Less carbs less hunger?

Caloric deficits work in individuals, though only if they also induce insulin deficits. They do not work in populations, and they have diminishing effects in individuals over time (successive diets).

I totally appreciate you are genuine and I hope I'm not being rude. In the first instance I would point you to either book by Gary Taubes. He is excellent because he not only explains the science, he explains how the correct science was obscured by stupid bureaucracies.

Spiker said:

Caloric deficits work in individuals, though only if they also induce insulin deficits. They do not work in populations, and they have diminishing effects in individuals over time (successive diets).

I totally appreciate you are genuine and I hope I'm not being rude. In the first instance I would point you to either book by Gary Taubes. He is excellent because he not only explains the science, he explains how the correct science was obscured by stupid bureaucracies.

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Ok, well interesting discussion, it has stimulated some thought in me and I'll pursue some more research and education into the matter, perhaps a discussion for the future.

EDIT: I'd still like that "population" study though

If your lab buddies will bet their house against mine I'll happily take that bet!

Or if we can use your T1 body rather than mine as the test bed, we can lower the stakes. Either way I'll be laughing as I take your lab buddies' money.

By the way you haven't put up any data either, and you're making claims, I'm just rejecting them.

Seriously though you are a good guy. Read Taubes and then we can continue this discussion. Meanwhile it is bedtime in Pommy Land. ;-)

Haha I would call "insulin as the sole determing factor" quite the claim.

Very well night night. Its only morning here for me

If you want to keep yourself entertained, Omar, I've got over 8+ hours viewing for you - Dr Jason Fung's Aetiology of Obesity lecture series at Youtube, starting here:


His blog is at: http://kidneylifescience.ca/programs/nutrition-and-diabetes/intensive-diabetes-dietary-management/

All concerned with Type 2 diabetes management, not Type 1's though.

Omar101 said:

That's not true, you should count calories even when low carbing. It's because "burning" fats and proteins for energy takes more energy than burning carbs and glycogen that you you can take in more calories than a regular diet. But you can get fat as hell on a low carb diet if you ignore calories and just eat all day.

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That's the wrong way around. In general burning fats generates the LOWEST thermic losses, proteins the HIGHEST with carbs in between:

Marion Nestle - Why Calories Count said:

Amino acids generate the most heat losses, sometimes as much as 20 to 30 percent of the calories contained in the original protein source. Fatty acids generate the least: 0 to 5 percent of the original fat calories. Sugars generate something in between; they dissipate 5 to 10 percent of the energy in the original food carbohydrates as heat.

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I take three things from this:

1. Fat is your bodies preferred energy source and storage mechanism. It burns "cleanly" with the fewest wasted calories - which would be important in an environment of fuel scarcity.
2. Protein isn't really a fuel source at all (or at least shouldn't be used a principle one)
3. That thermic effects alone don't account for the greater success of low-carb diets over low-fat (ie high-carb) ones. For equal amounts of protein and high carb diet would waste more thermic energy than a low-carb diet.

Of course, it depends on how broken your endocrine system is. Lots of people find that once they step away from the blood sugar swings induced by high carbohydrate diets that they can begin us appetite to gage calorific intake, which after all is what 2 million years of evolution tuned your appetite to do.

It doesn't work for everyone, some people have other over-eating problems which I suspect are down to hormonal disruption of a another kind.

The trouble with counting calories is that you don't really know what your basal metabolic rate is, and how much your energy expenditure increases on a day to day basis. If you get it wrong you will be either hungry (and therefore miserable) or slightly fatter.

Also, your body is not a bomb calorimeter, talking about ideal thermic rates measured in the lab, probably goes out of the window when eating real food that contains a mixture of macronutrients.

Andy12345 said:

so @Omar101 when you say you have to count calories YOU ARE WRONG

i didnt

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I have spent many years counting calories. It worked at first, short term. Then I spent a year having 800 calories a day and walking two miles (at least) every day . I finished that year a couple of pounds heavier than I started. I got ill with repeated coughs, colds, flu infections. I decided there must be another way. I read about insulin resistance, and the effects of carbs. I gave up bread, potatoes sugar pasta and rice and ate everything else. At last I could manage on three meals a day, and I spent my time choosing delicious things which were allowed. For the first time since childhood, hunger was no longer an issue. For the first week I ate three huge meals a day. I lost a pound. I had to fight the urge to start calorie counting again (after all, if I lost a pound eating THAT much, how much more could I lose if I ate less?!) No, I had to kick the addiction of controlling calories, I would only get hungry again because I would need to cut down on the fats I was consuming. After that I settled down and I just ate till I wasn't hungry anymore. I lost a pound a week for 10 weeks. Unfortunately, then other health issues kicked in and I wasn't able to sustain this.

I don't know any of the science. I just know about me. A simple 'calories in must be less than calories out' regime does not work when the body isn't working properly. LCHF works for me and many others.

Atwater only calculated the calorific values of different macronutrients at the end of the 19th century.
Calorie counting as a method of weight control was only really invented in the 1920s.
We've only been labelling the calorie content of food since the 1990s.

So calorie counting has been around for less than 100 years (the last 30 years of which have been the worst obesity epidemic in the history of the mamallian species). For at least the the 220million years before that, we were using our appetite to regulate our calorie intake, and there was little (if any) obesity. Go figure...

(For the avoidance of doubt - of course calories matter, fat accumulation results only from a sustained surplus of calories. However, there are better ways of regulating your calorific intake than guessing your metabolic rate and estimating the calorific content of food).

borofergie said:

(for the avoidance of doubt - of course calories matter, fat accumulation results only from a sustained surplus of calories. However, there are better ways of regulating your calorific intake than guessing your metabolic rate and estimating the calorific content of food).

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Spot on.

borofergie said:

The trouble with counting calories is...

[] your body is not a bomb calorimeter, talking about ideal thermic rates measured in the lab, probably goes out of the window when eating real food that contains a mixture of macronutrients.

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... and particularly considering that the thermal losses / metabolic efficiency losses t
can never be measured by the bomb calorimeter (which is the "most accurate" source of calorie information in publishing nutrition data). These standard calorie measurements are an "ideal case", not what actually happens in the body. Though fats are not far off the ideal case.