LessLiz, I love your new avatar! Where'd you get it?

By the way, I see a lot of people talking about nuts stalling their weight loss or being addictive. I think it is simpler than that. I think nuts are simply compact and easy to overeat. We're used to seeing large mounds of food on our plates adding up to 400+ calories, but nuts can give you that much in a handful. I eat a lot of nuts, but never without putting them on my digital scale. I always carefully weigh and account for them in my daily calorie/carb count. I never eat nuts right out of the can ad libitum.

Calories do count. No one, not Taubes, not Atkins, no one ever said that calories are irrelevant. I think it just seems that way when you are in the early stages of losing a lot of weight, since you really need a lot of calories to maintain a large body mass, and suppressing the fat-storing insulin allows your metabolism to begin tapping the existing fat stores for some of those calories.


I understand that carbs raise blood sugar which raises insulin which stores fat. All of that is a large part of the weight loss or gain equation. But taking in more energy than we need to expend is still part of that equation as well. In my experience, I can easily eat as much fat as my body needs to function during the day and thus spare all of my stored fat to be used another time. If I want to use/reduce that stored fat I have to deny my body some dietary fat and force it to go to the stores.