[thras]

You will lose weight on calorie restriction as long as you go low enough. Though I've been fat my entire life, after college, I was 150 pounds overweight. I lost the extra weight by eating 900 calories a day for a year and a half or so.

At my normal healthy weight, I was starving. And weak as a kitten. I took up running, and stopped watching my diet. I literally could not keep up the willpower necessary to continue a 3000 calorie diet, even though 900 had been doable for so long. Despite running for an hour a day, I immediately started gaining 10-15 pounds a month.

So I was convinced that it was all about calories. I was fat because I ate too much. Why my body was so hellbent on eating 4000-5000 calories a day, I didn't know. I seemed to have a lot more willpower than anyone else I knew. It was sort of confusing. Then about a year ago, I read Taubes' book.

What if the human body is actually sort of complicated? What if hormonal regulation controls fat? What if the "trash bin" theory of body fat is actually a humongous oversimplification or just wrong? What if, after getting to a "healthy" weight by starving fat, muscle, and vital tissue, I wasn't healthy at all? What if it had also made me malnourished (hence the amazing hunger at my "healthy" weight)?

Anyway, I cut the carbohydrates out of my diet last December. I made zero effort at calorie restriction. In fact, I ate a lot. I made very little effort to exercise more. After a year of this, I'm almost 100 pounds under my max weight. I recently started running again, for fun, not weight loss, and am up to 2-3 miles a day.

And I am stronger than I've ever been in my life. Eating steak every day is probably more expensive than building the same muscle mass with steroids, but I'm pretty happy. I wasn't expecting it. It's good being a carnivore.

[glymor]

What little I've read on obesity research seems to require that both excess sugar and fat are consumed to overcome homeostasis.

Sugars can ignore homeostatic regulation for hedonistic reasons and fats don't have the same day to day correction that carbohydrates do.

So the part that might be working in your diet might be the no-sugar part of no-carb.

Overall it's quite amazing that many people can consume something like a million calories per a year and end up within 0.5kg (3500 calories) of their starting point.

[MikeCapone]

I'm about halfway through Taubes' book (Good Calories, Bad Calories), and I also recommend it. So far, he has made a very strong case, and the theory that he supports seems to have better predictive power than the mainstream theory.

[keefe]

Going from 4K-5K calories per day to 900 is an extreme swing. These type of diets are shown not to work. There is also some evidence they convince your body it is living in feast/famine time which triggers a fat accumulation response. I do not believe that it is healthy to remove carbohydrates from your body. The body is a complex machine indeed, but we have a pretty good understanding of how it works regarding nutrition. Most structures run on glucose, muscles are made of protein, fiber helps digestion and micronutrients are used all over the place. The bottom line is that fat is used for storing extra glucose. The function of protein in nutrition is very interesting. If you don't get enough, then your body will cannibalize muscles to get it. Proteins can be broken down to provide glucose, but it's inefficient and generates toxins. Carbohydrates break down to glucose much better. I would suggest you try a conventional approach : Checkout nutritiondata.com or one of the numerous calculators and for your weight and height calculate your daily needs. Pay particular attention to the grams of fiber needed and setup a plan that leads to 1-2lbs of fat loss per week - a deficit of only 500-1000 calories per day. Changing habits faster than that is generally not practical, it certainly never was for me. Make sure you are getting enough protein without overwhelming calories, supplementing with a protein shake if necessary. Try that out for half a year or a year with daily measurements and diet recalculation every 10 lbs lost. Never, ever deviate from the selected diet (you accomplish this by leaving wiggle room in your estimates), weigh yourself daily and keep careful records. I really don't think carb free living is either sustainable or healthy.

[9oliYQjP]

They do work. Thras looks like he was on a form of Protein Sparing Modified Fast. They work really well. I've done the same thing. The tough part about these diets is transitioning out of the diet, but if you follow the "maintenance" modes that most of these diets advocate, you'll be absolutely fine. The promoters of these diets do not advocate these as long term solutions. For people that are > 30% body fat, the longest recommended time to stay on this diet is about 12 weeks before moving to maintenance. For someone whose body fat percentage is less than 30 but greater than 20, the longest recommended time to stay on the diet is 2 to 6 weeks before, again, moving to maintenance. After two weeks on maintenance but not yet reaching the target weight, the person may choose to proceed with the diet or opt for a more moderate one.

Checkout http://bodyrecomposition.com which promotes a form of Protein Sparing Modified Fast that the author has dubbed "Rapid Fat Loss". He is not an advocate of protein shakes on this diet but rather obtaining macronutrients from actual food, because protein shakes are metabolized so quickly that the body feels hungry soon afterward.

[thras]

No no. I just eat a lot of meat, eggs, and cheese. I average 2-3 pounds of rib-eye per day, 6-9 eggs, and 3-6 ounces of cheese.

Googling for calorie information...good god, that's 2900-4500 calories a day. And I'm only 5'10". No modified fast for me. Lost 65 pounds in the last year. Not an amazing result. On the other hand, an amazing result -- on a 3000-4000 calorie diet.

[9oliYQjP]

Ahh I misread your first post. So you went on a 900 calorie diet that wasn't necessarily a protein modified sparing fast. Now, at a macronutrient level you just eat higher protein and fat whilst avoiding carbs.

Are you certain that you didn't have pre-diabetes or some form of insulin resistance before starting your diet? It might be the reason why you feel like crap when having carbs. At a healthy weight, reasonable levels of carbs shouldn't cause you to feel like crap unless you have some underlying condition that's affected by them.

UPDATE: Another thing that can be going on here is that when you lose weight, you don't necessarily get a reduction in fat cells. Normally, fat cells contain 90% triglycerides. When you lose weight, some fat cells release their triglycerides. But they can fill up with water instead (e.g., perhaps the body's adaptation to famine conditions... where there's no food there's likely no water). Your carb intake may have simply been causing you to bloat with water, and some of your fat cells may have been storing this water too. How long did this 10-20 lbs weight gain last? It's not abnormal to gain 10-20 lbs after losing such a substantial amount of weight because some of that weight lost will have been water-weight.

[thras]

The weight gain lasted from when I was 170 pounds until I was 305. I had to stop running when I hit 240 or so.

At 305, I was still 30 pounds under my max...but something tells me it wasn't water weight.

[keefe]

no it wasn't water weight, it was the net result of eating approximately 470,000 calories beyond what you burned

[thras]

It did work. I lost the weight.

Pay attention to fiber? The research in support of that suggestion is execrable (pun intended).

I did try the 500-1000 calorie deficit for a number of months. My weight loss was on the order of 5-10 pounds, and I was hungry the entire time. And then I gained the weight back and more when I wasn't able to carry through. People simply do not lose large amounts of weight on small deficits. It's bizarre. According to the trash bin theory of body fat it should work. It doesn't. Almost like the trash bin theory is wrong...

The carb free living is sustainable and healthy. If you aren't going to read Taubes, then at least read Victor Steffansson. He's a bit more fun.

[keefe]

the point of paying attention to fiber is that if you get your daily needs in fiber, you'll have eaten so many vegetables that your tastes regarding carbs will change. Your belly will also be full, which cuts down on the feeling of hunger.

People do lose large amounts of weight on small deficits, get serious!! It just takes a while. I personally dropped nearly 40 lbs this way and large people can also certainly do this - go ask a nutritionist. Of course you were hungry all the time, your body was down regulating. You are sitting here attacking a theory immediately after admitting that you could not maintain the 500-1000 calorie deficit? That has nothing to do with the theory! You chose to eat more, you gained weight again - if you had maintained your discipline, you would not have gained the weight back.

I've researched the carb-free diet in detail and my conclusion is carbohydrates play an important role in human nutrition and it is very unwise to cut them out. We evolved to run off a particular type of fuel, continue with this diet for a couple more years and then consequences will become apparent. There is a wide variety of material from credible mainstream nutrition researchers on this. The healthy thing to do is to make sure your nutrients are handled in a balanced way and then slowly burn off fat and actually maintain discipline for years. This book has a lot of good info : http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Well-Optimum-Health-Essential/d...

[9oliYQjP]

Slow and steady works. Rapid and fast works also. Different tactics are needed for the different strategies. Your hunch that carbohydrates are important is indeed correct. The protein sparing modified fast that I was on, as outlined over at http://bodyrecomposition.com suggests strategic re-feeds incorporating starchy carbs once you get do more reasonable body fat percentages (e.g., under 30% for males). Lyle McDonald, the author of the site, is one of my favourite experts in physiology because he takes a hacker-like approach by researching studies, skeptically reviewing them, and then testing strategies that he thinks will work. If you peruse his forums you'll find all sorts of people, from athletes and bodybuilders to morbidly obese who have successfully adopted strategies that he has advocated (not necessarily devised).

In fact, Lyle starts off his book on Rapid Fat Loss (his PSMF) by specifically stating that if you can go the slow and steady route, then do so. It's certainly healthier and carries fewer risks. But some people can't or won't, for whatever reason, go slow and steady at losing weight. For them, it's much better to have lost the weight rapidly than carry it around having never lost it. For people like this, he suggests his form of PSMF.

[keefe]

I'm not necessarily against doing it quickly, but I see that as orthogonal to the protein/carbohydrate mix in the diet. As I see it, Person A currently has an average calorie intake of C, burns C' calories a day and requires P grams of protein and F grams of fiber. I would contend that it if you construct a diet plan with D<C' calories, then you will receive more favorable results with a proper diet that covers protein and intakes proper amounts of fiber and carbs and micronutrients. For me, this is a very vegetable heavy diet with daily protein supplements (I prefer brown rice protein + orange juice, to which you may add active culture yogurt)

[gruseom]

The research in support of that suggestion is execrable (pun intended).

It's not really a pun. "Execrate" and "excrete" aren't related. (Sorry for the distraction; I find these things interesting.)

[_pius]

It is a homophonic pun.

The associated Wikipedia article is pretty fascinating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pun

[gruseom]

Execrate and excrete are not homophones. But yes, that is a good Wikipedia article.

[yummyfajitas]

You should be very careful on carb restriction. It can cause acid levels to build up in your blood which can be exceedingly dangerous. One side effect: the acids can crystalize in your bloodstream and collect at your joints. In short, you get gout/pseudogout/other gout-like conditions (depending on the exact composition of the crystals).

I know someone who did this; she was bedridden for a month and couldn't turn her head for 2 months.

[ahoyhere]

There is a very important book you should read called _Life Without Bread_. It was that book that showed how excessive carbohydrates causes gout, and how that led my husband (who has gout at 30 b.c. of an immuneoresponsive issue) to cure his gout with low-carbohydrate diet.

Now -- anybody who does "no carb" is making a big mistake. Vegetables, and legumes, etc., are a very critical part of the diet. They provide so much more than carbohydrates, such as fiber and necessary acids.

And sometimes shit just freaks out. Like me, I have "steroid psychosis" type responses to very low levels of non-oral steroids. Sometimes you just have to accept that you're a freaky outlier. Plural of anecodate is not data, sadly, either way.

[thras]

I've actually never heard of hyperuricemia being caused by carbohydrate restriction. Nobody seems to list it in the standard "drink your Coke, low-carb kills" list of warnings, either.

Anyway, here's Taubes on Gout: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/10/05/gout/

[FreeRadical]

Just out of interest, have you had any tiredness from cutting carbs from your diet? Many people on who restrict carbs, such as on the Atkins diet, experience this from what I've read.

[elblanco]

I tried a regulated vegetarian diet before and a diet like the Atkins diet before and experienced the following:

Veggies)

Bad:

-I typically felt kinda "blah", like I was on the verge of getting a cold

-generally low on energy

-injuries took forever to heal

-my joints ached after being on the diet for about 6 months

-I felt hungry almost immediately after eating

-I lost much less weight than on Atkins

Good:

-It's hard to describe, but I felt "clean" all the time. Like I had just taken a shower.

-I also tended to feel light, like moving about took less energy, but I felt like I had less energy overall

Atkins)

Bad:

-I felt kinda "gross" all the time, like oil was oozing from my pores and follicles.

-Expensive

-Most of the foods I wanted to eat were not on the approved list, and I got tired of eating on the diet after about 6 months

-I felt hungry all the time

-Hair and nails grew really fast...like freakishly so. I was cutting my finger nails like every 2 days at one point.

-I felt "heavy"

Good:

-I had super, non-stop, bottomless energy

-no midday loss of energy

-I could exercise for hours

-I lost tons more weight than on the veggie diet (about 3x as much in the same amount of time)

-Injuries healed super fast, maybe twice as fast as normal, and I got injured far less often than on the veggie diet, maybe 1:3 ratio

-I felt stronger, so even if I felt heavier, it was less effort to move about

-I packed on muscle, my bench press (without actually doing any weight lifting as a form of exercise) went from 140 to 210 in 6 months.

[9oliYQjP]

There's a tiredness and "brain fade" associated with these sort of diets. I'm not so sure it's the carb cutting so much as it is the extreme calorie restriction. I used a protein sparing modified fast (which Atkins is a form of) that advocated supplementing sodium and potassium along with essential fatty acids using fish oil (it was a low fat and low carb diet). I've tried Atkins before and experienced the tiredness/brain fade. The PSMF I was on though caused me none of these symptoms. In fact, I felt precisely the opposite. During the diet, I experienced a form of mild euphoria.

[travisp]

Personally, I found I actually have more energy -- which I think is from more stable blood sugar levels.

[thras]

No tiredness for me. There's the "induction flu" that people on Atkins get, and I felt that for the first few weeks. Apparently it's caused by sodium depletion (carbohydrates cause you to retain a lot of water/salt). Drinking non-sodium-reduced beef broth every day for that month will cure you. Wish I had known. I just toughed it out.

As far as my energy levels nowadays...pretty much boundless. I'm ravenously hungry when I don't eat. But I'm told that's how it's supposed to work. When I was fat, I was hungry around the clock, even after eating.

[gojomo]

Can you recommend any sources for more details about this 'beef broth' fix for induction discomfort? (Would other sodium replenishment options be just as good?)

[rjurney]

Without steak (protein and extra calories), steroids don't work - so yeah, you're doing the cheapest way to build muscle ;)

[jodrellblank]

Would you say more specifically what you cut from your diet, and what you retained? You don't only eat steak, do you?

[ams6110]

Last time I lost significant (for me) weight (220 down to 180) I did it by cutting carbs. I did not eat only meat, but I did cut out all bread, other starchy food, sweet fruits, and sugars. So I ate meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, and green vegetables like broccoli, spinach, and legumes. I missed bread, because I love good home-baked bread, but you can have enough variety with other foods to keep a low-carb diet from getting boring. Atkins says to cut coffee and diet soda but I didn't do that. I did not exercise beyond normal daily activities.

[elai]

How about beans (like kidney beans)? Or are they too starchy?