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Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

nytimes.com

41–50 of 185 posts

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#41
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sugar free/carb free Atkins diet of the 90s and its modern versions isn't any better. Pretty much any diet which is free of anything should be avoided.

I strongly disagree with this: > Pretty much any diet which is free of anything should be avoided. For the couple of years, I've been trying various elimination diets so that I can see what effects particular foods and food groups have on me. Even if I had ended up with exactly the same diet, it would have been worth doing, as I learned a lot about my body and my relationship with food. As it happens, though, I want…

Good for you, want to try it without a link to a commercial diet?

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#42
post #21

Whether or not you believe in low/no carbs for everyday health, it is uniquely horrifying that the Diabetes association is promoting a high carb diet. Having recently made changes to my own eating, which still includes carbs but at a much less extreme amount, I'm amazed at the differences. I don't have diabetes and the doctors say my blood sugar control is very good, but the energy differences I feel before and after…

> I don't have diabetes and the doctors say my blood sugar control is very good

I don't understand what this means for a non-diabetic. Are they measuring your A1c? How are you "controlling" your blood sugar?

Secondly, even if you're not building fat your body still needs insulin.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#43
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

How so what? A diet that says it's ok to eat a steak but an apple is bad because it has carbs in it? There is nothing wrong with carbs, carb free diets work because it's easier to create a caloric deficiency not because you some how can eat 3000 cals of w/e and lose weight. But in the long run they aren't healthy either try being on a low carb diet and exercise at the same time let me know how it's working for you. E…

A couple of points:

1) The low-carb hypothesis is that there is a fundamental physiological reason that highly refined carbs cause weight gain. It goes something like this: highly refined carbs get stored by your body as fat. Because they get stored as far, they are unavailable to be used for energy. Because they are unavailable to be used as energy, you get hungry (this is your body signaling that it needs energy). So you eat more carbs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Do you have a specific claim as to how this hypothesis is incorrect?

2) It is a complete non-issue that it's hard to compete in long distance running races while on a low-carb diet, especially for people who are obese.

Running has an incredibly high injury rate (on the order of 20-90% of runners get injured per year, Google "running injury rate"). It's about the worst way imaginable for an obese person to be active.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#44

Thank the "low-fat/fat-free" craze for that. Associating dietary fat with body fat has been one of the worse mistakes in "nutrition" in the past decades. Now most "low-fat" food has added carbs to deal with the loss of consistency. And even regular foods (especially in the US) have added sugar.

The sugar free/carb free Atkins diet of the 90s and its modern versions isn't any better. Pretty much any diet which is free of anything should be avoided.

People basically evolved without any sugar (fructose) except what they could get in fruit (which was limited and contained fiber). With the sugar islands it became available to people though expensive and volatile in price. With high fructose corn syrup etc. it became a consistent priced commodity with little to no volatility.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#45
post #21

Whether or not you believe in low/no carbs for everyday health, it is uniquely horrifying that the Diabetes association is promoting a high carb diet. Having recently made changes to my own eating, which still includes carbs but at a much less extreme amount, I'm amazed at the differences. I don't have diabetes and the doctors say my blood sugar control is very good, but the energy differences I feel before and after…

This one minute video will save your life. FAT is the cause of type 2 diabetes. Fat in cells stops your body from processing sugar correctly. You need to reduce dietary fat to very low levels and your body will be able to process carbs correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51D07bvlPY

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#46

I have been doing Keto for 3 months and lost 20kg without any exercise at all.

That's good, but don't make it sound like 3 months of Ketosis is "easier" than a full and strict exercise routine. That's an extraordinarily hard diet to follow.

Says who? I did very strict Paleo and didn't find it that difficult.

Remember the saying "abs are made in the kitchen". Working out is fine and good, but if you don't control your diet first you won't get anywhere.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#47
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so what? A diet that says it's ok to eat a steak but an apple is bad because it has carbs in it? There is nothing wrong with carbs, carb free diets work because it's easier to create a caloric deficiency not because you some how can eat 3000 cals of w/e and lose weight. But in the long run they aren't healthy either try being on a low carb diet and exercise at the same time let me know how it's working for you. E…

> ... carb free diets work because it's easier to create a caloric deficiency not because you some how can eat 3000 cals of w/e and lose weight. There is much missing / wrong with your logic and assertions - but this one is particularly telling. Are you genuinely asserting that low-carb diets work because ultimately they involve less calorie consumption than a 'conventional' (carb-heavy) diet? If so, this seems entir…

>If so, this seems entirely wrong to me - low-carb diets typically involve the consumption of a greater volume of energy (calories) compared to what your BMR would suggest you need to not gain weight.

Eh no, now you are getting into the realm of physics, what happens often are 2 things. Some foods have overstated caloric values this is quite common.

Your body doesn't metabolizes some foods at the same rate, especially true when you adjust your diet considerably and your body isn't used to produce enzymes in the required amounts, as well as other environmental factors like fiber content (lower fiber count would mean lower caloric value while higher fiber count would increase the caloric value even tho fibers themselves have no intrinsic caloric value on their own) and gut biome.

If you think you can eat say 500-1000 cals over your daily allowance with any diet and not gain weight, man you have really really been sold hard on this.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#48
post #35
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that blood pressure very low? Sounds like close to something that makes you faint.

actually recent evidence point to below 100 to be beneficial

You can always find _a_ study that says this or that, need to ask a researcher with an overview of the field for broader conclusions.

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#49
post #45
post #21

Whether or not you believe in low/no carbs for everyday health, it is uniquely horrifying that the Diabetes association is promoting a high carb diet. Having recently made changes to my own eating, which still includes carbs but at a much less extreme amount, I'm amazed at the differences. I don't have diabetes and the doctors say my blood sugar control is very good, but the energy differences I feel before and after…

This one minute video will save your life. FAT is the cause of type 2 diabetes. Fat in cells stops your body from processing sugar correctly. You need to reduce dietary fat to very low levels and your body will be able to process carbs correctly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51D07bvlPY

Dangerous nonsense. Do you fatten up a goose by feeding it butter, or by feeding it grain? Since America fell in love with a low-fat diet, have Americans become lighter, or heavier?

Re: Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates

#50

I've been on a low carb diet since June. I've lost 30 pounds and my high blood pressure is now gone (I read 97/63 last week). My glucose went from 134 mg/do to 96 in 2 months. A1C from 6.5% to 5.5%. Now normal again. If you've been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes you should try a very low carb diet before anything else. It really seems to work.

Please see my comment/video above. Dietary FAT is the cause of type 2 diabetes. Very low carb/keto diets seem to work at first because they reduce the need for the body to process sugar. The problem is the underlying system is still broken. This is just preventing the symptoms from occurring (high body fat, insulin spikes). Over time, your cholesterol will skyrocket and heart attack/stroke are inevitable. Very dangerous.
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