Stuart, I would like to reference your source for this comment, Re: Mike Eades, to a friend that is a stickler for detail. I have no reason to disagree with you but my/your saying Dr. Eades “thinks Gary Taubes got it wrong” will not fly with him unless I can point him to a web page/post/blog entry where Dr. Mike has made such a statement.

Thanks for your help,
Larry

Here's a question.

Before I begin, let me say that imho, the main goal is weight maintenance at a reasonable level for an individual. Losing weight, followed by gaining it all back is frustrating at best and inimical for health at worst.

The "traditional" method for losing weight is to go hungry. It occurs to me to wonder if this may not be actually detrimental for long term weight loss/maintenance? In other words, will experincing persistent hunger tend to produce long term weight gain (not loss) given an abundance of food available?

I can imagine 2 ways this could happen. One is that appetite (hunger) could be upregulated, the other is that activity could be downregulated.

I'm not, btw, talking about eating less because one is less hungry or about "metabolic advantage". I'm specifically talking about eating a small enough amount of food to produce noticeable hunger on a consistent basis. Hunger is a biochemical state after all, in which the body is sending a signal. What happens if one deliberately ignores that signal?

Does anyone have ideas, comments, research, personal experience, etc about this?

Beth

It's kind of what a lot of the book good calories/bad calories is about, well the chapters on obesity. Semi-starvation diets don't work in the long term because we're not meant to starve. That's why low carb works, it isn't a starvation diet and you don't feel hungry.

If the Minnesota Starvation study and others are any indication, deliberately ignoring that hunger will tend to cause rebound hunger at a later date and the regain of lost weight plus more. Many of the people "starved" in the studies later gained back all the weight, plus more after the study ended. Sort of explains yo-yo dieting, doesn't it?

Yes, (FWIW) I completely agree Nancy. It's worth adding in relation your third point, that ketosis has a metabolic advantage, that Mike Eades did the math on the possible size of the ketosis related metabolic advantage in one of his blog entries during a recent to an Anthony Colpo flare up and he pointed out that it was only ever going to be tiny. I have no doubt that metabolic advantage exists just as I've no doubt that cephalic phase insulin response happens as well, but they're both more like metabolic curiosities rather than an important mechanism. And many low carbers tend to cling to both as such.

On the subject of CPIR, it's always struck me that fructose has no insulin response at all and yet if CPIR was at all important, even thinking about, let alone eating something sweetened with fructose, would cause a signifigant (ie. likely to influence the total hormonal environment) release of insulin. And in the same way that the insulin surge produced by dietary protein is balanced by glucagon, any tiny CPIR insulin reaction, unless it is actually needed by insulin requiring carbs will also be balanced by glucagon. Our bodies are so much cleverer than we give them credit for.

Stuart

But do you think it explains low carb yoyo dieting Valerie ?

Stuart

Beth, most Cron adherents are chronically hungry for decades. So are a lot of poor people in third world countries (whose meagre available food is mostly high carb as well). Both groups just ignore it, the Croners because they are chasing extended maximum life span and the poverty stricken because they have no choice.

And both stay emaciated. Certainly not pretty (although pretty morally reprehensible in the case of poverty though).

Stuart

Kneebrace - I. too, would like you to address Larry's question. I have corresponded with Mike Eades about Gary's book and never heard the complaints you're talking about. In fact, he posted a blog making the very argument you say he disagreed with when it appeared in GCBC. Here's the link:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/2007/09/

I also think you could benefit by rereading the section in GCBC about fructose.

Larry, I think you might have to try to persuade your friend to read between the lines a bit. Mike Eades certainly has never come out and said 'Gary Taubes got it wrong in GCBC' because I'm sure he like me finds much of the book splendid.

However he does think that Gary's notion that carbs are the only thing that determines the total fat storage/loss hormonal environment is wrong because it is not even up for debate. That there are many determinants of that hormonal environment, including whether you are in energy surplus/equilibrium/ or deficit. And this is, as much as some low carbers try to deny it, basic biochemistry. That's why, IMHO, GCGC will never get the notice so many other aspects of the book deserve, because he gets the basic biochemistry about body fat loss hormonal environment demonstrably wrong.

GCBC also gives the impression that without carb driven insulin, you can't store bodyfat. Even this is wrong, because everyone has a baseline amount of insulin in their bloodstream at any moment, even if they eat no carbohydrate, and that amount of insulin is sufficient to store dietary fat. How much bodyfat an individual stores for a given dietary fat energy surplus varies considerably from individual to individual with factors that as yet aren't well understood. If anyone doubts this they just have to cast their eye over any low carb forum to see repeated reports of people gaining bodyfat despite eating practically no carbohydrate, if they eat too much fat.

Also Mike Eades has indeed said, in both his books and his blog that he thinks any metabolic advantage is insignifigant, and that the main advantage of low carb, for bodyfat loss is that you naturally eat far less.

Nevertheless Mike Eades certainly agrees with Gary, as do I , that Low Carb is far and away the healthiest dietary approach for humans. In fact, as important as bodyfat loss is to many of the people who take an active interest in this forum, I think the bodyfat loss aspect of low carbing is a only a bit player in the big picture of eating the way we were designed to by zillions of years of evolution. One of the best low carbing books, Life W/O Bread, makes the very important point that some people actually gain bodyfat on low carb, because they need to. It's not just a simple matter of whether low carb is better for bodyfat loss.

Stuart

Thanks for this post. At the very end I read:
(my emphasis)

This is basically what I meant when I said that there seems to be an existence proof of metabolic advantage if the data from this thread is to be believed.

Thanks Ceberezin, I read the link, but I got the impression that in it Mike Eades was saying that although metabolic advantage for rate of bodyfat gaindoes exist (in mice genetically engineered for bodyfat gain at least) even in them in this study, it says nothing about bodyfat loss. It can certainly be extrapolated to do so, if you try hard enough. Also the first half of the blog was about the confounding factor in humans which is how carb driven hunger is what makes low carbing such an effective tool for weight loss. It was interesting that he stressed that the laws of thermodynamics were inviolable don't you think, in or out of a human body, something that a lot of low carbers are wont to forget?

Fructose's metabolic peculiarities are certainly fascinating. What was on your mind?

Stuart

But Beth, is it a signifigant factor in why low carb diets work so well for bodyfat loss ?. I'm still mystified why so many low carbers seem determined to believe that it is signifigant when low carb doesn't need it at all to be the best approach to health/bodycomp. And because carb driven hunger driven overeating is so powerful anyway why spend so much time agonizing over a figure to put on an insignifigant metabolic curiosity like 'metabolic advantage'? It's almost as if 'carbs make you hungry and cause degenerative disease' isn't as impressive as 'metabolic advantage'.

Stuart

From what I've read here, for some people it seems to be very significant. Also, if people are like the mice, it is likely to be about 66% (that is, the ketogenic mice weighed the same as mice eating 66% of the regular diet). That isn't chump change.




BTW, it seems to me is that the person on this thread who seems most interested in the question is you, yourself. Much of the conversation about it here seems to be you claiming that it isn't and other people discussing what you said.

Beth

Well the number of bodybuilders with impressive physiques who reduce their bodyfat to single digits with low fat, but at least adequate protein would tend to support the notion that it was getting sufficient protein that was the critical factor in preserving muscle I would think. Though I think even ultra low fat athletes are cognizant of the necessity of EFA's.

But PJ I do want to emphasize that I'm certainly not recommending low fat to anyone. Who wants to be unhealthier or constantly hungry? Nevertheless they do work for bodyfat loss without LBM loss if you can stand this very considerable downside. In other words, one of the fundamental propositions of GCBC, that it is not metabolically possible to lose bodyfat in a high insulin environment, is just fundamentally wrong.

Stuart

[QUOTE=rightnow]

I'll do my best .

If you don't provide your body with carbs for energy, it certainly must look to fat for energy, but if you are eating any dietary fat, it would much prefer to just use that rather than go through the vastly more complicated hormonal/enzyme driven process of mobilzing bodyfat. The enzyme machinery to use even dietary fat requires the three (?, it's often more than three days isn't it? Took me about a fortnight) days of misery. And producing and using ketones as the major part of the energy you derive from fat is a bit of a medium term sideshow anyway. The longer you spend low carbing the more you become adapted to using FFa's for energy directly without your liver having to churn out ketones. Some cells will always prefer ketones over FFA's, like heart muscle, and some cells can't even utilize FFA's at all, like your CNS. So ketones will always be part of your fat burning picture, just not a very important one eventually (takes about a year). Traditionally living Inuit are only ever in very mild ketosis (don't forget that even high carbers are in mild ketosis too when they wake up from their overnight fast) despite hardly ever eating much carbohydrate. You can effectively prevent yourself from ever becoming fully fat adapted, by regularly having carby 'treats' or PWO carb 'glycogen replenishment 'refeeds', and be stuck forever having to rely on ketones.



AFAIK, induction flu is because of the stress of bringing your fat burning metabolic/enzyme machinery up to speed, but that isn't necessarily from bodyfat, if you are eating a lot of fat. There will certainly be some bodyfat involved if you are in energy deficit, but if you are in energy equilibrium or surplus, bodyfat will just watch from the sidelines.



Yes, that's true, but if you aren't in energy deficit, you'll just burn the dietary fat and not lose any bodyfat. And I think you meant 'glucagon' not glucogen

4

If you provide your body with dietary energy, either fat or carbs, it will use that first before it goes looking for stored energy PJ. And don't forget that it takes at least 24 hrs for a meal to be digested. Most people eat at least every 8 hrs, so if you are in energy surplus, you aren't going to access any bodyfat at all. You might store less of the excess if you are restricting carbs, but you won't lose any either.



Well vastly improved health springs to mind. Throw in vastly improved bodyfat loss outcomes from naturally eating less, and you've got a pretty powerful argument for low carb wouldn't you agree?.




Absolutely. However here's what IMHO is actually happening in the above scenario. Eating low carb means you are less hungry, so you eat less. You might calculate that you are eating the same calories, but you are losing bodyfat, and you really want to believe that there is some fancy sounding mechanism at work rather than a simple notion like 'I just eat less naturally' so you fluff the figures. Now PJ, this is what all the metabolic ward studies in humans have shown thus far. They may be wrong, and let's all hope they are.

But as Regina has so eloquently stated: 'The doorway to the 'possibility' of the existence of the low carb metabolic advantage that anecdotal evidence seems to support is still open'. But that is all.

Meanwhile, savour the bodyfat loss that low carb has provided you, and increase low carb's wider credibility by keeping very circumspect about metabolic 'possibilities'.



Very coherent I thought. But look after yourself anyway.

Stuart