I have a lean body type with fast metabolism, and typically can(and do) eat loads of food without putting on much weight. I had a back injury a few months ago, and the resulting total lack of exercise means I have put on a little fat which is proving stubborn, even though I now get moderate exercise. A handheld impedance body fat measurement device puts me between 19 to 20% body fat. I read recently that low/no carb diets with one cheat day a week are a good way of reducing fat because they fool the body into using fat stores for energy. However, the article I was reading also advised that I should stay off milk/milk products.
Two things - How effective or not are low carb diets for the sort of thing I’m trying to do? and if they are,
Is dropping milk products essential?
According to Wikipedia, which cites several studies, low-carb diets are similar to other diets in weight loss; i.e. reducing calorie intake causes weight loss whether it is fat or carbs (protein would also work, but protein is preferably used for non-energy things and shouldn’t be cut), and possibly better in some cases (the cited association with obesity may be simply due to overweight people dieting more). On the other hand, even if it doesn’t produce significantly different weight loss, metabolic health, including lipids and cholesterol profiles, tends to improve more than with other diets (some studies indicate that carbs increase the dangerous type of LDL cholesterol; there are several subtypes of LDL, but cholesterol tests generally don’t differentiate beyond LDL/HDL).
As for milk, maybe it is due to the carbs in milk, which has 12 grams of sugars, accounting for 60% of the calories in skim milk (48/80). However, studies haven’t found adverse weight gain/metabolic effects from drinking milk, except for, oddly, skim milk (see here; “higher dairy fat intake is associated with lower body fat and/or less fat gain over time. None identified an association between high-fat dairy consumption and fat gain, although some did find an association between low-fat dairy consumption and fat gain.”). Or maybe it was written by one of those people who thinks that humans shouldn’t drink milk because most other animals don’t as adults (despite studies like this one that find benefits in cardiovascular health and diabetes risk). Obviously, this assumes you are lactose persistent (an evolutionary adaptation to enable digestion of lactose into adulthood; lactose “intolerance” is the norm).
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If accurate that percent body fat aint bad. Low end of average, not in athletic range but hey, you’ve just started back up at a moderate level.
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Very little argument out there that low carb should work just fine for what you are trying to do. So would lots of other approaches but many like that one lots. And if you want to avoid the dairy carbs and still want dairy just stick with kefir or even better yet Greek yogurt. No need to get into the more controversial discussion of why it works and how tenable or healthy it is or is not for a long term nutrition plan; your question is specific.
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Don’t mistake your initial weight loss though for fat loss however. The initial drop is glycogen and water.
I’ve lost ~ 35lbs over the last year or so, mostly by reduction of calorie intake, but the calories I cut out were primarily from processed foods; so no crap that comes in boxes that’s mostly sugar with needless added fats. I don’t worry about eating “lean” meats, I get plenty of vegetables, fruits, and tree nuts.
Two years ago, my total cholesterol was 340 with a poor LDL/HDL ratio. The results from my lipid panel last week was 218, with high HDL and triglycerides in the basement.
It’s the best way to lose weight without consistent workouts. Losing carbs can definitely change your lifestyle, because losing calories and carbs can change your metabolism completely. Some people do diets for a while, then their body adapts to it then they stop doing the diet and still be able to lose weight like crazy.
For beginners, it would be easier to follow a guide or a cookbook/recipe. Here are some stuff that you might want to give a shot.
http://cooklikeacaveman.com/paleo-cookbook-review/
Years ago, I lost a lot of weight on Atkins, and had no trouble keeping it off. Then my doctor informed me that all that protein was damaging my kidneys. I saw a nephrologist, and sure enough I had stage-3 kidney disease.
So now I’m on a diet that’s low-fat, low-carbs, low-protein, low-sugar and low-sodium. Basically, I can drink water . . . until I have to cut down on that too.
I’m very skeptical of diets that claim to fool the body into using fewer calories than are available. The human body has had millions of years to learn how to consume (and store) every available calorie and moving to a low-carb diet isn’t going to fool anything.
But you look fantastic! 
I’ve done a lot of research on this subject, mainly for my mother who has an abnormally low metabolism and disabilities which make it more-or-less impossible for her to elevate metabolism by exercise. The main advantage of low carbing is that it curbs hunger by placing the subject in ketosis. Weight loss comes by the ordinary mechanism of reducing calories. See, e.g., here. It’s a very difficult diet, though, and generally has the side effect of resetting one’s metabolism. See this NYT Mag article. Which is to say, it may be the right diet for some people (e.g., my mother), but it’s not the right one for most. It only works in the long run if accepted as a permanent lifestyle. Very few people are willing to do that.
But I’m not trying to fool the body into not using and storing all calories available to it. I’m just trying to fool it into not storing those calories as fat. For example, it may not be possible to lose weight without using more calories than you consume, but it could be possible to lose fat while consuming more calories than you use.
I don’t think it works that way. You consume calories in food–those calories have to go somewhere. If you eat more calories than your body uses there are only two possible outcomes for those excess calories:
- You excrete them.
- They end up as fat.
If you could fool your body to not turn them into fat then you’d have to be getting rid of them somehow. PBear42’s explanation makes much more sense to me: different foods can have different effects on your appetite, which may help one to consume fewer calories.
What about proteins that go into muscle? Do they get counted separately from calories? For e.g, if I eat an egg, does it give me i) Proteins that go into muscle or get excreted, and ii) Calories that go into fat or get excreted, or does it work differently? I thought proteins also had a calorific count.
Ah, that must be the “one weird trick” I hear so much about.
If it seems to you that there’s something wrong in my understanding, it’d be nice if you could set me right.
Basic version:
Protein taken in is broken down into its componant amino acids which are used for repairing and building muscles (and other tissues that contain protein, all of which are constantly being broken down, used for energy to some degree, and rebuilt, in some balance every day), and for energy. We don’t excrete many calories and calories taken in beyond those needs gets stored. The long term storage depot is fat.
Adequate protein intake (something like 20 to 30% of daily calorie intake, roughly 1 to 1.5 g/kg body weight) seems to allow for relative muscle sparing during weight loss (which is lost along with fat during energy restriction) and if coupled with resistance exercise and only a modest calorie deficit, may even allow for some muscle gain while fat is lost. Dietary protein (and fiber) also seem to result in less hunger (greater satiety).
Thanks. I mostly knew this, but was making a mistake in counting proteins as (amino acids OR calories) instead of (amino acids AND calories). So the calorie deficit has to exist to lose fat. Got it.
I’m with you. Basically, your body can do four things with calories you eat:[ol]
[li]Use them for energy[/li][li]Use them to maintain body temperature[/li][li]Store them as fat[/li][li]Excrete them[/li][/ol]
For a while there I tried to increase #2, which can work short-term but isn’t sustainable. Failing that, your only realistic option is decreasing calorie intake until your body has to burn some of its stored calories in addition to what you eat in order to maintain itself. It’s a slow process, but it’s simple physics.
Counting calories for weight loss actually works, but it’s relatively simple to do on your own and isn’t an easy program to sell, so you end up hearing a lot about fad diets, like “low carb”. In my experience, low-carb diets actually work by limiting your food choices so severely that you lose interest in eating, thereby voluntarily lowering your calorie intake, and losing weight as a result.
As long as you burn more calories than you consume, you could eat nothing but convenience store junk food and still lose weight.
This may technically be correct but seems overy simplistic to me. Caloric input is not the only factor here. You must take into account metabolic rate…which may be decreased during weight loss. The body can enter starvation mode and try its hardest to hold on to every calorie simply by lowering metabolism. If hunger causes this then one could speculate that a diet that results in a more full sensation may bypass this metabolic resistance to weight loss. I don’t know if this has been studied…I’m only speculating.
I suspect it was a joke, referring to the ubiquitous online ads for weight loss programs (among other things) along the lines of “Suburban mom loses 100 pounds by following this one weird trick.”
For the record, a study on removing starch and sugar from meals was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1963. Dr. Atkins had 65 people follow the diet and lose weight. His version was published in *Vogue *in 1970 and his book Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution was first published in 1972.
So since it’s been around for 40 or 50 years now can we stop calling low-carb a fad diet? It’s a legitimate way of eating and absolutely helpful to millions of people, myself included. Weight Watchers has also been around since 1963 and I don’t hear anyone calling that a fad.