This is my post which has started this conversation:
I know the official definition of obesity is the state of extreme overweight, but I was using this term to mean the permanent change which happens to a person that causes tendancy to gain weight. We have agreed that neither Atkins diet nor any other diet can reverse this change.

kwikdriver, sorry we'll leave you for Woo

Interesting point, mate.

Personally I am addicted to sugar. No ifs, buts or maybes about it, and unless I totally abstain, my addiction tends to zoom out of control.
But I firmly believe that eating plenty of carbs in the form of fruit and vegies are an essential part of a healthy diet, so "carbs" are not the problem.

So maybe we should be referring to "sugar" addiction rather than "carb" addiction.

Rosebud

Yes that is interesting, although I think you will need to define your 'addiction' further.

What you are saying is that you are addicted to sucrose? Relatively small amounts of other naturally occuring sugars such as fructose and lactose don't cause you any problem? You don't have any issue with bodily production of glucose from other high carb but not sugary foods?

What are the symptoms of your addiction. Do you go into withdrawal when you stop?

Alternatively is this more in the line of a dysfunctional eating behaviour when you interact with a high sugar carb item, like a packet of Tim Tams (sorry umm try Oreos for the wider audience). I can understand that sort of behaviour BTW but it seems to be not necessarily a sugar addiction - I have to stop myself doing the same thing (eating the lot) with other items which have no added sugar and only small amounts of carbs (try nuts or cheese). If that is the case are we talking about addiction or how some of use food (any food) - not for what it contains but in the context of a wider self destructive or guilt laden relationship with food generally?

Either way, I am not dismissing your problem, but I would be interested in just how it manifests itself.

Cheers,

Malcolm

Sigh indeed. After claiming you cured being overweight by reducing carbs, you now admit that obesity isn't a disease, but claim it's caused by some vague thing called "eating the wrong foods." What would the kids say these days? "No duh!" The question is why are they the "wrong foods," and why are they wrong for some people, but perfectly fine for many others. You fail to answer this question, in fact you pretend it doesn't exist, when it is actually the whole root of this discussion.




Opinions are cheaper than a 5 pound bag of rice at a Mexican flea market. I hate to insist on sticking to actual definitions, but it seems to be the only way to keep things tethered to reality, so here goes:

Addiction:



As an aside, the entire essay makes for quite good reading.

People who "eat the wrong foods" exhibit all of these behaviors. If it walks like an addiction, talks like an addiction, acts like an addiction, and meets the definition of an addiction, that would pretty much make it an addiction. Of course, you are certainly entitled to your own private definition of the word.




I wonder how many carbs are in a serving of straw man.

The horror!

Hi,
I think you misunderstood me.
I did not mean to intimate that to be successful losing weight, it necessitates hating food and feeling miserably deprived all the time. In fact I notice people who get really strict with themselves and don’t work on feeling satisfied emotionally in their diets are almost guaranteed to fail. Not only does this method (crash dieting) demonstrate a reluctance to truly change and maintain a new way of life, but it leads to desire for food. "Rebellious cheating" is common. You'll crave what you feel you CAN'T have.

What I meant to say was that losing weight requires people leave their comfort zones in some way. You have to be open to change, ready to learn new ways of living and eating (and for the food addict, new ways of existing/coping). It's very, very difficult to do this.
It's difficult because all people have an emotional relationship with food in varying degrees, and therefore any change to a new way of eating will be met with varying degrees of difficulty. People are creatures of habit, food is very emotional. Food is an occasional source of pleasure to all, much like a glass or two of alcohol is to almost all adults. Just as there are people who compulsively drink and use alcohol to the point where their health is abysmal and their life is in ruin, so are there people who destroy themselves with food. Food is their everything. Food was MY everything, too, as I admit I am a food addict. Food was my proxy through which I lived life. Every facet of experience was paired with it. All my best memories feature food prominently.
I don’t think it is uncommon for those who are overweight to be emotionally dependent on food. I feel that obesity and morbid obesity are quite often symptoms, and many who express it are full blown food addicts.

Anyway. For the emotional food addict... the leaving your comfort zone with food, learning new ways of eating, etc... it's almost impossible to do for any length of time. That’s why people fall off diets that are working for them so often (like my mother in the example I previously gave). They (we) just depend on food for too many things besides fuel to so flippantly change.

This is why I feel focusing on low carb as the primary solution to obesity is looking at the problem incorrectly. Here’s where we differ: I view obesity primarily as a physical symptom of addiction, and secondarily a symptom of disease (unrelated to and inconsequential of addiction). Certainly that’s a step in the right direction for an unknown percentage of people with weight problems. Unfortunately though low carb deals with physical stuff exclusively, but I feel obesity has more in common with a behavioral/psych/emotional problem than it does a pure symptom of disease therefore I don’t feel LC isn’t a major part of resolving obesity. I feel a small minority will get their “AHA” moment the day they start Atkins and that is that. I feel a larger majority will go on Atkins, find out it works and is helpful to controlling desire to eat, but “just can’t make it work and can’t live that way” and therefore relapse. Food addiction is like any addiction. Detoxing (or as the case may be, going on induction) is the easy part. Don't use junk for a few days, you're clean. Don't eat a lot of refined and high glycemic carbs, and you're no longer biologically driven toward insatiable hunger any longer. No arguments there.

My argument is that the true hard part is staying clean and learning to say NO when the urge strikes to eat your old foods, or to eat all the time, or whatever the case may be. This is what I meant when I spoke of difficulty and sacrifice and deprivation. Any degree of restricted eating is thought of adversely by all, but for those who are emotional eaters it's absolutely intolerable and one of the worst things you could do to them. They won’t stick it out, unless they are aware of the nature of the thing and are doing the soul work to change/cope.
Basically what I’m saying is it's difficult to stay on track with LC eating for everyone, but it's virtually impossible for the food addict. This is because LC is simply a set of rules for your diet so as to control physical impulses to eat, and it does nothing to address the emotional needs and secure future commitment. For a food addict a restricted diet will always feel deprived because of the nature of food addiction. You always want more, and restriction means less.

For emotional food addiction, maintaining/losing weight requires sacrifice and deprivation. It is *painful* to learn new ways to deal with life and enjoy yourself. It's uncomfortable and it sucks. It was absolutely hell for me to give it up, but as much as I didn't want to give up food I was fed up with what it was doing to me even more, so I had no choice but to welcome change. Again I would like to make clear I'm not saying that my diet is miserable or that to lose weight you must eat a miserable diet. It's hard for me to explain how I could consider myself as having "given up food" even though I am satisfactorily satisfied in my current way of eating.
It's the sort of thing you would have to be a food addict yourself to understand. When you're a true food addict, you're NEVER satisfied with what you have eaten, because you could always be eating something else. Satiation and true satisfaction can never be obtained because your impulse to eat and continue eating is stimulated disproportionately by signals other than true hunger. All people eat emotionally, all people tend to keep eating if food tastes good... but the difference for food addiction is in extremity and severity. A normal person will eventually reach satiation. Even if they over eat because of emotional/sensual stimulus and triggers... eventually they will get sick of it and want to stop.
That feeling of wanting to stop, of no longer wanting food at all, it never comes for the food addict. All there are, are varying degrees of desire for food. Even when you're so full that your stomach is pained and feel as if it might burst... somewhere inside of you you still want to eat more. It's a chronic state of unfulfillment.

So, even if the food is good on low carb... it's just not the same. It's not the same because deep down, logically, I KNOW I can't eat the way I used to. I can no longer "entertain the void" by trying to fill it with food. Even though before I never satisfied it, at least I got to pleasurably indulge it by TRYING. Now, I no longer can permit myself to try. I KNOW I can't eat even low carb foods when I'm not hungry, "just 'cuz" the food looks good and I desire it as that will produce weight gain. I KNOW that I can't go downstairs, and eat brownies and a big bowl of ice cream, and eat even when I'm not hungry. I KNOW I can't make myself a plate of roast beef – even if I don’t eat potatoes and bread - even though I'm full. Because if I’m honest with myself, I really am not hungry and I would be over eating, and over eating low carb things will promote fatness too.

I think most of it is just feeling like I no longer am allowed to eat when I'm not hungry anymore. That's the sadness, the feeling of deprivation: knowing I now HAVE to listen to my body and am not to abuse food. When I made the decision to be thin I also made the decision to stop habitual compulsive eating. I am no longer allowed not to eat when not hungry, and that, to me, is a huge huge sacrifice as previously I ate all the time simply because food stimulated my senses and made me feel something I wanted to feel. I hungered for food non stop, I hungered for the tastes and sensations. Physical satiation (which was pretty much obliterated by my abusive eating and self-induced metabolic issues) was, honestly, an unwelcome deterrent to my never ending desire to eat. I LIKE when I finally get hungry because it means I can eat again.
(Please note that my compulsive desire to eat all the time even when not hungry went away on Atkins Induction, and food eating became a tiresome chore. I feel this is because the foods on induction were so limited and sensations/tastes so redundant that there was no joy in eating, and therefore my compulsivity to eat was eliminated. However, I couldn’t live that way… I enjoy food too much to relegate it as a tiresome chore. I need to like what I’m eating too.
Many people get this “ugh food is disgusting to me now” feeling when they go on induction and therefore they think the problem is carbs and not “other stuff”. I see people doing it all the time here and I feel bad because I KNOW what awaits them once they add back in a small taste of cookie or a few strawberries – uncontrollable urges to eat.)

Anyway, sorry for that lengthy ramble but I think it's necessary for me to elaborate on the nature of food addiction if you are to at all understand what I mean when I say it is a HUGE sacrifice to go - and stay - on a restricted diet. Take it from a former compulsive eater when I just say being on a limited diet - even a reasonably satisfying one - is no where near the same as indulging in addiction. It's like there's a bit of a void. The temptation to eat is always there and I'm always controlling it. I've developed a thousand and one thoughts and outlooks and behaviors to control it. I'm emotionally satisfied on my LC diet enough to stay with it and enjoy it, but if I had the option to go back to eating the way I did (but without the negative repercussions)... I'd do it in a heartbeat. It was a great source of pleasure to me, to eat all the time, to taste foods, to always be chewing and anticipating flavor. (I live with this desire to eat all the time. I cope with it in many ways. For example, I have quite a sugarless gum and baby carrot habit now heh heh ...)

I think the main source of conflict is you are someone who is almost a case of overweight resulting exclusively from physical disease, and I on the other hand am a case of morbid obesity resulting heavily from food addiction (as well as reinforced by disease, which was largely exacerbated by the former abusive food eating). The symptoms are the same but the disease is wholly different. You are convinced low fat diets make people obese and that low carb is the only way to lose weight and do it naturally, healthfully, and enjoyably. Though I agree LC makes it easier for many, and for some it is almost essential... I am convinced the diet isn't as important as the stuff motivating the diet.
Both of us are extrapolating from our own unique experiences and are therefore biased. You think most with weight issues are like you, I think most are like me. Who knows who's correct. Observation leads me to believe that food issues ARE an issue for more dieters than not. Perhaps my bias leads me to exaggerate the degree they are an issue for others, much like your bias leads you to exaggerate the need for specifically reducing carbohydrate (rather than portions, or calories, or anything like that).

I tend to go into far too much detail, in my attempts to clarify I can sometimes muddle and confuse further... I hope I have made clear my position.


Oh of course.
I believe most people have some degree of metabolic disease and all would be well served to improve their diets, increase natural healthy fats, reduce/eliminate highly starchy and sugared processed foods.
I believe almost all obese and overweight people - food addicts or not - have carbohydrate problems and most will find greater success by choosing lower carbohydrate diets.
I think you really can't be a true food addict without also having strong sugar sensitivity (as almost all behavioral/emo/psych addictions are strongly linked to positive physical feedback from the behavior).

However the term "big step" is a little extreme. I think most people can make any reasonable diet work. I don't think most people have such bad problems with carbohydrate that it can be said to be anything more than a help at reaching their goals. It just lets them eat more, and think about food/desire to eat less. Those mid day valleys and energy slumps are eliminated. Those late night cravings are reduced.

The sort of sugar issues you describe later (where you're virtually starving yourself and still gaining weight) are very uncommon. Most people are capable of just eliminating their indulgence foods and this will produce weight loss. Very few people are eating restricted diets, tightly controlled, and STILL gaining.

That's a bit unfair.
I said there are other ways to lose weight besides low carb.
You say you agree, but then basically say "... but all the other ways are unhealthy and don't work long term" via example.

It IS possible to eat a lower fat diet (30% I think isn't extreme and high enough to be healthy), or to ignore sources of calories but just focus on portion size, and lose weight healthfully. The bottom line is if you lose weight you are already doing yourself a huge health benefit, so even if diet stays the same (i.e. the “reduced portions diet”) you’re healthier than you were. Most of the time weight loss is the result of increased healthfulness of diet.
Furthermore, some people - especially those whos weight isn't heavily influenced by metabolic disease - might find such programs more helpful than a pure strict LC program (which would be unnecessarily restrictive and likely not as effective due to the emphasis on "eating your fill" which for food addicts who aren’t reading between the lines means "just eat all the time").
The reduced fat diet with an emphasis on portion control and choosing quality foods (i.e. puffed grains w/ skim milk berries and a little nuts VS captn crunch cereal ) is very helpful if you need to control a constant urge to consume food. I don’t think I would be nearly as successful if I did not make the conscious decision to opt for a lower fat, AND lower carb plan. By eating lower fat and lower carb my meals have very few calories, which means I CAN somewhat indulge my desire to snack all the time (within reason) but not gain tons of weight. Making less energy-dense food selections means you can eat more, and more frequently, but you aren't taking in as much energy and thus weight drops.

Sure, sure. However I think you’re looking at this through the eyes of a non-addict and you just don’t understand that for the food addict with carbohydrate sensitivity… even when the physical impulse to eat is gone, there are still other impulses to desire food. Those impulses are often more strong than true physical hunger. Getting off the sugar roller coaster is a good first step, but all it is, is one tiny step. For us, the battle has just begun whereas for someone like you, it’s almost over.

"Recovery" programs for addictions of any kind tend to be comprised of two parts: they physical recovery, and the emotional recovery. You can't do one without the other. Emotional recovery without physical recovery is ingenuine. Physical recovery without emotional recovery is destined to certain and rapid relapse.

My issue is, as I have said earlier, that I am of the following position:
1) obesity is more often than not a symptom of some degree of food addiction
2) food addiction, while often having physiological roots, is primarily a "head matter" and not a "body matter"
3) LC deals only with the body stuff, in which case to many if not most obese people, it will wind up as "just another diet that didn’t work"
4) While LC will probably often prove to be part of recovery, it is NOT the most important part. Figuring out how to live and function without using food as a crutch, or figuring out new ways to continue to enjoy eating all the time without gaining weight (i.e. snacking on baby carrots and not cookies) is what will truly keep you on the straight and narrow.

LC is detox for those with emotional food issues. It's important for some, but not all of those with weight issues.
It is an important first step, but a food addict going on Atkins induction alone is as meaningless as locking an alcoholic up in a room w/o booze for a few days.

I guess we also disagree that extreme LC is the healthiest way to eat.
I personally believe that a more varied diet of whole foods will prove the healthiest, if for no other reason than when you eat a varied diet of whole foods it's harder to create awkward situations that you can make on extremely limited diets which result in deficiencies.
Furthermore, I feel caloric percentages from macronutrients aren't specifically important (unless food intolerance like metabolic syndrome necessitates as such). You did swimmingly on extreme LC because you extreme metabolic issues that most people don't have. Health improved dramatically because LC solved those problems that most don’t have (or have anywhere near as extremely).

I didn't mean to call you stupid, I apologize. I just think that the belief that everyone needs to eat really low carb and anyone who limits fats is going in the wrong direction, or it's destined to fail, etc... I think that's simplistic.

You admit you are just extrapolating from your own experience with cutting fat and not carbs specifically, I respect that. I should also admit that my whole crusade with the "dealing with/importance of eating issues" thing comes from my own history. Ultimately we are two people who used to have weight problems for very different reasons. I am a food addict. I had no control. I had sugar metabolism problems, too, which I suspect were exacerbate by the behaviors of over eating and junk food abuse.
You on the other hand don't have the behavioral stuff with food and you just had metabolism problems.
Our experience causes us to diverge wildly in our view of obesity and what is necessary to correct it. Perhaps my experiences are more common among those with extreme weight problems (since I have both physical and behavioral food issues = more of a weight problem)?

I think the diet is only as good as it is a fit for you and your needs.
If the problem is mostly unstable blood sugar, then LC is going to be a lot better and more easy to stick with than low fat.
On the other hand, if most of the problem is just poor eating habits and eating too much when you're not hungry, then it's probably not necessary to be so LC and instead to just focus on caloric density and portion size (lower fat).

I do think LC is just like any other diet in that it attempts to solve people's obesity by supplying a guideline of what you are and are not to eat. Whether or not it is effective depends on the user and the nature of their weight problem. You're basically saying "no but you don't understand... lc REALLY is different it's not like low fat!" This was true for you but your experiences aren't universal...
I can't but help feel that somewhere on a traditional diet forum there's someone saying "oh that horrible Atkins! I had no energy and was chronically constipated and felt so deprived... I feel so much better now I can eat fruit and a little bit of bread if I just use less mayo and watch my portions!". Know what I mean?

For people whos weights are 100% the result of sugar metabolism: Yes, LC is IN NO WAY just another diet: it's the only way to healthfully solve overweight and other health problems resulting from it.
But, the mistake being made here is we are assuming cases like yours (pure physical intolerance to high carb) make up the bulk of overweight/obesity ... I don't think that's true. Like I said, lots of those who try to lose weight refer to me when they see my stats....and from what I observe it seems that "issues with food" could explain a lot of the difficulties they have losing, staying on the plan, etc. Again I admit my biases could be coloring my perceptions, so take it as you will.

I think this is one of those "you have to be an addict to understand" things. When you are TRULY addicted to something... it really does take hitting rock bottom and getting so sick of what the behavior is doing to you that you are basically forced to give it up.

Desire for some benefit of health isn't stronger than the satisfaction of core needs that you're getting from the substance/behavior. Desire will never overcome need, and when it comes to addiction, there is an emotional need that's being satisfied. I mean, look at how many of those with eating disorders - perfectly intelligent people - who will starve themselves to death simply because they can't cope without the behavior... they depend on it for too much, they need it. Many do reach rock bottom and recover, but many others also are so deep in that they don't.

I think this is why people who have extreme weight problems rarely overcome it totally. Many are food addicts. Many relapse frequently.

I don't know...
I've never been on a low fat diet myself. Do they deemphasize all foods besides hunger-inducing crap like cereal grains? What about stuff that satisfied like lean meat, low fat dairy, veggies, low sugar fruit? Because, I mean, I think I woulda figured out right quick that for breakfast an egg white omelet with maybe 1 yolk with a piece of fruit filled me up much better than, say, toast with orange juice, or special K with bananas. I would have through trial and error figured out that chicken breast with low fat cheese and romaine lettuce and reduced fat dressing was a much more satisfying lunch than snackwells, or honey/molasses coated low fat granola and some dried fruits.

Basically I'm saying is that you start off with a certain program but then you change it to make it work for you. If you are REALLY interested in getting to your goal, know what I mean? You add foods in, take foods out, find out what agrees and what doesn't.

Someone in your position would probably never have been able to make low fat work... even if you had managed to figure out that egg white omelets and low fat chicken caesar salad was better for you than toast and bananas and juice. But I think you are an extreme case and most overweight people don't have the same severity of metabolism problems you do. I think most people can make almost any sane plan (sane = not extreme) plan work with willingness and effort. I think most diet failure is due to people doing unsustainable things, gravitating toward quack diets, or just plain quitting healthy ones all because they aren't really truly prepared to change.

This isn’t true, at least for me.
When I eliminated virtually all foods (going on induction), food became repulsive to me. Physically I felt sick all the time because of the ketones. Emotionally I no longer felt a compulsive need to eat, because the foods were so redundant. I longed for my old foods, but had no desire to “eat for fun” the foods I could eat, because a) eating made the ketone situation worse, which made me feel sick and b) I got bored right quick with the limited foods.

So it’s really not true that a food addict will behave compulsively with ANY food and on ANY diet. It’s true, to a point, but the properties of the food are also important.

If you’re wondering why I just didn’t stay on Induction, then, if it cured me of my desire to compulsively eat – it’s because induction merely masked the issue, it didn’t totally eliminate it. I still wanted to compulsive eat (my old foods), I was merely just “denying” myself. If I kept it up I’m certain sooner or later I would have broke down and binged. In fact, I do remember breaking induction during my 2 week stint… I ate a yogurt with grapes because I felt so totally miserable (mostly it was physical sickness that made me do it, but I also was absolutely starved for diversity in texture/sensation of taste).
Anyway, just as for you a low fat diet is unnatural starvation to lose weight, for me, an extremely limited low carb plan – no fruit, no nuts, just fats and veggies and meat and small portions of dairy – is equally an unnatural way to force weight loss. It’s like asking me to hold my breath and to pretend that I think of food as nothing more than fuel for the body. I can keep that up for awhile but I won’t deny that I am much more satisfied on my current plan where I can eat anything I want and never totally deny myself anything. Even if it’s just to taste it, it’s enough to keep me on track. I know I don’t need to eat the whole thing to satisfy the urge to taste and experience and use food.

How lucky for you 
I know that my fondness for starches are reduced, however I still do miss them somewhat. The other day I bought an Arabic wrap sandwich and while the filling was quite delicious, I have to admit that pulling off that yummy toasted pita was a little painful, lol. I did eat some of it (maintenance) but if I’m honest, I would have left the whole thing on if I could.

This is the thing… to be a food addict means the food ITSELF is just as sentimental and emotionally important as the occasion. It’s hard to explain. The vividness of every good memory I have is also paired strongly with the taste and exact properties of all foods I enjoyed at the time. I remember summer vacation with a spaghetti salad and olives. I remember BBQs with tender sweet meats, smokey burgers, watermelon, and pasta salad. I remember new years with Chinese food. I remember thanksgiving evening, and the ritualistic “dessert sampler” plate I would make: One heaping of pumpkin pie, one heaping of apple pie, one heaping of cranberry orange bread. I remember picking on the turkey and the leftovers too.

I remember the food just as much as the activities and people. I had to give that up. Not just the foods, but also the reasons I ate. For a long time I felt “flat”, a little emotionally dead. Every day though I do better, and every day I learn to experience life a little more without using food as a crutch.

Thank you…
I exaggerate my feelings quite often. I’m pretty extreme in anything I do, and sometimes I can give people the wrong impression.

I don’t really but I’m just using it to illustrate that the diet I currently eat would not be my first choice. My first choice would be the “eat everything all the time” diet .
I am satisfied, I do feel lucky to have found a big part of the answer for my weight issues… but I don’t deny that there is a part inside me, a food addict, that is always unsatisfied and will never be satisfied, who loathes this “diet” and wants to go back to the old ways.

I do understand you are likely not an emotional food user like I (and I feel, most overweight/obese people) are. LC was the answer for you because your weight problem was of no other consequence besides eating a diet that disagreed.

However there are lots of people who eat a lower fat diet and lose weight and do so naturally, without feeling chronically hungry, who’s health improves. So you should be aware that not all the time is low fat destined to fail or an unnatural way to “starve” the body into low weight (meanwhile everything inside you is screaming for food).

I’m probably being the biggest hypocrite here, by lecturing you on not extrapolating your experiences to others (when I have in the past been a major pain in the ass with the whole “emotional eating” thing – I still have a hard time believing anyone can get extremely obese without having some amount of emotional eating problems).

No argument there. People like you would be cured by low carb.

You are basically saying that you feel most with weight problems have a combination of “food issues” and “blood sugar issues”, I think.
I would agree with that.

I think both of us are extreme representations of the two sides (I probably more so since I also have blood sugar issues in addition to the food addiction whereas you seem to have little to almost no food issues and if anything have a below-average love of food).

Ok, I can agree that for a good many people LC is the answer.
I just think that “many” is in no way MOST. I think for the average person, poor eating habits – difficult habits to break stemming from “food issues” – is the main thing so this is why I disagree that LC isn’t going to make much of a dent in our epidemic of overweight and obesity.

Hi Lisa
I've heard of cases like yours online, several forum members for example including yourself...
but in real life I've never actually seen it. Everyone I know who is well into the obese range got that way by eating.

I'm not saying that cases like yours don't exist and you're all cheaing liars... that would be so ignorant to assume that. I'm merely trying to illustrate that if cases like yours and others DO exist they are probably the minority of those with obesity, at least in my experience.

I do believe that LC is a healing plan. It can help heal a sugar-abused metabolism back to a more healthy state. This means you can tolerate moderate amounts of stuff like oatmeal and other unprocessed grains eventually. It's unnatural not to be able to tolerate normal amounts of bread and grain, and you get to that state by eating more carbs than your body can handle for too long (whether because of a long history of too low fat diet, or abusive eating or whatever).

So yes, I do think LC is a cure for a lot of people. It did help cure (although not normalize) my sugar problems and yes I can now eat foods that I couldn't before and still feel alright.

If you go back to the ways that made you sick obviously you'll undo the healing and get sick again. But somewhere between "sick" and "tightly carb controlled" lies a healthy medium of "normal for you"... everyone needs to find that spot. Sometimes the damage is so bad you can't ever leave the tight carb control. This is common in older people I find, as I notice young people like myself who stop the problems earlier on have an easier time healing to an almost normal metabolic state.

I think the mistake you are making is that you are not realizing the disease you have is a disease of lifestyle, and therefore changing your lifestyle not only controls the disease but helps reverse it. Insulin resistance is not like cancer, or some other disease that strikes out of the clear blue. It's largely under our control to reverse and reduce metabolic syndrome by eating a proper diet, losing weight, and getting active.

That's true...
however I feel that "intolerance to moderate amounts of carbs" is the consequence of consuming far more than moderate amounts of carbs (combined with, on occasion, too little fat which is just as bad because you need fat to keep fat metabolism active, which keeps sugar metabolism healthy).

Except for a small minority, you are not born with insulin resistance. It's something that develops over time of eating a diet you can't handle. If everyone ate normal healthy diets from birth - higher fat (30-40%), little to no added sugars, grain and fruit in moderation, lots of veggies, calorie adequate - this epidemic would not exist.

I am open minded to the prospect that some people more readily and easily develop the problems (carb sensitive). I feel myself to be carb sensitive. I ate the same foods as my brothers and sisters when I was very little, but I was the only one crying out of hunger and "shakiness" a short while afterward. But if the food I was eating was more like meat and salad with a small piece of fruit... it's unlikely I would have gotten to the point where I have to worry if a quarter cup of rice combined with a small portion of yams might give me a hypoglycemic episode.

I agree that we need carbs in our diets, just like we need fats in our diets. Its about balance. For some of us the balance has gone severly out of wack.

I am now a diabetic because I couldn't control my sugar cravings. Getting the body fat down using the low carb method helps get my body back into sync.

The real secret is to learn to control my sugar addiction once the weight is back to a healthy level. But unlike other addictions, you can't avoid eating ever. If you ever get the chance, read a book called Sugar Blues. It was written thirty years ago but still holds true today.

I think that you don't understand the label because you aren't a food addict (or, alternately, you are taking the label too literally).
I think there are two kinds of people who call themselves "carb addicts"

There's type 1: A person who is confusing food addiction (which is a combination of carb intolerance and some degree of "food issues") with a pure physiological intolerance to carbs.
These are the types who feel they are "powerless but to cheat", who often lose control after one bite of a "trigger food", who limit their diets extremely to try to "control their physical intolerance to carbs" through stricter dietary restrictions (since they will soon "discover" they are intolerant to virtually EVERYTHING in their diet and virtually EVERYTHING makes them want to over eat). They get real strict, only to eventually give up and relapse due to the denial of the real nature of the problem.

Then there's type 2: A person who calls themself a "carb addict" but what they really mean to say is "when I eat a diet high in carbs, for purely physical reasons my blood sugar gets messed up and I want more, and I feel a bit like an addict". For this person food issues don't figure in heavily, so they have very little problems choosing and sticking with a low carb plan. They don't have the thousand and one impulses to eat familiar food, comforting food, tasty food all the time that we true food addicts have, and therefore sticking with the plan is as effortless as taking your medicine every day.

Type 2 differs from type 1 in that type 2 needs additional plans/control on their behavior with food besides from purely restricting carbs to make it work. They can't develop these skills without first recognizing they have a problem - which, they are not doing, by the nature of labeling themselves a "carb addict" (they are placing all the blame on blood sugar and therefore not fingering other issues contributing to the over-eating behavior).
For the food addict, unless they are willing to ADMIT they quite often want to eat for reasons totally unrelated to the body... they will never develop effective work-around strategies and they will never be successful.

I agree with your willingness to distance yourself from that extreme mindset.
I think it is the product of "food issues" not being dealt with. Of people doing only the physical work but not the emotional stuff. They think if they just do what I did for months - just pretend the only foods they can eat are stuff they don't WANT to over eat - then everything will be fine. It won't work out, you'll wind up tasting some day and unless you've learned to handle yourself you could relapse. Your body will get that taste of sugar and it will SCREAM for more because of the self-imposed deprivation.

A lot of the fear of foods/carbs I had (but have now overcome with experience) comes from me reading those "horror stories" of failed dieters. For a long time I really did believe the moment I tasted cake I ran the risk of losing control and falling headlong into over eating and weight gain again.
It's not healthy to think total abstinence forever of many foods is a practical way to deal with a compulsivity to eat.

I agree in your assessment of "sugar addicts" or "carb addicts" who feel one bite and its all over. It's more in line with "food issue stuff" (my blanket term for eating for non-hunger reasons foods you consciously understand to be not good for you, to a point where you feel yourself unable to stop) than any physical problem.
I do to be a "food addict" you must also be carb sensitive, but the feeling of being unable to STOP yourself from eating bad food even when consciously you know what it will do - that is something other than blood sugar.

You really can't blame the physical properties of any food. Sucrose, glucose, fructose... these things occur naturally in all fruits and veggies. Cabbage, for instance, is very high in sugars. A fudgy brownie is actually much higher in fat and relatively low in sugar/carbs, as is icecream. A small portion of ice cream and brownies are actually lower in sugar than a generous serving of many veggies. Yet I don't hear people say "one bite of squash and i'm through!"

I think a lot of the confusion between ourselves and mcsblues is that he is heavily extrapolating from his unique intolerance to a high carbohydrate diet and assuming most people have the same degree of carb intolerance he does. It is, in fact, extremely abnormal to go to bed starving, to limit your calories dilligently, but still gain weight. Almost no one has that problem. Most people who are overweight and obese got that way by eating. Most people who are carb intolerant got that way by choosing to drink soda, sweets, cakes, big portions of starch, and juices, and over eat, and gain lots of weight, and the tolerance to carbs can be greatly restored if one adheres to a corrective low carb diet and loses weight.

It's pretty aparent to me this is the cause of most cases of obesity. At least, it has been for every individual I've ever personally known who has had a weight problem anyway.

Hi,
I think the confusion here is that there are really two types of people who use the "carb addict" label.
Those with food issues as well as carbohydrate sensitivity (in which case they ARE literal addicts), and ...
those without food issues who simply - for reasons of ignorance - ate foods that they didn't realize were bad for them, foods that messed up their metabolism and resulted in behavior with food that resembled addiction.

The first type is the sort who will feel they are always balancing a fine line between loss of control with eating, and not. They are the ones you'll see in a desperate scramble to try to find "the answer to their physical problems with carbs" because they just can't seem to stick to any LC plan for long.

The second type is merely using a label that literally means something different than what they are truely meaning to describe. The features of addiction are only there when blood sugar is unstable due to eating a high carbohydrate diet. This is the difference between the food addict and those with pure blood sugar problems. The food addict always wants to eat things they enjoy and feels almost compelled to do it, due to "food issues", even when physically satisfied. The other group does not have this compulsion and can effortlessly moderate intake (does not binge on fruit, strawberries, cake, etc when tasting small portions) just so long as blood sugar is stable.

Woo, can I point out that your experience isn't universal? Think about how many people you actually know well enough to know their medical and lifetime dieting history. Now think about how many billions of people there are in the world. Pretty small percentage, right?
Just because you haven't run across something in your own experience does not make it a minor occurrance or conversely make your experience universally true.

I'm really curious what sources you have to back up your assertion that it's abnormal to not be able to eat *moderate* amounts (which hasn't been defined) of grains and bread without developing some sort of metabolic problem down the road, especially in light of the fact that mankind hasn't been eating such foods for terribly long considering the whole of our development as humans.