Low-Carb Diets Are Working, Study Says

In the latest issue of Consumer Reports on Health, there is an article on low-carb diets which contends that
(a) Low carb diets produce more weight loss initially than low-fat diets
(b) In the long term the people on the low-carb diet regain more weight than the people on the low-fat diet, so that in the end the difference between them was "no longer significant."

It mentioned that result (b) was less publicized than result (a).
 
I'd be interested in seeing the full results of the study and all the data. I've lost 35 pounds over the last 12 weeks (actually, a loss of 41 pounds of fat and a gain of 6 pounds of muscle) on a diet that is quite different than the 3 in the study. For the curious, my diet is roughly 25% carb, 35% protein, 40% fat - carb intake tapering off throughout the day. I eat when I'm hungry and work out 3 times a week.

I think it would be important to look at pre/post-test BMI (Body Mass Index), physical activity levels and water intake. Depending on the time of day and fluid intake, my weight can fluctuate by as much as +- 4 pounds.

For these types of studies to produce concrete results, you really need to track physical activity closely. It's no good to just monitor input and assume that the output balances out. Maybe higher-fat diets give people more energy? Maybe a calorie from fat really isn't the same as a calorie from carb or protein. Maybe the low-carb dieters are retaining less water than the low-fat dieters. The only way to find out is to basically turn people into lab rats for a couple months. :)

The bottom line for me is that any close monitoring of what you eat coupled with regular exercise will result in weight loss. People who have never monitored their intake closely would be amazed at all the calories they sneak in without even thinking about it. Keeping a journal of what you eat can really open your eyes (and keep you honest if you have to show it to someone periodically).
 
There's nothing new in that article. It's just a compilation of studies published earlier this year that show that after 6 months, Atkins diets work a little better than traditional low-calorie diets, but at 12 months, there was no statistical difference. And neither diet was very effective in these studies with very obese subjects.
 
herbaliser, do you know WHY you are losing weight? The answer is simple, and I quote you yourself:
I eat when I'm hungry and work out 3 times a week.
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Use more calories than you consume is the ONLY way to lose weight.

Simple, no?
 
Zep said:
herbaliser, do you know WHY you are losing weight? The answer is simple, and I quote you yourself: Use more calories than you consume is the ONLY way to lose weight.

Simple, no?
Click to expand...
Thanks for saying that, Zep. I have found that this fact really upsets some people. It's just basic physics, but I got in a yelling argument over it once. People like to believe something so hard must be solved by a complicated solution.
 
Carbs and protein have nothing to do with losing weight. It's all about the calories. However, I regret that I cannot locate an article from a little over two years ago which presented an extremely significant finding that no one, not even the scientific community, really responded to. Basically, it detailed super-low calorie diets in rats resulted in them living much longer (some dramatic percentage, I want to say 10%+) and all their organs functioning at maximally efficient levels. The study basically showed that calorie starved organisms go into a super-efficient mode of operation and that it is possible to maintain this level of operation to result in the organism living at peak health for significantly longer than the control group which was fed the "optimal" amount of food for the caloric intake of a healthy rat. I believe the study was conducted over the full life of the rats, which must have been annoying when the control group died off and the experimental group stuck around for a few more years. If you can find the article, it was really quite amazing. The implications to medical science are astronomical, but I don't see the knowledge ever being truly used. More's the loss, I suppose. Imagine the average age being 100+....
 
While I'm not in disagreement with those of you advocating more exercise (which nearly everyone can use) but my biggest problem with "diets" are that we insist on "going on a diet" rather than "having a diet." If you go on a diet, you're doomed to failure. If you adopt a diet and realize you're going to have to stick with it for a lifetime and adjust calories down as you get older, you'll likely succeed.
 
Zep said:
herbaliser, do you know WHY you are losing weight? The answer is simple, and I quote you yourself: Use more calories than you consume is the ONLY way to lose weight.

Simple, no?
Click to expand...

Although I apparently failed in my attempt, that was the point I was trying to get at (somewhere in that post). There's no need for voodoo or gene studies into how to lose weight. You just do it. Burn more than you take in.
 
US brought up a point I always wonder about. Are people who are on low-carb diets intending to stick to the diet their whole life? Because otherwise, what good does it do to go on a diet if you just gain the weight back?

I don't understand dieting.
 
QuarkChild said:
US brought up a point I always wonder about. Are people who are on low-carb diets intending to stick to the diet their whole life? Because otherwise, what good does it do to go on a diet if you just gain the weight back?

I don't understand dieting.
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I thinks you do...;)

( For any diet to work, you have to stay on it your whole life..... )
 
Dieting is an money making industry that has little to do with long term weight loss. This is different from having a healthy diet.
 
Zep said:
Use more calories than you consume is the ONLY way to lose weight.

Simple, no?
Click to expand...

but if the study shows that people who ate MORE lost MORE there has to be something else going on.

obviously the amount of calories consumed is important but why is it so hard to believe that the components of your food taken in can't have an effect on your body and how it processes them.

this study shows that this is the case (in this group anyway) but the results seem to be casually dismissed by many people here.
 
QuarkChild said:
US brought up a point I always wonder about. Are people who are on low-carb diets intending to stick to the diet their whole life? Because otherwise, what good does it do to go on a diet if you just gain the weight back?

I don't understand dieting.
Click to expand...

Dieting per se is by definition a lack of something. Dr Atkins always said (although this is hardly ever reported) that a change of diet from high carb/sugar to high protein must be a lifestyle change to consciously restrict carbs and eat more good proteins and fats (and by good fats he didn't mean trans fats)

He also recommended exercise and more exercise (again not much mentioned). He noted that people on a low carb diet go through an energy crisis as their bodies switch metapbolic pathways from high evailbility energy (glucose) to lower availability energy (body fat breakdown), but that people would experience greater energy levels without the sugar highs and crashes of the so-called "healthy" high carb diet.

We have not transcended our evolutionary biology. We are evolved to eat a high protein, high animal (inc. fish) diet, with fibers and only seasonal fruits (which help put on wieght for the lean winter months). All year round availability of fruit plus sugar concentrate (especially high fructose corn syrup which is just about everywhere) is, he contended, causing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in ever younger people.

Although it may be counter-intuitive, a calorie from meat is not the same as a calorie from sugar because of the human metabolism.

That said, I'm too damn heavy so I'm giving up carbs today. If anyone wants more help with the Atkins approach see www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.com
 
Well, the good news is that someone finally did this study by supplying the food to the participants, rather than relying on self-report. Most of this type of research is done with self-report, which is so laughably bad that the research is largely useless to draw conclusions about what people actually did. You can draw conclusions about what they say they did, but people are really, really bad at tracking their own food intake.

The bad news is that there are still alternate explanations. The low-fat people might have been more likely to cheat, for example. Also, if this is the research I read about earlier this year, Lyle McDonald pointed out that the higher calorie low carb group had a massive outlier (someone who lost a lot of weight) and the low-fat group had another outlier (someone who didn't lose much weight at all), and given the tiny sample size (7 per group), those outliers are a big problem. Unfortunately, I'm not positive this is the same research.

It's a step in the right direction, though.
 
If ANY of the test subjects used ANY other lifestyle change while "dieting" then the results of the diet, whatever it is, are in doubt. An experimental given.

And the report indicates that these test subjects also indeed did start changed exercise regimes and changed other aspects of their lifestyle. As per Atkins' "diet prescription".

Ergo, the Atkins diet itself may or may not be a contributing factor to weight loss. And knowing full well that exercise IS a contributing factor to weight loss, one is drawn to the conclusion that it is not possible to conclude that the Atkins diet actually has any effect at all.

In fact, here's something that seems to indicate that Atkins had it diametrically wrong:
From: http://www.medicineau.net.au/clinical/obesity/obesit2272.html
The take home message for GPs advising their patients is that you can lose weight and keep it off long term, but to achieve that you must persistently have a low fat, high CHO[carbohydrate]/fibre diet, exercise a lot, eat breakfast and monitor progress regularly and be prepared to tighten the reins if straying off the rails.
(my emphasis)
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Diamond said:
Dieting per se is by definition a lack of something. Dr Atkins always said (although this is hardly ever reported) that a change of diet from high carb/sugar to high protein must be a lifestyle change to consciously restrict carbs and eat more good proteins and fats (and by good fats he didn't mean trans fats)

He also recommended exercise and more exercise (again not much mentioned). He noted that people on a low carb diet go through an energy crisis as their bodies switch metapbolic pathways from high evailbility energy (glucose) to lower availability energy (body fat breakdown), but that people would experience greater energy levels without the sugar highs and crashes of the so-called "healthy" high carb diet.

We have not transcended our evolutionary biology. We are evolved to eat a high protein, high animal (inc. fish) diet, with fibers and only seasonal fruits (which help put on wieght for the lean winter months). All year round availability of fruit plus sugar concentrate (especially high fructose corn syrup which is just about everywhere) is, he contended, causing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes in ever younger people.

Although it may be counter-intuitive, a calorie from meat is not the same as a calorie from sugar because of the human metabolism.

That said, I'm too damn heavy so I'm giving up carbs today. If anyone wants more help with the Atkins approach see www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.com
Click to expand...

I hate quoting an entire post but yours is salient enough to do so.

First, I'm glad that Atkins addressed the fact that a diet is something you adopt and not something you "go on."

Second, the metabolism argument is flawed in that until about the late 19th Century most diets on earth consisted mostly of grains (rice in the East, millet in Africa, wheat (bread) in the mid-East and West) and yet the incidences of obesity (at least from paintings, statuary and written records) seem to be scant at best. A diet high in carbs and low on did not contribute to human obesity for 9,900 years or so.

That, of course, leads us to the cunondrum of the current carb question. Most of the carbs consumed by people before the late 19th Century were unrefined and largely came from grains and fruits. Today that is not the case. Which leaves us wondering - is it the more widespread availibility of meat or the prevelance of processed carbs (in addition to the everpresent exercise question) that is leading to endemic obesity?

For me it will always come back to calories consumed vs. calories burned. I am a naturally skinny man with a beer gut due to lack of toning and calorie burning exercise. The only times I have lost weight have been when I have burned more calories than I have consumed. I have done so on what could be considered high fat/high calorie diets and on the more traditional 40% carb, 30% fat, 30% protein diets. It's all about the exertion, and has little to do with the consumption.
 
Zep said:
If ANY of the test subjects used ANY other lifestyle change while "dieting" then the results of the diet, whatever it is, are in doubt. An experimental given.

And the report indicates that these test subjects also indeed did start changed exercise regimes and changed other aspects of their lifestyle. As per Atkins' "diet prescription".
Click to expand...

So in order to check this, the researchers would have to check exercise as well as diet.

Ergo, the Atkins diet itself may or may not be a contributing factor to weight loss. And knowing full well that exercise IS a contributing factor to weight loss, one is drawn to the conclusion that it is not possible to conclude that the Atkins diet actually has any effect at all.
Click to expand...

From that it is not possible to conclude that ANY diet has any effect at all, not just Atkins.

In fact, here's something that seems to indicate that Atkins had it diametrically wrong:
[/B]
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Actually, it demonstrates that medical professionals may be getting it wrong. Certainly it seems sensible to assume that low fat diets reduce body fat. The problem is, that doesn't seem to happen. In all probability, low fat high carb diets have been an incredible failure in terms of dieting but a massive boon for an extremely lucrative market of overweight people desperate for "the magic bullet"
 
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