Are low fat diets dead?

Ah, but if you lock the subjects in a cage and measure out their calories...

"em" wrote in message ...

"Cubit" wrote


Calories are the true key to weightloss. Behavioral change may involve
various eating strategies. If low fat works for you, I figure your body
just creates whatever fat it needs itself.


Hmmmmm...... How about: Behavioral change is the true key to weight loss.
Cutting calories may involve various eating strategies...

Cubit
190/157.5/160

Impressive! Good work.

"determined" wrote in message
. ..

"Steve" wrote in message
oups.com...
I recently heard some proactive defenses of the low fat diet.

Certain fats are not only good for you, but essential for best health. I
eat plenty of fat, from sources like nuts, peanut butter, flax, olive oi,
and avocados. Fat helps me feel full longer. I don't believe in any diet
that is so strict it is difficult to follow, or excludes certain things,
because I don't believe it's sustainable or realistic. I believe in
balance. Mostly good, a little splurge here and there.


I've been thinking about this & have been getting curious. Is a lf diet
similar to a lc diet, in that you count grams of fat & that's pretty much
it? In other words, is a low-fat diet a "don't count calories" diet?

"em" wrote:
"determined" wrote:

Certain fats are not only good for you, but essential for best health.

Since the human body makes glucose from both fat and protein,
dietary carb is not essential. There exist Inuits who still live the
traditional hunting lifestyle on the ice and they go months eating
closer to true zero carbs than anyone in America or Europe is
ever likely to. And they don't drop dead from lack of carbs. On
the other hand the nasty stuff they need to eat to stay healthy
is extreme in its own right.

Carbs may not be essential, but the metabolism does better with
some. Eat too low too long and T3 levels start to drop once you
no longer have at least some threshold of stored fat. Leptin
hormone levels also fall. So there's no harm in viewing maybe
20-50 grams daily as essential even though they technically aren't.

I
eat plenty of fat, from sources like nuts, peanut butter, flax, olive oi,
and avocados. Fat helps me feel full longer.

That's a big advantage to low-carb, high-fat diets for me.
Low carb keeps the cravings away, high fat keeps the
hunger from coming back longer. Portion control is easier
for me.

I don't believe in any diet
that is so strict it is difficult to follow, or excludes certain things,
because I don't believe it's sustainable or realistic. I believe in
balance. Mostly good, a little splurge here and there.

I have no idea what balance actually is in diet, but what
many view as unbalanced work fine for many. Low carb and
low fat.

I've been thinking about this & have been getting curious. Is a lf diet
similar to a lc diet, in that you count grams of fat & that's pretty much
it? In other words, is a low-fat diet a "don't count calories" diet?

All diets that work stress portion control and that includes low
carb. With Atkins there's a short period where you're supposed
to eat what it takes to get through the carb cravings of the first
couple of days but the day the cravings are gone so is that
permission.

So are there low fat plans that only have you count fat grams
and figure as long as you're following their other food guidelines
counting fat grams will ensure the rest of your portions are okay?
Probably. Don't confuse that with permission to overeat just
because you haven't gone over your fat grams for the day. That
package of hard candy may be "0 grams of fat!" but it's still junk
not on your plan.

The basic concepts of low carb and low fat aren't that different -
They are what many would call unbalanced and in their unbalance
they push the body into burnings its fuel inefficiently. Combine
that with when you follow their allowed foods you tend to no be
hungry for other foods. Except that neither method works for
everyone.

On Aug 17, 2:52 pm, "em" wrote:
I've been thinking about this & have been getting curious. Is a lf diet
similar to a lc diet, in that you count grams of fat & that's pretty much
it? In other words, is a low-fat diet a "don't count calories" diet?

In general, no. Low-fat nutrition plans don't have this attribute.
That is to say, merely reducing the fat content in a nutrition plan
doesn't magically turn it into one in which the calories are reduced
to below maintenance without some kind of external restriction being
imposed.

There are ways to avoid counting calories on a low-fat eating plan:

- glycemic control to level out blood sugar:
- more frequent, smaller meals
- high GI carbs
- carbs eaten in combination with of foods that effectively raise
the GI
- fine-tuning for carb sensitivity: reducing carb calories, bumping
up protein.

- volumetrics:
- goal is to become full on bulky foods without eating lots of
calories.
- emphasizing foods which are not dense in calories, e.g. less than
1 kcal/g.
- don't forget fibre

- consistency:
- by eating the same kind of food consistently, week in week out,
you learn how much
you need without counting anything.
- think: millions of thin people in the world, who eat staple diet,
do
not know what a calorie is.

- exercise:
- improves metabolism, insulin resistance, etc.
- teaches you to tune in to your body and listen to its signals.
- better way to achieve deficit than dieting alone.
- allows for more calories; feel fuller while still achieving
caloric deficit.

I did a moderate low-fat diet (10%-20% cal from fat) and went from
boderline obese to about 5 lbs overweight.

Satyed there for 2 years. I read a Scientific American Article on why
low fat diets don't work. It was well-argued and supported by the
literature.

I gained the wieght back over 3 years- slightly slower than I lost it.

I've heard that low fat is not what makes "low fat" diets work. It is
low caloric density of food taht makes them work -and I can see how
that might be.

I jsut finished re-lsoing my gained wieght - this time not so low
fat. But I'm watching calories. I'm trying to keep my Fat to about
20-25 % of my calories.

One difference between lower fat and low car diets is taht lwoering
your caloric content by lowering fat - works OK in moderation. It
isn't very fast.

When I've seen fast weight loss, it has always been temporary (more
than 10% of body weight in a year) and has led to SERIOUS gain over 5
year periods.(Has anyone here seen anything different? I'm curious. )

I understand that a medium-low carb diet is like no diet at all.

So I would vote low fat over low carb just because moderate is good
and moderate low-fat stuff seems to work OK.

Also, I think with both Low-fat and low carb that they will find out
more and more taht the particular macronutrients are critically
important. They know that nuts, olives, fish and such are "good
fat".

I imagine that 10 years from now, they'll know more about particular
carbs anmd particualr proteins, too. They do know complex carbs are
good compared with sugar and starch.


Michael