Jenn,
Check this out. For a few day stretch I did nothing but sleep and eat fatty chicken and some decorative broccoli
. I was clocking 1700, 1800, 1900 cals per day. At the time this was more than I was eating by a pretty significant amount, and less activity too. I lost weight. I felt bonier, and the scale reinforced this with a 110 weight. I hadn't been 110 in months and the last time I was really under eating.
Fairly amazing to me since I was eating so much more and doing so much less activity, but there you have it - sleep and not eating carbs = obesity resistance.
I used to 100% believe it was *all* about calories. I believed LC gave a mild metabolic advantage but it was really just eating less. Now I see that metabolism is really plastic, and it controls weight gain... and calories are *not* the exclusive effector of metabolism. If you are avoiding all sources of fat-gain stress (sleep deprivation, caffiene abuse, carbs)... it is *extremely* difficult to gain weight on LC. Your metabolism is much more eager to burn up food than store it. It only wants to store things in the stress state, avoid the stress state and you avoid obesity.
The unfortunate truth is it is very hard to stay out of stress state, so most of us have to restrict cals in varying degrees
. It's unfortunate our culture makes it impossible to sleep enough and stay very LC (and, if I don't sleep enough, then I'm abusing caffiene and more likely to make bad food choices, a horrible cycle).