Fat burning furnace?

On Dec 25 2009, 6:18*pm, Doug Freyburger wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote:

Give those concentration camp followers access to food and they will
quickly regain the weight. Fasted or over fed experimental subject
return to pre experimental weight when allowed to eat.

Thus rendering invalid any example that uses concentration camp victims.


It's still a perfectly valid example that shows calories consumed and
obesity are linked. Whether people can LIMIT calories to avoid
becoming obese short of being forced is an entirely different issue.



Any plan that does not include a maintenance phase is a fad diet to me.
Calorie restriction only works when it is mild enough to only trigger
slow loss and not later trigger regain. *Extremely few dieters have the
patience to deliberately target slow loss. *The few that do are the few
that keep it off.

Has anyone managed to make subjects gain massive weight on a very low
carb diet?

That's the missing piece of course. *If folks could show some their
arguments would be a lot more convincing.

At one point the Atkins Center told the tale of one person who managed
to gain while keeping carb count low, and having the food checked for
hidden carbs. *She stayed under 50 grams of carb daily and continued to
gradually gain in a way that could not be water gain. *Eventually they
asked her to log what she ate including quantities. *Turns out each
night in addition to a diet otherwise common for folks losing on low
carb she was eating a stick of butter flavored with cimminon each night
as a snack. *That's about 100 grams and nearly a thousand extra calories
per day in addition. *It's possible to drive weight up while on low carb
but it takes a lot.

For me all I need for rapid weight loss is to restrict carbs and the
diet is easy to follow. So subjectively calories don't count.

The idea is that if you eat the expected mix of foods and count carbs
and stop at your limit, you end up low enough in calories to lose
without counting calories or being hungry. *The example of the stick of
buffer snack shows that idea does not always work, but it works for a
lot of folks. *It also seems to fail when folks have 10-20 pounds left
to lose.

Agree completely. When doing Atkins, one thing that is universal, is
people report a greatly diminished appetite after just a few days.
So, even while consuming a diet high in fat, they wind up eating less
calories than they would if they were eating their normal high carb
diet. It's also the magic that makes it possible to stick with the
diet.

Also, Atkins clearly stated to only eat until you no longer feel
hungry. That shows that he believed you could stop weight loss or
reverse it if you chose to continue to eat excess calories, even on LC.

wrote:
Walter Bushell wrote:

But, of course. One can burn a lot of calories just by fidgeting, for
example.

And your reference for this would be? Every time I look at a table
that shows calories expended doing anything, even exercise considered
fairly rigorous, I'm amazed at how little energy is actually
expended.

Running a marathon burns a pound of fat. It's astonishing how few
calories are burned by exercise. Yet exercise is the most important
tool in not gaining it back again. Some things are about calories; some
things are not about calories.

How about a reference that increasing calories leads to
fidgeting at all?

It would need to take into account type of carbs, too. Many get sleepy
when they eat a high carb meal. That's the opposite of Walter B's claim.

wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

The idea is that if you eat the expected mix of foods and count carbs
and stop at your limit, you end up low enough in calories to lose
without counting calories or being hungry. *The example of the stick of
buffer snack shows that idea does not always work, but it works for a
lot of folks. *It also seems to fail when folks have 10-20 pounds left
to lose.

Agree completely. When doing Atkins, one thing that is universal, is
people report a greatly diminished appetite after just a few days.

It took me more than the first week of Induction, less than the entire
second week of Induction. But once the carb cravings were gone the
difference was astonishing. I'd spent 20 years trying to stay low fat
and the result was 50 pounds gained while I was hungry almost the entire
time. The months I managed to keep my fat grams low enough to lose the
fat cravings were strong enough to wake me up several times per night.

I think the reduced hunger is the single strongest point in favor of low
carb. More people see reduced hunger on low carb than low fat. For
most it's like there's a "carb tank" and there are cravings when it's
partially full. Either top it off constantly to keep it full (muching
on rabbit food constantly on a low fat plan) or drain it completely to
get into ketosis (Induction) and the carb cravings go away. The go away
part never happened for me on low fat - Fat cravings may be less intense
than carb cravings but they never went away for me.

So, even while consuming a diet high in fat, they wind up eating less
calories than they would if they were eating their normal high carb
diet. It's also the magic that makes it possible to stick with the
diet.

Less calories after completing Induction for some, less calories even by
the end of Induction for others, check. Either way the low carbing
lasts a lot longer than the initial carb cravings phase.

Also, Atkins clearly stated to only eat until you no longer feel
hungry. That shows that he believed you could stop weight loss or
reverse it if you chose to continue to eat excess calories, even on LC.

Yet he did not discuss calorie counting nor did he give a specific plan
for reducing portions. His "eat what you want" is taken by successful
low carbers as a plan to gradually cut portions as they lose, but it's
also taken by unsuccessful folks as license to eat unlimited quantities.
He wasn't very good at expressing his meanings.