WeightLossBanter - View Single Post

**Doug Freyburger** · November 20th, 2006, 03:36 PM posted to alt.support.diet.low-carb

wrote:
Susan wrote:

The unexamined reason that the weight loss looks so similar at one year
i s that the low carb diets call for increased carb levels for
maintenance and look more like the higher carb diets at that point.

Further, the low carb dieters lose more fat mass and preserve more lean
body mass than the higher carb, low fat dieters."

As said, once all is said and done at 1 year weight loss was similar for
all diets because of reduced calories

Notice how you're carefull to pick a specific time frame in order to be
technically correct on your stated point while at the same time
ignoring the facts for earlier time frames.

In many studies, low carbers without caloric restriction lose 4%
more than low fatters with caloric restriction. The reason that loss
at twice that length of time has reached the same levels is the
metabolic advantage of ketosis is proportional to the amount of
excess fat remaining to lose. A year later so many test subjects
have bottomed out in both test groups that rates no longer
mismatch. What these studies show is that if you're willing to
stick with a low fat plus calorie restircted diet for longer than
someone on a low carb non-restricted diet, you'll lose anyways.

that is how in all diets works.

A stance you reach by carefully ignoring one set of facts and
selecting another set of facts without paying heed to why the
numbers start different and end different.

The details might vary to a degree but it is the calories in the
end. Any energy cost for different metabolic pathway engagment is a
detail and not an fundimental explanation.

That's also incorrect on several levels.

1) Different fuels are burned using different metabolic pathways and
they do have different efficiencies. Include digestion and calories
have even greater inefficiencies. Calories are a poor measurement
that happens to be easy to look up in a table. In a way, calories
are rather like the scale reading that way.

2) Weight is caused by amount of stored body fat plus amount of
lean plus other. If stored body fat is withdrwan from storage it
is weight lost whether it is burned for fuel or not. Low insulin and
high glucagon levels of ketosis draw fat from storage. Calories
get wasted. Do enough studies on where it goes and I suggest
you'll find where that 4% number above comes from. Also, low
carbers lose less lean that low fatters.

3) Calories-in is not all there is to the equation. Calories-out is
also a variable. It's why exercise is stressed. It's also why there
is so much discussion of "starvation mode". What "starvation
mode" is (other than something denied by folks who like to
define stuff out of existance) is a reduction in basal metabolism.
Carefully track basal metabolism in dieters and you'll discover some
fun stuff. For example low carb reduces it less than low fat. But
also extreme approaches to local carb reduce it more than mild
approaches to low carb.