I wasn't endorsing WLS, I'm just intrigued by why it works, beyond the obvious. Yes, some people regain weight, but some people don't. So we can't make blanket statements. It would be interesting to have a study where volunteers who wish to have WLS are compared with volunteers who want to try a low-carb approach. I noticed that people who undergo WLS end up pretty much following a low-carb diet. If that is the only factor at work, then the two approaches would produce similar weight loss. But I also suspect that the resulting induced malabsorption causes people who had the surgery to lose more weight than those who are simply trying to diet.

Too bad no one is looking at this (that I know of). I'd love to see some long term studies on this surgery.

P.S. Thanks for the confirmation Natasha

"However, here's a black swan to your theory. If that is true, why do people who undergo gastric bypass surgery usually achieve a more or less normal weight ?"

Who are these people exactly? I know exactly two people who achieved this - one was not really obese to begin with and lost 30 pounds. The other one just committed suicide before reaching the age of 30 (RIP my good man). Everyone else I have met or been told of never even got out of the "obese" BMI range.

Well I don't know anyone personally who has undergone gastric bypass. But I've heard of people, here in the forums. It just seems to be my impression that a lot of people who get WLS achieve a near normal weight. Otherwise what would be the point.


I did a quick search and found this one study

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12410135



I don't know if that's an average. But if you lose 70% of your excess weight, that puts you pretty close to normal. I have no idea though, what percentage of people regain all or some of the weight they lost.

And I have to gasp at the person who underwent WLS for 30 lbs.

"I don't know if that's an average. But if you lose 70% of your excess weight, that puts you pretty close to normal. I have no idea though, what percentage of people regain all or some of the weight they lost.

And I have to gasp at the person who underwent WLS for 30 lbs."

I think you overestimate what 70% can do for a person's BMI and physique. If you look at my stats, you will see that I have lost 67% of my goal loss. I was certainly someone who would not be sneezed at if I showed up wanting WLS, but most people who take that step are probably much bigger than I was at my highest weight. I am still 20 pounds away from getting out of the "obese" BMI range with that 67% gone.

At some point I get curious about excercise. I just finished GCBC and loved it. I remember Gary's Chapter on excercising more leads to more hunger and that the whole cals in vs cals out has been slightly misinterpreted, and think its really interesting...then I think. Assume a person is eating low carb 20-60 grams a day and doing everything else right...water, sleep, meditation. What else is there possibly left but excercise. I think, and this is just an opinion, that in addition to the diet stuff I mention above that one ALSO needs to excercise to the body that they want. If the person wants to look like a football player, ninja, or librarian then they gotta act like one. If all that doesn't work then a person is bascally screwed, so move on. Screwed in the sense that they won't look like their favorite celeb or ninja. I'd like to know how many people who have been eating low carb without monitoring calories list some weight then hit a loss plateau decided to do P90X while continueing to eat low carb without monitoring cals and did not have any success. Even with the Tuaubes thing in mind it would just seem weird for this person to not improve their body composition. sigh...then again I can see how its all hormonally driven...is there any good books/trusted research on the affect on weightloss hormones from excercise?

I cannot believe that the reply to my valid point about muscle weighing more than fat was 'nitpicking'! When one says something weighs more than something else, obviously one means per volume or size. Obviously a pound is a pound! Aaarrrggghhhhhh

Darn it! I know it's not impossible for me to lose weight. I re-started Atkins induction in January. By Feb 12th I had lost 16 lbs. At that point I stuck for several months. So it's not like it's impossible, but I don't know how to continue losing.

Has anyone here, especially someone who has been stuck for a while, tried cutting out artificial sweeteners? I'm thinking maybe all the sweetened coffee and tea I drink all day keeps my insulin levels up.

There have been studies on AS that show rats have a higher expectant insulin response and more weight gain. Here's one of the studies.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/st...=4271246&page=1

Just to chime in on the WLS debate...

I happened to see this last year and just found it again. These ladies have all had WLS and, as you can see from the pictures, they are by no means super-slim now. Having a gastric bypass can lead to all sorts of health complications as the gut is no longer able to absorb nutrients so well (seeing as some of it has been chopped out, it's kind of obvious).

You can see the ladies for yourselves at this link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...st-lighter.html

Earlier this year I was looking into copper deficiency and found a whole bunch of articles about people who had become seriously deficient in copper due to their gastric bypasses. The stories were quite horrific.

One of them is here:

http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/19/2/191

And this is just the list of articles that came up on the Google search I did:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=e...l=&oq=&gs_rfai=

I bet they don't tell people about this when they are waving the scalpel in the air...

amanda

Hi Debbie,

If adding in carbs has such a negative effect on your blood sugar, I totally understand your reluctance to eat them on a regular basis in more than the smallest amounts. However, this guy - "cajunboy47" - who has been posting on this forum for a good while - seems to have reversed his diabetes and can now eat carbs in goodly portions with no blood sugar problems.

Of course, he is a 63yo man with a different profile to you, but, nonetheless, his experience is interesting. He once had to be very careful about his carb intake, but, now, after following his Chinese wife's advice about food and health in general, he is now able to eat a lot more carbs than he used to.

You can read his story here:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=416734

amanda

Reading a few of the comments on that Daily Mail article reminded me of why I do not discuss nutrition outside lowcarb or paleo circles of people:

It is staggering how profoundly ignorant-with-volume people are about nutrition, including alleged experts.

PJ

I've tried it. Twice. Didn't work for me.

I ran across a thread by cajunboy while researching a supplement called berberine. He was taking it for something else and found that his blood glucose went way down.

I started taking berberine a week and a half ago. Unfortunately I'm not diabetic and don't measure my blood sugar, so I don't know if it's helped there. [Hmmm... just re-read this and can't believe I started a sentence with the words "Unfortunately I'm not diabetic..." ]

I picked up on berberine as being helpful in raising adiponectin, a hormone which is higher in the blood of lean people than obese. I seem to remember reading that obese rats given adiponectin for six weeks lost weight, but now I can't find that research.

Apparently berberine is helpful with a wide range of things, including inflammation and diabetes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berberine

Yea, I always read the comments and always end up in a bad mood. Sometimes you see a poster trying to correct the misinformation, but they're swimming against the current.

I presume that dieters who are following a HIGH carb regimen would be stuffing up on lots of vegetables, right?

Does Gary Taubes literally believe fructose-filled vegetables to be the "right carbs"?