Low fat vs. low carb

[Jungledoc]

Has anyone seen more detail about this than this story reports? What do you all think?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100803/hl ... weightloss

[stuward]

It's interesting but not surprising that the low-carb group had better lipids and BP. I've said before that it's hard to stick to low carb because the rest of the world promotes junk food and/or low fat. If you do stick to it as a lifetime eating habit, you can continue to lose fat continually but only a few do it.

http://www.annals.org/content/153/3/147.abstract?aimhp

Conclusion: Successful weight loss can be achieved with either a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet when coupled with behavioral treatment. A low-carbohydrate diet is associated with favorable changes in cardiovascular disease risk factors at 2 years.

[frogbyte]

What about other health markers... For most of my life of eating toxic grain foods I had skin issues, like dry itchy flakiness. Immediately (within a couple weeks) of switching to paleo and high O3 all that went away.

Forgive the rant, but the media obsession with weight, and not health, drives me crazy and stories like that are contributing to the problem. Especially where it alludes to calorie reduction, blah.

[jml]

"It confirms what we have known for years: that it's not fat versus carbohydrates. It's the calories that lead to weight loss."

...

After 3 months, participants in the low-carbohydrate diet group increased their carbohydrate intake (5 g/d per wk) until a stable and desired weight was achieved.

Uhhh...

[NightFaLL]

This seems pretty accurate to me, weight loss is 100% about a caloric deficit.


The type of weight loss can, of course, be manipulated by different macro breakdowns.

Adherence has always been what people should focus on - assuming protein is high, any diet that keeps you at a caloric deficit consistently is the way2go.

[pdellorto]

This seems pretty accurate to me, weight loss is 100% about a caloric deficit.


The type of weight loss can, of course, be manipulated by different macro breakdowns.

This has been my experience - that both calorie counts* and macro breakdown are important when I try to either gain or lose weight.

I know some people here say calorie counts are rubbish, but for me, they aren't. I need to watch my total intake as well as the composition of that intake. The difference between my maintenance level low-carb days and my "make 179.9 on weigh-in day" low-carb days is in kcals, not carb counts or even carb percentage.

Still, kcals isn't the only thing or even the main thing; I think you need to start with "what am I eating" and move to "how much of this do I need to eat?" rather than the other way around if you want to maximize the amount of LBM you hold on to...or add.


* Usually cunningly disguised as macro targets for the day...

[pdellorto]

After 3 months, participants in the low-carbohydrate diet group increased their carbohydrate intake (5 g/d per wk) until a stable and desired weight was achieved.

Uhhh...

It's been a long time since I did Atkins, but the idea was to start with about 20 net carbs a week, and then after a few weeks you added carbs (5g/d/wk sounds about right) until you found the level of carbs you could handle and still either lose weight (if that was the goal) or maintain (if you were where you wanted to be.

I could be wrong, my copy of the book isn't handy, but I absolutely remember slowly ramping up carbs in that fashion, and urinating on ketone-detecting strips to see if I was still in ketosis. You wouldn't need to do that if you just stayed at "Induction" level - 20g/d, net (total carbs minus fiber, minus sugar alcohol) - for the whole diet.

[jml]

After 3 months, participants in the low-carbohydrate diet group increased their carbohydrate intake (5 g/d per wk) until a stable and desired weight was achieved.

Uhhh...

It's been a long time since I did Atkins, but the idea was to start with about 20 net carbs a week, and then after a few weeks you added carbs (5g/d/wk sounds about right) until you found the level of carbs you could handle and still either lose weight (if that was the goal) or maintain (if you were where you wanted to be.

I could be wrong, my copy of the book isn't handy, but I absolutely remember slowly ramping up carbs in that fashion, and urinating on ketone-detecting strips to see if I was still in ketosis. You wouldn't need to do that if you just stayed at "Induction" level - 20g/d, net (total carbs minus fiber, minus sugar alcohol) - for the whole diet.

I just figured adding in carbs after 1/8 of the study is a weird thing to do since it was my impression that all of the people were still fat (not at their desired weight) and that could affect their weight loss. Never mind then.

[Jungledoc]

I was curious if anyone had any specific thoughts about this particular study.

Here's the abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20679559

[ApolytonGP]

Not surprised. There are a variety of nutrient mixes that will provide adequate nutrition while losing weight and while keeping adherant. We are omnivores. This stuff does not need to be so complicated. Alan would agre...

[Helena115]

I would have liked to see more details on the composition of both diets, how much the low carb group increased their carbs during the last 21 (!) months of the study and what kind of fats were consumed. In the low fat group I'd like to see more details on what types of food they ate in general.

Like jml said, the people were still overweight (they started at BMI 30-40 and no one lost more than 12 kilos, and gained half of that back after 2 years) after the study was over. Why? They continued the behavioral treatment throughout the 2 years and kept food logs, so the authors should be able to give some sort of clue, but they don't.