Can you get it in your thick heads that Low Carb diets do work, and that Low calorie diets work too?

Why do you think that you have to berate the other method to prove your method superior.

Thousands of *individuals* have lost weight on low carb diets
Thousands of *individuals* have lost weight on low calorie/low fat diets.

Can we just recognize the individual factor and stop berating other plans?

*shrug* im pretty flexible and nothin against (nor berate) both diets (or woe) whichever works whether for weight loss or long term health ---> is fine with me

If low calorie/ low fat diets worked, why is there an obesity/ diabetes epidemic?

I think that there are SOME people for whom a low fat, low calorie diet is best; but I think for the majority of overweight individuals, a reduction of carbohydrates, particularly processed foods and sugars, is the very best way to attain and maintain health.

Disease and obesity have risen in the Western World as processed carbohydrates and sugar consumption has risen. We need to return to a whole foods diet of meats, vegetables and fruits. This naturally is going to be a lower carbohydrate diet than the Western norm.

...and suffered from diabetes-related disorders (including myocardial infarction), and have been hungry, irratable and lethargic because of these diets. All problems low-carb dieters rarely face. Being thin does not necessarily make one healthy.

Well gee Wildcard we wouldn't want to be responsible for you getting "really mad"

Of course you can lose weight on a low fat diet. You can also lose weight if you don't eat at all. The point is that in order for me to lose more than 50 pounds on a low fat plan I had too eat so little I was almost constantly hungry. And to keep that weight off I had to give up more and more foods forever. After two years of that is there any wonder the weight started to return? The huge difference with low carb is that I don't have to go hungry, I can eat just about all the foods I want, I don't have to count calories and I feel much better than I ever did on the low fat starvation plan. This is a way of life which is easy and makes you feel great so why would you ever even want to go back?

I have seen both sides of this debate up close. If you mean they both work in that you can lose some weight short term - sure they do. But if you are one of the many people who is predisposed to gain weight, and you want to be happy , healthy and slim for the rest of your life ... there is only one plan for that "works".

Cheers,

Malcolm

Let's just suppose we lose the same amount of weight on both plans. But what are the consequences of weight loss on both plans?

Low-fat-high carb: muscle loss, hair loss, diabetes, hunger, irritability, cancer, depression, and other diseases of modern man

Low-carb: health, vitality, energy and the elimination or lessening of diseases of modern man.

So what are you trying to say here Wildcard? Why defend low-fat? This is a low-carb forum.

I agree that low fat diets work. I previously lost down to 120 lbs eating low fat. There were a few problems with it though -- first, I had to brainwash myself into believing that a growling stomach meant that I was losing weight and was a good thing. OK, not too bad, after all I don't believe growling stomachs ever killed anyone outright. I could deal with being hungry all the time.
The second problem, however, could kill. I have familial high cholesterol. And my lipid ratio sucked. Since I've put fat back into my diet and the carbs out, my lipid profile has vastly improved. Just look at the data in my signature.


So I think I'll stick to this WOE.

Everyone's body chemistry is different, therefore, what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. I lived the low-fat, low-cal life for years, all I did was gain weight. I now do low-carb, it works for me and that's great. What I don't enjoy is having to defend my eating choices and WOL to people who have no knowledge and tout the disadvantages of low-carbing because of ill-received information, bad news articles, misinformed food manufacturers, etc...........

LL

I agree that both plans can work, depending on the person. I guess for me what it all comes down to is finding an eating style that I can live with. I have be low carbing for over a year now, and find it very easy to do so. But I never personally have been able to get much past 6 weeks when trying to go low fat.

Of course low fat works, for those who can stick with it. The same goes for low carb. Both eating styles have their success stories and the failures. And I would never be one to tell a person what their eating style should be. By the same token, I do not want people preaching to me about my eating style.

You left out lowcarb ailments...constipation, leg cramps, dizziness, kidney stones, mood swings, hair loss, nd many other things discused in the forums here.

I have not suffered from any of the above as you called them "ailments" while low-carbing. Dizziness, mood swings and constipation may appear in the first couple of days as you are withdrawing from carbs but are not a disease of modern man. Besides, constipation is an individual thing and is not exclusively a low-carb phenomenon. Hair loss seems to appear in most males at some point in their life and some women. Kidney stones are not experienced by low-carbers exclusively. Leg cramps strike people of all ages and diet types. I experienced leg cramps while pregnant. I was not low-carbing at the time. I have not experienced them since.

I agree; not *everyone* is overweight because of a problem with insulin resistance/carbohydrate intolerance and I think we need to recognize that fact. When I first found low carb I was totally a preacher of the church of Atkins. As far as I was concerned, obesity was caused by carbs and the way to cure obesity was by restricting carbs -- for all people. The reason I felt this way was because upon limiting glycemic load I improved soooo much that it was hard for me to see past my subjective experiences and realize that not everyone else has the same problem I did (with insulin resistance), and therefore not everyone will have the same recovery (with low carb).

Everyone in my house went on Atkins for awhile - my little sister who is insulin resistant with PCOS, but only modestly overweight (small amount of insulin resistance-related fat like a belly and neck/shoulder fat, but her arms and legs are thin as pins), my other sister who about 10 lbs overweight and a major carb & caffeine addict (but doesn't appear to suffer from insulin resistance), and my mom who is really fancies sweets and about 70 pounds overweight. Their results?

-Mom claims her hunger is diminished on Atkins, which is good and to be expected, however she doesn't experience the easy losses that I did when I first started. To me this implies that she really wasn't and isn't all that insulin resistant, because if she was going on Atkins would take pressure off the resistance by omitting rapidly broken down food. This would have allowed her to become hypoinsulinemic effortlessly (at least in the beginning it should) without needing a big consciously made caloric deficit, thus allowing weight loss. Mom lost only 5 pounds in a month, this includes induction water loss. She does much better when restricting calories, and won't lose unless she restricts them.

-My carb addict sister has had the weirdest experience with Atkins that I've ever heard. She gets HUNGRIER when she's not on carbs... several weeks into the program she still had this huge appetite. Eating things like jelly beans and smarties and sweet tarts and marshmallows (she likes the pure sugar low fat candies) actually suppress appetite for her, whereas she claims very low carb food doesn't tide her over. She lost I think a total of 10 lbs, but again losses are very slow for her, partly because on Atkins she eats way more food. Like my mom, my sister does best when restricting calories. However my sister has an additional quirk in that restricted calorie + moderate-highish carbs seem to be best for her.

-My insulin-resistant sister, unsurprisingly, has done the best with the diet. Her IR fat is melting off, her tummy/neck is much smaller now and I believe her PCOS symptoms are improved. Atkins as written seems to work for her like it does me.

Seeing all the very different responses from my family members has demonstrated to me that low carb is not the answer for everyone. Seeing this first hand has really helped me become open minded to the individual nature of diet. If you are insulin resistant, like me and my sister, than LC or moderate carb is obviously at least part of the answer to managing weight. However for someone like my mom and my sister, LC doesn't seem to offer them much of an advantage. They do better with focusing on the calories mainly and don't really need to worry much about carbs because they don't have the same type or degree of metabolic problems that the insulin resistant do.

I just want to say that I have experienced dizziness on very low carbohydrate levels. All her other symptoms I have not experienced, except for hair loss but that is to be expected when one loses a vast amount of weight with *any* diet.

The dizziness is a unique symptom of carb restriction though, I think. It is a symptom of both low blood pressure and low blood sugar, both of which one runs the risk of on a low carb diet. The low blood pressure happens because if you do very very low carb you might not take in enough potassium to regulate fluid pressure, thus resulting in the low blood pressure. This is very common on induction level carbs, unless one is *very good* about making sure they choose high-potassium food.

Low blood sugar is a different ball of wax. For a normal person, they won't become hypoglycemic with carb restriction because their insulin levels always match the energy in their bodies. The only kind of hypoglycemia a normal person can have is reactive hypoglycemia, and normal people as a rule only experience reactive hypoglycemia by eating ridiculously simple food (like a large quantity of white bread with nothing on it, for example). On LC you can't have "normal" reactive hypoglycemia so low blood sugar isn't really a problem for metabolically normal people. However, for someone with insulin problems & a tendency towards hyperinsulinemia (such as myself), very very low carbs can cause a hypoglycemic episode depending on numerous factors (i.e. inadvertently consuming slightly highish intake of carbs at the previous meal, caffeine consumption, etc all can trigger spikes which result in lows later on).

Before I type any other replies I just want to say I am defending low carbs. I dont like people coming on here and bashing low carb. This is a forum for low carb bashing, so I came here to bash the bashers, but I am also telling you low carbers that low cal/low can lead to sustained weight loss. I see it every day.