Yes we are. And the doctors are colluding with the big pharma to prevent the wholesome cures of herbal remedies and homeopathy from being used by the public.
:eek:
Americans may have been getting the advice to avoid meat and fat for 30 years, but many of them sure as hell aren’t following it. Calorie consumption overall has increased, physical labour has decreased, and driving absolutely everywhere has taken over. Look at the popularity of McDonalds and KFC and Burger King - sure they serve carbs, but they serve a whole lot of fatty meat too. Do you really think most Americans got fat on a reasonable volume of cereal and grain?
I do see that soda and HFCS has played a part in the obesity epidemic, but you could easily say that that’s because they add so many calories to a persons daily intake (and calories you drink don’t fill you up so much). I don’t see how you can so definitively say that carbs are to blame when so many other facets of daily life have shifted and overall calorie consumption has also increased.
Incidentally, Stoid, what do you make of people who have lost weight successfully by simply counting calories?
So when you refute a theory (calories in vs. calories out) it’s because you ‘genuinely cherish facts and truth and reality’, but when others refute a theory (carbs make you fat, you can eat all the other calories you want) they must have an sinister alternate motive? Maybe we’re just looking to fight ignorance too.
I think they can handle a lot of discomfort, and hat’s off.
Was someone refuting a theory? Where was I?
Because I was responding to someone’s very mysterious need to insist - no, declare, in a fashion suggesting he has my medical chart in front of him containing a comprehensive analysis of my entire body chemistry when for all he knows I’m a skinny 15 year old girl munching brownies while I mess with everyone’s head - that the weight I have lost was water.
Why in the world he was so invested is a mystery I have not solved - I wondered if he (or others who’ve behaved similarly) has paused to ask himself what in the world is really driving him. Whatever the answer, the very fact that he does feel that need so strongly is funny. Hence my remark.
Whenever someone shows up to refute the theory of carb restriction with something other than sneers, unsupported declarations of absolute truth or miscellaneous mockery…I’m completely ready to take in the information and sources they provide and consider it carefully. I believe I have followed every link that anyone has provided to anything, I always do, although I confess off the top of my head I can’t recall any “refuting” links apart from Dio’s to a nine-year old rebuttal of Taubes’ original ten-year-old article, and since that article is obsolete in light of Taubes’ 2007 and 2011 books, I confess I didn’t give it too much consideration.
Pretty much all the other links I can remember offhand have been provided by people who, to one degree or another, agree with carb restriction, and frankly, as you might imagine, the effect of that is to reinforce my faith that Taubes is just as good a journalist and reporter as his very impressive resume suggests, and that he has accurately brought out the facts and the analysis and yes…high carbohydrates are in fact the #1 reason so many of us are fat, and finding our own path to reversing that will be the answer to undoing it.
But if that changes I’ll be right here. Because yes, I do like truth, data, facts… big fan. Always have been, always will be.
G’night.
Cite?
I asked this question in my other thread, but does anyone know how low-carbers avoid metabolic ketoacidosis, if they’re constantly beta-oxidizing fats and producing ketone bodies?
Stoid, I wish you luck. I’m not sure I understand your objection to counting calories but I accept that not all calories are the same.
For me, I ate less, exercised more, added a lot more vegetables to my diet and lost 60 lbs in the space of around 7 months. I’ve kept it all off for almost a year and I’m running my first marathon next month. Changing my diet to less food hasn’t really been a major problem for me, although I slip off the wagon from time to time and splurge.
Counting calories has worked fine for me, I didn’t need major changes in diet, just portion size, making some smarter choices, and getting a lot of exercise. I’m in better shape than when I left college 20+ years ago and loving it. I hope you have a similar success story no matter how you get there. IMO, it’s critical that whatever you do, it be something you can sustain and gives you the nutrition that you need.
Ketosis is not ketoacidosis. You can live in a state of ketosis more or less permanently. There are some epileptics who are on a strict ketogenic diet to prevent seizures, and as I pointed out in a previous post, there are some cellular repair mechanisms that only are activated in ketosis. Ketone bodies also seem to have some neuroprotective function. Unless you have either severe insulin resistance, or an inability to produce insulin, you won’t go into uncontrolled ketosis.
Here’s a quote pulled from a correlational study titled: *Increased consumption of refined carbohydrates and the epidemic of type 2 diabetes in the United States: an ecologic assessment *
They also found that when total calories were accounted for, neither fat nor protein intake was positively correlated with increased risk of diabetes, but carbohydrate intake was.
You are flat out wrong. Animal domestication is only estimated to be around 12,000 years old. We’ve found evidence for use of grains as early as 60,000 years ago and 100,000 years ago. I imagine more discoveries will push it back even further.
But that’s not even possible under the theory that you have been operating with this whole time. You’ve been saying “calories don’t count and counting calories will not help you lose weight”. It’s what Taubes says. But it works for many people, even people in studies cited by his own book! This whole argument is not about “what’s least uncomfortable” or “what’s the most fun diet to go on”, it’s about what works. And low-carb and low-calorie both work, in fact low-carb is calorie restrictive by its very nature.
Yes, you see the title of this thread? The one about you being right about obesity and diet? There are two theories here that are trying to be debunked: you’re trying to debunk the idea that calories matter when trying to lose weight, and we’re trying to tell you that they absolutely do matter depending on the composition of the food, which you seem to agree on.
Again, focusing on this book like a laser beam is part of your problem. Read more about low-carb. You are not presenting low-carb as it has been tested to work though. You’re reading refutations of Taubes like it’s the refutation of all low-carb literature, and it isn’t. Like I said earlier, you will find a lot of low-carb proponents out there. But we acknowledge that calories do count, and that low-carb is calorie restrictive without as much pain as just going low calorie. You’ll find it difficult to lose weight and keep it off if you’re constantly seeking the path of least resistance. It’s not fun, it’s not getting to eat tons and tons of great delicious food all the time, and it is finding ways to work out even if it’s “outside of your maximum personal comfort zone”.
Then read actual scientists. Taubes is not a messiah and frankly he’s a pretty shitty writer. Low-carb is not being debated here. “Calories don’t matter” is.
You lose the right to say this when you only read the stuff you want to hear.
From what I understand the only difference between ketosis and ketoacidosis is degree of difference, and the wikipedia article says you can go into ketosis from a ketogenic diet.
Where are you getting that insulin resistance/deficiency is the only way you can go into ketoacidosis? And if that’s the case, why would your blood acid levels go high with low endogenous insulin from diabetes but not from diet?
Keep in mind that low-carb still allows for some carbs. I average about 60 carb grams a day, most from vegetables with a tiny bit of sugars from the dairy in cheese. My diet doesn’t have an induction phase.
Is this really your experience? Because I have been around for the past thirty years and it is not my experience. I have never seen any news story or published research suggesting that you should not eat meat at all, only that you should eat more lean meats. In addition, most of the recommendations have been to address what were perceived as potential health threats, outside of the relative effect on weight. I’m not going to argue whether these recommendations are valid - I’ve certainly seen enough medical theorizing turned into advice without supporting proof to know that there is a lot more theoretical medicine being practiced than people realize.
Moreover you, of all the people participating in this thread, should realize that advice from the medical community doesn’t translate into changes in behavior of the population in general. If anything, there is usually a kickback effect for some people, resulting in medical advice that actually spurs some to do the opposite.
What has actually happened in the past thirty years (and more) is that consumption of all types of food has risen: This chart is about availability, but I think I can safely say that production will be closely tied to consumption.
I don’t agree with low-carb diets, but that is in part because it is a one-size-fits-all explanation of weight problems, *just like the eat-less-exercise-more *solution is. IMO, the reality is that every person that is overweight has a number of different behaviors that caused the problem and each behavior needs to be addressed.
As ladyfoxfyre points out, counting calories shouldn’t work at all according to your theory (and your OP). Your Lean Larry/Beefy Bob example basically says that Bob can’t lose weight at all by keeping his calorie count at 1500, because his body will still turn it to fat.
The only thing that matters is carbs, right? So why do people lose weight when counting calories but not carbs?
Because sufficient restriction of all calories will result in weight loss. I don’t believe I have ever denied that, Meyer. Wait. I KNOW I’ve never denied that because I’ve never even thought it, so there’s no “belief” involved.
My point (the carb issue compleely set aside) is that the degree of restriction required for people like me, who are genuinely obese (vs. a little thick after 20 years of inattention) reaches a point where it’s virtually impossible for the great majority of human beings to sustain it. Repeatedly trying makes it worse and worse, until successfully losing and maintaining means sustaining permanent semi-starvation.
This is not news. The man who brought us the “answer” that the only thing we needed to do to reverse obesity was manage the calories in vs. the calories out was named Ancel Keys the “Father of Modern Dieting”. We can also thank him for the (false) idea that fat makes us fat, and that fat is responsible for heart disease.
Ancel Keys was a dishonest researcher. This was most famously shown in his “Seven Countries Study” that “proved” the link between fat and heart disease. He combed the data for heart disease and diet, and selected only the countries where there was a correlation between the two to “study” for his “research” on fat’s effect on heart disease. After all, why study a country that has a high fat diet and low heart disease? How will that sell the theory you’ve already decided is true?
So back to calories. Mr. Keys conducted The Minnesota Starvation Experiment…love that title. Ancel took 36 healthy white male volunteers between the ages of 22 and 33 and, to put it simply, reduced their calories to see what would happen.
First they were studed for three months under normal eating of 3200 calories.
Then, for 24 weeks, their calories were cut to 1560, and included a lot of high carbs, actually. Then they were returned to normal levels at varying stages (read the link).
The subjects were also required to walk a total of 22 miles per week.
In other words, they ate less and they exercised more.
The published results required two volumes! 1385 pages of data and analysis.
First thing was that they all lost 25% of their bodyweight. So yes, we know that sufficient restriction of calories, coupled with more activity to expend the calories you get will, in fact, cause you to lose weight.
But here’s what that study also showed:
This blogger actually read the original material (!) and includes more information than the wiki and what is generally talked about by those who insist that fat people are full of shit, such as:
I’ll just quote the blogger some more, since he says it just fine:
So, at the same time that Ancel Keys proved, without a doubt, that eating less and exercising more will definitely make you lose weight, he also proved what any serious dieter will tell you: it lowers your metabolism, turns you into a food-obsessed depressive, drives you insane, and in the end makes you fatter than you were when you started.
So frankly, when people keep trying to shove it down my throat, and most especially when people do so with snide, sneering, hostile, rude remarks towards me or other fat people, I kinda feel like they are telling me this because they know exactly how pointless, painful, and destructive calorie restriction actually is, and they just consider it the punishment fat folks deserve for having the gall to get fat in the first place.
Sorry if it pisses you off, but I think I’ll pass. And post threads like this so the fat people in the gallery can hear it for themselves no matter how hard you or anyone else tries to shout it down, because it’s a goddamn crime the way we’ve all been lied to and mistreated around this subject.
And that’s my agenda.
What’s yours?
There’s a denial right here:
If I had more time to waste, I’m sure I could find a dozen more…
well…maybe just as low carb diets often automatically reduce calories (through reducing appetite), low calorie diets may also be having the effect of automatically reducing carbs? After all, when you go on a diet, the first thing that most people do is eliminate or at least minimize sugars - no cake, cookies, ice cream, donuts - along with going easy on the pasta, potatoes? - that’s kind of a given even on a low cal diet, isn’t it? Which, coincidentally is the first thing to go on a low carb diet also.
just speculating…
To find “more”, you’d need to start by finding one.
I’ve always found that no matter what happens later in a thread, it’s always a good practice to read the OP, just to get the lay of the land.
My OP was long, I grant you, but this is only the third sentence:
I think that can only be described as a clear, unambiguous declaration, the meaning of which it is impossible to misconstrue, (assuming you speak English, of course.).