The futile cycle thing makes sense to me, and accounts for effects I've seen in myself. I used to always be freezing my ass off all the time and would have to cuddle up to people for warmth. Now *I* am the warm one. It's a very nice change.

I think to simplify it... we have these processes in the body that convert A to B, like fatty acids to triglycerides and B to A. If the body just plays ping pong with itself and converts one to the other and back again, it wastes energy in the process.

Did you ever eat a REALLY huge meal and feel much warmer afterwards? I think that's an example of your body attempting to get rid of some of the excess energy.

Thanks - the Eade's article was very good btw. I should be feeling the effects of this very soon. So far I'm just cold. (Arctic cold front coming through our area today.)

Absolutely. But I think weight loss battlers have a tendency to think that because a metabolic process doesn't result in bodyfat gain (in this case futile cycles) then it is inherently healthy. I think this is a mistake. And although the 'warming' factor is gratifying, it hardly indicates healthiness either.

The bottom line seems to be that eating and digestion (even of healthy low carb food) is inherently inflammatory and oxidizing. The less we do of it while maintaining optimum body comp/health/energy, the better for health/ longevity/functionality. Bodyfat gain or lack of it is important to people who store fat easily, but it hardly means that consuming more fat than your energy needs is healthy.

Stuart

Well, I'm aiming for a balance ultimately, as are most people who have weight to lose. And that would be ingesting no more calories than I expend. It seems like interpretation of calories is relative, or a sliding scale depending on the type of calories eaten; I have no fear of tricking my body into losing weight, with the goal of long-term balance. But then again, I've failed in the past, so what WTF do I know, right Stuart?

Proteus, I think that the metabolic processes involved in not storing excess (to energy requirements) calories as bodyfat are quite distinct from the process of mobilizing bodyfat to be used as energy when the other more easily available sources like dietary carbs or fats are exhausted. In other words, not gaining (maintaining) is a very different kettle of metabolic fish from losing. And just because your fat burning enzyme machinery is very well oiled and operational by eating a low carb diet doesn't mean any bodyfat will get the call if there is dietary fat from your most recent low carb meal available. There is a widespread misconception that if you are burning fat then it will be both bodyfat and dietary fat. This is incorrect. It is very well understood that if any dietary fat (even less likely if dietary carbs or glycogen is available) remains, it will be used before any bodyfat is mobilized.

Nevertheless, and this is a very important qualification, keeping your hormonal environment conducive to fat burning rather than fat storage will mean that excess calories, (ie fat calories - remember, you are eating low carb) will not tend to be stored. So while you may be metabolic light years away from losing an ounce, you are relatively safe from depositing any new bodyfat either.

Futile cycles are probably the major fate of these excess dietary fat calories in the context of a low carb diet. They can't be stored, there isn't enough insulin. Dietary fat doesn't trigger insulin release. But futile cycles don't take any part in bodyfat mobilization. The only reason dietary fat is mobilized at all, ever, is to provide energy. That is, it is needed to keep the fires stoked when a calorie deficit has been established (eg. because you are naturally eating fewer calories on low carb, or even fewer calories on a plainer, less 'moreish' paleo/low carb dietary approach). Perhaps one day human ingenuity will develop a pharmaceutical or 'electrode type' technology to get futile cycles to burn bodyfat, even in the context of a dietary fat calorie surplus). But I wouldn't hold your breath. Most human attempts to modify our metabolism come with a raft of unpleasant side effects.

As JL has been discovering, excess dietary fat calories in the context of a low carb diet won't tend to cause bodyfat gain. But if the bodyfat is already in situ, those same excess dietary fat calories will effectively prevent bodyfat loss.

And I agree, with you, the type of calories is critical, but only insofar as they contribute to either a fat burning or fat storage hormonal environment. Human metabolic calories are the energy that human digestion can extract from food. To a horse, grass has considerable metabolic calories. But to a human, apart from residual simple carbs (both sugar and starch) that same grass is pretty devoid of calories.

To use your parlance Proteus, TF you know (from your own long experience) is that a paleo low carb dietary approach offers you the best chance of acheiving a calorie deficit, and having the fat burning enzyme machinery humming like a well oiled machine ready for that event so that you can burn some existing bodyfat, and when you for some reason consume more energy than you are burning, you won't be storing it as bodyfat.

So futile cycles play a huge role in the fate of excess (fat) calories that aren't (and can't) be stored. Which is a fabulous and very powerful metabolic trick. But they don't (and can't) play any role in bodyfat mobilization.

Stuart

My idea is not to go completely zero carb so that I can "eat as much as I want" and still lose weight, but to trick my metabolism into thinking it's getting fed while moving into a caloric deficit. I think I understand more about the futile cycles now, thanks to you and Nancy. The real part is now up to me -- Can I switch over to near-zero carbs, reduce my calories, and burn more than I ingest?

We'll see.

Well I personally think it's a myth that even consuming absolute zero carbs would allow you to burn bodyfat when you are consuming more (fat) energy than you are burning. The people who report it (I think Regina did recently) are forgetting that on very low carbs on a calorie surplus, they will actually tend to be storing some of those excess calories (as bodyfat)so it's 'new' bodyfat that will need to be burnt first (before net bodyfat loss can occur) when a calorie deficit is established, Which will give the impression that a calorie deficit has occurred at a higher calorie intake, when in reality no such change has occurred.

Anyway, I wish you success in establishing a net calorie deficit over time and having the fatburning enzyme machinery ready for bodyfat burning action when you do. And while not trying to open another can of worms, you wouldn't consider pushing your normal overnight fast by an hour for the next week or two and just watching to see if you tend to eat more in total over the slightly shortened eating 'window'?. If you don't (tend to eat more in total), it would be interesting to see whether the desired 'calorie deficit' would be getting more of a chance to establish for a bit longer each day.

Remember, over any given eating/fasting cycle (and bear in mind that everybody intermittently fasts to some extent every day of their entire lives) you can concievably be in calorie deficit for some proportion of it, and in calorie equilibrium/ surplus for the the rest (ie for however long it takes after food is last consumed for those calories to be consumed). If while you are in calorie surplus you don't tend to store any new bodyfat because you have set up a hormonal environment not conducive to bodyfat storage with a low carb dietary approach, then when whatever time is necessary to exhaust FFa's/ketones from dietary fat has elapsed before you eat again, you will necessarily begin to burn bodyfat.

If OTOH, you eat again before dietary fat (and whatever carbs you have consumed) has been exhausted, your body simply won't bother going after bodyfat. Why would it? It's much more difficult to get bodyfat out of storage than just burn the dietary fat (or carb) that's immediately available.

Stuart

Hmmm. Something to consider.

Kneebrace, you are right, the experiment of high calories high fat almost zero carbs diet only managed to prevent weight gain.

However a very high fat, zero carb and lower calorie diet is called fat fast (am sure you knew this already) its well known that fat fast is the fastest form of losing weight.. however we are always told that fat fast is very dangerous and its only to be used for a few days by metabolically resistant people, not sure why though, perhaps some of you here know? I am not sure if its is also considered dangerous to do a higher calorie fat fast ?

btw: I personally never did the fat fast because I just feel too deprived on around 1000 calories a day all coming from fat.

Sandy, AFAIK the reason the 1000 calorie fat fast is not recommended is that after 48 hrs of not eating adequate protein, your free amino acid pool (supplied by either dietary protein or cellular repair 'junk proteins') will go into deficit, and muscle will necessarily be consumed to make up the shortfall. There is also the pesky problem that a very low carb dietary approach necessitates gluconeogenesis to provide for the obligate glucose burning cells. A fat fast is very low in carbohydrate (as well as very low in protein), so it makes muscle even more in the energy firing line.

In fact the whole idea smacks of metabolic damage to me. Atkins should have just been honest and told people straight out that fast weight loss (particularly for metabolically resistant individuals, which many (though not all, and probably not even a majority) of obese people are, is metabolic insanity, and to go away and stick concientiously to a moderate calorie deficit low carb diet to lose weight gradually and consistently. Not the message fat people who want to shed the pounds and get straight back the carb gravy train want to hear

Stuart

Ok after reading JL53563 experiment I needed to research how the body digest fats... I found the following explanation

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This to me suggests that there may be the following areas where the body is unable to make use of fats
1- Absence of bile substance, if there is no bile there the body can't The dissolve the fat into the watery contents of the intestine, however if that was the case I think JL53563 would have had diarrhoea as well.

2- Absorption of the fatty acids have not been absorbed by the villi in the intestine - again I think if this was it, diarrhoea would happen.

3- The fatty acids were not transported from the lymphatic system into the bloodstream - but would it just sit around in the lymphatic system?

4- Fatty acids were not transported from the bloodstream to the body cells - but then the we'd know from the blood work ( and think JL would have died by now)

5- Fat was transported to the body cells, but all of it was oxidized for energy, non was stored.

I think the majority of the explanations and various theories leans towards the last point, but i.e. because insulin levels are low, cells didn't get triggers to store the fat, just oxidise it... but where does all the energy go??


Please let me know if you think I got the above wrong

Scroll up a bit, it goes into futile cycles. All those ways you mentioned of fat not getting absorbed would cause side-effects like greasy, unexpected bowel movements such as Alli causes.

Thanks Nancy, I have read the other posts futile cycles is just a theory... just wanted to see if there is an evidence to it, or if there is a different explanation.

I think it's worth noting that there were no changes in my bowel movements. No diarrhea. I did not go any more often, nor was the overall quantity increased.

It's generally understood that some increased level of insulin is necessary for excess calories to be stored as fat. But, I also learned something about fat storage from reading Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Body fat is stored in the form of triglycerides. A triglyceride is 3 fatty acid molecules bound together by a glycerol molecule. Here's the interesting part....... Where does the glycerol come from? Well, it turns out that it comes from a molecule known as glycerol phoshpate, which it turns out is a product of glucose metabolism. So it seems to me that for any significant amount of fat to be stored, carbs in the diet would have to be a must.