Low-carb diets get thermodynamic defence

Here, the "experts" are trying to explain the success of the low carb diet in terms of the lipid hypothesis. They are so certain that weight loss has only to do with total calories that they cannot imagine how else the diet might work. They simply cannot fathom the idea: insulin drives fat; carbohydrates drive insulin.

Here's exactly what Gary Taubes was complaining about. He is very certain that obesity is a disorder of overeating and not a disorder of fat accumulation, as Gary Taubes pointed out.

It’s interesting to consider all the prejudices in this statement. If you believe that obesity is a disorder of overeating, then you cannot admit to there being important differences in the way different foods are metabolized. If you believe that calories are the only variable, then there can be no difference between a sugar-burning and a fat-burning metabolism.

Perhaps the strangest thing this expert says is that obesity is not due to a ”small biochemical defect.” Since he believes obesity is a disease, he can only imagine its being caused by a defect. So he identifies insulin’s storing of excess calories as fat while preventing fat metabolism as a metabolic defect, and a small one at that.

But obesity is not a disease, and the action of insulin is not a metabolic defect. It is the normal response of a metabolism dealing with foods for which it is not well adapted.

I think that the reason that the obesity epidemic is so hard to fight is because it is accompanied by an epidemic of certainty.

In Taubes epilogue he states:

5. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation, not overeating, and not sedentary behavior. (p. 454)

He goes into the myths about obesity in great detail in chapter 14 and I found that chapter extremely revealing, particularly the section on the Pima indians. The whole prejudice that intemperance and gluttony is the cause of obesity is one of the most psychologically destructive ideas out there. I was glad to see that myth debunked. Don't get me wrong, though, overindulgence can certainly pack on the pounds, but there is plenty of evidence that it does not determine obesity. I was comforted by that.

I thought it was clear that the referent for "He" in my statement was the speaker cited in the article, not Gary Taubes. Please excuse my momentary grammatical lapse.

Oops, I misread it. I'll leave my post in case somebody wants to refer to Taubes.

I love it when people think they understand thermodynamics because they understand the first law of thermodynamics. The first law is just the first law and thermodynamics is A LOT more complicated than that. In physics quantum mechanics and relativity get the reputation of being complicated to understand. Thermodynamics kicks it old school and trust me it is just as hard as the other two.

The basic idea behind the second law is this: if you throw a bunch of broken pieces of china into the air the odds are that it is not going to turn back into a coffee cup. You could set it up so that it is theoretically possible for it to turn back into a coffee cup but the chances of that happening are the same as the chances of the pieces falling into any other patterns. But since there are billions and billions of combinations that look like random messes, and all combinations are equally likely, you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that the pieces aren't going to turn into something like Michael Angelo's David.

Same thing is true when you are giving energy to a bunch of molecules. Any pattern they take is equally likely so you can pretty much bet that they are just going to go off randomly in all directions. Since temperature is really just a measure of how fast the molecules are randomly moving it is more likely that all that energy is just going to go into heat. Making molecules do what you want is like herding cats. But if you are smart you can set it up so that you can get useful work out of them. However in the end it will be like you are throwing up tons and tons of pieces of china in order to get a couple of coffee cups. In other words you will get useful work out but you will be wasting a lot of energy in the form of heat.

So the first law is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. People sometimes assume that mean a calorie is a calorie. However the second law explicitly says that a calorie IS NOT a calorie. And there is no way to expect that one way of getting useful work out of chemical reactions will be as efficient as any other way.

Nicely put.
I love the laws of therm & quote them for any reason or no reason at all:
1. You can't win
2. You can't break even
3. You can't quit playing



Anyway, yes. There is no particular reason to think that when the body extracts calories for its use from carbs, it gets the same 4 cals/g that is obtained in the lab, or even that it gets the same amount all the time, and likewise for fat or protein.

The deeper issue, from my point of view, is that there isn't any reason to think that the metabolic response to carbs is the same as for fats or proteins, we know for sure it isn't. There isn't any reason to think that the different metabolic responses don't have macro effects either.

If noticed that I feel warmer and dress more lightly since starting LC. Have others noticed this?

I get sick of these guys claiming I'm fat because I'm inactive. I'll try to be nice and not run him down on my rollerblades.

Yes. However, I am feeling quite cold lately. I wear layers now because I'm so cold. "Fleecy things" are my favorite. I don't understand why I'm so cold lately. The outside temps right now are -3F, but our indoor temps are around 67*F. Perhaps while my internal furnaces are burning hotter, it's just so dang cold here that I must shiver to increase body temp? Shivering makes me put on my cozy fleecy things.

So, if the fleecy things are doing their job, then I'm not burning as hot? Or, am I putting on the fleecy things to keep myself hotter? Whatever I'm doing, it's working, as my weight does not fluctuate at all. That is strange, considering it's the middle of "winter food".

I completely disagree with the notion that

Again with the sloth and gluttony. Not true.

The universe tends towards entropy, the "laws of thermodynamics" notwithstanding.

I've been feeling quite the opposite actually. Since losing weight I'm really comfortable in the summer when I used to barely make it through the heavy heat before, and I'm freezing in the (Canadian) winter most days.

Shedding 35-40 pounds of insulating fat is probably more a factor in body warmth than any increased metabolism.

I lost 40 lbs at 1 lb/wk on a low-fat high-carb diet of 1100 calories (felt hungry all the time and gained it back several times), but lost 60 lbs at 1 lb/wk on a high-fat low-carb diet of 1900 calories, and have been maintaining it w/2000 cals/day for 19 months! So the eating less on LC suggestion is certainly not true for me. I can even eat large portions of food while inactive and still lose/maintain nicely - as long as it is VLC food.

When I was low-fat dieting I was always freezing, but I feel warm most of the time now that I eat a lot of fat.