WeightLossBanter - View Single Post - CNN article: Low-fat? Low-carbs? Answering best diet question

**Don Klipstein**

In ,
wrote:

On Mar 17, 5:12*am, (Don Klipstein) wrote:
In ,

We're not talking about your personal experience. *We're talking about
the slam you made against LC saying that since it didn't result in any
reduction in Americans waistlines means it doesn't work.

* Except that I am talking and continue to talk from experience of myself,
including seeing relatives and coworkers buying Atkins books and not
getting any thinner.

* And Atkins sold 30 million books without reversing the expansion of the
average American waistline.

There you go again. Bitching about Atkins, while failing to mention
Low Fat, Low Cal. If you stack up books and diet plans on those two,
they would go to the moon and back. Yet they get endorsed, while the
fact that Atkins books couldn't reverse obesity is taken as proof that
LC doesn't work. Here's an additional thought. Just maybe the
obesity problem would be even worse had it not been for Atkins. I
would be one of those statistics in the obese ranks were it not for
Atkins.

I'm sure it works for a few, but I never saw it work.

* I am angered more by diets advocated by those with books to sell and
requiring spending more $$$ on food.

Again, how many books have been written and profited from LF and Low
cal? Yet, they get a free pass. And you actually endorse them.

I never saw anyone buy a book by the guy whose name I saw a couple times
a decade since I started reading Usenet or any other low fat advocate.

The sandwich shop I deliver for never saw a need to get low fat cheese
or low fat salad dressing, so the low fat stuff did not appear to me to be
anything like low carb. My place had a memo come down to promote new menu
items for low carb - not that revenue or profits changed, but I see what
diet trends have more money associated with them.

Now the comment about people spending more money on food is
interesting. I don't see why anyone would give a rat's ass about how
someone else chooses to spend their money. Unless you have an anti-
meat agenda. Do I smell PETA here?

I hate them even more than people making money pushing diets - I regret
saying insufficiently last time that PETA and their ilk really get me in a
bad mood. If circuses gave their animials better treatment than the
animals would get after they die and go to heaven, I bet PETA would still
want people to boycott circuses.

I suppose you're also very upset about those that choose to buy
organic products that cost 3X too right?

That also ticks me off, chemophobia. 95% of the chemicals I see people
saying are worst poison on Earth, whatever, aren't what's killing us.
Chemophobia is hurting America's industries.

But I never saw restaurants promoting organic to the extent I saw
low-carb promoted. I never heard ads for daily multivitamins marketed to
followers of anything with exception of low-carb. I never heard a barrage
of ads for weight loss pills with names implying anything specific is
fattening except carbs.

* I am angered more by such diets when experience of so much as family
members who bought the books is that they don't work.

Gee, doesn't take much to anger you does it? I'm not angry at all
the Low cal, LF books. I don't dislike Pritkin either. The reason
your family members failed is likely because they did what you did.
Didn't bother to read a book and claimed they were doing LC, while
still eating 150g a day of carbs and God knows what else.

No, they tried what the books said and it did not work for long.

*Especially when low fat and low calorie have been so actively promoted
precisely during the decades when Americans got far more obese,

* Due to increase of calories and increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

Gee, you think just maybe that's because eating lots of carbs, while
avoiding fat, makes most people MORE HUNGRY?

They were not avoiding fat when fat consumption was 38% or so of
calories. They were eating more calories as sodas, frenchfries, and
portion sizes got supersized, quarter pounders and whoppers became
available in double versions, and they got less exercise as cable TV,
VCRs, DVDs, satellite TV, video games and internet became parts of our
lives.

while LC only had a brief period of being anywhere near as popular.

* If Atkins sold 30 million books and low-carb failed to turn things
around, in addition to negative experience of myself and for that matter
coworkers and relatives buying Atkins books, I suspect the reason that
LC has faded in popularity from a peak is because it largely failed to
improve upon low-calorie.

And now you've actually done it. You now claim you did Atkins,

I do not claim I did specifically atkins - that relatives did.

when in fact you stated that all you did was reduce carbs down to
125-150g a day. One more time, THAT IS NOT ATKINS.

*In fact, right now, low fat and low cal are still being promoted by all
the mainstream health authorities, govt, media, etc. * LC is not.

* Low fat - if you consider 25-30% of calories from fat to be low fat. *If
25-30% of calories are from carbs (120-150 grams per day on 2,000 calories
per day), would you call that low carb, and if not then why not?

* Low calorie - The only people I know successfully dieting did so from
that approach.

Yes, in that special little world of yours. Where the supermarket
shelves are not full of products designed and marketed as low fat or
low cal, but instead loaded with LC ones. Where the media reporting
bashes and inaccurately reports not LC, but LF and Low cal.. Where
the govt and health authorities have not actively promoted low fat for
3 decades.

Unless 25-30% of calories from fat is low fat, but 25-30% of calories
from carbs you say is too much carbs.

Where Atkins died of a heart attack. And where you tried Atkins

Again, I did not say I tried specifically Atkins, though I have
relatives who did.

and it did not work, despite the fact that what you did was not even
close to Atkins.

SNIP
* My personal experience is coworkers, friends and family members and
myself having 100% failure rate of low-carb and success of the few that
go for low calorie.

Which has zippo to do with calling LC a failure based on the fact that
it did not reverse obesity, while endorsing low fat,

I don't endorse it to the extent of claiming that fat calories are more
fattening than others, though I did say that's where a lot of easily
cuttable excessive calories are.

which hasn't reversed it either

After so little participation that the sandwich shop I deliver for never
found a need to stock low fat cheese or low fat salad dressing.

In fact, it has reigned supreme
precisely over
the decades when obesity skyrocketed the worst. And again you claim
here you did LC, when you did not.

SNIP

* For one thing, approaching and during the peak of the "Low Carb Craze"
I heard enough radio ads for weight loss pills with names along the lines
of (with exact spelling not guaranteed since I heard those mainly on radio
ads and I listen to radio a lot more than I watch TV) Thermo-Carb,
Carbolyte, Carb-Blocker, Carb-Assassin, etc. *Those pills were generally
stimulants / appetite-suppressants, often with active drug ingredient
being ephedrine or something similar in effect - usually ephedrine if the
supplement was entirely herbal. *That perked my ears to "Big Lie".

Hmm, who was selling those products? Atkins, Agatston, Bernstein?

It's hard enough for me to determine who is behind some light bulbs that
I evaluate, and if you look at my website you will see that's where I
have some expertise. Let alone supplements enabling people to buy and eat
more food.

No. They didn't sell them or advocate using them. Which you would
know if you bothered to read a book. So, exactly what does some
companies promoting their own pills have to do with anything? Again,
it's curious how you pick and choose your data. There are even MORE
diet pills available and I'm sure an order of magnitude MORE have been
sold over time to support diet attempts that were low fat or low
calorie. Yet, diet pills are used as a slam against LC only?

I heard more diet pill ads on radio pushing a notion that carbs are more
fattening than anything else more than I heard diet pill ads pushing any
other notion.

SNIP
* My experience is that meat is appetizing, along with anything spicy
and/or flavorful. *Spicy/flavorful foods, whether "Red Hot" "Cheetos" or
foods less "Junk Food" than that, I find to be "diet busters" as much as
beer.

* And, I never had non-carb calories sate me better than carb calories.

That hasn't been the experience for most people. And if you go take a
look around, there have been studies that confirmed this.

I see enough studies saying anything anyone wants to hear. I get
pointed to enough studies claiming things such as atmospheric CO2 being
higher a couple hundred years ago or whatever than it is now, and I know
atmospheric science a lot better than the technical details of how noise
gets into medical and diet studies.

If I am hungry at 3 PM and buy 3/4 pound of chicken salad that is close to
75% chicken 25% mayo and eat half of it, I remain hungry. *I eat the other
half and I am still hungry. *Half an hour later I am still hungry.
* I can satisfy the hunger at that point with a few ounces of veggies and
a couple ounces of bread. *I can do the same with half as much chicken
salad and a few more ounces of veggies and 1 ounce more bread.

Try doing that on a real LC plan, where you start off at 20g a day of
carb. I can assure you that your experience will likely be totally
different. If you started your day with cereal or pancakes, then the
chicken salad experience would not surprise me. But only one of us
here has actually done LC, so how would you know?

I know others who did LC in general, and Atkins specifically, and the
diet successes of people I know were entirely elsewhere.

*And then they show a fridge full of pork chops and
butter or a plate with all meat. *I've never seen any of that with low
fat. * In fact, the mainstream media is still very positive about LF and
LC while very negative about LC.

* I saw less positivity of Low fat than of low carb since 2000, including
a report in the mainstream media last year on some study claiming low carb
achieved more weight loss than low fat, Mediterrainean, and some other
diet. *And since 1997 or so enough sound bites here and there saying carbs
are what cause weight gain.

Sure, I'd agree there is less positive on LF. *They've turned the
volume down from 100db to 90db. * And they've turned the positive
volume up on LC from 0 to 10db. * That's what I see.

* You surely look at other than what I see! *And I don't have my TV-viewing
so low as to not notice TV promoting low-carb more than low-fat.

Again, you're in your own little world.

SNIP from here largely repetition

- Don Klipstein )