether they feel it's any of your business or not, it's someone with a medical degree and/or someone with a nutrition science degree who prescribed it to them. Whether or not the poster fully understands the science behind it is irrelevant to them wanting recipe info, or wanting to find other people using the same WOE, or wondering if anyone else has experienced XYZ.

Unless you're suggesting you can psychically diagnose people through a message board more accurately than their own doctors?

False

If your sample is taken from gym rats, your numbers are going to be skewed. If you take into account the larger lc community, the majority are people you will probably never interact with, unless you're in the habit of hanging out on PCOS forums or diabetic support groups. Exactly what percentage of your sample is peri or post-menopause, for starters?

I know lots of people who are or have been "low carb" and none of them were prescribed it by their doctor. They just read Atkins or heard that low carbing makes losing weight easier. When I started losing weight about 100 people asked me what I was doing and the first thing they guessed was low carbing. It's trendy. No, it was trendy in the early '00s, now it's assumed to be an easy way to lose weight.

The gym people I know aren't so likely to low carb because a lot of them do endurance sports (they typically eat lots of carbs) or are into carb cycling or paleo. (This is biased because I do some CrossFit, and now everyone can mock me, yay.)

I totally agree with this, and... after reading through this thread I have observed a couple of things.

1. OP started the thread to get more insight into the type of LC individual who doesn't believe in CICO, who believes that eating LC voids the science of CICO and can lose weight regardless of how many calories they consume, just because of low carb.

2. Most of the LC people who responded to this thread did so very neutrally, saying that no, they believe in CICO, that losing weight ultimately comes down to a calorie defcit, and LC is just a means to achieve that calorie deficit. Many of those same people have said that they started LC because of medical reasons and under doctor guidance. It seems to me that the people who have medical reasons, or are doing LC under doctor prescription - have more concrete guidelines/targets as far as specific number range of carbs to stay within.

3. A couple of LC folks seemed to think OP was picking a fight, when in actuality I think this has been a very neutral discussion with both sides making, and accepting, each other's logical points.

4. I think we were starting to come to consensus that the people who were the object of the OP's original question are likely new to the LC lifestyle and how it really works.


Doesn't it also stand to reason that the ones coming here making the wild claims that LC invalidates the CICO principles, who may be new to the LC approach, are NOT doing this under doctor supervision, they are doing it because someone told someone who told someone that eating LC makes you feel fuller, you don't have to worry about how many calories you eat, that the weight just falls off of you, yadayadayada.

I will go ahead and cosign this ....

Actually, I would too even as a LC myself. I am very glad this thread is here so it helps those who dont LC see that we're not all crackpots and sometimes the newbies come into the LC boards and yell 'I can haz all the meats!!' just like they do in the general forums. Now everyone can direct them where they will find the info they need, either a LC forum or help them to understand CICO, or even that it isnt meat but fat they need to increase, etc.

Information is always good, even if you dont subscribe to that WOE.

JPW1990 wrote: »

MrM27 wrote: »

JPW1990 wrote: »

MrM27 wrote: »

JPW1990 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

blktngldhrt wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

yarwell wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

So I guess in conclusion, a low carb diet is completely arbitrary and meaningless.

as is a "high protein diet" or any other subjective choice of words. Always best to define ones terms.

I don't know...it seems like those folks actually have more guidelines than what you seem to be suggesting. I mean, I'm on like 45% carbs right now...guess I'm low carb...even though that's about 225 grams per day.

From here on out, I will simply dismiss low carbers as simply not knowing what they're doing or what they're talking about.

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

Weren't you doing so already?

Point being, if it's completely arbitrary and meaningless as your buddy yarwell agrees that it is...then how can I actually take someone who says they're "low carb" serious...I can't take them any more seriously than I can take a "clean eater" or a person who follows paleo, but only certain parts of it and only when they want to.

Srsly...it's just hard to take most people srsly in general when they're just flinging around arbitrary and apparently meaningless labels and what not...

Because in the majority of cases, whether they feel it's any of your business or not, it's someone with a medical degree and/or someone with a nutrition science degree who prescribed it to them. Whether or not the poster fully understands the science behind it is irrelevant to them wanting recipe info, or wanting to find other people using the same WOE, or wondering if anyone else has experienced XYZ.

Unless you're suggesting you can psychically diagnose people through a message board more accurately than their own doctors?

False

If your sample is taken from gym rats, your numbers are going to be skewed. If you take into account the larger lc community, the majority are people you will probably never interact with, unless you're in the habit of hanging out on PCOS forums or diabetic support groups. Exactly what percentage of your sample is peri or post-menopause, for starters?

Gym rats?

You specifically said the majority of lc people have prescribed it by a medical professional. You're making an assumption because you don't actually have figures to back that up.

As you are making an assumption that it's not. However, I'm also going with the idea that I have a much larger sample size than you, since I've been actively participating in online and real life support groups and forums for over 10 years, while you're basing your assumption on people you've met who talk about their diet and people who post in the general info area of MFP. As I asked, what percentage of your sample size is post menopausal women? How about men over 50 with a T2 diagnosis? Women of all ages with PCOS and IR? People over 40 with GERD or IBS? In the places I'm associating with people on low carb, I'll find a lot of those, and a handful of people using it only for non-medical reasons. If those people aren't even included in your view of what constitutes the "lc community" you can't really make an estimate of how many have a prescribed WOE.

How many diet and fitness forums do you belong to? How active are you in the fitness community at large? Have you been to a magazine rack in the past decade? Have you not noticed the general low carb marketing all over the place, to include random signs posted at the super market.

Undoubtedly there are many people with medical conditions for which a low carb diet is going to be beneficial...hell, my dad was a type II and had full blown metabolic syndrome and among my numerous blood work issues a few years ago was high blood sugar levels...but are you really that oblivious to how main stream this is...and not in a positive, well educated way...but in a totally ridiculous fear mongering stupid way.

Also, I didn't fix my issues by going low carb, I fixed them by fixing my nutrition in general and researching what was good for this and what helped improve that, etc...low and behold the resulting diet consisted of eating a lot more veg, some fruit, whole grains, legumes, etc...carbs. While they may be at a lower intake than they were previously, I still wouldn't consider myself "low carb."

What does WOE mean?

Alliwan wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

I would be happy with this, except that IME more often than not someone who announces this means to challenge CICO and to claim that eating low carb allows them to eat more than what would otherwise be their maintenance, and not merely because of a particular medical condition. (The guys who claim to eat 3000 calories low carb and not gain or the like.)

Again tho, the arguement would be over semantics. They say CICO didnt work but what they meant was CICO on an mfp recommendation, SAD, etc didnt work and they had to tweak their macros by lowering carbs for it to work. When you have a medical condition that makes you super sensitive to carbs or the effects things get weird. So there are people who eat much more on LC than they could on the mfp recommendations or SAD or w/e and lose the weight they couldnt before, but it is because they changed the way they eat to a way their bodies can process it. And as stated before, trying to find out if you have a medical condition or trying to get a doctor to test you for certain things cant be a very long journey. Many people who find out they are IR or other metabolic syndromes, as was stated earlier, often find out AFTER they try LC and the weight 'magically' falls off when it wouldnt before at the same calorie goal. Then sometimes, and only sometimes, can you get a doctor to run the right tests and you find out you have some sort of problem with carbs.

It's not about semantics. You seem to want to deny the existence of people I've seen with my own eyes, who insist that calories don't matter, because protein and fat don't turn to fat like carbs do, and who make all sorts of arguments to claim that eating carbs affects your weight (not just theirs, although to be honest I don't believe that either) like eating carbs does. That they can eat 2500 calories of carbs and lose, but gain on 1500 calories with a normal macro ratio. These are not people claiming to have medical issues, but people claiming carbs are in general bad for a diet.

So maybe what you or the calculator you use would be wrong about what their maintenance is?

The usual response is that THEY were underestimating their maintenance and that IF they are really eating 2500, that's probably below their maintenance. THEY are the ones who say no, that their maintenance is less, but that protein and fat can't turn to fat in the same ways. There really, truly is a bunch of ridiculous pseudo science here (and that people keep citing to Jonathan Baylor on threads doesn't reassure me).

I am completely willing to believe that most long-term low carb people, at least on MFP, are sensible and understand that CICO is a truth that is simply affected by their macro mix due to medical conditions (meaning carbs affect CO) or compliance reasons. But it's simply false to say that no one takes the position that OP was initially talking about. Lots of people do.

There are quite a few people in the LC forum who do endurance sports, like long distance running, cross country skiing, etc who dont eat carbs. You can burn carbs or you can burn fat for fuel, but carbs and endurance sports are not mutually exclusive.

Be that as it may--it has nothing to do with what I was saying--my experience is that on average and for the most part people focused on endurance sports tend to be pro carb, and that's especially true with those who give nutrition advice to endurance athletes. Saying that some low carb people do endurance sports does not contradict that at all.

Maybe I am in the minority but I eat low carb and follow CICO. I am not ultra low carb I try to stay between 60-70 and not over 50 net carb.

I find it easier to stay under may calories by eating less carbs. I also find I feel so much better. I cheated a little today (on carbs not calories) and had pizza and man do I feel like crap now. I felt great before lunch.

So, I have hypothyroidism which-- from a metabolic standpoint-- means that I burn fewer calories at rest than a normal person does. Calories in, Calories out does not work really well in black & white terms when metabolic and other hormonal issues are thrown into the mix. I count calories, try not to eat more than 1500 a day (though, it's usually more like 1200 a day for me on average) and eat low carb.
The reason I eat low carb is because I found that I DID NOT lose more than about 1/2 a lb a week doing just calorie counting. Combing low calories with low carb keeps me from feeling super hungry most of the time and I lose around 2lbs a week. I don't know exactly why low carb works so well for people with metabolic issues, but it does. I think everyone is different and their bodies respond to different eating styles, and that's ok.
I'll probably have to up my carbs once I start working out more (knee injury), but I don't think I'll ever eat over 70g a day ever again. My skin is way nicer as well.

The one concept I read a long time ago by Tim Ferris in the Four Hour Body that stuck with me is that a dieter that isn't trying to lower their carb intake consciously but is lowering their calorie intake is often lowering their carb intake comparatively to the diet they had previously. That simple carb reduction may be helping them succeed. Interesting... how many people here that went from non dieting to dieting on CICO only that claim success are eating the exact same number of grams per day of carbohydrates that they did previously? Likely, you reduced or cut out some pretty carb rich junk food. I suspect very few... by that fact, it is difficult to assume that simply calorie restriction has helped and not the lowering of carbs in combination.

Things that make you go hmmmm.....

wonderfullymadebyhim wrote: »

The one concept I read a long time ago by Tim Ferris in the Four Hour Body that stuck with me is that a dieter that isn't trying to lower their carb intake consciously but is lowering their calorie intake is often lowering their carb intake comparatively to the diet they had previously. That simple carb reduction may be helping them succeed. Interesting... how many people here that went from non dieting to dieting on CICO only that claim success are eating the exact same number of grams per day of carbohydrates that they did previously? Likely, you reduced or cut out some pretty carb rich junk food. I suspect very few... by that fact, it is difficult to assume that simply calorie restriction has helped and not the lowering of carbs in combination.

Things that make you go hmmmm.....

I would agree with this to an extent...certainly I reduced my carb intake when I lost all of my weight first go around in that I did reduce and/or eliminate some "junk"...I was a good, solid 5 sodas per day kind of guy and I think you're correct...most people are going to do this...eliminate some "junk" type of foods which generally do tend to be sugary carbs.

That said, I still wouldn't consider my carb intake to be "low carb"...just reduced from before, mostly from just not drinking sodas. I've always been a starch guy and I love legumes...always and forever and most certainly didn't/haven't given those things up nor would I.

In the past 2.5 years I have lost 40 Lbs and then maintained for about a year and a half and then gone on a bulk cycle and am now in a small cut again...for me, carbs are a flex...I keep protein (115 grams to 150 grams) and fat (50 - 70) relatively static no matter what my weight control goals are and to cut calories something has to give...so that something is usually a few carbs in a cut.

Just judging from my previous maintenance and this current cut, I still would say that CICO is overwhelmingly the driver...basically the difference between my current cut and maintaining this go around is a tortilla in the morning with my typical eggs and pinto beans and more sandwiches and an extra piece of fruit or something in maintenance...whereas I'm eating a garden salad with my protein and fat in my cut for lunch. We're only talking about 500 calories or so.

Saktii23 wrote: »

So, I have hypothyroidism which-- from a metabolic standpoint-- means that I burn fewer calories at rest than a normal person does. Calories in, Calories out does not work really well in black & white terms when metabolic and other hormonal issues are thrown into the mix. I count calories, try not to eat more than 1500 a day (though, it's usually more like 1200 a day for me on average) and eat low carb.
The reason I eat low carb is because I found that I DID NOT lose more than about 1/2 a lb a week doing just calorie counting. Combing low calories with low carb keeps me from feeling super hungry most of the time and I lose around 2lbs a week. I don't know exactly why low carb works so well for people with metabolic issues, but it does. I think everyone is different and their bodies respond to different eating styles, and that's ok.
I'll probably have to up my carbs once I start working out more (knee injury), but I don't think I'll ever eat over 70g a day ever again. My skin is way nicer as well.

It works for some metabolic disorders because the problem is with processing carbohydrates. Lower carbohydrate intake, and you (hopefully) lower usage of the disordered part\s of the metabolic processes.

If the problem is with one of the pathways that's used to process other macros as well, a low carb diet may make little difference.

If you have a metabolic disorder where the problem is processing fats, for example, a high carbohydrate and low fat diet is recommended.

lemurcat12 wrote: »

wonderfullymadebyhim wrote: »

The one concept I read a long time ago by Tim Ferris in the Four Hour Body that stuck with me is that a dieter that isn't trying to lower their carb intake consciously but is lowering their calorie intake is often lowering their carb intake comparatively to the diet they had previously. That simple carb reduction may be helping them succeed. Interesting... how many people here that went from non dieting to dieting on CICO only that claim success are eating the exact same number of grams per day of carbohydrates that they did previously? Likely, you reduced or cut out some pretty carb rich junk food. I suspect very few... by that fact, it is difficult to assume that simply calorie restriction has helped and not the lowering of carbs in combination.

Things that make you go hmmmm.....

I definitely lowered my carbs, but also definitely lowered my fat, quite possibly more. (I've always been more tempted by fat.)

Perhaps Susan Powter had a point!

(I'm willing to bet not, however.)

What happened to that woman??

Saktii23 wrote: »

So, I have hypothyroidism which-- from a metabolic standpoint-- means that I burn fewer calories at rest than a normal person does. Calories in, Calories out does not work really well in black & white terms when metabolic and other hormonal issues are thrown into the mix. I count calories, try not to eat more than 1500 a day (though, it's usually more like 1200 a day for me on average) and eat low carb.
The reason I eat low carb is because I found that I DID NOT lose more than about 1/2 a lb a week doing just calorie counting. Combing low calories with low carb keeps me from feeling super hungry most of the time and I lose around 2lbs a week. I don't know exactly why low carb works so well for people with metabolic issues, but it does. I think everyone is different and their bodies respond to different eating styles, and that's ok.
I'll probably have to up my carbs once I start working out more (knee injury), but I don't think I'll ever eat over 70g a day ever again. My skin is way nicer as well.

I don't know, at least where hypothyroidism is concerned, that blanket statements can be made. I've got a long-term diagnosis of Hashimoto's (25 years ago) and my thyroid is just about dead at this point.

I eat moderate carb, and lose close to a pound a week calorie counting. That's a good rate, considering that I'm older and short. I really don't have the room to cut to a deficit that's going to give me a 2 pound loss. I eat potatoes and oatmeal, and things like Greek yogurt and cottage cheese and chickpeas and lentils. And gelato.

I really do think it comes down to what you said about people being different. I'm not sure how much, at least as far as hypothyroidism is concerned, comes down to body, and how much comes down to personal preference for body plus other factors.