Is this why folks regain weight faster...
 

when they go off the LC WOE? I have heard that that is the case
many times over the years and wonder whether folks think this
explanation is logical.

From Michael Eades' blog:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/obesity/are-carbohydrates-fattening/

Is this why folks regain weight faster...
 

Jean B. wrote:
Susan wrote:

Don't forget that just as low carbers have a sudden early loss due to
water whoosh, so do we pick up a bunch of lbs within a day or two of
carbing because each stored glycogen molecule is attached to three water
molecules.

Aha! A scientific explanation of this! Thanks.

Yep. The body stores carbs as glycogen. Glycogen is stored dissolved
in water.

Deplete the body's store of carbs and the water that it was dissolved in
goes along with the glycogen. Being a carb glycogen is 4 calories per
gram. It gets dissolved in about 4+ grams of water per gram of carb.
So as the stored carbs are lost the weight is lost at 1+ gram *per
calorie*. That's cheetah-with-a-jetpack fast. And being water
retention it's far more random than just a 1 to 1 correlation of
calories to grams. Water retention bounces up and down randomly whether
you're losing or gaining stored water for easily measurable reasons.

Restore the body's store of carbs and the body retains enough water to
dissolve that much glycogen. That's 1+ gram of weight *per calorie* of
stored carb. Same caveats.

In comparison when fat is lost it's 9 calories per gram and the body can
temporarily add water to mask the effect. Even losing lean protein is 4
times as slow as losing stored carbs because of the dissolving water.

The only good news in the whole thing is our body's has a limited
ability to store carbs as glycogen. Part of a day to a couple of days
worth of metabolic needs depending on the person. If the water loss
during Induction is a good estimate for a person's ability to store
carbs. I'ts probably not a good estimate.