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Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

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Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#41

Post by headsoup »

taneq wrote: post #39
headsoup wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can eat just cardboard, so long as I don't eat so much of it that I can't expend the energy? It's nowhere near as simple as that.

You can eat whatever the hell you want, so long as you don't eat so much of it that you don't burn off the energy. It's precisely that simple. Of course, you could say it's complex because you have to choose to reduce your energy intake, and the way that we make that choice is complex. But in that sense, everything is complex.

So all food/non-food is useful to the body in the same way? Just so long as you burn it off? Is all energy expenditure by the human body the same?

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#42

Post by cageface »

_red wrote: post #32
20180201 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calorie intake and expenditure is a description not a prescription . this is about as useful as saying "make more money than you spend" in order to become wealthy. sure, that's true, but it won't help you make $10 million. how do you eliminate the desire to waste time and money on useless pursuits? that is the analogy we need to use to reframe this discussion. yes, there is a certain level of maturity and self-contro…

Good points, but there is something else going on. If you travel alot you start to see that every culture is heavy on carbs: Rice, pasta, potatoes, noodles, bread. They are ubiquitous. Find a frenchmen that isn't eating bread from first meal to last...or an asian with rice / noodles. Or an Italian with pasta / bread, etc. There is something else wrong here. I don't pretend to know what it is, but it seems like its al…

Exactly. The idea that carbohydrates, which have been the staple of most human diets for millennia, are somehow suddenly toxic makes no sense. Complex carbohydrates are fine. What's gone wrong in the US is that we are eating more processed carbohydrates along with way more chicken and cheese and our portion sizes and overall calorie intake have gone up significantly:

http://geeksta.net/visualizations/calories-us/

Excess consumption leads to obesity, which correlates strongly with just about every major chronic illness. Portion sizes are a big part of the problem. Every time I come back to the US after living in Asia I'm shocked at how ridiculously large restaurant serving sizes are.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#43

Post by testuser312 »

lucidguppy wrote: post #34

29% cal from fat isn't really low fat. It would be interesting to see a study on lower fat diets.

Also, 30% of calories from carbs (on the so-called low-carb diet) is not really low-carb. As mentioned in another comment, for a 2,000 calorie diet, that's 600 calories from carbs! Most low-carb diets aim way lower than that because they aim at reaching a state of ketosis, where your body is essentially burning fat instead of sugar for energy. This might be something like 20-50 grams per day, depending on a lot of factors like specific carbs consumed, etc. This is the stage where a lot of the health benefits including increased energy, no afternoon crash, weight loss, etc. come in.

I realized recently that I was getting fat (4 inches of waist size increase in just a couple years), so for the past couple months, I've tried restricting my calories. At first, I tried cutting out things that are just ridiculous like beer and bread. In the past week or so, I've gotten more 'restrictive' and have been trying to eat almost exclusively meat. I'm not counting calories or anything like that, I just eat until I'm full and then I stop. I have lost 20 lbs in the past two months, and I feel much better overall. I have way more energy than I did before and I fart a lot less.

I can understand if it sounds extreme, but look at the standard American diet. Since the food pyramid was introduced, with a base of grains, people have gotten nothing but fatter, more diabetic, more heart attacks and stokes, etc. While there are essential fats and proteins, there are NO essential carbohydrates. I'm not sure if I'm going to stay on this diet forever, but it doesn't seem like the mainstream diet is very healthy, so I'm going to listen to what my body tells me and use reason to try to get out of this mess.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#44

Post by taneq »

headsoup wrote: post #41
taneq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can eat whatever the hell you want, so long as you don't eat so much of it that you don't burn off the energy. It's precisely that simple. Of course, you could say it's complex because you have to choose to reduce your energy intake, and the way that we make that choice is complex. But in that sense, everything is complex.

So all food/non-food is useful to the body in the same way? Just so long as you burn it off? Is all energy expenditure by the human body the same?

Micronutrients, obviously not. You have to get your required vitamins and minerals etc. or you'll get sick. But for macronutrients (basically carbs/fats) then yes, basically. Maybe you'll be slightly more or less efficient with some types of food, but in the end, if you eat a calorie you have to burn a calorie or you'll put on weight.

The key factor is to realise that it's relative to your body. Maybe for you, personally, a gram of fat is more efficiently metabolized than a gram of carbs. Whatever. You have to close the loop.

If you're above your target weight, eat progressively less until you start losing weight, then maintain that intake until your target weight. If you're below your target weight, eat progressively more until you're gaining weight, then maintain that intake until your target weight.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#45

Post by will_brown »

kasey_junk wrote: post #16
euler_ wrote: post #14

Ketosis can apparently lead to more weight loss because ketones are less efficient vehicles of energy in general. Additionally, unused ketones can be eliminated through sweat, urine, and breath.

Apparent to what evidence?

The Krebs Cycle I am guessing.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#46

Post by jobu »

gwern wrote: post #26

Fulltext: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cbpt3bw8ql310kr/2018-gardner.pdf?d... Worth noting that the genetics here was just 3 SNPs based on a 2010 candidate-gene study of apparently n=133 (it was never published, it's just a conference talk, based on the citation & description of the work in https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703862704575099... ), which made the absolutely crazy claim that "those with a genetic…

The key thing for these diets is the ratios of Carb/Fat/Protien :

In the HLF vs HLC diets, respectively, the mean 12-month macronutrient distributions were 48% vs 30% for carbohydrates, 29% vs 45% for fat, and 21% vs 23% for protein.

Both of those diets seem fairly balanced. A typical ketogenic diet (high-fat, low-carb) is usually < 10% calories from carbohydrates, 20-30% from protein (depending on exercise) and 60-75% fat calories. It seems unlikely any of the HLC participants would have gotten into ketosis, so I don't see this study as being relevant to the current debate over the efficacy of ketogenic diets.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#47

Post by elhudy »

cageface wrote: post #36
20180201 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

calorie intake and expenditure is a description not a prescription . this is about as useful as saying "make more money than you spend" in order to become wealthy. sure, that's true, but it won't help you make $10 million. how do you eliminate the desire to waste time and money on useless pursuits? that is the analogy we need to use to reframe this discussion. yes, there is a certain level of maturity and self-contro…

Meat and animal protein is actually more insulinogenic than many common carbohydrates. https://www.drcarney.com/blog/entry/low-carb-theory-regardin... Pretty much everybody agrees that eating a lot of sugar or processed simple carbs is a bad idea but the demonization of high fiber, complex carbs has no basis in science.

The idea that protein should be consumed instead of carbs couldbe due to them being equally insulinogenic to most 'complex' carbs, while also being the building blocks of muscle (rather than being stored on the body as glycogen). While I don't doubt that porridge, all-bran, and muesli enact a lesser insulin response, I'd rather eat the steak, which still beat out nearly all other carbs.

As a side-note, it would be interesting to see how the insulin responses would look if the test subjects were already following a low-carb protocol.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#48

Post by cageface »

elhudy wrote: post #47
cageface wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meat and animal protein is actually more insulinogenic than many common carbohydrates. https://www.drcarney.com/blog/entry/low-carb-theory-regardin... Pretty much everybody agrees that eating a lot of sugar or processed simple carbs is a bad idea but the demonization of high fiber, complex carbs has no basis in science.

The idea that protein should be consumed instead of carbs couldbe due to them being equally insulinogenic to most 'complex' carbs, while also being the building blocks of muscle (rather than being stored on the body as glycogen). While I don't doubt that porridge, all-bran, and muesli enact a lesser insulin response, I'd rather eat the steak, which still beat out nearly all other carbs. As a side-note, it would be in…

Eating too much protein is not healthy. And most Americans eat way more than the recommended amount:

https://www.healthline.com/health/too-much-protein#risks

You're also getting saturated fat and cholesterol with the steak, which is unhealthy despite recent efforts of some to cloud the issue.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#49

Post by jewei »

Conclusions: In this 12-month weight loss diet study, there was no significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate diet, and neither genotype pattern nor baseline insulin secretion was associated with the dietary effects on weight loss. In the context of these 2 common weight loss diet approaches, neither of the 2 hypothesized predisposing factors was helpful in identifying which diet was better for whom.

Re: Effect of Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet on 12-Month Weight Loss in Overweight Adults

#50

Post by daxfohl »

sokoloff wrote: post #27
daxfohl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit surprising that the number of degrees burning your food will raise the temperature of water is related to weight gain. I find it more surprising that this simple relation has withstood the test of time.

Can’t tell if sarcastic or not. Burning food to release chemically stored energy therein seems like it would correlate naturally to the chemical energy an organism could extract.

Not at all sarcastic. I mean, we're told this process all the time so it seems like "duh", but if you really think about it there are lots of jumps and hand waving in that process.
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