OK, this is where it gets confusing to me. Stoid said it’s not about calories in vs. calories out. But then here you say that you actually eat fewer calories because it’s a low-carb diet, and it breaks the craving cycle and makes you feel full. So…it IS about fewer calories, it’s just that eating certain kinds of calories makes it less difficult to do. (Right?)
Umm. People, why are you arguing with Stoid about this? She has found a diet that she believes will suit her tastes/satisfy her hunger and let her lose weight. Why are you trying to talk her out of it? It may not fit with the standard diet recommendations, but it doesn’t sound suicidally stupid, either. I mean, she’s not proposing to live on Hershey’s bars and a cup of cider vinegar a day, or anything like that.
So why not just wish her good luck and let her ‘experiement’? Let her try the diet, and maybe she’ll come back in a month and report how it went. If she lost weight (pretty much any amount) and it wasn’t psychologically taxing, isn’t that good?
And may I delicately point to the well-known and scientifically accepted placebo effect? If Stoid believes that eating this way will reduce hunger pangs, then it almost certainly will. If you manage to destroy that belief, well, you would just make it harder for her.
Is that really what you want to do? Do you have a personal level animus towards her that you don’t WANT her to lose weight, will all the health benefits likely to follow from it?
Stoid – I wish you the very best. Happy eating (not toooooo much!), little hunger, and an amount of weight loss that will satisfy you and let you carry on until you reach your goal.
And I really do suggest you step away from this thread. I doubt anything people are saying about diet is new and vital info for you. Maybe even ask for the thread to be closed.
Then start a new thread next month with, I truly hope, good news to crow about.
Good luck!
Yes. It’s about calories. Some, not all, people who reduce their carbohydrate intake find that they are less hungry, more easily satisfied, and tend to have fewer cravings. It’s all still about being able to eat less.
Even that’s a little too simple. If you eat too many carbs or simple sugars and your blood sugar spikes, insulin is released to reduce the blood sugar (because too much blood sugar causes damage). The insulin forces the blood sugar to be converted to fat and stored, instead of being available for utilization. Too high a spike and the insulin released drops your blood sugar too low, which is one of the mechanisms that induce the feeling of hunger.
Moreover, protein is not just used for energy - it is also used for creation of cells and also the various chemicals that run the body.
Because they have to prove that it is just about eating less and exercising more. Because that will mean they are right, and therefore if she succeeds, they get to claim that it was their advice that spurred her to lose weight, and if she fails then obviously it’s because she didn’t work hard enough. And then they can continue to justify their bias against overweight people as coming from a morally and medically superior position, rather than coming from thinking that fat people are ugly.
Of course. Anyone who has ever disagreed with Stoid about anything is really just thinking that fat people are ugly. It was a clever disguise, but you have found us out.
So you tell me, why do you insist that losing weight is only about eating less and exercising more, when there is a large body of evidence that shows that there are numerous other factors at work?
C’mon! You already got me to confess that it’s because fat people are ugly. Are you trying to get me to admit I hate puppies, too? Damn, I guess I just did. Gosh, you’re good at this.
Ok, great. So where is the evidence, proof, facts, and data to back up your assertion that weight loss is exactly "a hundred times harder for me than for most people."?
jsgoddess - If you think that I unfairly characterized your argument, please point out at what step I failed.
Can you maybe answer the question that was asked of you?
I have said repeatedly in this thread that low-carb diets work for some people because they seem to enable some people (I’m one of them) to stick to a lower calorie eating plan because they are less hungry, less prone to cravings, and more satisfied with their food. Is that the question?
No. The question that you responded to was “So you tell me, why do you insist that losing weight is only about eating less and exercising more, when there is a large body of evidence that shows that there are numerous other factors at work?”
Because there isn’t a whole lot of evidence showing that calories don’t matter. Calories matter, no matter what plan people find easiest to follow. Calories have always mattered. Lower carb is easier to stick to (at least for some), but the mechanism behind the weight loss is still caloric deficit. Some foods may be miscalculated in how many usable calories we actually get from them, but the mechanism is still caloric deficit. It isn’t magic.
So do you think that because calories and exercise are important to losing weight that they are the only thing that affects how much weight you gain or lose?
I would also like to see where you think anyone invoked “magic”.
Well, Stoid seems to think that an anorexic child is able to consume 4,000 calories per day and barely gain weight, which seems borderline magical to me.
I don’t think jsgoddess’s statement in post 395 is particularly controversial.
Show me the posts where what I’m describing “sounds like mostly anecdotal common sense stuff” vs. peer-reviewed science?
And how exactly does it manage to sound like “just common sense” if it also manages to sound so crazy?
The same way books are stupid but you’re going to read them anyway because I make them sound so ridiculous yet you’re interested?
You might want to have a chat with everyone inside you…
Beautifully said. 
That’s pretty much a judgement on your part though, isn’t it? Because it doesn’t fit into your equation of how weight works, there must be something that someone is lying about, or something that someone else doesn’t know.