Pet peeves of little experiments like this of carb cutting. Cutting carbs causes you to shed a lot of water weight. Also if the exercise is new it is quite possible that is the bigger factor in improving perceived cognitive ability. If you changed multiple things and started paying closer attention to diet it is really hard to pin down what actually helped the most.
Vigorous exercise helps clear waste along with sleep, not much else really clears things out -- brain seems more and more to be a part of, or similar to, the lymph system.
edit: also most people who do 18 hour fasts report feeling energized, better concentration, etc,. especially if they have caffeine on an empty stomach.
I've cut carbs and increased my calorie intake (through fat and protein) over the past year and have shed 70 lbs of "water weight". I went from Obese to a healthy weight, from a 42" waist to a 32" waist. And I've actually decreased the amount of exercise I've done, too. Amazing how much "water weight" all those fat cells were holding.
I switched from a calorie restricted "balanced" diet (1900 kcal/day, 150g carbs/day) with small portions that was going nowhere to an unrestricted (>2500 kcal/day, <30g carbs/day) diet with larger portions and lost weight.
And you're measuring everything with a food log? When I do a low carb diet, even unrestricted, I have to focus (eat on a timed schedule) on getting enough calories to maintain my lean mass. Without carbs I simply do not eat enough naturally to maintain a weight I want to keep.
Are their studies that demonstrate that consuming more calories (with different composition such as HFLC) leads to weight loss compared to lesser calories (regardless of composition)?
I think that he is referring to the immediate weight loss effects associated with depleting the glycogen stores in your liver (400 grams) and muscles (100 grams). Each gram of glycogen is bound to 3 - 4 grams of water.
Thus, depletion of your glycogen stores results in the loss of 2.0 - 2.5 kilograms (4.4 - 5.5 pounds) of "water (and glycogen) weight" within the first week of a low-carb diet. Larger individuals often retain even more glycogen and water, which can result in immediate losses of 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds) or more.
His point is that some studies, particularly short term studies, do not account for this non-fat weight loss.
Wonderful to hear. Please continue to post. How much of your fat intake is saturated? I greatly increased my saturated fat intake and saw the associated quality of life improvements you'd expect (included increased free testosterone).
Referring specifically to folks who change diet and report 6-12 lbs of weight loss in 1 or 2 weeks. Can't burn fat that fast. Carbs in excess cause cells to hold more water, this is a fact. Diet changes, especially water loading, macro nutrient ratio changes,and exercise can cause big shifts on a small time frame. Recommend hacker's diet style of weight trending vs scale measurements to measure short term weight loss.
An increase in dietary protein from 15% to 30% of energy at a constant carbohydrate intake produces a sustained decrease in ad libitum caloric intake that may be mediated by increased central nervous system leptin sensitivity and results in significant weight loss. This anorexic effect of protein may contribute to the weight loss produced by low-carbohydrate diets.
So in reality, the reasonable explanation is that you decreased your calories involuntary by upping your protein intake.
Note this study was not about carb cutting, "high fat" in this context means high fat
+ high sugar, a combo specifically designed and proven to fatten mice. 60% lard, 20% sucrose, 20% casein.
The exercise (ocean swim) isn't new. I've been doing it for years.
And yes - it does help enormously (e.g to get the blood really flowing well) - as long as I get the start time, duration, intensity and intervals about right. I tend to swim only until just after the point that I reach peak performance.
Also, (for me) it isn't just about carb cutting - it's about timing.
If I eat a medium bowl of white rice at a breakfast, then I tend to feel worse afterwards and I put on (some) weight. If think that the blood gets thicker and stickier as blood sugar rises and so blood flow gets worse.
If I eat the same medium bowl of white rice after my swim then I don't seem to put on weight, but it does help avoid a next day energy crash. I also paid it with 5g of Creatine Monohydrate (before the swim) and the combination seems to have reversed my middle-age loss of muscle.
What doesn't work for me is vigorous early morning exercise fueled by caffeine. Again for me, that is the route to over -training and a long bout of fatigue.
Similar for me. I get brain fog from eating sweets. After I cut sweets (including any products with a high amount of added sugar, like yogurts and cereal), the problem decreased. I started going to the gym after I wake up and have the first meal after that. This helped tremendously. My routine is loosely based on intermittent fasting. Most days, I have about a 12 to 14 hour gap of not-eating. So basically it is sleep, exercise, restricted eating. Works for me.
So you cut sweets first and then started the gym or did you make the changes at the same time? I'm only asking because I would argue the gym is probably where you are getting your biggest change from.
I've been working out consistently in some form or another for > 15 years, and if I go 2 days without doing something athletic I notice it physically and mentally.
Brain fog is tied to what I eat, exercise only helps alleviate the symptoms. With exercise I can eat more sweets until brain fog appears and it also disappears more quickly.
If you weren't working out before, I bet you the exercise is 9/10ths of it. Its amazing how much of a difference regular exercise makes for your energy and sleep schedule.
> Never been a morning person - assumed blood sugar must be low.
For healthy people this is usually a mental/learned thing. You're not a morning person? Start getting up at 6am and going to the gym. Eventually you'll adjust after a week or so.
No reason to get defensive. Since you're now implying you have some health issue, my point still stands. Most people will adjust to whatever schedule they start to keep. Just look at the number of people who enter the military to see schedule adjustment on a huge scale. So it does not just work for me or all the other people I've seen turn themselves into 'morning people'.
I didn't ask for advice or instruct anyone about what they should do anywhere on this thread. You on the other hand immediately instructed me what I should do. Perhaps you are accustomed to giving people orders? Been in the military perhaps?
>Just look at the number of people who enter the military to see schedule adjustment on a huge scale.
I call that BS.
What data you have that is independent of the military's own data of the percentages that do and don't adjust?
Outside of the era of conscription, make sure you correct for the fact that people who enter the military are a self selected sample.
FWIW, I did have a great metabolic upgrade in 2013 and 2014. And it was done by cutting down on carbs and eating delicious foods like fatty chicken and beef, cheeses, etc, and cooking with lard whenever possible.
Intermittent fasting has been quite popular in the fitness and lifestyle worlds in the last years. I myself have been practicing it for more than a year now. A good point to start (which I used myself) is this article from James Clear: http://jamesclear.com/the-beginners-guide-to-intermittent-fa...
The experiment to do is simple. Put mice (or humans) in constant conditions (lights always on, food as much as you want) and track sleep wake and eating behavior. You will see that animals will continue to behave in a cyclical manner even in the absence of an external force.
This almost answers a question I've often wondered.
Whenever I see research on calorie restriction, I wonder whether it's directly caused by eating fewer calories, or indirectly caused by eating fewer bad things. For example, methionine, an essential amino acid, is linked to cancer growth. In other words, maybe we don't need to eat less calories, but less of specific nutrients.
Anyways, this study seems focused on metabolic diseases and doesn't touch on cancer or longevity in general. So, if anyone has any thoughts, I'd like to know. It's been bugging me for a while.
carbohydrates yield 5x the ATP proteins do. 1 gram of carbs is 5x as "rich in energy" as 1 gram of proteins. In spite of them being billed as equal.
A tablespoon of sugar yields about as much energy as a pound of chicken breast.
Then we go into fat. People think fat makes them fat. The truth is, ingested fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly. It is way easier for the body to turn carbs into fat than it is to turn fat into fat.
"Diet" products that extract fat from milk products, like yoghurt, and replace them with sugar, which makes the product less calorically dense, nominally, literally makes people more fat - AND is billed as a diet alternative.
Everything. the. media. says. is. wrong.
Everything.
And this isn't arcane knowledge acquired from some hermit. Its literally on wikipedia. One click away. Google ATP, or adenosinetriphosphate, and read the whole page. you will know more about diet than most dieticians.
When I talked to my physician about these things, initially, they didnt know those basic facts either. All the knowledge we've got about how to lose weight is buried and ignored by bullshit.
Simple facts that, if applied, make people lose weight. Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight. Its what Ive done.
Do you have any sources for the calorie vs ATP information? I've recently been assuming this and I'd really like to read more in the direction of ATP based diets versus calorie based diets.
You're mixing two things, though my original question wasn't clear.
You're talking about calorie restriction with respect to metabolic disease. This study seems to further support your view and, I don't disagree with you.
I was asking about calorie restriction in terms of longevity. There's a growing body of science (and also wiki pages) that link reduced calories to an increase in media and maximum life span (via a reduction of various age-related diseases). Although the mechanism isn't known, this appears to go beyond weight.
Thanks! That helps (seems like methionine-restriction is related to all this too, after all).
Maybe really stupid, but is it bio-chemically possible to create a amino acid analog that fulfills the good duties without the bad? What xylitol is for sugar, say.
> People think fat makes them fat. The truth is, ingested fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly.
It's funny to think people ever took this literally, although many still do. Broccoli, for example, doesn't directly end up as broccoli lining your veins. Humans have digestive systems.
> Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight.
While I agree that for many people, restricting carbs is a far easier method of eating healthy while still feeling fully sated, stating that you can "literally eat until your stomach hurts" is false, misleading, and potentially destructive.
5000 calories of cream cheese or other caloric dense foods is, still, at the end of the day, 5000 calories. Caloric restriction isn't the only way to diet or eat healthy, but ignoring overall caloric intake (even rough estimates) while only focusing on "what" you eat is one of the biggest pitfalls I see.
I don't think anyone is arguing that calories don't matter, what matters is if a free living humans can eat a diet without too much effort. I don't think many people would want to (or even could) eat 5000 calories of cream cheese. But you probably could do it if you're eating ice cream and potato chips.
The "a calorie is a calorie" approach to diet and health has been thoroughly debunked.
Our bodies metabolize carbs, protein, and fat, very differently. If a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes. All things equal except the composition of their diet, the person on the HF diet will stay lean and feel consistently satiated, while the LF person will put on more fat and feel hungry far more frequently than the HF.
IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.
> IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.
I completely disagree. At the end of the day losing weight is about changing the amount of calories a person consumes vs. what they use. The most damaging science is trying to say it's not about calories at all when in fact that is almost all it is about in healthy person. Now, if you want to argue about satiation and the ability to keep up with a diet, then the type of food matters, but for strictly weight loss a person has to cut calories (or add activity).
> At the end of the day losing weight is about changing the amount of calories a person consumes vs. what they use.
Over an extended period, yes, this bears out because the law of thermodynamics. But the question is - can people adhere to a calorie-restricted diet long enough to see meaningful results? More importantly, will they simultaneously be able to build muscle and maintain normal bodily functions (thyroids tend to stop functioning normally during extended calorie restriction, especially when fat intake is low)?
You will have a much easier time achieving a healthy body composition and feeling satisfied while eating a high fat low carb diet, than you would eating the same amount of calories on a low fat high carb diet.
I say that the "calories in, calories out" approach to dieting is problematic because it's simply not as effective as switching to a HFLC diet. It makes building muscle tissue difficult, it encourages miserable dieting tactics, and taken to the extreme (which many people do) is a threat to a person's health.
> Our bodies metabolize carbs, protein, and fat, very differently. If a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes.
Show me those studies and we can discuss it further. Because the studies I've seen demonstrated slightly different results for each diet, but not wildly different as you're implying, so calorie counting works just fine.
" If a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes."
Is there any evidence of that actually happening? Starkly different outcomes? Everything I've seen shows weight change to be pretty damn close on matched calorie diets with the macro mix not mattering much.
Doesn't matter. Whether the body can extract calories out of it doesn't change the definition of calorie and a calorie is still a calorie.
"But some foods are more filling and satiating than others despite the calories being the same"
Still doesn't matter. How does how long the body takes to process calories out of food affect "a calorie is a calorie".
You must already know this. I might have been a bit pedagogical but that's because "a calorie is a calorie" is false is one of my pet peeves.
More to the point:
> then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes.
Studies please. Especially for "starkly different outcomes". I can copy pasta the famous /r/fitness link dump which is posted every time keto comes up but I will wait for you to find me some studies supporting your argument first.
> All things equal except the composition of their diet, the person on the HF diet will stay lean and feel consistently satiated, while the LF person will put on more fat and feel hungry far more frequently than the HF.
So I can feed 5000 kcal/day to a 5 feet girl and she will stay lean as long as it's olive oil shots?
> IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.
But all calories are equal, by definition. Some people do well on a high fat/high protein diet, some don't. You want to lose weight, burn calories(eat less, move more) above your tdee. You want to gain weight, give your body more calories than it burns. As annoying as hearing this may sound(it isn't annoying to me but for argument's sake), that's all there is to it. People have lost weight and maintained lean mass on all sorts of shitty diets. If high fat diet works for you, superb. But it's not a panacea and the science is no where as clear cut as you make it out to be. In fact, keeping protein constant, a high fat and high carb diet had the same results.
Yes! To reiterate: the backlash against calorie counting into not taking calories into account at all is just as damaging.
Certain foods help satiate better than others at lesser calories -- which is why some people find that eating 1500 calories of high fat and protein foods to be much easier to live with than eating 1500 carb heavy calories.
IMO, that's one of the big draw of keto. It's not that you can magically eat 5000 calories of cheese and meat and lose weight. It's that you can eat a caloric amount at a deficit and still feel energetic and full and like you didn't miss out on anything.
"5000 calories of cream cheese or other caloric dense foods is, still, at the end of the day, 5000 calories."
Even if that is true... try it. Seriously. Try it. It won't hurt you for one day, and the education may well be worth it. Try eating 5000 calories of high-fat food. That's six and a quarter standard 8-oz packages of cream cheese. You're going to be hard-pressed to get that down in one day.
By contrast, it's 2.4 party-sized 15-oz Doritos bags. Try eating nothing but those for one day. Or substitute any corn or potato chip or mix of chips of your choice. That may sound like a lot, but I guarantee you that A: you'll get much farther and B: you'll feel much worse afterward. There is, quite frankly, a decent chance you'll find you can get this down in one day, and still feel hungry at the end of the day.
This is why a calorie is not just a calorie. Even if that's true by the time they hit your cellular processes as ATP, there's a loooot of body systems between your mouth and the ATP that cares a lot about the differences. In fact the idea that a calorie can just be a calorie is all but incoherent when you look at it with enough detail, because a gram of fat and a gram of carbs and a gram of protein all headed to ATP take very different routes. It would defy all probability if the end result were that there were no meaningful differences between those routes. To say nothing of the differences between various carbs, proteins, or fats within their own category, which are quite substantial on their own.
I don't disagree with what you wrote -- I acknowledged in my post that certain foods satiate better than others.
But too often, in the swing towards "think about more than just calories!" I see folks completely ignore calories. It's much, much harder to over eat on some foods than others, true, but IMO I find people espousing "you can eat as much as you want all the time!" to be equally damaging.
Set a target caloric amount. Eat towards that. Fat/protein heavy foods make that easier to maintain.
> The truth is, ingested fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly. It is way easier for the body to turn carbs into fat than it is to turn fat into fat.
> Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight. Its what Ive done.
I'm sorry but your post is not supported by the research at all. The process which turns carbs into fat is called de novo lipogenesis and is extremely rare in humans. It only happens when your glycogen stores are full AND after masssive overfeed of carbohydrates(500 grams+) for days.
the addition of excess carbohydrate energy to a mixed diet so that total energy intake exceeded total energy expenditure (TEE) increased body fat stores, but not by conversion of the carbohydrate to fat. Instead, the oxidation of dietary fat was suppressed and fat storage thereby increased.
[...]
Thus, de novo lipogenesis does become a quantitatively major pathway when carbohydrate energy intake exceeds TEE, but this circumstance is unusual in daily life.
Also, calorie restriction is not "bs".Protein is more satisfying, spares lean mass and has a larger TEF(thermic effect of food), which makes it great for fat loss. A carb restricted diet is usually high in protein, since carbs are typically replaced by meat, cheese etc and that is a confounding factor.
The point is that low-carb diets are not good because they are low in carbs, rather they work well because they are high in protein. In fact, when studies control for protein i.e the protein content is the same for the low and higher carb groups, the fat loss is the pretty much the same. See Johnston CS et. al (2006)
Your facts aren't even being supported by the NuSI experiments, (Gary Taubes's own initiative).
The NuSI experiments were suppose to prove the insulin hypothesis but showed no metabolic advantage for low carb/high protein/fat diets.
The one advantage the low carb diet does appear to have is satiety; fats just leave you simply feeling fuller longer. But there's nothing metabolically magical about them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUyjMjuLl0&t=674s
The low fat/high carb group actually gained a longer-term metabolic advantage vs the low carbers..
Citation? No really. I think 90% of the fitness press is truthy BS designed to sell more memberships, but you're making big calls here.
> Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key.
Having lost 15+ kg using caloric restriction, and kept it off for the past 5+ years, based on my own anecdata I'm inclined to disagree. I don't eat meat, though, so maybe my caloric restriction also reduces carbs enough?
> Then we go into fat. People think fat makes them fat. The truth is, ingested fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly. It is way easier for the body to turn carbs into fat than it is to turn fat into fat.
This is so wrong and stupid, it hurts. Look up "de novo lipogenesis" that's the process that converts sugar into fat. The efficiency of it in humans is less than 5%. So before you go wailing about a conspiracy, examine your own flawed facts. The fat you eat is the fat you wear. That's why all low fat vegans are slim and in excellent health. Take care!
Your post is nonsense. De novo lipogenesis is not efficient in humans; sugar doesn't metabolized into fat. But fat is readily stored in adipose tissue. That's why meat eaters are fat and sick while low fat vegans are of superior health.
(Everything in this response is my interpretation of the research I've seen. Some of it is my guesswork with no evidence).
Good question. It seems that having some period of starvation that is beneficial. Overall calorie intake is less relevant. Decreased overall caloric intake may actually be bad (can't find a link for this at the moment).
Benefits appear to include decreased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, possible decreased cancer risk, and decreased risk of neurological disease. Also longer life expectancy in some animals, as yet unproven in humans.
Even fasting for short periods regularly appears to be beneficial [5]
Three main reasons - autophagy, ketosis and decreased inflammation.
Autophagy, a kind of intracellular recycling operation, is increased by, inter alia, starvation [1]. It seems likely that most of the benefits of fasting derive from this. Valter Longo is a key researcher into this.
Of particular interest to me is his work on fasting coupled with chemotherapy. [2]
Ketosis occurs when all your glucose and glycogen (a polymer of glucose) are used up, and you burn fat instead. Mark Mattson is a key researcher into this. Ketosis appears to have a neuroprotective action [3]
Decreased inflammation - chronic inflammation appears to be a cause of all sorts of problems, and fasting appears to decrease it.
Awesome post, thank you. I'll have to come back and read the articles you linked when I have more time.
I started following a ketogenic diet in January of this year. I cap myself at 20g of net carbs per day, and my goal is to get 80% of my caloric intake from fats. I've lost 50 pounds so far (318 to 268), and have naturally drifted toward intermittent fasting as my hunger has decreased so significantly I don't have the urge to eat at all.
Read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung. A real doctor using real medical studies but with a different view to explain in common language why diets fail and why old practices work.
his youtube lectures and interviews are also good.
i wouldn't advise sharing his findings with most other people though, especially those who are prone to get swept up with the prevailing beliefs on things like low-fat eating and/or fasting.
the great thing about modern society with regards to diet is you can eat whatever you want and get your blood and weight/fat% tested as often as you want without anyone else's input or permission.
I know that mice have been used very successfully to study many diseases and conditions that can also affect people. But are mice a good human analogue when it comes to diet?
I don't have time to find citations at the moment, but I seem to recall that the original studies linking consumption of saturated fat with...bad things (high cholesterol, etc.) were originally done with mice and more recent studies involving actual humans have failed to find a connection between consumption of saturated fat and the aforementioned bad things.
It is about compromise. The ideal would be to use real humans for all studies. There are many reasons we cannot do this, about half of them are obvious. (try to come up with the non-obvious ones as an exercise)
Mice are cheap, have a short lifespan, and have less ethical concerns so we use them. They are an okay model of humans, which is good enough to say if something fails on mice don't try it on humans. It is an open question of what treatments would work on humans that fail in mice - but this is impossible to study so we will never know how often this happens. (the fringe "coconut oil" groups put it at 5% from what I can tell)
You've defined above why we use model organisms, but the original question wasn't questioning model organisms in general. I think we should work towards the original posters challenge to validate our models are efficacious, not just normal and cheap. After spending a semester seminar reading rodent dietary studies, I am equally sceptical that mice are a good general model for diet.
I know this doesn't answer your question as much as it introduces more questions, but I recall there being a propensity to use mice for these studies because gene expression based on lineage is more reliable in mice, the effects of metabolic modification are easier to study in mice, and a lot of existing studies are done on mice so it is easier to advance research. I may have read this in a biologists AMA on Reddit, so take it with a grain of salt. I also very much agree that study reproducibility is a major problem. Everyone wants to do the original research, and few want to validate existing work.
The cautious conclusion regarding your question seems to be "mouse models are decent, but we understand the dietary habits of mice much better than that of humans. And sadly, leptin model doesn't translate neatly to humans for reasons not yet fully known but probably partially social in nature"
I don't know if they specifically apply to this study, but Stephan Guyenet has pointed out some of the potential problems with what are typically called "high-fat" diets for mice.*
For example one research diet that is called high-fat, D12492
- is extremely high in fat (60%)
- does not contain what are generally considered to be particularly healthy forms of fat
- is extremely processed overall
- is typically used with genetically obesogenic mice
- typically causes obsesity and neuron damage (and often diabetes) at a young age.
I would think there are quite a few studies on Intermittent Fasting (IF) that more easily generalize to humans.
Some of the top ingredients are soy products (which in high enough doses will render most animal species infertile)
Can you show legitimate repeatable recent research that shows this. I'm starting to think that the Soy raising estrogen (to unhealthy levels) thing may not be as true and is perpetuated in some cases as broscience.
I'm sorry, the research I reviewed on animal infertility was a long time ago. The studies that were from the first half of the 20th century in which this result was demonstrated on just about every domestic farmed species. I don't have time at the moment to track those down. But I don't believe this is 'broscience'.
The first place I'd look if you're searching for studies, esp. more modern ones, is actually the Weston A. Price Foundation. While they have an agenda for sure (e.g. they are currently suing the US prison system for malnourishing inmates, just to name one example of activism/ideology) I think they are generally good folks. They have sponsored some top-notch researchers, such as Chris Masterjohn, in the past.
Here is their scary soy page, which starts with a few citations. I think you'd find more in some of the linked articles.
Please feel free to post here anything that you may find to be of particular interest.
I should add that most of these results probably don't apply to traditionally fermented soy (like natto or traditionally made soy sauce -- but not the mass produced stuff nowadays); as I understand it there is no traditional culture which ate soy in an unfermented form.)
Thanks. I'm always trying to reduce meat and other animal product consumption but its fairly difficult with out some if not a large portion of soy consumption.
I'll have to check if tempeh (which is what I normally eat) has the same soy dangers (it is supposedly traditional fermented).
Another way to reduce meat and animal product consumption, though counter intuitive, may be bone broth / anything with gelatin or glycine. I understand it has a "protein sparing" effect, meaning you can eat less protein total without muscle wasting. Our ancestors got a higher ratio of this stuff by eating more of the whole animal, rather than eating primarily muscle muscle bellies, as we tend to do today.
There's a theory called the protein leverage hypothesis: as the percentage of food protein decreases, hunger is increased to the point that you eat more calories of food that have a higher fat % + carbohydrates %, to compensate for the need to accumulate the remainder of your daily protein. This tweet explains it w/ a graphic from a study: https://twitter.com/tednaiman/status/868597859037216768
And reasonably so. Partly, this is because the "best diet" at any given time depends on practical factors like availability and affordability. Both of those have been rapidly improving, I think, for much of the world. I can buy food today that, to my grandparents or even parents, was unheard-of or only-eaten-by-kings.
e.g. the value of quinoa or blue-green algae in a diet probably makes sense to study now, but it probably didn't 50 years ago
I suspect a lot of HN probably listens to Sam Harris' podcast, but just in case ... there was a relevant episode last month where he and Gary Taubes discuss the whole "good calories vs bad calories" idea and popular fat/protein misunderstandings over the last few decades.
Jesus, the debate is long over. All that are left are people who can't seem to reset their brains to realize the food pyramid was wrong all along.
This is like some slow moving comedic parade of ignorance or something. Do your research people and move on, the debate is over, fat doesn't make you fat and all the truly controlled scientific studies show the way forward.
It's been painful over the years watching the big brains here snail their way slowly slowly slowly crawling towards what is long proven reality on the subject.
From personal experience (IANAD), cutting carbs to below 50g/day has greatly improved my life. This "diet" naturally leads to increased fat and protein intake, and for me resulted in weight loss, better concentration and reduction of inflammation (mild psoriasis improvement).
Also, I recently got a pack of (urine) testing sticks which confirm a high level of ketones, and plan to experiment with increasing the daily carb limit.
Just be careful with increased urine acidity that accompanies ketones. It can cause kidney stones, and can be prevented by supplementing with potassium citrate
What's depressing about all of this is that it's not really that interesting.
We know that exercise and activity improve all metabolic measures, increase happiness, longevity and outputs.
But very few people pursue that strategy. You can barely get post-injury patients to do their rehab exercises.
Similarly, we seem to have very good evidence of the benefits of fasting/restriction/etc. in addition to the very good historical evidence of these behaviors being so well preserved by culture and religion, across the world.
But people aren't going to do it. It's not going to change anything for (almost everyone).
Agreed. I've been doing IF (intermittent fasting) for the last 3 months. It's changed completely how I feel, in addition to losing some weight that was bothering me. It's like a weight has been taken off my metabolic system, that was working way too hard to process the amount of food I was throwing at it. And, the monkey on my back which was my sugar addiction is mostly gone--I still occasionally have sweets, but far less often than I used to.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadNever been a morning person - assumed blood sugar must be low.
Did the glucose testing strip thing - found that was completely wrong!
Now cut carbohydrate intake until after daily brisk swim around 15:00.
Suddenly I've shed eight pounds and brain fog problem is much improved.
Hypothesis: problem was impaired blood flow to the brain not low blood sugar.
Vigorous exercise helps clear waste along with sleep, not much else really clears things out -- brain seems more and more to be a part of, or similar to, the lymph system.
edit: also most people who do 18 hour fasts report feeling energized, better concentration, etc,. especially if they have caffeine on an empty stomach.
Are their studies that demonstrate that consuming more calories (with different composition such as HFLC) leads to weight loss compared to lesser calories (regardless of composition)?
Thus, depletion of your glycogen stores results in the loss of 2.0 - 2.5 kilograms (4.4 - 5.5 pounds) of "water (and glycogen) weight" within the first week of a low-carb diet. Larger individuals often retain even more glycogen and water, which can result in immediate losses of 6 kilograms (13.2 pounds) or more.
His point is that some studies, particularly short term studies, do not account for this non-fat weight loss.
See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084
Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.
Also, switching to a diet higher in protein tends to make people eat less calories and consequently lose fat.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16002798
An increase in dietary protein from 15% to 30% of energy at a constant carbohydrate intake produces a sustained decrease in ad libitum caloric intake that may be mediated by increased central nervous system leptin sensitivity and results in significant weight loss. This anorexic effect of protein may contribute to the weight loss produced by low-carbohydrate diets.
So in reality, the reasonable explanation is that you decreased your calories involuntary by upping your protein intake.
And yes - it does help enormously (e.g to get the blood really flowing well) - as long as I get the start time, duration, intensity and intervals about right. I tend to swim only until just after the point that I reach peak performance.
Also, (for me) it isn't just about carb cutting - it's about timing.
If I eat a medium bowl of white rice at a breakfast, then I tend to feel worse afterwards and I put on (some) weight. If think that the blood gets thicker and stickier as blood sugar rises and so blood flow gets worse.
If I eat the same medium bowl of white rice after my swim then I don't seem to put on weight, but it does help avoid a next day energy crash. I also paid it with 5g of Creatine Monohydrate (before the swim) and the combination seems to have reversed my middle-age loss of muscle.
What doesn't work for me is vigorous early morning exercise fueled by caffeine. Again for me, that is the route to over -training and a long bout of fatigue.
YMMV. Listen to your body.
I've been working out consistently in some form or another for > 15 years, and if I go 2 days without doing something athletic I notice it physically and mentally.
For healthy people this is usually a mental/learned thing. You're not a morning person? Start getting up at 6am and going to the gym. Eventually you'll adjust after a week or so.
What works for you doesn't necessarily work for everyone else.
You frankly have absolutely zero clue about what I've tried over 30 years to become that morning person.
I didn't ask for advice or instruct anyone about what they should do anywhere on this thread. You on the other hand immediately instructed me what I should do. Perhaps you are accustomed to giving people orders? Been in the military perhaps?
>Just look at the number of people who enter the military to see schedule adjustment on a huge scale.
I call that BS.
What data you have that is independent of the military's own data of the percentages that do and don't adjust?
Outside of the era of conscription, make sure you correct for the fact that people who enter the military are a self selected sample.
FWIW, I did have a great metabolic upgrade in 2013 and 2014. And it was done by cutting down on carbs and eating delicious foods like fatty chicken and beef, cheeses, etc, and cooking with lard whenever possible.
That sentence makes claims about history and about causality. I wonder if they really have the evidence needed to back them up.
To me, if they couldn't know this much, it would be like a civil war historian that couldn't really tell who gave the Gettysburg address.
Whenever I see research on calorie restriction, I wonder whether it's directly caused by eating fewer calories, or indirectly caused by eating fewer bad things. For example, methionine, an essential amino acid, is linked to cancer growth. In other words, maybe we don't need to eat less calories, but less of specific nutrients.
Anyways, this study seems focused on metabolic diseases and doesn't touch on cancer or longevity in general. So, if anyone has any thoughts, I'd like to know. It's been bugging me for a while.
1 gram of carbs equals 4 calories.
1 gram of protein equals 4 calories.
When metabolized, however,
carbohydrates yield 5x the ATP proteins do. 1 gram of carbs is 5x as "rich in energy" as 1 gram of proteins. In spite of them being billed as equal.
A tablespoon of sugar yields about as much energy as a pound of chicken breast.
Then we go into fat. People think fat makes them fat. The truth is, ingested fat can not be turned into bodyfat directly. It is way easier for the body to turn carbs into fat than it is to turn fat into fat.
"Diet" products that extract fat from milk products, like yoghurt, and replace them with sugar, which makes the product less calorically dense, nominally, literally makes people more fat - AND is billed as a diet alternative.
Everything. the. media. says. is. wrong.
Everything.
And this isn't arcane knowledge acquired from some hermit. Its literally on wikipedia. One click away. Google ATP, or adenosinetriphosphate, and read the whole page. you will know more about diet than most dieticians.
When I talked to my physician about these things, initially, they didnt know those basic facts either. All the knowledge we've got about how to lose weight is buried and ignored by bullshit.
Simple facts that, if applied, make people lose weight. Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight. Its what Ive done.
Both carbohydrates and fats have direct pathways to ATP. Protein does not. Protein must first go through gluconeogenesis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
You're talking about calorie restriction with respect to metabolic disease. This study seems to further support your view and, I don't disagree with you.
I was asking about calorie restriction in terms of longevity. There's a growing body of science (and also wiki pages) that link reduced calories to an increase in media and maximum life span (via a reduction of various age-related diseases). Although the mechanism isn't known, this appears to go beyond weight.
Maybe really stupid, but is it bio-chemically possible to create a amino acid analog that fulfills the good duties without the bad? What xylitol is for sugar, say.
It's funny to think people ever took this literally, although many still do. Broccoli, for example, doesn't directly end up as broccoli lining your veins. Humans have digestive systems.
While I agree that for many people, restricting carbs is a far easier method of eating healthy while still feeling fully sated, stating that you can "literally eat until your stomach hurts" is false, misleading, and potentially destructive.
5000 calories of cream cheese or other caloric dense foods is, still, at the end of the day, 5000 calories. Caloric restriction isn't the only way to diet or eat healthy, but ignoring overall caloric intake (even rough estimates) while only focusing on "what" you eat is one of the biggest pitfalls I see.
Ahem:
> Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight.
Our bodies metabolize carbs, protein, and fat, very differently. If a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes. All things equal except the composition of their diet, the person on the HF diet will stay lean and feel consistently satiated, while the LF person will put on more fat and feel hungry far more frequently than the HF.
IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.
I completely disagree. At the end of the day losing weight is about changing the amount of calories a person consumes vs. what they use. The most damaging science is trying to say it's not about calories at all when in fact that is almost all it is about in healthy person. Now, if you want to argue about satiation and the ability to keep up with a diet, then the type of food matters, but for strictly weight loss a person has to cut calories (or add activity).
Over an extended period, yes, this bears out because the law of thermodynamics. But the question is - can people adhere to a calorie-restricted diet long enough to see meaningful results? More importantly, will they simultaneously be able to build muscle and maintain normal bodily functions (thyroids tend to stop functioning normally during extended calorie restriction, especially when fat intake is low)?
You will have a much easier time achieving a healthy body composition and feeling satisfied while eating a high fat low carb diet, than you would eating the same amount of calories on a low fat high carb diet.
I say that the "calories in, calories out" approach to dieting is problematic because it's simply not as effective as switching to a HFLC diet. It makes building muscle tissue difficult, it encourages miserable dieting tactics, and taken to the extreme (which many people do) is a threat to a person's health.
Show me those studies and we can discuss it further. Because the studies I've seen demonstrated slightly different results for each diet, but not wildly different as you're implying, so calorie counting works just fine.
Is there any evidence of that actually happening? Starkly different outcomes? Everything I've seen shows weight change to be pretty damn close on matched calorie diets with the macro mix not mattering much.
A calorie is a calorie, period.
"Sawdust has calories. Try eating that".
Doesn't matter. Whether the body can extract calories out of it doesn't change the definition of calorie and a calorie is still a calorie.
"But some foods are more filling and satiating than others despite the calories being the same"
Still doesn't matter. How does how long the body takes to process calories out of food affect "a calorie is a calorie".
You must already know this. I might have been a bit pedagogical but that's because "a calorie is a calorie" is false is one of my pet peeves.
More to the point:
> then we need to be able to explain why two people eating the same amount of calories per day, but one eating a high fat, low carb diet, and the other a low fat high carb diet see starkly different outcomes.
Studies please. Especially for "starkly different outcomes". I can copy pasta the famous /r/fitness link dump which is posted every time keto comes up but I will wait for you to find me some studies supporting your argument first.
> All things equal except the composition of their diet, the person on the HF diet will stay lean and feel consistently satiated, while the LF person will put on more fat and feel hungry far more frequently than the HF.
So I can feed 5000 kcal/day to a 5 feet girl and she will stay lean as long as it's olive oil shots?
> IMO, the claim that all calories are created equally is the most damaging "science" that's been put forth as common knowledge about dieting.
But all calories are equal, by definition. Some people do well on a high fat/high protein diet, some don't. You want to lose weight, burn calories(eat less, move more) above your tdee. You want to gain weight, give your body more calories than it burns. As annoying as hearing this may sound(it isn't annoying to me but for argument's sake), that's all there is to it. People have lost weight and maintained lean mass on all sorts of shitty diets. If high fat diet works for you, superb. But it's not a panacea and the science is no where as clear cut as you make it out to be. In fact, keeping protein constant, a high fat and high carb diet had the same results.
Certain foods help satiate better than others at lesser calories -- which is why some people find that eating 1500 calories of high fat and protein foods to be much easier to live with than eating 1500 carb heavy calories.
IMO, that's one of the big draw of keto. It's not that you can magically eat 5000 calories of cheese and meat and lose weight. It's that you can eat a caloric amount at a deficit and still feel energetic and full and like you didn't miss out on anything.
Even if that is true... try it. Seriously. Try it. It won't hurt you for one day, and the education may well be worth it. Try eating 5000 calories of high-fat food. That's six and a quarter standard 8-oz packages of cream cheese. You're going to be hard-pressed to get that down in one day.
By contrast, it's 2.4 party-sized 15-oz Doritos bags. Try eating nothing but those for one day. Or substitute any corn or potato chip or mix of chips of your choice. That may sound like a lot, but I guarantee you that A: you'll get much farther and B: you'll feel much worse afterward. There is, quite frankly, a decent chance you'll find you can get this down in one day, and still feel hungry at the end of the day.
This is why a calorie is not just a calorie. Even if that's true by the time they hit your cellular processes as ATP, there's a loooot of body systems between your mouth and the ATP that cares a lot about the differences. In fact the idea that a calorie can just be a calorie is all but incoherent when you look at it with enough detail, because a gram of fat and a gram of carbs and a gram of protein all headed to ATP take very different routes. It would defy all probability if the end result were that there were no meaningful differences between those routes. To say nothing of the differences between various carbs, proteins, or fats within their own category, which are quite substantial on their own.
But too often, in the swing towards "think about more than just calories!" I see folks completely ignore calories. It's much, much harder to over eat on some foods than others, true, but IMO I find people espousing "you can eat as much as you want all the time!" to be equally damaging.
Set a target caloric amount. Eat towards that. Fat/protein heavy foods make that easier to maintain.
> Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key. You can literally eat until your stomach hurts all day long and lose weight. Its what Ive done.
I'm sorry but your post is not supported by the research at all. The process which turns carbs into fat is called de novo lipogenesis and is extremely rare in humans. It only happens when your glycogen stores are full AND after masssive overfeed of carbohydrates(500 grams+) for days.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/6/707.long
Hellerstein, 2001
the addition of excess carbohydrate energy to a mixed diet so that total energy intake exceeded total energy expenditure (TEE) increased body fat stores, but not by conversion of the carbohydrate to fat. Instead, the oxidation of dietary fat was suppressed and fat storage thereby increased.
[...]
Thus, de novo lipogenesis does become a quantitatively major pathway when carbohydrate energy intake exceeds TEE, but this circumstance is unusual in daily life.
Also, calorie restriction is not "bs".Protein is more satisfying, spares lean mass and has a larger TEF(thermic effect of food), which makes it great for fat loss. A carb restricted diet is usually high in protein, since carbs are typically replaced by meat, cheese etc and that is a confounding factor.
The point is that low-carb diets are not good because they are low in carbs, rather they work well because they are high in protein. In fact, when studies control for protein i.e the protein content is the same for the low and higher carb groups, the fat loss is the pretty much the same. See Johnston CS et. al (2006)
I am thinking you're underestimating just how "rare" 500g of carbs make their way into peoples diets every day, for years.
[0]http://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/c...
edit: 20oz, not 16
That's what Trump's saying! /hide
Down-vote me, but any vote is a good vote.
The NuSI experiments were suppose to prove the insulin hypothesis but showed no metabolic advantage for low carb/high protein/fat diets.
The one advantage the low carb diet does appear to have is satiety; fats just leave you simply feeling fuller longer. But there's nothing metabolically magical about them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUyjMjuLl0&t=674s
The low fat/high carb group actually gained a longer-term metabolic advantage vs the low carbers..
Citation?
> Everything.
Citation? No really. I think 90% of the fitness press is truthy BS designed to sell more memberships, but you're making big calls here.
> Caloric restriction is bs. Carb restriction is key.
Having lost 15+ kg using caloric restriction, and kept it off for the past 5+ years, based on my own anecdata I'm inclined to disagree. I don't eat meat, though, so maybe my caloric restriction also reduces carbs enough?
This is so wrong and stupid, it hurts. Look up "de novo lipogenesis" that's the process that converts sugar into fat. The efficiency of it in humans is less than 5%. So before you go wailing about a conspiracy, examine your own flawed facts. The fat you eat is the fat you wear. That's why all low fat vegans are slim and in excellent health. Take care!
Good question. It seems that having some period of starvation that is beneficial. Overall calorie intake is less relevant. Decreased overall caloric intake may actually be bad (can't find a link for this at the moment).
Benefits appear to include decreased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, possible decreased cancer risk, and decreased risk of neurological disease. Also longer life expectancy in some animals, as yet unproven in humans.
Even fasting for short periods regularly appears to be beneficial [5]
Three main reasons - autophagy, ketosis and decreased inflammation.
Autophagy, a kind of intracellular recycling operation, is increased by, inter alia, starvation [1]. It seems likely that most of the benefits of fasting derive from this. Valter Longo is a key researcher into this. Of particular interest to me is his work on fasting coupled with chemotherapy. [2]
Ketosis occurs when all your glucose and glycogen (a polymer of glucose) are used up, and you burn fat instead. Mark Mattson is a key researcher into this. Ketosis appears to have a neuroprotective action [3]
Decreased inflammation - chronic inflammation appears to be a cause of all sorts of problems, and fasting appears to decrease it.
[4] is a good general review
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831538/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3608686/
[3] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165017308...
[4] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413113...
[5] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/861319
Use sci-hub for paywalled papers.
I started following a ketogenic diet in January of this year. I cap myself at 20g of net carbs per day, and my goal is to get 80% of my caloric intake from fats. I've lost 50 pounds so far (318 to 268), and have naturally drifted toward intermittent fasting as my hunger has decreased so significantly I don't have the urge to eat at all.
i wouldn't advise sharing his findings with most other people though, especially those who are prone to get swept up with the prevailing beliefs on things like low-fat eating and/or fasting.
the great thing about modern society with regards to diet is you can eat whatever you want and get your blood and weight/fat% tested as often as you want without anyone else's input or permission.
I don't have time to find citations at the moment, but I seem to recall that the original studies linking consumption of saturated fat with...bad things (high cholesterol, etc.) were originally done with mice and more recent studies involving actual humans have failed to find a connection between consumption of saturated fat and the aforementioned bad things.
Mice are cheap, have a short lifespan, and have less ethical concerns so we use them. They are an okay model of humans, which is good enough to say if something fails on mice don't try it on humans. It is an open question of what treatments would work on humans that fail in mice - but this is impossible to study so we will never know how often this happens. (the fringe "coconut oil" groups put it at 5% from what I can tell)
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry-...
The cautious conclusion regarding your question seems to be "mouse models are decent, but we understand the dietary habits of mice much better than that of humans. And sadly, leptin model doesn't translate neatly to humans for reasons not yet fully known but probably partially social in nature"
For example one research diet that is called high-fat, D12492 - is extremely high in fat (60%) - does not contain what are generally considered to be particularly healthy forms of fat - is extremely processed overall - is typically used with genetically obesogenic mice - typically causes obsesity and neuron damage (and often diabetes) at a young age.
I would think there are quite a few studies on Intermittent Fasting (IF) that more easily generalize to humans.
* http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/01/high-fat-diets...
ADDENDUM: Here is the diet used in the actual study. http://www.labdiet.com/cs/groups/lolweb/@labdiet/documents/w... Some of the top ingredients are soy products (which in high enough doses will render most animal species infertile).
Can you show legitimate repeatable recent research that shows this. I'm starting to think that the Soy raising estrogen (to unhealthy levels) thing may not be as true and is perpetuated in some cases as broscience.
The first place I'd look if you're searching for studies, esp. more modern ones, is actually the Weston A. Price Foundation. While they have an agenda for sure (e.g. they are currently suing the US prison system for malnourishing inmates, just to name one example of activism/ideology) I think they are generally good folks. They have sponsored some top-notch researchers, such as Chris Masterjohn, in the past.
Here is their scary soy page, which starts with a few citations. I think you'd find more in some of the linked articles.
https://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/
Price was a fascinating bro, BTW.
Please feel free to post here anything that you may find to be of particular interest.
I should add that most of these results probably don't apply to traditionally fermented soy (like natto or traditionally made soy sauce -- but not the mass produced stuff nowadays); as I understand it there is no traditional culture which ate soy in an unfermented form.)
I'll have to check if tempeh (which is what I normally eat) has the same soy dangers (it is supposedly traditional fermented).
e.g. the value of quinoa or blue-green algae in a diet probably makes sense to study now, but it probably didn't 50 years ago
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-should-we-eat
This is like some slow moving comedic parade of ignorance or something. Do your research people and move on, the debate is over, fat doesn't make you fat and all the truly controlled scientific studies show the way forward.
It's been painful over the years watching the big brains here snail their way slowly slowly slowly crawling towards what is long proven reality on the subject.
Also, I recently got a pack of (urine) testing sticks which confirm a high level of ketones, and plan to experiment with increasing the daily carb limit.
We know that exercise and activity improve all metabolic measures, increase happiness, longevity and outputs.
But very few people pursue that strategy. You can barely get post-injury patients to do their rehab exercises.
Similarly, we seem to have very good evidence of the benefits of fasting/restriction/etc. in addition to the very good historical evidence of these behaviors being so well preserved by culture and religion, across the world.
But people aren't going to do it. It's not going to change anything for (almost everyone).