"Ignoramus5937" wrote in message
...
Well, these were two groups of children dieters, assigned
randomly. The low carb kids ate a lot more calories than the
conventionally dieting kids.

That might also be a problem. 1100 calories is very low. You don't always
have a linear rate of loss. Like, the rate is faster with VLC diets than
with pure fasting, because the body doesn't go as hard into economy mode.
Having the low-fat sample on such a low calorie diet while the low-carb
sample is not could introduce a bias, like one sample being in starvation
mode and not the other. It would have been better if they had only changed
one parameter, the diet, while remaining at constant caloric level. It would
also have been nice to have a balanced diet thrown in the sample, in order
to better discriminate between the diets. I'm still wondering if the good
results of low carbing are because they lower the carbs (compared to a
normal diet) or just because they don't cut the fats beyond the level of a
normal diet. Having a normal low-caloric diet in the sample might have shown
that.
During my initial weight loss, I had a pretty fast curve, like 6kg the first
month. I was on a normal diet (that is, eating the normal food for my
country - around the same amount of calories from fats and carbs) with
hunger control, so it's hard to know the exact number of calories, but I
would say I was around 1800 a day. So, it was possible to get a good rate of
weight loss, at least during the first couple of months, without cutting the
carbs and without getting the calories very low (though certainly much lower
than what I ate before!).