Low carb diets

On 12/18/2003 1:35 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:
eat sufficient protein

Lyle, I follow you up to a point but what are you calling sufficient
protein? US RDA (or DRI or whatever it is these days)? WHO's
recommendations? Some other amount?

--
jmk in NC

OmegaZero2003 wrote:

"Lyle McDonald" wrote in message
...
Mirek Fidler wrote:

and a standard low-calorie diet. Also, sticking to a low-carbohydrate
diet doesn't appear to be any easier than following other weight-loss
plans. People on the Atkins diet dropped out at a similar rate as
those
following the low-fat diet. If dieters aren't getting the results they
want - anticipated weight loss - they drop out. This suggests that the
low-carbohydrate diet, like so many diets, is no easier to stick to
long
term."

http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm...1-4F40-A099254
FDF10BCB1

I was thinking about this issue, as personaly for me low-carb menu seems
to be much attractive than low-fat one.

and that, IMO, is the bottom line.

After all of these studies and 30+ years of research, the basic
conclusion is that all diets work, as long as people follow them. And
unless they are totally retarded, they all generate about teh same
weight/fat loss (and for the majority of dieters, small differences in
LBM retention are an irrelevancy; that only matters for athletes and
bodybuilders and tha'ts a tiny percentage of the dieting public).

Meaning this: pick the dietary approach (which is going to depend on
personal food preferences, activity, etc) that YOU CAN BEST STICK TO. I
have been saying this for years.

Oh I agree with this 100%.

But it is interesting to look at the mechanisms and theories.

No doubt. But the more you look, the more you find it comes down, more
or less to the above.

I mean, fundamentally, weight loss is a function of

eat less (or eat differently so that you automatically eat less)
exercise (or not)
repeat
forever

most of the mechanistic stuff has to do with determining the details of
those 4 steps.

What to eat and does it even matter what the composition of the diet is?
Given a few requirements (which I stated previously), the differences
are minor approaching 4/5th of **** all (they certainly aren't that
important for your average obese individual; a few pounds either way may
be huge for an athlete or bodybuilder). So all diets basically work as
long as you reduce calories. One issue is whether or not the diet is
going to be strictly controlled or you're allowing ad-lib intakes. If
the latter, you need to pick a diet that spontaneously makes folks
reduce food intake. Both low-fat and low-carb approaches have studies
to back them (reducing fat tends to reduce calories in the short-term
because of the high energy density, in that carbs typically make up 50%
or more of the daily diet, reducing/removing them tends to reduce
calories as well). High-fiber is key and protein is turning out to be
the big player as it decreases hunger/appetite the most. A high fiber,
high protein, low GI carb, and low to moderate fat diet would probably
lead to the greatest spontaneous reduction in caloric intake.

Exercise. What type, how much, how often? Studies are showing that
exercise has a bigger role in preventing weight regain (but it takes a
lot) than in causing weight or fat loss per se. Of course, most
exercise studies use pretty paltry intervenions. Of course, the average
person won't do/can't handle intense exercise, at least not at first.

Repeat forever gets into adherence issues and is, IMO, where the real
meat of the matter lays. Face facts, losing weight is NOT hard. People
do it all the time. KEEPING the weight off is the problem and figuring
out how to do that is where the key solution is as far as I'm concerned.
That also ties in with diet composition: is a given diet relatively
harder or easier to stick to. Very low fat diets tend to have poor
compliance (so even though they generate weight/fat loss in the
short-term, people get tired of eating cardboard and go off of them), a
number of studies show that moderate fat diets (25-35% of total
calories) do better. I'm unaware of any long term studies on low-carb
diet adherence but I suspect it's going to be close to just as bad.
Moderate carb diets allow a lot more food variety and probably have an
advantage in this regards (compared to strict low carb diets). Same
with moderate fat, they taste better and allow more food variety.

On and on it goes. One of these days I'll write a real diet book and
adress all of the above issues in the anal retentive detail I'm known for.

Lyle

jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 1:35 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:
eat sufficient protein

Lyle, I follow you up to a point but what are you calling sufficient
protein? US RDA (or DRI or whatever it is these days)? WHO's
recommendations? Some other amount?

For dieting: 0.8-1 g/lb LBM.

It's been known for over 30 years that protein requirements go up when
calories go down which makes most of the standard recommendations (RDA,
probably WHO) too low (they are based on maintaining body protein under
normal dietary/non-stressed conditions).

The PSMF studies determiend taht you need 1.5 g/kg LBM (they actually
used ideal bodyweight as a proxy for lean body mass), or about 0.7 g/lb
to limit LBM losses (while still allowing a sufficient caloric deficit).
Of course, that's in extreme obesity (the more bodyfat you have, the
less proetin you tend to lose). It's also without activity.

For an active individual who is not extremely fat, .8-1 g/lb LBM would
be the minimum I would consider sufficient.

Lyle

Lyle McDonald wrote:


and that, IMO, is the bottom line.

After all of these studies and 30+ years of research, the basic
conclusion is that all diets work, as long as people follow them. And
unless they are totally retarded, they all generate about teh same
weight/fat loss (and for the majority of dieters, small differences in
LBM retention are an irrelevancy;

If the focus is strictly on weight loss then what you both have said
seems obvious, at least to some of us. When one introduces
additional notions such as, likelihood of staying on it, overall
health concerns which dovetails into quality of life, sprinkle in
some exercise, the discussion gets interesting and sometimes heated.

Someone realized that I post from sci.med.nutrition. I have been in
and out of SMN for years and regardless of the number of degrees and
experience there is very little agreement on nutrition. I listen in
and get a few weeks of my daddy can beat up your daddy and put it on
the back burner. I would say most people agree that simple carbs aka
empty calories could be eliminated from everyone's diet and lose
nothing but possibly some weight. We have churned for years the
amounts, contents and proportions of pro/car/fat. Anyone think over
the next 5-10 years anything will be concluded? Until that time
most pick their horse, dig up some justification studies, with the
studies themselves coming under fire, and ride their horse.


--
Doug Freese
"Caveat Lector"

On 12/18/2003 2:10 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:
jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 1:35 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:

eat sufficient protein

Lyle, I follow you up to a point but what are you calling sufficient
protein? US RDA (or DRI or whatever it is these days)? WHO's
recommendations? Some other amount?


For dieting: 0.8-1 g/lb LBM.

It's been known for over 30 years that protein requirements go up when
calories go down which makes most of the standard recommendations (RDA,
probably WHO) too low (they are based on maintaining body protein under
normal dietary/non-stressed conditions).

OK, so if I weighed 150 and wanted to weigh 135 and was on a diet, I
would need to consume at least .8 g/lb (120 g/day) but if I weigh 135
and I am maintaining at that weight .36 g/lb of protein (48.6 g/day)
is fine? (WHO's would be much lower at 27.5 g/day.)

--
jmk in NC

jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 2:10 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:
jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 1:35 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:

eat sufficient protein

Lyle, I follow you up to a point but what are you calling sufficient
protein? US RDA (or DRI or whatever it is these days)? WHO's
recommendations? Some other amount?


For dieting: 0.8-1 g/lb LBM.

It's been known for over 30 years that protein requirements go up when
calories go down which makes most of the standard recommendations (RDA,
probably WHO) too low (they are based on maintaining body protein under
normal dietary/non-stressed conditions).

OK, so if I weighed 150 and wanted to weigh 135 and was on a diet, I
would need to consume at least .8 g/lb (120 g/day) but if I weigh 135
and I am maintaining at that weight .36 g/lb of protein (48.6 g/day)
is fine?

Assuming no activity, I have no problem with that in terms of meeting
nutritional requirements (whether more protein might be beneficial in
terms of other things is a different question than what you're asking).

(WHO's would be much lower at 27.5 g/day.)

Do note that the WHO is mainly concerned with protein intakes for basic
health and they are dealing with a lot of situations like 3rd world
countries. The RDA may be on the high side (except for energy intakes)
and are typiocally estimated by determining bare minimums and adding one
or two standard deviations (in theory, this accounts for 97% of
individuals, because of variance in utilization). But in situations
where protein is not readily available (3rd world countries), the RDA
correction may be inappropriate (hence the WHO value, IMO).

Lyle

Doug Freese wrote:

Lyle McDonald wrote:

and that, IMO, is the bottom line.

After all of these studies and 30+ years of research, the basic
conclusion is that all diets work, as long as people follow them. And
unless they are totally retarded, they all generate about teh same
weight/fat loss (and for the majority of dieters, small differences in
LBM retention are an irrelevancy;

If the focus is strictly on weight loss then what you both have said
seems obvious, at least to some of us. When one introduces
additional notions such as, likelihood of staying on it, overall
health concerns which dovetails into quality of life, sprinkle in
some exercise, the discussion gets interesting and sometimes heated.

I mentioned that in a different post.
There are other issues that factor into optimal diet choice.

Activity is one, potential health issues is another, there are certainly others.


Someone realized that I post from sci.med.nutrition.

Explaining why you are a total dip**** (I'm basing this on your moronic
carb and exercise arguments, just so you know).

I have been in
and out of SMN for years and regardless of the number of degrees and
experience there is very little agreement on nutrition. I listen in
and get a few weeks of my daddy can beat up your daddy and put it on
the back burner. I would say most people agree that simple carbs aka
empty calories could be eliminated from everyone's diet and lose
nothing but possibly some weight. We have churned for years the
amounts, contents and proportions of pro/car/fat. Anyone think over
the next 5-10 years anything will be concluded?

Yes: Moderation in all things.

My grandmother knew this 50 years ago and many nutrition studies are
coming to the same basic conclusion. Both extremely low-fat and
extremely high-fat diets can cause health problems (low-fat can raise
triglcyeride levels and increase small LDL particles; high fat has a
separate set of problems although it depends on the rest of the diet).
Same for protein (tho the risk of 'high-protein' are drastically
overstated). High-carb diets (esp if the carbs come from refined
sources and, let's face it, they do in modern diets) cause all kinds of
problems. Lowcarbs can or can not be a problem depending on other specifics.

for the majority of individuals, I feel that a diet containing

1. ~25-30% dietary protein (in the realm of .8-1 g/lb LBM)
2. 25-35% dietary fat (from mostly healthy/monounsaturated sources): I
use .45 g/lb as a pulled out my ass value for now (it's about 25-30% at
maintenance calories)
3. the remainder carbs: preferably less refined. Meaning that, at most,
carbs are going to be 50% of total calories. They can go lower but,
unless you're talking about elite endurance performance, there's rarely
a need to go higher.
4. High fiber (goes with 3)
5. Allow one or two don't worry about it, eat whatever the **** you want
meals per week to get it out of your damn system.

is probably about right.

There are outliers to any such schema. Elite endurance athletes may
need relatively more carbs (of course, their total claorie intakes go
through the roof so their absolute carb intakes will go up). Folks with
severe insulin resistance may need to reduce carbs further for health
reasons and/or to control calories.

Lyle

On 12/18/2003 2:24 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:
jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 2:10 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:

jmk wrote:


On 12/18/2003 1:35 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:


eat sufficient protein

Lyle, I follow you up to a point but what are you calling sufficient
protein? US RDA (or DRI or whatever it is these days)? WHO's
recommendations? Some other amount?


For dieting: 0.8-1 g/lb LBM.

It's been known for over 30 years that protein requirements go up when
calories go down which makes most of the standard recommendations (RDA,
probably WHO) too low (they are based on maintaining body protein under
normal dietary/non-stressed conditions).

OK, so if I weighed 150 and wanted to weigh 135 and was on a diet, I
would need to consume at least .8 g/lb (120 g/day) but if I weigh 135
and I am maintaining at that weight .36 g/lb of protein (48.6 g/day)
is fine?


Assuming no activity, I have no problem with that in terms of meeting
nutritional requirements (whether more protein might be beneficial in
terms of other things is a different question than what you're asking).

I think that we may have a disconnect here. What I am asking is what
you are referring to as suffient protein in a previous post --
"Comparing an RDA protein diet to a lowcarb diet with double the protein
is a **** poor comparison but that's a lot of what's going on. Yeah, of
course, the lowcarb diet will work better. Because it has sufficient
protein." In this context, what do you feel is sufficient for weight
loss? for maintenance?

--
jmk in NC

OmegaZero2003 wrote:

"Seth Breidbart" wrote in message

What they all had in common,
however, was that calories were restricted to about 1,100 per day and
the diets lasted about four to five months."

Losing the most weight requires the fewest calories per day, sure.

What were the results for people who dieted for even longer than 4-5
months?

I posted a few recent studies of 6m-1yr.

all those studies came after the big meta-analysis came out.

Nutrient partitioning effects, theoretically - although Lyle's readings tell
a different story.

I can also report empirically the feedback I've gotten. This was from a
few years ago (on the lowcarb-l list) from folks comparing things like
Isocaloric (33/33/33) diets to Bodyopus (CKD) types of diets. These
were motivated bodybuilder/athletic types who are known for being anal
compulsive about their diet and who were using similar protein inakes
and caloric deficits (and weight training and the rest). At *most*, the
variance in fat loss/LBM loss was ~3 lbs over 12 weeks. That is, they
might report 3 lbs more fat lost and 3 lbs more LBM maintained over that period.

Adding:
a. Even then, the effects weren't consistent. Some folks did better on
CKD's, some folks better on Isocaloric (and lost more muscle on the
CKD). Meaning there was no consistent pattern with one diet being
absolutely superior.

Note: studies from Blundell and Rolls are supporting the idea of high
and low fat phenotypes, bascially folks who differ in how they adapt to
higher and low fat intakes (some resisting obesity despite a high fat
intake). The mechanisms are obscure at this point with the only measure
they had done finding that sleeping heart rate was higher in the
high-fat phenotype (as I recall). This suggests higher SNS output,
probably a function of high leptin, insulin, etc. sensitivity. This
would make some sense considering the other effects of that axis (and
other studies such as Levine's NEAT studies) which contribute to what's
going on.

Unfortunately, I have no way to predict who might or might not do better
on one diet vs. the other except in the vaguest sense. And that has
more to do with a choice by exclusion: folks who feel well/do well on
high-carb/low-fat diets tend to do terribly on low-carbs (they just
never adapt) and vice versa (some folks seem to have the metabolic
flexibility to go either way).

b. 3 lbs is within measurement error (sorry, this is the cynic in me
speaking). Hell, it's within the error of glycogen and water balance.

c. 3 lbs of fat vs LBM is hardly relevant for the majority of dieters.
For an athlete or bodybuilder, yeah, it matters. But without a
consistently superior diet or a way to know who will be ideally suited
for one or the other, the above is kind of meaningless (at this point,
there's no good way to apply it).

Lyle

jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 2:24 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:
jmk wrote:

On 12/18/2003 2:10 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:

jmk wrote:


On 12/18/2003 1:35 PM, Lyle McDonald wrote:


eat sufficient protein

Lyle, I follow you up to a point but what are you calling sufficient
protein? US RDA (or DRI or whatever it is these days)? WHO's
recommendations? Some other amount?


For dieting: 0.8-1 g/lb LBM.

It's been known for over 30 years that protein requirements go up when
calories go down which makes most of the standard recommendations (RDA,
probably WHO) too low (they are based on maintaining body protein under
normal dietary/non-stressed conditions).

OK, so if I weighed 150 and wanted to weigh 135 and was on a diet, I
would need to consume at least .8 g/lb (120 g/day) but if I weigh 135
and I am maintaining at that weight .36 g/lb of protein (48.6 g/day)
is fine?


Assuming no activity, I have no problem with that in terms of meeting
nutritional requirements (whether more protein might be beneficial in
terms of other things is a different question than what you're asking).

I think that we may have a disconnect here. What I am asking is what
you are referring to as suffient protein in a previous post --
"Comparing an RDA protein diet to a lowcarb diet with double the protein
is a **** poor comparison but that's a lot of what's going on.

I mean doing so in a study under dieting conditions. Isn't that what we
have been talking about this whole time?

That is, putting two groups at 1000 cal/day deficit and giving one the
RDA for protein and one double that and seeing different results is no
surprise. Of course the second diet works better because the first is
protein insufficient.

comparing protein intakes under dieting conditions to protein intakes
under non-dieing conditions is meaningless.

Yeah, of
course, the lowcarb diet will work better. Because it has sufficient
protein." In this context, what do you feel is sufficient for weight
loss?

for dieting: .8-1 g/lb LBM (is there an echo in here?)

for maintenance?

Assuming no activity, RDA should be fine from a purely LBM standpoint.
The RDA is ostensibely defined as being sufficient to meet daily
requirements (and in the case of protein, maintenance of LBM is one of
the end points) under non-stressed conditions. Again, it's actually
determined by figuring out minimal (or sometimes average) intake
requiremnts and adding 2 standard deviations (the exception being
calorie requirements which do not have the 2 SD's added). Exercise and
dieting both counts as stress and both increase protein requirements.

Again, whether a higher protein intake would be beneficial in other
regards such as appetite (two recent abstracts, referred to in the
Westerterp-Plantenga paper I cited showed that higher protein helped
limit weight regain) or health (several studies have linked a HIGHER
protein intake to lowered blood pressure) is a different situation.

Lyle