are carbs or calories more important when losing weight?

lemurcat2 wrote: »

jhanleybrown wrote: »

The real answer is: BOTH!

Calories are what measure weight loss. But carbs play a role in hunger and your ability to hit calorie goals.

For some people, certainly not everyone. Also, it's more likely to be that consuming sufficient protein and fiber prevents hunger than that not eating low carb causes it. Some feel less hungry eating low carb, but some feel more hungry, and for some -- like me -- carb percentage doesn't matter at all, other things do.

Complex carbs typically will also have fiber. Simple carbs will not and will leave you hungrier for the same amount of calories.

Incorrect. Simple carbs are sugars. Many foods that get their cals mostly from simple carbs also have fiber. Raspberries, and other fruits, for example.

Complex carbs are starches. Some have fiber (whole grains, beans and lentils), and some are kind of low fiber (refined grains). Some quite nutritious complex carbs (potatoes and sweet potatoes) aren't especially high in fiber but are often considered very satiating.

So you need to hit cal goals for weight loss. Avoiding simple (usually processed flour or sugar heavy carbs) and sticking with complex carbs (whole grain baked goods, fruit, veg, beans) will make it a lot easier to hit cal goals.

Again, when it comes to the main source of calories, flour is a complex carb, and fruit is a simple carb.

It's always kind of silly when one tries to use the simple vs. complex carb argument but doesn't really understand which is which. It's pretty irrelevant anyway unless someone is eating those foods in isolation, which rarely happens. When one eats a meal with protein, fat and carbs the whole rate of blood glucose increase depends on the meal as a whole and not the individual components.

vkrenz wrote: »

I must be the odd one out here. My body will only lose weight if I am obsessive about cutting carbs. I have an awful time staying below calorie goal if I don't restrict carbs. I spent the first month of my weight loss journey at 1,000- 1,300 calories and barely moved the scale. Since I've been using MFP and cutting carbs I've lost 15 pounds in one month. And I feel the best with an overabundance of energy when I keep net carbs about 30 . Could it be it just depends on who you are?

Several people, including those not stumping for low carb as the best thing ever, have noted that some people find that

* carbs can affect appetite
* carbs can affect energy level **
* medical conditions**** can alter carbs' influence
* the first weeks of carb restriction result in substantial scale drop from water weight losses
* for most people, carb restriction results in increase in either fats or protein, and possible micronutrients, any of which can affect personal perceived energy level** or satiation, and protein level can affect TEF (the reason why protein levels need to be equalized to compare keto to non-keto weight loss rates).

In that context, I don't think you'd have to assume that you're especially special. :flowerforyou:

** If you personally feel more energetic on reduced carbs - or with any other dietary/exercise strategy, for that matter - it's conceivable that your non-exercise energy expenditure increases, effectively increasing deficit. Since research suggests that the difference between fidgeters and non-fidgeters can be up to the low hundreds of calories per day, that has the potential - not certainty! - to make a meaningful difference for particular individuals. Anecdotally, it seems more common for folks here to report fatigue with too-low carbs (whatever the definition of that is, for them), but you're not the first person I've seen report increased energy, and I have no reason to disbelieve you.

**** Including undiagnosed and not life-threatening ones . . . insulin resistance comes to mind, though I don't know what role (if any!) it might play in your story.

P.S. If you keep losing at 15 pounds a month, eat more, unless your current weight is around 400 pounds or more.

Here's where the anti-carb movement came from, in a nutshell.

People do not want to face the simple, immutable truth that to lose weight, you have to eat less food - i.e. consume less calories. They don't want to face this, because it requires ... well, eating less stuff, which isn't pleasant or easy, especially for more than a few weeks or maybe a month or two.

So for many decades, gurus, consultants, diet industry marketing types, celebrities, and now "influencers", and of course individuals seeking weight loss, have played a giant game of "pretend" with diets, namely, pretending that somewhere out there must be a solution that's different (and easier) than "eat less calories". This is the source of everything from keto to the grapefruit diet to "eat all you want in a 4 hour window" IF to apple cider vinegar. Some of these fads fade fast, because they're just stupid and make so little intuitive sense that people abandon them as soon as a new fad comes along. But some of these fads are wrapped in pseudoscience which, at least superficially, sounds plausible - and voila, the madness-of-crowds factor kicks in, as everyone jumps on board and then everyone who's not on board jumps on board too, so as not to be the person who's left behind. The more people get on board, the greater the proliferation of discussion fora supporting the fad, and the greater the number of "experts" who jump in to retroactively explain why this particular fad is, finally, the painless, easy Way to lose weight.

All of these fad diets work when they cause a particular person to eat less stuff, and all of them fail whenever they fail to get a person to eat less stuff. With every fad, a certain small percentage of people find that it suits them -- or put another way, causes them to eat less stuff -- while most people don't see any benefit. These success stories circulate wildly around the web, and are taken as confirmation that this fad is, in fact, finally, the Way. As success stories from the minority of people for whom the fad was simply a good fit (causing them to eat less) pile up, the fad becomes "conventional wisdom" and accepted orthodoxy, even though it's, ultimately, nonsensical. This is what's happened with keto, 15 years after it happened with keto's older brother, Atkins.

In the end, you have to eat less stuff. Calories matter. Carbs are precisely as important to weight loss as apple cider vinegar or being born a Sagittarius. Some Sagittarian out there has lost a hundred pounds eating grapefruits while reciting Psalms; that doesn't mean it's a valid diet strategy, it just means that quite literally anything will work for some small percentage of people, because it causes them to take in less calories.

I'm so tired of people demonizing carbs. Its calories that matter. Eat what you want and stay in a deficit.

vkrenz wrote: »

I must be the odd one out here. My body will only lose weight if I am obsessive about cutting carbs. I have an awful time staying below calorie goal if I don't restrict carbs. I spent the first month of my weight loss journey at 1,000- 1,300 calories and barely moved the scale. Since I've been using MFP and cutting carbs I've lost 15 pounds in one month. And I feel the best with an overabundance of energy when I keep net carbs about 30 . Could it be it just depends on who you are?

No it doesn't depend on who you are.

There are weight loss methods that simply make it easier for people to count calories in, or weight loss methods that are so restrictive that counting calories in is no longer necessary.

If you can see a very low carb diet as part of your maintenance strategy (ie: lifestyle change) that's great. A smaller you will require fewer calories forever. Find your forever.

With very low carb there comes a pretty good chunk of water weight loss in the first couple weeks. The water weight will gradually return so prepare yourself for much slower weight loss in month two. Weight loss won't be linear.

rickycbo1 wrote: »

Lillymoo01 wrote: »

What saddens me is that there is so much pseudoscience around that people no longer understand the basics of weight loss ...... or vaccinations ...... or climate change .....

all science started as pseudoscience....

Written by someone who has no understanding of how to do science!