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Repeated studies have shown that weight loss plays a bigger role than carb restriction. The article you linked showed a 12% weight loss in the experimental grou

Repeated studies have shown that weight loss plays a bigger role than carb restriction. The article you linked showed a 12% weight loss in the experimental group, which also had continued support by a health coach throughout its duration, which was the actual intervention. You make it sound like the intervention was carb elimination, rather than weight loss with a health coach. It was not.

originalsimba 9y ago
Repeated studies have shown that carb restriction leads to weight loss.
- arkades 9y ago
  No, repeated studies have shown that -any diet- leads to weight loss. Drawing anyone’s attention to what they’re eating in a detail-oriented way helps lose weight. When someone says “carb restriction is the ticket,” they’re attributing the effectiveness -to the carb restriction-, explicitly, as having an effect on weight loss notably above and beyond that of calorie restriction. Pretty much no decently structured studies have supported that. A couple animal studies suggest shit like HFCS has a much more severe short term effect on insulin than other foods, but they’re small, animal based, and “don’t eat junk food” is world away from “carb restrict.”
  - trevyn 9y ago
    Carb restriction is a ticket because, if you can follow it, it almost magically stops craving and binging. If you have a perfectly healthy relationship with food without having to constantly fight cravings, awesome, and nobody who needs to lose weight is like you.
    - mykmallett 9y ago
      YMMV. I have used keto to much success in the past, however I've found it impossible to stick with on a long term basis, even after giving it 6 months and really trying to make it work. My cravings for carbs was unbearable and made me miserable. My body seems to reject it now, as every time I try it I have a ravenous hunger for pasta, breads, chocolate. So it's not really a panacea for limiting hunger. Fat is more satiating yes, but it's also pretty joyless after a short while. I find fasting to be more in tune with my life nowadays.
      - tsmarsh 9y ago
        yeah. I was low carb for 18 months. I got down to 220 and felt really good except... I really wanted carbohydrates a lot. Even though I wasn't hungry. The first week or so was really hard. Close to no carbohydrates and all I could think about was sweet things. Even after I reintroduced healthier sweet foods like fruit, it just didn't hit the same spots as a good sandwich or a bowl of pasta. After I went back to regular food, I'd periodically do a month or so of paleo to try and the weight gain under control, but I got back up to 280. Currently I'm a couple of weeks into slimfast. I'm not hungry. I don't feel bad if grab a small piece of chocolate. Occasionally my evening meal is a small bowl of pasta, or a sandwich and I'm loosing a consistent amount of weight... for now.
      - spion 9y ago
        Out of curiosity and if you recall, what were the approximate macros?
    - originalsimba 9y ago
      What you're talking about is addiction. It has nothing to do with food. People who tend towards addiction will be addicted to all kinds of things. Fighting addiction is very difficult, no doubt. If you recognize it as addiction instead of pretending that it's something else, that makes it easier.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    You're not the arkades from buzz, by any chance?
    - arkades 9y ago
      I don’t know what buzz is, so I don’t think so. But damnit, I thought I finally found a handle (almost) no one else was using - it’s available on most sites. Bah!
      - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        Nah, don't worry. Buzz was a Greek-language forum. Your handle is (proobably?) unique on the English internet :)
- omw192168 9y ago
  If you take the time to read the studies you would see the diet leads to weight loss, carbs are not specific.
GreaterFool 9y ago
I've been on keto (carb restriction) diet (lifestyle?). Just some thoughts learned from the experience: it is incredibly easy to lose weight on carb restriction since hunger goes away and relationship with food changes. I still like to eat but it's become more a number game. I eat once a day and structure my meal to hit my macros. Just figure out how many calories and protein / fat ratio and I can usually hit close to it with 1 meal and top up calories with butter coffee. Also, I can instantly do a 1-day fast. It doesn't bother me at all. Every few days I stretch my intermittent fast to proper "just coffee and water today" fast. It's very refreshing. Calorie restriction on carbohydrate heavy diet sounds like hell. Food cravings. Starvation. Fasting on the other hand is a different story. Zen.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  Yea, the shift in your eating habits is really kind of astounding. I'm not even that close to keto levels of carb intake[1], but I've been progressively minimizing any processed carbs since college (and I'm lucky enough to have been raised eating fairly healthy, so my baseline was decent). At this point, there are certain foods that all my friends feel are impossible not to crave and give into occasionally, that I simply just don't enjoy. One of the biggest examples is fat+grain in its various forms: pizza, grilled cheese, many pastas, funnel cakes, etc etc etc. Don't get me wrong: I'm not completely incapable of enjoying these categories of food. It just needs to actually be well-made and have some flavor: by contrast, most of the people I know enjoy the wireheading effect of this combo per se. To me, this seems like the difference between eating a nice dessert and eating a bowl of straight white sugar. This is something I think about a lot: there's so many unhealthy food items that I find pretty gross at this point that most of my well-educated, high-income social circles have resigned themselves to being a completely unavoidable flaw in the human brain[2]. It's kind of eerie to think about; My diet isn't even amazingly healthy, and I've already found myself brushing up against the "eccentric abstemiousness" that pg mentions in his essay on addiction. [1] every time I lift weights, I crave carbs too much to drop them entirely: most of my carbohydrates come from beans, pulses, and certain green veggies. [2] IMHO, this is the source of the popular-on-HN sentiment that each and every one of us are hopelessly devoid of agency when it comes to resisting the power of corporations to exploit the way our brains' taste centers work. The theory isn't implausible to me, but my experience indicates that you really don't need superhuman self-control to change your diet: it just takes time and patience.
fmihaila 9y ago
> You make it sound like the intervention was carb elimination, rather than weight loss with a health coach. It was not. And you make it sound like the intervention was weight loss with a coach, rather than carb restriction made possible by continuous care. The authors assert that carbohydrate restriction was the main cause of lowered blood glucose, weight, and medicine use (weight loss was not the cause of the improvements; rather, it was one effect among others). Continuous care was required for medicine management and in order to sustain the diet, as clearly stated in the summary (emphasis mine): > Blood sugar in patients with T2D can improve quickly when patients eat significantly fewer dietary carbohydrates. However, this demands careful medicine management by doctors, and patients need support and frequent contact with health providers to sustain this way of living. [...] After 1 year, patients in the CCI, on average, lowered HbA1c from 7.6 to 6.3%, lost 12% of their body weight, and reduced diabetes medicine use. [...] This suggests the novel care model studied here using dietary carbohydrate restriction and continuous remote care can safely support adults with T2D to lower HbA1c, weight, and medicine use.
- arkades 9y ago
  They’re welcome to assert what they want, but that’s not the intervention they created.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> The authors assert that carbohydrate restriction was the main cause of lowered blood glucose, weight, and medicine use (weight loss was not the cause of the improvements; rather, it was one effect among others). Continuous care was required for medicine management and in order to sustain the diet, as clearly stated in the summary (emphasis mine): Well, to be fair, they didn't make any attempt to control for improvements due to weight loss alone. They compared their results with one "lifestyle change" study and one calorie restriction study (also with carbohydrate reduction, both of which references I didn't follow) and the difference in outcomes was not that groundbreaking, I'd say. But I'm not a doctor, or a biologist and I can't really say for sure. I'd welcome some input from a specialist on this.

originalsimba 9y ago

Repeated studies have shown that carb restriction leads to weight loss.

arkades 9y ago
No, repeated studies have shown that -any diet- leads to weight loss. Drawing anyone’s attention to what they’re eating in a detail-oriented way helps lose weight. When someone says “carb restriction is the ticket,” they’re attributing the effectiveness -to the carb restriction-, explicitly, as having an effect on weight loss notably above and beyond that of calorie restriction. Pretty much no decently structured studies have supported that. A couple animal studies suggest shit like HFCS has a much more severe short term effect on insulin than other foods, but they’re small, animal based, and “don’t eat junk food” is world away from “carb restrict.”
- trevyn 9y ago
  Carb restriction is a ticket because, if you can follow it, it almost magically stops craving and binging. If you have a perfectly healthy relationship with food without having to constantly fight cravings, awesome, and nobody who needs to lose weight is like you.
  - mykmallett 9y ago
    YMMV. I have used keto to much success in the past, however I've found it impossible to stick with on a long term basis, even after giving it 6 months and really trying to make it work. My cravings for carbs was unbearable and made me miserable. My body seems to reject it now, as every time I try it I have a ravenous hunger for pasta, breads, chocolate. So it's not really a panacea for limiting hunger. Fat is more satiating yes, but it's also pretty joyless after a short while. I find fasting to be more in tune with my life nowadays.
    - tsmarsh 9y ago
      yeah. I was low carb for 18 months. I got down to 220 and felt really good except... I really wanted carbohydrates a lot. Even though I wasn't hungry. The first week or so was really hard. Close to no carbohydrates and all I could think about was sweet things. Even after I reintroduced healthier sweet foods like fruit, it just didn't hit the same spots as a good sandwich or a bowl of pasta. After I went back to regular food, I'd periodically do a month or so of paleo to try and the weight gain under control, but I got back up to 280. Currently I'm a couple of weeks into slimfast. I'm not hungry. I don't feel bad if grab a small piece of chocolate. Occasionally my evening meal is a small bowl of pasta, or a sandwich and I'm loosing a consistent amount of weight... for now.
    - spion 9y ago
      Out of curiosity and if you recall, what were the approximate macros?
  - originalsimba 9y ago
    What you're talking about is addiction. It has nothing to do with food. People who tend towards addiction will be addicted to all kinds of things. Fighting addiction is very difficult, no doubt. If you recognize it as addiction instead of pretending that it's something else, that makes it easier.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  You're not the arkades from buzz, by any chance?
  - arkades 9y ago
    I don’t know what buzz is, so I don’t think so. But damnit, I thought I finally found a handle (almost) no one else was using - it’s available on most sites. Bah!
    - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      Nah, don't worry. Buzz was a Greek-language forum. Your handle is (proobably?) unique on the English internet :)
omw192168 9y ago
If you take the time to read the studies you would see the diet leads to weight loss, carbs are not specific.

GreaterFool 9y ago

I've been on keto (carb restriction) diet (lifestyle?). Just some thoughts learned from the experience: it is incredibly easy to lose weight on carb restriction since hunger goes away and relationship with food changes. I still like to eat but it's become more a number game. I eat once a day and structure my meal to hit my macros. Just figure out how many calories and protein / fat ratio and I can usually hit close to it with 1 meal and top up calories with butter coffee. Also, I can instantly do a 1-day fast. It doesn't bother me at all. Every few days I stretch my intermittent fast to proper "just coffee and water today" fast. It's very refreshing. Calorie restriction on carbohydrate heavy diet sounds like hell. Food cravings. Starvation. Fasting on the other hand is a different story. Zen.

wutbrodo 9y ago
Yea, the shift in your eating habits is really kind of astounding. I'm not even that close to keto levels of carb intake[1], but I've been progressively minimizing any processed carbs since college (and I'm lucky enough to have been raised eating fairly healthy, so my baseline was decent). At this point, there are certain foods that all my friends feel are impossible not to crave and give into occasionally, that I simply just don't enjoy. One of the biggest examples is fat+grain in its various forms: pizza, grilled cheese, many pastas, funnel cakes, etc etc etc. Don't get me wrong: I'm not completely incapable of enjoying these categories of food. It just needs to actually be well-made and have some flavor: by contrast, most of the people I know enjoy the wireheading effect of this combo per se. To me, this seems like the difference between eating a nice dessert and eating a bowl of straight white sugar. This is something I think about a lot: there's so many unhealthy food items that I find pretty gross at this point that most of my well-educated, high-income social circles have resigned themselves to being a completely unavoidable flaw in the human brain[2]. It's kind of eerie to think about; My diet isn't even amazingly healthy, and I've already found myself brushing up against the "eccentric abstemiousness" that pg mentions in his essay on addiction. [1] every time I lift weights, I crave carbs too much to drop them entirely: most of my carbohydrates come from beans, pulses, and certain green veggies. [2] IMHO, this is the source of the popular-on-HN sentiment that each and every one of us are hopelessly devoid of agency when it comes to resisting the power of corporations to exploit the way our brains' taste centers work. The theory isn't implausible to me, but my experience indicates that you really don't need superhuman self-control to change your diet: it just takes time and patience.

fmihaila 9y ago

> You make it sound like the intervention was carb elimination, rather than weight loss with a health coach. It was not. And you make it sound like the intervention was weight loss with a coach, rather than carb restriction made possible by continuous care. The authors assert that carbohydrate restriction was the main cause of lowered blood glucose, weight, and medicine use (weight loss was not the cause of the improvements; rather, it was one effect among others). Continuous care was required for medicine management and in order to sustain the diet, as clearly stated in the summary (emphasis mine): > Blood sugar in patients with T2D can improve quickly when patients eat significantly fewer dietary carbohydrates. However, this demands careful medicine management by doctors, and patients need support and frequent contact with health providers to sustain this way of living. [...] After 1 year, patients in the CCI, on average, lowered HbA1c from 7.6 to 6.3%, lost 12% of their body weight, and reduced diabetes medicine use. [...] This suggests the novel care model studied here using dietary carbohydrate restriction and continuous remote care can safely support adults with T2D to lower HbA1c, weight, and medicine use.

arkades 9y ago
They’re welcome to assert what they want, but that’s not the intervention they created.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> The authors assert that carbohydrate restriction was the main cause of lowered blood glucose, weight, and medicine use (weight loss was not the cause of the improvements; rather, it was one effect among others). Continuous care was required for medicine management and in order to sustain the diet, as clearly stated in the summary (emphasis mine): Well, to be fair, they didn't make any attempt to control for improvements due to weight loss alone. They compared their results with one "lifestyle change" study and one calorie restriction study (also with carbohydrate reduction, both of which references I didn't follow) and the difference in outcomes was not that groundbreaking, I'd say. But I'm not a doctor, or a biologist and I can't really say for sure. I'd welcome some input from a specialist on this.