I find the idea of losing weight on a high carb diet a bit of an oxymoron…
Really? How high can your carbs be with the idea of losing weight?
I need to think about this… Maybe a boiled potato with no toppings diet…
Fat Adapted: is it real?
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#42
People lose weight on CICO diets while eating ‘substantial’ carbs and very low fat. Remember that fat contains 2.5 times the calories of carbs per gram. So cutting fat eliminates far more calories than cutting carbs. Thus the CICO paradigm of eat less (fat primarily and maybe a little less carbs) and move more (trying to keep your energy expenditure high). Sounds good in theory, but ultimately fails in practice because you can’t eat an energy deficit forever. You must start eating again or starve. Then your reduced metabolism converts pretty much everything you give it into stored fat.
Corals
#44
It’s about 5 (!) well trained cyclists! If they “found” anything with their 5 (!) subjects, theis p values anyway could only mean the result would be significant to the general population of well trained cyclists.
I had asked for papers that could mean something for populations other than rats and super humans.
And 5 subjects! Seriously? That’s virtually a n=1. Amazing that public money is funding this kind of research.
OldDog
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.)
#45
Don’t count on it… The big grants come from the mega ( processed ) food conglomerates and drug companies.
End the end, I guess it’s public money, provided by people buying all that crap.
Corals
#46
Ok. Let’s see the peer-reviewed content.
Paper one says plasma cortisol increases, insulin decreases and glucagon increases after 7 days fasting. It’s a bit of a duh result. Of course fasting 7 days decreases insulin, since no carbs. The body is under tremendous stress: cortisol= stress hormone. Glucagon increases: brain needs food.
Paper two: “We conclude that there is greater protein sparing by the nonketogenic than by the ketogenic very low calorie diet, and the mechanism appears to be greater protein synthesis.”
That could be used as great ad for non-keto lowcal diets.
Paper three: oh, no! The 5 (!) super human endurance cyclists again! No comment!
Paper four: “Excess dietary fat leads to greater fat accumulation than does excess dietary carbohydrate, and the difference was greatest early in the overfeeding period.”
You’re really into providing ads to carb lovers!
Paper five: subjects lost weight, first 4 weeks with high carbs, then an extra 4 weeks with keto diet (KD). I quote:
“Body fat loss slowed during the KD and coincided with increased protein utilization and loss of fat-free mass.”
More ad against KD?
Paper six… not a peer-reviewed paper.
__
So, thank you, but I’d more interested in papers that make me few good in my chosen very low carb WOE than papers that are negative about it.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#47
You’re welcome. But I see you’re playing a game. You have access to Google the same as I do. Have fun.
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#48
Nutritional research is very expensive. It is also, according to Gary Taubes, very hard to do. Randomised, controlled trials are very difficult, since people generally know whether they are in the low-pasta or high-pasta group (to pick an example at random). This is why we have to rely on low-powered, short-term studies like this one, and studies where food questionnaires are the main source of data. Locking thousands of people up in a metabolic chamber for several years just isn’t going to happen.
On the other hand, while a study with N = 5 has low predictive power, that can be overcome by observing a strong, highly significant effect. So if the dose-response ratio is 2.0 or better, and the p-value is less than 0.00001, the results might be worth paying attention to, even when N = 5.
Unfortunately, far too much gets made of studies where the effect is on the order of 1.15, and/or the p-value is less than 0.5. In that case, a high N is hardly useful. When I see a study like that, I go back and read one of Prof. Ioannidis’ articles on statistical significance, just to recalibrate my brain.
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#49
It is possible, if it’s really high carb and basically very low fat. I ate this way for a long time. It’s just not palatable, and talk about restrictive: rice cakes, white meat chicken without the skin, eggs with no yolks, fake “cheese”, etc.
OldDog
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.)
#50
That is the kicker, and why most " diets " fail…
ctviggen
(Bob M)
#51
OK. You get 10,000 cyclists or runners or body builders, each of which who have eaten a certain way for a time. And, then apply very time consuming and expensive analyses to them. And get it funded, particularly when your goal is to compare low fat with low carb.
It’s not going to happen.
That’s WHY there are animal models and small studies. Furthermore, when’s the last time you put people on diets for a while, then killed them, took out their livers to photograph them? That’s WHY we use animals.
If you want to complain that these types of studies are too small, I give up.
Shinita
#52
My SO always slimmed down (just a little correction after some gain, his big loss happened with a significantly worse method) on high-carb as he can’t do low-carb for a single day. 2 normal meals, lots of sweets, 2000-2500 kcal, normal activity. Very smooth and simple, always effective (for him). He usually eats my keto or carnivore or whatever meals. Just with a ton of carbs, extra desserts and dinner is skipped. The woe, food choices are exactly the same, only the number of meals change.
The hunger is even worse than at maintenance but that’s the price, he knows no better options.
Well, he has results and I stall forever on low-carb after reaching a normal weight… But I don’t do hunger.
How high can be the carbs? Well, surely it’s possible to lose fat with 1000g carbs under the right circumstances… 
My SO isn’t big or super active or particularly muscular so he eats, like, 200g. But he eats quite fatty too. Sometimes he eats more fat, sometimes more carbs. It’s not important for him as long as both are high.
But of course, people do it with HCLF too, I just never knew anyone well with that weird style. Very many carbs may fit into that even for a normal person. Carbs may be very satiating and protein too. It depends on the person. But hunger isn’t a reason to quit for everyone. And calories matter, they tend to do that, it’s just very complicated - but not so much in many cases.
We never experienced anything like this. If we don’t overeat, we don’t gain fat. The body can’t make energy from nothing. I understand some people can’t avoid overeating, their body isn’t healthy and works in odd ways, many people mess with their metabolism… I get it. But the simplest CICO approach seemingly works for certain people… Or the fat gain is so tiny that they just diet 2 weeks per year and that’s it.
Slowed down metabolism (I mean, not due to the mere fat-loss) is a problem, everyone should avoid that if possible. That’s why even sites all for simple CICO says that we shouldn’t eating at a too big deficit (and they bring in BMR too, I always ignored that part but it doesn’t matter to me anyway. I track but don’t enforce calorie limits). They oversimplify that too but indeed, we shouldn’t starve. Whatever that means. So it’s not very informative, yeah… Things are way too complex. I just say not all people balloon up again after losing fat with eating “less” on high-carb. (Not even everyone who slowed down their metabolism but it’s tricky even for a healthy, disciplined one with a quick metabolism until some month earlier.)
I guess it’s about taste (among others, it may matter a lot if one needs to lose 3 kg or 80 too). If someone doesn’t even care what they eat, it’s just fuel, they probably have it easier as long as their body accepts a low-fat diet…
And I know many people love their HCLF food.
You are somewhere between them and me who never would do HCLF for 2 days, ever (fasting doesn’t count. If I had to eat like that for a week, I wouldn’t eat for a week and I am very sure about this. low-fat is possible for a while for me but only with very low-carb).
PaulL
(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing)
#53
You are talking about the Kempner rice diet, for sure, and possibly others. As you say, the key is the extremely low amount of fat. But people did reverse their Type II diabetes, for sure. Even Dr. Kempner admitted, however, that it is a very difficult diet to adhere to. There was a bit of scandal when it turned out that he actually whipped a few of his patients to help them stay on the diet. (It was apparently at their explicit request, so let’s not get too excited, here.)
