3 ms·

Seems there was little difference between low fat and low carbs. However, both groups were urged to eat a healthy diet: “Everyone was supposed to have vegetable

Seems there was little difference between low fat and low carbs. However, both groups were urged to eat a healthy diet: “Everyone was supposed to have vegetables all day long as much as they could, have a salad every day, and no added sugar and as little refined flour as you could get,” Also, at the end it talks about the idea of satiation. Eat as much as you want to feel full, as long as it is healthy. That has been my philosophy, and it has worked very well.

juice_bus 9y ago
I've 'recently' (May 2017) started simply counting the calories i consume and not avoiding one thing or another, keeping it below my TDEE. Some days are very high in Fat, others carbs, sometimes protein. I've lost 32lbs/14.5kg since then (and another 30 to go). I guess i will see in the long term if it is healthy, but i do feel great now.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I think you are on the right track. A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much and generally eat quality food.
  - fintler 9y ago
    > A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much I think my personal problem was that I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE.
    - kbutler 9y ago
      "I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE." Winning quote right there.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      That's a big problem, especially in the US. Portion sizes for everything (including coffee) are over the top so people have no idea how little food they actually need.
- fintler 9y ago
  After a few (many?) failed attempts at keto and other diets (I would always stall out after around 15lbs of weight loss), simply counting calories is by far the only thing that has worked for me well. Currently, I target 1,400 kcal a day (8-16 intermittent fasting with 2 meals of 700 calories each) with a calculated TDEE of around 2,500 kcal. I've lost around 60lbs/27.2kg since January 2017 (240lbs/108.9kg to a bit less than 180lbs/81.6kg). I eat whatever I feel like (usually meat, veggies, and a starch in each meal) and just limit calories. I don't use anything like MyFitnessPal to track calories counted. Keeping things to "eat only 700 calories per meal" is simple enough where you can do a quick Google search before eating to make sure you're on track. Something interesting is that my error with calorie counting (and possibly metabolism) is about 10-15%, given that the hacker diet calculations (trendweight.com hooked up to my withings scale) calculates my TDEE (based on my actual weight changes) at 2,200 kcal instead of the calculated 2,500 kcal. Also, I just bought a medium t-shirt last weekend for the first time since I was in high school! :)
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    IMO it helps to treat calorie-counting as something that is fundamentally inaccurate, but still "good enough" as long as the errors are consistent. Meanwhile, the moving-average of your weight is closer to some kind of ground truth, and can be used to recalibrate the calorie budget.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Yeah, the passable diet you will actually follow always trumps the theoretically-excellent process which you can't stick with :) 4-5 years ago I started a trek from 215 down to 155, which took a year using basic calorie-tracking. The best thing about it was that it let me start doing this little comparisons of "which choice will I enjoy more" between different quantities of different substances with the same calorie-budget. While I backslid a bit over the next few years (170) I still think it went pretty well and it encourages me that I can probably do it again, even as a sedentary computer-guy.
defined 9y ago
Thing is, vegetables have varying amounts of carbs that can set back your low-carb diet. For example, celery, broccoli and lettuce are very fibrous and humans don't really digest the carbs, so they have little impact. Probably only ruminants can extract significant nutrition. On the other hand, in roughly increasing order of carb content, tomato (technically a fruit), onion, carrots, potatoes, corn, wheat products, and rice will reduce the effectiveness of a low carb diet, especially if dieters are told it's ok to eat vegetables all day long without specific guidance on what to avoid. I agree that ultimately it comes down to the rate at which we put energy into our bodies vs the rate at which our bodies use the energy and don't store it as fat. Unfortunately, there are confounding factors that make this a simplistic heuristic. Things like underactive thyroids, insulin response to blood glucose fluctuations, our basal metabolic rate, and similar things, many of which are often genetically determined. I believe that a really important reason to do a low-carb diet with moderate protein and enough fat for satiation is that it is much easier to sustain as a permanent lifestyle change than a low-fat diet, which in my experience leaves one often feeling hungry and unsatisfied. And the permanent change is what is needed for long-term success.

juice_bus 9y ago

I've 'recently' (May 2017) started simply counting the calories i consume and not avoiding one thing or another, keeping it below my TDEE. Some days are very high in Fat, others carbs, sometimes protein. I've lost 32lbs/14.5kg since then (and another 30 to go). I guess i will see in the long term if it is healthy, but i do feel great now.

maxxxxx 9y ago
I think you are on the right track. A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much and generally eat quality food.
- fintler 9y ago
  > A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much I think my personal problem was that I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE.
  - kbutler 9y ago
    "I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE." Winning quote right there.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's a big problem, especially in the US. Portion sizes for everything (including coffee) are over the top so people have no idea how little food they actually need.
fintler 9y ago
After a few (many?) failed attempts at keto and other diets (I would always stall out after around 15lbs of weight loss), simply counting calories is by far the only thing that has worked for me well. Currently, I target 1,400 kcal a day (8-16 intermittent fasting with 2 meals of 700 calories each) with a calculated TDEE of around 2,500 kcal. I've lost around 60lbs/27.2kg since January 2017 (240lbs/108.9kg to a bit less than 180lbs/81.6kg). I eat whatever I feel like (usually meat, veggies, and a starch in each meal) and just limit calories. I don't use anything like MyFitnessPal to track calories counted. Keeping things to "eat only 700 calories per meal" is simple enough where you can do a quick Google search before eating to make sure you're on track. Something interesting is that my error with calorie counting (and possibly metabolism) is about 10-15%, given that the hacker diet calculations (trendweight.com hooked up to my withings scale) calculates my TDEE (based on my actual weight changes) at 2,200 kcal instead of the calculated 2,500 kcal. Also, I just bought a medium t-shirt last weekend for the first time since I was in high school! :)
- Terr_ 9y ago
  IMO it helps to treat calorie-counting as something that is fundamentally inaccurate, but still "good enough" as long as the errors are consistent. Meanwhile, the moving-average of your weight is closer to some kind of ground truth, and can be used to recalibrate the calorie budget.
Terr_ 9y ago
Yeah, the passable diet you will actually follow always trumps the theoretically-excellent process which you can't stick with :) 4-5 years ago I started a trek from 215 down to 155, which took a year using basic calorie-tracking. The best thing about it was that it let me start doing this little comparisons of "which choice will I enjoy more" between different quantities of different substances with the same calorie-budget. While I backslid a bit over the next few years (170) I still think it went pretty well and it encourages me that I can probably do it again, even as a sedentary computer-guy.

defined 9y ago

Thing is, vegetables have varying amounts of carbs that can set back your low-carb diet. For example, celery, broccoli and lettuce are very fibrous and humans don't really digest the carbs, so they have little impact. Probably only ruminants can extract significant nutrition. On the other hand, in roughly increasing order of carb content, tomato (technically a fruit), onion, carrots, potatoes, corn, wheat products, and rice will reduce the effectiveness of a low carb diet, especially if dieters are told it's ok to eat vegetables all day long without specific guidance on what to avoid. I agree that ultimately it comes down to the rate at which we put energy into our bodies vs the rate at which our bodies use the energy and don't store it as fat. Unfortunately, there are confounding factors that make this a simplistic heuristic. Things like underactive thyroids, insulin response to blood glucose fluctuations, our basal metabolic rate, and similar things, many of which are often genetically determined. I believe that a really important reason to do a low-carb diet with moderate protein and enough fat for satiation is that it is much easier to sustain as a permanent lifestyle change than a low-fat diet, which in my experience leaves one often feeling hungry and unsatisfied. And the permanent change is what is needed for long-term success.