A friend sent me that today. It is kind of funny. The laws of thermodynamics! Rent asunder by low carb!! Well, DUH, maybe you just don't know 100% about everything in the universe, or more to the point, in the human body. Scientists are supposed to be willing to realize that they don't know all the factors sometimes.

But hey, it's a great study to quote to people, isn't it? So when someone says "Well, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie," you can just throw this one at them. Very handy!

I'm so sick of that "calorie is a calorie" thinking. The body isn't a box, where you put things in and they come out unchanged. Perhaps, after the cholesterol fiasco, they will realize it's not GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) when it comes to the human metabolism.

I'd still love to know how many calories' worth of ketones I pee out and breathe out daily...

Just to clarify,the First Law of Thermodynamics states that when a CLOSED system is altered ADIABATICALLY(without heat transfer to/from its surroundings) the total WORK associated with the change of state is the same for all possible proccesses between the two given equilibrium states. Therefore if a gram of carb is burned in an adiabatic chamber(calorimeter) it produces a 4 calorie change of state while a gram of fat produces a 9 calorie change of state. Note that a calorie is a unit of heat energy (work). The problem in transfering this to the human body should be obvious: to begin with we are not closed systems as evidenced by the prevalence of bathrooms and kitchens in our homes and that we evolved on a planet bathed in life supporting fluid(air). Nor are we adiabatic vessels and the very act of digestion unleashes hormonal and metabolic responses that make the process of measuring and accounting for the energy very difficult. That the public continues to be duped by these simple-minded boneheads is incredible!

Thanks for the link. Maybe it will lead to more studys and understanding of LCing.
Rod

My ex's girlfriend told me once that no one was ever going to convince her that the food pyramid was wrong...lol. I let it go because I don't have the ill manners to argue with someone I barely know, but I almost said that a few hundred years ago, there were many people who said that you could never convince them the world wasn't flat either.


L

Satisfying article, thanks for posting it. "Calorie is NOT a calorie" is starting to sink in.

This KILLS me every time I see it:

>>"Maybe the low-carb diets are more satisfying, so they do not get so hungry."

That's the point!!! Is losing weight supposed to be raging hunger and a display of will power? Penance for the sin of gluttony? Gimme a break.

(edit: wow, you guys are really on the ball - four different people posted this article. I merged the threads since they're all about the same article.)

Way to go Haycreek. Maybe you should email this to the author of that absurb statement. Oviously she is in need of a little refresher on First Law of Thermodynamics

I'm very happy to have found this article on here today. I heard a bleep in the news on a radio stations and was hoping to get it.

I sent this to my family members. I've been trying to talk my mom and sister into doing Atkins. We are all on a "diet" and check in weekly. However as we all know I've been loosing more inches and weight. Most importantly I've been keeping it off, where as they have gained and re-lost many of their pounds.

Deana

Quick Keto Calc.

The highest reading on KetoStix is 160 mg/dl (milligrams per deciliter).

That's 1.6 gm per liter of urine. Let's say one pees 1 liter per day.

Over 300 days, that would be 480 grams of ketones, or just over 1 pound.

So, direct ketone loss through urine is not significant to weight loss even at the largest levels of loss (that we rarely reach.)

Gotbeer:

I'm guessing that the weight of the lost ketones probably isn't the point.

Maybe the CALORIC value of those 'peed-away' ketones is what contributes to the metabolic effect.

Or maybe I'm missing something?

I do think that it is other mechanisms of caloric loss that far exceed the loss of ketones, regardless of whether you count by weight or by calorie. Incomplete fat digestion, leading to fecal elimination, seems much more credible to me than ketone leakage as a source of loss.

All of us who have had success on a low carb eating regimen knows the metabolic advantages (however slight it might be at about 300 - 500 calories) which the scientific community finds so perplexing.

These studies no longer surprise me. The more studies the research community does will only confirm what we know to be true from our own respective experiences--that you can eat more when low carbing relative to eating low fat & high carb.

What I don't understand is that even now, "they" are so shocked, even by the remote possibility that Dr. Atkins hypothesis might be right. I mean, there are so many of us here who have succeeded with the low carb eating regimen making each one of us living proof of the diet's validity; yet, they're still surprised? Do they not even know a single person who have experienced what we have?

Frederick

Yes Frederick, how can they be "shocked?" have they REALLY never studied, thought about insulin and its role in appetite and fat storage? Considering how many still call the Atkins diet a high protien one, obviously they not only don't read Atkins book, they also don't read the many studies he cited to show the basis for the "metabolic advantage." I am going to get out my copy of Eric Hoffer's "The True believer," to remind myself of the way in which ideology stifles intellect. So long, Bill

Now how many pounds of fat can produce 1 lb of ketones? The answer could be a very large number.

According to Dr. Atkins, fat breaks down into glycerol and fatty acids, which break down into "pairing of two-carbon compounds called ketone bodies" leaving a newer fatty acid, shorter in chain length by the 2 carbon fragment.

Although I'm not an expert on this subject, this tells me that only a small amount of the carbon found in fat makes ketones. The rest is probably wasted.

Now, how much carbon does a pound of fat contains to start with? This could also be very little. It could be an ounce or less.

So, I believe that the ketones which leave the body contribute to the weight loss. However, I agree that this is not the only reason we lose weight on Atkins diet.