maybe i'm guilty of pedantry, malcolm, but then so is anthony. and if it's all the same to you, i'd prefer to keep this exchange cordial.

as far as the debate goes, how do you define energy expenditure? do you include the costs of protein turnover, thermogenesis, etc. (i.e. the cost of eating an lc diet). if you don't, than i disagree with what you an anthony are claiming. i think you can lose weight by consuming more calories than you expend, if you don't account for those "lost" calories and other added losses, as dodger mentioned. and although none of the studies quoted indicate that this has happened, none indicate that it hasn't happened either. i know i've read of weight losses occurring at high calorie intakes, i'll have to do some searching.

I wasn't aware anyone had overstepped the 'cordial' boundary, but if I did so unintentionally i apologise.

You seem to feel that Anthony should reiterate all the many advantages of low carb (to which he alludes in this piece) in every article he writes.

All I have tried to point out to you is that this newsletter (which is directed at the low carb 'faithful' anyway) simply addresses the common conception that as long as you eat low or very low carbs, calories, portion control, energy intake - call it what you like - is no longer something 'we' have to concern ourselves with. I agree with Anthony that this is certainly not the case, and is an issue that is worthy of discussion on its own, in his newsletter, here, or anywhere else.

As for the definition of energy expenditure, of course in includes all factors and some of those relate to macronutrient ratio - noone is arguing that point! , and as others have suggested to you, its almost impossible to measure on a day to day basis anyway. So that gets us right back to balancing energy intake with whatever expenditure we each require - so clearly how much we eat and how much we exercise are as relevant to low carbers as to anyone else - which I think you will concede, is Anthony's point.

Cheers,

Malcolm

well, i can see we're not going to agree. i don't think how much we eat and exercise is as important as it is to someone eating a high-carb/low-fat diet. as kekwick's study shows, eating 1000 calories a day on a 90% carb diet led to NO lost weight. clearly, those on high-carb diets are fighting an uphill battle.

anthony contended that a high-carb diet that was 1000 calories below bmr would lead to more weight loss than a low-carb diet 1000 calories above. it's possible that an lc diet that exceeds bmr by 1000 would lead to weight gain, but you'd be forcing yourself to eat that much. i do believe that an vlck diet that exceeded bmr by 200-300 calories would lead to some weight loss, which beats NO weight loss.

no. never said any such thing. but if he's going to discuss calorie balance he needs to consider all the factors involved, which he didn't.

I just have a hard time believing this one, unless someone has a huge metabolic issue, like a malfunctioning thyroid gland, you'll lose weight on 1000 calories a day regardless of the macronutrient content. Well, who knows, maybe you retain so much fluid that it doesn't result in weight loss over the short term, but otherwise, I think there must be something wrong.

When my thryoid was nuked and the levels of hormones in my blood stream had fallen off to such a level that I was severely hypothyroid, I couldn't lose on 1200 calories a day and an hour of exercise. That was a diet where I ate food that was delivered to me and completely portion controlled.

But when things were totally normal, or closer to normal, I could lose on 1200 calories. And this was back in the midst of the low-fat craze.

Had to chip in concerning the amount of energy lost by elimination of unused ketones (in the sweat, urine, etc).

First, this effect was shown to be trivial (maybe a max of 20 calories per day).

This loss is also transient and only occurs at the beginning of a LC diet.

It fades over time (no matter how low the carb intake) because the body adapts to use ketones as energy. BTW, ketones are the body's preferred energy source.

After about 3 months on very low carb, blood ketones may be quite high, but there are not going to be any spilled over in the urine and sweat because the body can make use of them very efficiently as an energy source.

It would have been a weird evolutionary twist that the body should eliminate any part of its preferred energy source for no reason.

Something, perhaps a burst of testosterone, has convinced Mr. Colpo to make statements that probably he knows are false, were he to be a little more careful. From the URL that began this thread:



This starts with a bit of a straw man. There are *many* factors in weight loss. "Calorie intake," without further qualification, is certainly not a "deciding factor." It seems to be forgotten what calories are.

When we say that such and such a food "has" so many calories, we mean that, if we burn the food (literally, perhaps in a bomb calorimiter, that is, we oxidize it), it will generate so many kilocalories in heat. Which is shortened to "calorie" in popular usage.

But the body is not a bomb calorimiter. We do not oxidize every oxidizable substance in the food we eat. In particular, human beings can't digest cellulose, i.e., fiber. Cows can do it, which is why you can fatten a cow by feeding it straw. You could feed a human being straw all day long and.... well, it is not a pleasant prospect, is it?



He is making the point that if you don't consume enough metabolizable food to provide the energy you expend, you will lose weight, because your body will consume its stores, whether those be fat or muscle. I don't think there is any controversy about this: but, easily overlooked, such a diet will leave you ravenously hungry; it's extremely difficult to follow a diet like that for an extended period of time.



The way this test was designed, it would be physically impossible to follow the diet and not lose weight. (It would be *hard* to follow the diet, perhaps, but that is a different issue.)



I'm going to add one little extra condition here. The dietician knows who Mr. Colpo is, wants to embarass him, and is free to design the diet in such a manner as to accomplish this.



Actually, not. We don't count fiber when counting carbs, but fiber burns nicely, and, unless some adjustment is made for that, the calories that come from fiber have no effect of the kind being described. You won't gain weight by eating fiber.

Plus there is, of course, in addition, the famous metabolic advantage: the body is not as efficient burning ketones as it is in burning digestible carbs.

So a diet could be designed that would match the low-calorie diet in terms of weight loss. It might also be difficult to follow, but I haven't actually looked at how much fiber one would have to consume. But, theoretically, at least, it could be done.



Well, I believe that, with a number of caveats. First of all, "the low carb diet" is not nearly specific enough. What kind of low carb diet? Secondly, my goal is not the size of weight loss, such as, "amazing weight loss in four weeks!", but, rather, a way of eating that maximizes my health, and which includes weight loss. I don't need to lose more weight than I've already lost, so my goal is simply to not gain the weight back. So "greater weight loss," I would define as, starting from an overweight position, the net loss in weight after a lapse of time. Say, five years. That low calorie diet is impossible to follow for five years! But low carb diets, properly designed, can be followed indefinitely. So, yes, the weight loss, as I have defined it, would be greater with the low carb diet. Unless the dieter really was forced to follow that low calorie diet and died as a result.



I've seen nutritionists make this statement quite a few times. It is, quite simply, false. To make it clear why it is false, I'll qualify the statement to make it true.

Assuming normal metabolism, to lose weight while consuming food containing digestible calories more than the body utilizes or excretes is a physiological impossibility.

We don't consume "energy," per se. We consume foods which contain, among other things, fuels. Some of the fuel we burn, some we excrete, and some we may store. What we store adds weight.

I don't think it is true that "calories don't count." But counting calories, as such, is probably counting the wrong thing. The most readily utilizable fuel that we can consume is carbohydrates. By counting net carbs, we are counting the quick fuel that we consume. By consuming less of that fuel than we need for the work we do (I'm using "work" to include all the metabolic processes), we force the body to burn other fuels, and on an Atkins diet, the other fuel is fat.

It is quite possible that if one added those 1000 calories as fat in the diet, in addition to the fat added to replace the carbohydrates taken out of the diet, that one would gain weight. But it is very difficult to eat that much fat, I think. Fat sates. So, while it may not be true that "calories don't count," it *may* be true that it is unnecessary to count calories, and *this* is the claim that Atkins made.

I do know that, since I went on the Atkins diet, I have deliberately eaten my fill of butter, heavy cream, chicken skin, fatty meat, and the like. And I have not gained weight, indeed I lost a fair amount of weight doing this. I don't count calories. In fact, I don't even count carbs precisely, I just have an idea of how many net carbs there are in the foods I eat, and I normally avoid high-carb foods and instead eat full-fat dairy products, meat, fish, salad greens, vegetables, blueberries and sometimes raspberries.

Expanding on your data, a little:

Barry Groves, the Eat Fat, Get Thin guy, summarizes his thoughts on this topic at the Red Flags site below:

http://www.redflagsweekly.com/confe...2004_feb23.html

He lists some old studies, including Kekwick's (wonder why they don't repeat these?)




He also comes up with some interesting calorie equivalents for fats and carbs.





I suspect 4700 to 8470 calories of fat would weigh about the same as 2500 to 3300 calories of carb. Must be a coincidence.

Right on!!

I just wanted to add this note to emphasize that I'm not criticizing Mr. Colpo's work in general, at least not here. Just his error in leaning on the common error: "A calorie is a calorie," which very clearly implies that what *kind* of fuel is involved does not matter. That slogan is used over and over by nutritionists arguing against low-carb diets. (That and the apparent myth that saturated fats such as butter will clog your arteries, so it is better for heart health to eat a low-fat diet. The opposite is probably true.)

And the argument that increasing the caloric content of food will necessarily reduce weight lost or increase weight gained, on the basis that this is a physical impossibility is likewise a serious error; in fact, an article was published in a major nutrition journal devoted entirely to debunking this bad science.

The counterexample is blindingly obvious: fiber has caloric content, yet you can consume, apparently, all the fiber you want, without consuming *effective* calories.

Mr. Colpo is apparently arguing against the opposite error, the idea that it does not matter *at all* how many calories you consume. It probably does matter. But the consumption of net carbohydrate grams apparently is correlated with weight loss much better than caloric content.

My suspicion is that if, given a controlled-carb diet, in the low range, you increase fat calories (holding protein constant), you would see lower weight loss in a normal individual. In fact, this is almost certain, as can be seen by the opposite thought experiment:

Hold protein and carb content of a diet constant, but lower fat content. If the protein and carb components are not adequate to sustain the metabolic processes in the individual, there is a level of fat content at which weight loss is guaranteed. There *may* be a range within which increasing the fat has little effect on weight loss, but there is a level of fat consumption (in this precisely-controlled diet) where there is enough fat that the body begins to store at least some of it. It appears that the conversion of fat calories into stored fat calories is quite inefficient. And because fat is sating, an ad libitem diet will not normally (under the conditions which Americans mostly live under) contain enough fat to maintain weight, if the base weight is high enough. People on low-carb diets do seem to plateau at a certain weight; to go below that weight probably requires caloric limitation. But that weight is, almost by definition, the person's healthy weight. Losing beyond that point may not be healthy at all.

But if a person has a disordered appetite or deliberately gorges on fat (not merely consuming more than society says is too much, but actually neglecting the normal warnings of fullness and loss of appetite), then weight gain is certainly possible.

So, to summarize, it is not normally necessary to count calories to lose weight, if one's weight is unhealthily high. Counting carbs or otherwise maintaining net carb intake in the Atkins weight loss range seems to be quite sufficient. But this does not mean that calories are completely irrelevant, just that *normally* counting calories is not necessary for weight loss.

On the other hand, if one is on a low-carb diet, long-term, and ketone tests are positive, and one is not losing weight, then looking at caloric intake could be a good idea. Lowering the fat in the diet and substituting fiber carbs might possibly maintain satisfaction (essential in a long term nutritional plan) while producing more weight loss.

Calories are the most important factor when it comes to weight loss.
Obviously true. Decepively so.

1) Calories are not all the same to our bodies.
Obviously one must use more energy than they consume to lose weight. The implication that this process is controlled exclusively by how much energy one is consuming – measured in kilocalories - is erroneous.
A calorie is simply a unit of energy. Monitors and keyboards have calories, so does everything in existence. People think of the kilocalorie as a unit of measuring food energy in particular; many are surprised to learn this is false.

The assumption is made that denying the truth of calorie theory is to deny the first law of thermodynamics. This is not true, because this assumption further assumes that if a food-source does not produce the anticipated effect (so many calorie’s worth of energy to the body) then the energy must have been spontaneously destroyed (which is not possible).
However there are other possibilities for the consumed energy.

The present model is to view everything in existence from the binary perspective of “food calories” or “nonfood calories”; meaning, it either can be used as energy and “counts” (fat, carbohydrate, protein), or it doesn’t (fiber).
It’s not true that there are only binary states of “food” and “nonfood”. The reason this is so is because it is our bodies enzymes and hormones which discriminate between food and nonfood calories, and the state of our bodies metabolic agents are highly dependant on lifestyle and diet composition.

What’s being lost in translation here with all this focus on calories, is that diet composition is a factor which affects enzymes, hormones, and thus metabolic state just as profoundly as raw calorie amount. You are doing yourself a disservice to pray to the calorie gods, without giving as much thought to diet composition.

The calorie theory, in exclusion of focus on diet and lifestyle, is very short sighted and not very effective long term. It’s seeing only one part of the picture. The calorie theory works on the assumption that all usable fuel sources have an identical effect on our body, when this is obviously false. If I eat 1000 calories of cotton candy, the effect is NOT the same as if I eat 1000 calories of chicken, avocado, and melon. When I speak of “effect”, I mean to say it is not true my enzymatic, hormonal profile will remain the same irregardless of what I consume, and it is only how much that matters. Eating only cotton candy I will store more fat, waste more muscle, my energy levels (and thus metabolic rate) will be lower, when relatively compared to an isocaloric diet of chicken, avocado, and melon. This is because the cotton candy calories, inside my body, do things to it that chicken, avocado, and melon does not. Likewise, chicken, avocado, and melon calories do things to my body cotton candy does not. The difference is stark.

In sum:

• everything has calories
• those things with calories that are “food” (i.e. “counted”) and those that are not (i.e. not counted, known as “fiber”), is a discrimination determined based on our bodies hormones and enzymes.
• hormones and enzymes ratios are determined, among other things, by diet composition.
• therefore a calorie is not a calorie; metabolic state will not remain equal irregardless of what food stuff is consumed, which means metabolic rate (as well as body composition) is subject to change.
• therefore, calorie counting is at best a crude approximation and by no mean a bible-like final word on what will happen to your body.

2) However, calories still count.
I don’t want to promote the stupid myth that calories don’t count. Nothing ticks me off more than people eating 2000 calories – but no carbs - and not understanding why they aren’t losing weight.
Focusing exclusively on diet composition – when you have specific fitness and health goals in mind – is just as foolish as focusing on calorie contents. Very few people achieve their fitness goals purely by counting carbs, because it is more than carbs which affect how much total tissue our body stores. Energy availability figures in huge, and one is doing themselves a big favor in meeting body fat reduction goals by selecting from lower fat options (in the context of carb control, of course).

Just as it is a truth that food-type effects metabolic hormones & enzymes, it is also a truth that food quanity does as well.
Sorry people but there is no one “golden ticket” to fitness. If this is your focus, it requires considering lots of variables. There is no free lunch. It is impossible to eat limitless quantities of fat and remain thin. I agree with Anthony that the low carb diet book gurus are promoting a “kitschy” hook to try to push their product, by lying to the consumer and creating the impression that one should not pay attention to calories as much as carbs.
Now some one is going to say “oh but woo I lost all the weight I wanted to by not counting calories!” Yes, it is true that to some people’s perceptions “limitless” is only enough to maintain weight. However, it is doing a disservice to those who tend toward over-eating and with more ambitious fitness goals (relative to starting point), to advise them calories don’t matter. It is irresponsible to fail to distinguish between one’s perceptions (it feels like I can eat whatever) and biological reality (that I actually CAN eat whatever). Simply because some people’s appetite is self-regulating, and their fitness goals are more natural to your body (e.g. a body weight reduction from 150 to 120 pounds), doesn’t mean that my appetite is equally self-regulating, and that my specific fitness goals are as natural to me (e.g. a body weight reduction of 350 pounds to 150 pounds). It may take me – the female with sedentary lifestyle and a history of significant obesity – a lot more conscious control to get her body where she wants it to be, because my body and natural lifestyle proclivities are such that I tend to eat more and store more fat. Eating whatever of fat isn’t going to work for me, without any control at all.

The bottom line is such. Yes high carbs and lower fat/pro carbs promote a metabolic state that is conducive to low energy, over eating, and fat building. However, food amount also plays a role. If you eat more fat and protein you put your body in a more anabolic (tissue building) state. Yes it is true that eating a healthful low carb diet means it is less likely there will be a gross imbalance between hormones, so the focus of that anabolism will be more proportionately distributed between lean tissue and fat. However you will gain fat, too, if you eat too much, even low carb. Everything we eat converts to sugar and fuels; this raises blood sugar, and insulin (which promotes anabolism although simultaneously with hormones that promote synthesis of lean-tissue so it is less likely to be fat that is created).
The obese are more anabolic than the less fat in an absolute sense; it is a myth, and exactly counter to reality, that the obese have low metabolism and no muscle, much like Anthony poins out.

In sum, the only thing that changes with carb control is the “balance” of hormones: how much the body favors energy use & fat building vs energy storage & muscle building relatively speaking. Absolute level of both is controlled primarily (but not exclusively) by net energy intake. Eating less makes the body lose tissues (fat, protein, bones, etc); eating more makes the body build more tissues (fat, protein, bones, everything).
Most people, especially obese people, will find it more common that low carb as written in the Atkins books will not take them to their ideal fitness goals. Now there’s nothing wrong with settling, but for the person who is in it just as much if not moreso for the body as they are the metabolic health improvements… it is doing a grave disservice to tell them to “up their fat”, to swallow tablespoons of oil, and other such nonsense to lose weight. It is a disservice to tell people that taking advantage of the appetite suppression of low carb & a metabolically balanced state (when overfat) will put them in “starvation mode”. None of that is effective, it’s all rubbish.
Observationally those who have done the dramatic transformations – meeting truly ambitious goals relative to start point – it is statistically much much more common for us to be calorie aware. This is not coincidence.
Again, there's nothing wrong with having a different priority set, but if your priority is weight loss, AND your goal is ambitious relative to baseline, it's very likely that Atkins as written will do it for you. You'll have to watch the cals, too.

I absolutely agree with you. When I first started Atkins, I followed it "by the book." I successfully went from 210 to 170 in about 7 months without much effort. The weight loss came to a screeching halt with no change in my eating habits. I continued under the supposition that I could just wait it out and eventually start moving downward again. I stayed very low carb and never once strayed from the official formula. I walked an average of 1.5 hrs daily in the summer and about 30 min in the winter on the treadmill (I hate the treadmill)...The Palm program I use to track carbs will also show calories and I was averaging about 1800. So, over the next year, I gradually gained back about 10 lbs on a "strict" Atkins diet. I'm a slow learner I guess...I finally decided I'd have to try something new so stayed low carb but cut the calories back to 1000-1200. I"m now back to losing a couple lbs a week and praying it continues so I don't have to find plan C.

At least for me, the calorie count is obviously an integral part of the picture. I just didn't realize it until my body lost enough weight that it balanced out with what I was consuming and I no longer had the calorie defiicit to continue weight loss.

This has been a great thread and needs to be made a sticky or something.

I’ve accepted for a long time that a calorie isn’t a calorie but that calories do count but even after everything I’ve read I still can’t get my head around one concept . Does knowing your BMR make weight loss quantifiable? In a nutshell:

If I’ve had my BMR tested and I know it’s 1500 calories per day, is it scientifically possible for me to lose weight on a low-carb-higher-than-1500 calories-a-day diet (without exercise)?

In my opinion, its extremely complex to the point I don't think it has really been explained yet. There is no single unified theory of weight loss, calories or weight gain, IMHO. You add in things like gender, hormones, diseases, gut bacteria, drugs you're taking which may inhibit loss, and who the heck knows what will happen?

We get guys on this forum all the time that swear they can eat unlimited calories, and do, and lose weight. Then we get women who eat next to nothing and can't, or who gain when they don't. It's just complex and so far, inexpicable.

I found a fascinating link today - http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodco...assics/ah74.pdf

I didn't read it completely (frankly, my attention span for such scientific stuff isn't high) but if I got the gist of it correct, most calorie counts listed on nutritional labels would already take into account issues of calories available to the body, digestibility, etc, etc.

It suggests to me that some of the arguements we've made for why we can eat more calories on low carb don't hold water. I still think some do, insulin issues, the effects of a consistent low-carb diet and such aren't studied here, but it does take away the "well, protein isn't 100% digestible and carbs are, so that's why we can eat more calories on low-carb" arguement. It seems that's already been factored in to calorie counts.

I guess I really just want to know if that particular scenario (in isolation) is still open to debate.......