Yet another study shows no weight loss benefit for low-carb

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  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
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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/
  • leanjogreen18
    leanjogreen18 Posts: 2,492 Member
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    nvmomketo wrote: »
    @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/

    Yikes almost 3000k in nuts in one day???

    Thats a lotta nuts!!!!
  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
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    leanjogreen18 wrote: »
    nvmomketo wrote: »
    @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/

    Yikes almost 3000k in nuts in one day???

    Thats a lotta nuts!!!!

    LOL He puts my love of nuts to shame.
  • tmoneyag99
    tmoneyag99 Posts: 480 Member
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    Lc is about satiety to me. I have been watching my weight since I was 11 and I can honestly say lc with the slow add back of low glycemic load carbs to medium load is the easiest for me to stick to.


    I eat healthier and better fats too. It works. I eat way more vegetables than the other way... so it works for me. As long as my doctor sees no problem I don't know what anyone else has to say about the matter
  • samhennings
    samhennings Posts: 441 Member
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    I dont claim to have any real knowledge on this, or to have followed this exactly, but am I reading it right?

    When we "burn" fat, water and hydrogen are produced as a by product and excreted/exhaled.
    It is being claimed that a keto diet does what? Increase that 'burn'?
    That somehow that exhalation/excretion is relevant on a keto diet? Doesnt happen on a higher carb diet?

    And as Winogelato has tried to pursue - is it significant if measured in calories?

    So far as I know, it happens regardless of diet type. It just happens when you are burning fat.

    Which makes the whole thing read as a red herring/straw man to me.

    Unless I have completely missed the point, which wouldnt be the first time :)
  • spinningmadlyon
    spinningmadlyon Posts: 3 Member
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    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.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    tmoneyag99 wrote: »
    Lc is about satiety to me. I have been watching my weight since I was 11 and I can honestly say lc with the slow add back of low glycemic load carbs to medium load is the easiest for me to stick to.

    I think this is a good reason (not that you need one) to eat low carb, and much more sensible than the "you will lose more fat!" claim. As I said above, somewhat lower carbs is more satisfying to me, because of what it makes room for in my diet and personal preference. Doesn't have a thing to do with GL for me (although a lot of my carbs are probably from low GL sources), but overall diet. I think potatoes are high GL, and I find them quite sating, although I do tend to eat smaller portions of them probably when I eat them to make room for other things, again.

    What I'm curious about -- although you obviously don't have to answer -- is the following:
    I eat healthier and better fats too. It works. I eat way more vegetables than the other way... so it works for me.

    Why would this be? There is nothing in NOT eating low carb that would cause someone to eat less healthy fats or fewer veg. Indeed, the number of veg I eat would be a problem for ketosis, sometimes, at least according to some ideas of what keto requires, and -- more to the point -- if one is concerned about a healthy diet why wouldn't one eat lots of veg (if one likes them, of course) before going low carb. I find it confusing when people connect low carb and eating more veg (mostly carbs), as if this wasn't something they easily could and should have done before going low carb. Same with eating more protein, for that matter.

    The diet I ate by FAR the most vegetables on was my semi WFPB way of eating, and although it was quite high carb compared to how I normally eat (and perfectly sating and I wasn't hungry), I had other issues, but obviously some like that way of eating and I respect that (kind of wish I did, but I like how I eat now anyway so oh well).

    And back to blambo's stuff, according to those studies showing slight differences between low fat and low carb for IR and IS people, I would in theory lose more on WFPB, as it was quite low fat (when I did it anyway), and I'm IS.
    As long as my doctor sees no problem I don't know what anyone else has to say about the matter

    Of course. Are you interpreting the arguments against extreme claims made for the superiority of the low carb/keto diet to objections to anyone doing it? So often people who do low carb seem to do that, so I will say again that I don't think keto is the best of all possible diets or superior, but I think it can be a perfectly good diet and is the right choice (or one possible right choice) for plenty of people.
  • snickerscharlie
    snickerscharlie Posts: 8,578 Member
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    leanjogreen18 wrote: »
    nvmomketo wrote: »
    @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/

    Yikes almost 3000k in nuts in one day???

    Thats a lotta nuts!!!!

    Yes. Yes it is.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,411 MFP Moderator
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    blambo61 wrote: »
    psuLemon wrote: »
    blambo61 wrote: »
    psuLemon wrote: »
    blambo61 wrote: »
    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.
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
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    Azdak wrote: »
    All of the debating about the hypothetical effect of micro effects in metabolism ignore the fact that we know what happens. When you do a controlled study, and you keep calories and protein the same in both groups, there is no difference in fat loss. That's it. The rest is just white noise. And that has been replicated several times. It's like someone still wants to parse a million arcane details to claim the earth is flat. No. We put satellites in space. We have pictures.

    agree...seriously majoring in the minors...

    you can play around with macros for 1% improvement or focus on calorie deficit and exercise for the best improvement in fat loss and body comp ...

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    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.
  • leanjogreen18
    leanjogreen18 Posts: 2,492 Member
    edited January 2017
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    Honestly even IF studies were to indicate one day that you could eat more calories on LCHF than you burn it STILL wouldn't be for me.

    I'd rather have less fruits, veggies and potatos than more butter or nuts!!

  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    edited January 2017
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    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?
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,411 MFP Moderator
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    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.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
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    psuLemon 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?
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
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    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    psuLemon 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?

    Yes. All of this. It is partially remembering the conversations and his thoughts regarding OMAD being a mechanism to outwit CICO through excretion which are underpinning what I'm trying to glean from his posts here.

    I admit that the engineering talk is over my head, but I do believe he's trying to say that it's possible. Here's the post:
    Life science people often say that any loss past what a deficit demands is breaking thermodynamic laws. Those trained in thermodynamics know that is not true. I only gave my background to state I have a thermodynamics background and know what I'm talking about when conservation of energy and thermodynamics are talked about. I do not have a lot of life sciences training. Lots of life science people obviously don't have much thermo training. Attia has both.

    This isn't about TEF (which would mean certain foods). This is about understanding thermodynamics itself and in Attia's case, I think it's working back from where he ended and fitting the data to his theory here. Heck, even Attia does that since he never tested things like his RMR or his energy output during exercise (and this is a point I made that blambo keeps missing -- you can exercise less and burn more if you're exercising at greater intensity).

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