[c1u]

Almonds are mostly fat, and not very satiating either.

I've done the paleo/lowcarb fad diets too. They just trick you into eating fewer calories by forbidding most of the food you ate before the diet. Not to mention some versions of these diets are based on incorrect understanding of human physiology. For example, despite what the paleotards will tell you, carbs are very rarely converted into body fat. But when you eat any food in excess of TDEE, the dietary fat you eat is stored instead of used as fuel. Even if you eat zero carbs, if you eat more than your TDEE, you will gain fat.

[rayiner]

You can't underestimate the psychological importance of tricking yourself into eating fewer calories. Carbohydrates are very calorie dense, and high-carb foods are usually psychologically less satisfying than foods you would eat on a ketogenic diet. A plain bagel has about as many calories as a 7 oz new york strip. Which would you rather have for lunch?

[kafkaesque]

It depends.

I'm assuming you are not a mid or long distance runner, though.

If you talk to many runners, myself included, we really do crave carbs. Because our bodies need it for the distance we're running.

As a mid-distance runner, proteins are good, but I use them up as energy very, very fast (even when I'm not running), so I get hungry faster if I only eat protein.

IMHO and from my personal experience, of course.

[rayiner]

Yes, it does depend. That said, I think the intersection of the set of people looking to lose weight and the set of medium/long-distance runners is nearly nil...

I think for your typical person, who is typically somewhat overweight, low-carb and ketogenic diets are a good way to go. People tend to eat what they grew up eating, and western cuisine is the product of historical contexts in which grain was cheap and meat/fat was expensive. A lot of typical food is thus based on flavoring-up bland bread with spare amounts of flavorful meat and fat. But that's not really relevant to people these days. You can get a lot of the flavor and filling quality of meat and fat without the extra calories from the carbs.

E.g. most of the calories in a fajita comes from the tortilla. Most people on a diet might cut net calories by eating half a fajita. Now they're just hungry. I'd rather eat an extra-big portion of the filling out of fajita, maybe with some cheese crumbled on top, and cut calories by getting rid of the least flavorful part of the meal. Again, this won't work for everyone, but I think it's a good "go to" default for typical people.

[MatthewPhillips]

Most diets are based on tricking you to eat fewer calories. Eating fewer calories is the only real proven way to lose weight. So-called "fad" diets just give you a strategy so you don't feel like you're starving yourself. Some people are successful with brute-force calorie cutting, or strict calorie watching, but there's nothing wrong with following a plan either, even if it is a "fad".

[c1u]

Agreed! I enjoyed eating paleo/low-carb for a while, but now I eat IIFYM and get the same or better results, because no food is off limits If It Fits My Macros. :)

In the end ALL diets work, but the best diet is the one you can stick with.

[kjackson2012]

"carbs are very rarely converted into body fat".

Yeah, you probably need to brush up on your biochemistry before you make statements like this.

[c1u]

Here's the explanation from an expert - http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.htm...

"Carbohydrates are rarely converted to fat (a process called de novo lipogenesis) under normal dietary conditions. There are exceptions when this occurs. One is with massive chronic overfeeding of carbs. I’m talking 700-900 grams of carbs per day for multiple days. Under those conditions, carbs max out glycogen stores, are in excess of total daily energy requirements and you see the conversion of carbohydrate to fat for storage. But this is not a normal dietary situation for most people."

[kjackson2012]

A basic text on biochemistry will educate you more than this "expert". You really should educate yourself properly instead of following random web sites that confirm your own biases.

Carbohydrates ARE converted to fat under normal dietary conditions, via insulin. If this metabolic process was "rare" as he states, then diabetics that require insulin injections wouldn't need them often.

I don't know where this "expert" is getting his information from, but it's a basic human biochemical reaction to form fat from blood glucose, via insulin.

[BlackJack]

Insulin does not cause the body to convert glucose into fat. That process is known as 'de novo lipogenesis', and Lyle is correct that it is very rare.

From a high level perspective, I agree that insulin causes the body to burn blood glucose for fuel. The extra "carbs" don't get magically converted to fat though - they're used to replenish muscle glycogen and perform other actions. It is the dietary fat ingested alongside carbohydrates that gets stored as fat in the body.

Here's a quick summary: http://examine.com/faq/how-are-carbohydrates-converted-into-....

Note: I am not an advocate of ketogenic or otherwise low carb diets. I think a calorie deficit and adequate protein intake is all that you need to lose fat. No diet can work without some sort of calorie deficit, either explicitly or indirectly induced.

[papsosouid]

>A basic text on biochemistry will educate you more than this "expert"

No, it will confirm what he said and that you are mistaken. You should try opening one and skimming through it before believing it will always support your assertions, regardless of their lack of factual basis.

[rb2k_]

> They just trick you into eating fewer calories by forbidding most of the food you ate before the diet.

I eat more calories than before judging by the amounts of meat/butter/nuts that I eat. I lost 15 kilos in body weight accompanied by a 5% reduction in body fat (-> gained muscle).

So at least on a personal level, I can really not confirm this.

An interesting article backing the low-carb high-fat diets that has links to the matching double blind studies: http://authoritynutrition.com/11-biggest-lies-of-mainstream-...

[brown9-2]

Are you also exercising more than before the diet? If so, it's an uneven comparison.

[rb2k_]

Not initially. This process was over 15 months or so and for the first 4-5 I didn't change my exercise routine.

[papsosouid]

>I eat more calories than before judging by the amounts of meat/butter/nuts that I eat.

So, judging by guessing. That is not how you judge. Measure your food and see how many calories you actually consume. It is fewer.

>An interesting article backing the low-carb high-fat diets that has links to the matching double blind studies

Which confirm that the people who successfully lose weight on low carb diets do so by caloric reduction. Might want to pay attention when posting sources that contradict you.

[rb2k_]

I can't find any of the points saying that low-carb diets restrict calories. The points mentioning calories are those:

"Every randomized controlled trial on low-carb diets shows that they:

- Reduce body fat more than calorie-restricted low-fat diets, even though the low-carb dieters are allowed to eat as much as they want (41, 42).

[...]

- Low carb diets are also easier to stick to, probably because they don’t require you to restrict calories and be hungry all the time. More people in the low-carb groups make it to the end of the studies "

[papsosouid]

Read the studies, not the random guy summarizing them as misleadingly as possible to suit his agenda.

[c1u]

When you eat low-carb, your body depletes your glycogen stores (if you go as far as keto, you're emptying the glycogen and switching your metabolism to run on ketones). Every gram of glycogen is stored with 3-4g water. When one goes low-carb (especially coming from a high-carb diet) they will loose a LOT of weight quickly, but most of this is water weight, not body fat.

[rb2k_]

This progress was over 15+ months. I think by now the water weight should be gone ;) Also, as mentioned, I lost quite a bit of body fat too.

[_delirium]

I found cutting out nuts to actually be one of the more effective ways of losing weight. I previously snacked on nuts way too much throughout the day, which ended up being as many calories in aggregate as some of my meals. That oil+salt combo is addictive, at least for me.

[driverdan]

Not entirely true. High protein diets allow you to eat more calories because the thermal effect of digesting protein results in a loss of 25% calories (of protein).

[c1u]

Yep. But even though almonds are ~20% protein, they are also ~50% fat. It's not the best protein source by a long shot.

While the TEF of protein does reduce it's net caloric contribution by about 25%, that doesn't matter if you eat in excess of TDEE, which will result in weight gain regardless of the kind of foods eaten. Upping protein to reduce hunger works really well, but there are better foods than almonds to do this (cottage cheese, meat, fish, whey protein, etc).

[driverdan]

Absolutely, but I wasn't talking about TDEE.

[juliano_q]

Almonds are probably the most satiating food that I know. I eat a few of them and I am satiated for hours.

[redidas]

What is a paleotard? Genuinely interested.

[c1u]

It's just a term one of the nutrition experts I follow, Alan Aragon has used to describe people who blindly follow the paleo diet. Not that paleo is all bad, but there a lot of people who get it very wrong.

[analog]

There's a little more to it than that. When you're in a ketonic state your body burns stored fat rather than carbs. [1]

For example for me, normally on a 2 hour bike ride (@ ~120bpm) I would need to drink ~2.5 bottles of glucose drink to keep my blood sugar levels high enough. When I'm on a keto diet I'll only need 0.5 bottles of glucose drink during the ride to stave off the knock. [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketosis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_the_wall

[mogrim]

I'm surprised you need to eat anything at all on a short ride like that, at such a low BPM, and certainly nothing like 2.5 bottles of glucose! Just water to avoid dehydration should be enough.

I doubt the diet has anything to do with it. (In this case anyhow... certainly nutrition is critical for harder efforts).

[analog]

A short bike ride that burns about 1250 kcal, which is another 50% on top of my normal daily requirements. So not that surprising that I'd need to take in 450 kcal really.

[mogrim]

Certainly burns calories which you'll need to make up at some point, but it's a fairly short ride and I doubt you'd hit the wall if you didn't eat anything. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat it, everyone's body is different, and if I were in a 2hr race I'd probably be eating gels etc to guarantee maximal energy availability at all times. I just don't think you need it to be able to get round without running into trouble.

Anecdotal reference point: I go out every weekend with 3 friends, we do minimum 3.5 hours riding time in the local mountains, and the most any of us eat is something like a cereal bar and a banana. I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times any of us have bonked in the past 5 years...

[analog]

I cycled competitively in my teens, and got a few ok results in my speciality (hill climb) at a national level, but not good enough to want to take it any further. Some of the friends I trained with went pro.

I trained 400 - 500 miles per week, riding anywhere from 10 to 140 miles per session. I'm 40 now and still cycle but just for pleasure and getting around now, slower than I was before but riding centuries is still no problem.

In short, I know exactly what the knock feels like.

I expect you are carb loading either the day before or in the morning before your rides, and that could easily give you enough stored glycogen to see you through a 2 hour ride.

I however was cycling to burn off fat that I'd built up during a few months of strength training, so the last thing I'm going to do is gorge on pasta the night before.