to carb or not too carb?

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  • umayster
    umayster Posts: 651 Member
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    WinoGelato wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Low carb - I don't like having to log food!

    Why would someone not doing low carb need to log food any more than someone that was??

    They wouldn't - who said otherwise?

    Your original statement:
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Low carb - I don't like having to log food!

    Seems to imply that if a person is doing low carb then they don't need to log. I am sure you are saying this because you have been LC for a while, you have a handle on how much you need to eat in order to reach your goals, etc, etc - but to someone just expressing an interest in going LC I think it is misleading to indicate that you don't have to log, that there is no need to keep track of those calories. It is very possible to be LC and not be in a deficit - logging helps ensure that someone who is trying out LC, is still in an appropriate deficit to be able to lose weight.

    Studies have shown that people spontaneously eat fewer calories on low carb diet.

  • Traveler120
    Traveler120 Posts: 712 Member
    edited September 2015
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    lindsey1979 wrote: »
    Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »
    Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
    Alyssa_Is_LosingIt wrote: »
    Traveler120 wrote: »
    Why obsess about carbs, protein and fat when all you have to do is eat a wide variety of whole/unprocessed foods. I've been there and it was a colossal waste of time with no lasting results. Just eat real food and be active. The end.

    Why would you be on a calorie/macro tracking website if you weren't going to track your macros/calories?

    Track exercise? The forums? The friends?

    While it can be used to track macros, you can also remove all macros from the list of things being counted so it's no more a macro counting site than it is a micro counting site.

    Okay, while I understand that there are other uses for the site, I guess I don't understand why someone would come into the forums and question why others would find it helpful to track macros and/or calories.

    But then again, there are some people on this forum who seem to need 2 argue with every other poster in almost every thread.

    I guess I'll just never understand.

    I think the point is that yes, tracking of cals/macros is a useful part of this site. But it's not the ONLY useful purpose -- some come for many other reasons too, and that's okay. So some may not choose to use the cal/macro tracking feature and still reap considerable value from this site.
    True. I'm just here for the chit-chat and to learn from the mistakes of others. It helps me recognize where I went wrong before (eg demonizing carbs, not eating or exercising enough etc), why it failed and what not to do again. Even though I've succeeded in losing and maintaining, and implemented habits I can stick with long term, one can never be too vigilant.

    As for tracking, I prefer to track the vitamins/mineral content of my food so that I can make sure I'm eating nutrient dense foods and then make them staples. I only do this periodically when I add/subtract something. The problem with MFP is it has 6 (Vits A&C, iron, potassium, calcium, sodium) while other free sites like Fitday has a list of nearly 20. And each food item in the database also shows how much of those 20 vit/min are in each food. Much more useful information in my opinion.

    For weight loss, it's definitely important to track total calories or get to a point where you can lose/maintain weight without tracking daily. But macronutrients are far less important than micronutrientsif the goal is optimal health. 2 people can eat a 1700 calorie diet with similar macros but one can be more nutrient dense than the other. So if a tracker like MFP can't distinguish between the two, it's useless in my book. The forum is probably the best though.
  • umayster
    umayster Posts: 651 Member
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    healthyrachel1979 wrote: »
    Thoughts?

    Carbohydrates supply glucose, proteins supply amino acids and fats supply fatty acids.

    Your body can make its own glucose as required, but must get amino acids and fatty acids from your diet.

    If you are picking the least important fuel to cut calories, restrict the carbohydrates.
  • umayster
    umayster Posts: 651 Member
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    UltimateRBF wrote: »
    umayster wrote: »
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Need2Exerc1se wrote: »
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Low carb - I don't like having to log food!

    Why would someone not doing low carb need to log food any more than someone that was??

    They wouldn't - who said otherwise?

    Your original statement:
    tennisdude2004 wrote: »
    Low carb - I don't like having to log food!

    Seems to imply that if a person is doing low carb then they don't need to log. I am sure you are saying this because you have been LC for a while, you have a handle on how much you need to eat in order to reach your goals, etc, etc - but to someone just expressing an interest in going LC I think it is misleading to indicate that you don't have to log, that there is no need to keep track of those calories. It is very possible to be LC and not be in a deficit - logging helps ensure that someone who is trying out LC, is still in an appropriate deficit to be able to lose weight.

    Studies have shown that people spontaneously eat fewer calories on low carb diet.

    What studies?

    Here's one http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0708681
  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
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    lindsey1979 wrote: »
    senecarr wrote: »
    lodro wrote: »
    jennifer_417 wrote: »
    Unless you have specific health conditions, low carb is totally unnecessary for losing weight.

    I hope you're realizing that we're approaching a time when up to 50% of a population may have these specific health issues, sometimes as early as the age of three.
    This specific issue? You mean because 50% of the population may have diabetes or pre-diabetes? The recent number saying that comes from recent changes to defining pre-diabetes which involve letting A1C and glucose level signify pre-diabetes. It unfortunately might be over diagnosing because they isn't necessarily enough evidence to say the measure they're using are predictive of being at risk for diabetes. The only early detection that has solid backing is, if I recall from a speaker on the subject, a glucose challenge, but those are procedures that take a fair amount of time, so they're using unproven methods.

    Don't you think "unproven" is going a little too far? It is what the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), ADA (American Diabetes Association), Mayo Clinic and AMA (American Medical Association) use to diagnose prediabetes.

    Sure, those standards are always shifting and maybe they'll have to adjust later, but those are pretty big orgs.
    I'm taking the term unproven from this guy's speech, in which he strongly feels the pre-diabetic epidemic is generally a result of a rush to over-diagnose health issues:
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=l3pVadh4yzM
    And as he presented it, no, I don't find unproven going to far. His citations were that there is no proven predictive power in A1C in the ranges they use. The people recommending it are doing so because it is cheap and quick. If they wanted to use a test with the most predictive power, they'd do a glucose challenge. No one wants to have to spend 4 hours intermittently testing people's glucose to use it as a way to tell them, "hey, watch what you're eating or you'll be at risk of being at risk for diabetes."
  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
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    Also, giving credit where due, shout out to @lemurcat12 for the youtube video I linked above.
  • senecarr
    senecarr Posts: 5,377 Member
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    umayster wrote: »
    healthyrachel1979 wrote: »
    Thoughts?

    Carbohydrates supply glucose, proteins supply amino acids and fats supply fatty acids.

    Your body can make its own glucose as required, but must get amino acids and fatty acids from your diet.

    If you are picking the least important fuel to cut calories, restrict the carbohydrates.
    If you're over weight (over fat), you kind of have an on-hand supply of fatty acids, well technically it has stores of lipids that can be converted into fatty acids rather easily.
  • fastforlife1
    fastforlife1 Posts: 459 Member
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    Troublemaker!

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