10 ms·

The carbs-obesity hypothesis

35 points by js2 8y ago

metabagel 8y ago
I think that exercise has a strong effect on mood, appetite, digestion, and metabolism. Grazing continuously probably interferes with the migrating motor complex, so we will tend to do better if we refrain from eating outside of mealtimes. Refined carbohydrates tend to be addictive due to the quick increase in blood sugar levels, and tend to make consuming unrefined carbohydrates seem less appealing. Eating some fat promotes satiety, which may help reduce over-eating. So, there are a lot of factors in play.
- theothermkn 8y ago
  > So, there are a lot of factors in play. I forget where I read this, or even the exact figure, but bowel movements for some subset of indigenous tribes was something like 4 pounds. I remember thinking they must be getting ridiculous amounts of fiber. I’m not one to advocate for “paleo” or any other diet based on “what’s natural,” but it does seem it’s at least possible that our metabolisms and blood chemistry may have “grown up” with a lot more fiber than we moderns typically get. Other factors, indeed.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    I think we need to be careful assuming that having a 4 lbs poop is a good thing just because we used to do it. The Inuit's diet was nearly entirely from animal protein and fats, totally bereft of fiber. People can adapt to a lot of misery, and I wonder if the need to eat that much fiber was due to other concerns (for instance, not having access to higher energy concentrated food stuffs). Either way we can't say that just because someone once did it it's healthy, or a well adapted behaviour.
    - theothermkn 8y ago
      I’m not sure how much more circumspect I could have been.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    My grandparents and their great grandparents were from small villages in Greece. They used "frequent solid bowel movements a day" as sort of a at-a-glance measure of good health. I have heard of other friends who are from eastern european countries share similar stories. So there seems to be some sort of tradition there. Anyways, Single easiest way for me to get fiber back in my diet was to simply eat the fruit instead of drinking the juice. It had a bonus effect of cutting down the sugars as well.
- oligopoly 8y ago
  People underestimate the amounts they are eating. Then again some amateur athletes would do well to eat more carbs. Steel Cut Oats, rice and vegetables are good source for carbs
hulton 8y ago
For most people: If Calories In > Calories Out, you're going to gain weight if you're consistently eating that way for long periods of time. It doesn't matter where your surplus of calories is coming from necessarily. However, a surplus of calories coming from carbohydrates is more likely than fat and/or protein for most people. Having said that, high fat intake + high carb intake is also common for many people, especially if you eat out. http://www.bodyforwife.com/keto-and-low-carb-diets-kill-performance/ http://www.bodyforwife.com/keto-and-low-carb-diets-kill-perf...
- InTheArena 8y ago
  Weight is only one factor though. Congestive heart disease and diabetes and cancer are the real risk, and there is a ton of evidence that simple sugars a drive the growth of these diseases.
  - hulton 8y ago
    No doubt.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yosito 8y ago
A lot of people tend to focus on the macronutrient factors of weight gain/loss (carbs, protein, fat). To some degree, I think those have an effect. As do the total number of calories consumed/burned. But it seems evident, at least anecdotally, that there are many other environmental factors that signal to our bodies how much fat to store vs burn, and much food to crave. I spend a lot of time with long term travelers and an interesting thing I've noticed is that many men lose weight when they travel long term, while many women gain weight when they travel. I don't really think that can be explained by how many carbs they eat. At least, if that's part of it, it's a very small part.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  It may be come down to behavioral changes while traveling. If your observation is true, maybe men tend to drink less alcohol while traveling, and women tend to eat more.
- CPLX 8y ago
  I noticed that I definitely lose weight when I am traveling and on vacation and I almost certainly eat and drink more. I'm pretty convinced it's because the regular office working lifestyle is really so sedentary in comparison. We're just used to it so we don't notice the stark difference.
  - pfranz 8y ago
    Most people I know hate traveling for work because the food options presented are less healthy and opportunities for exercise are more limited so they tend to gain weight. I prefer more active vacations opposed to sitting on a beach, but I also love food when traveling so much so that I find more places to eat than reasonable meals. So even when being more active I tend to plateau or gain weight. The worst is traveling to a place where the food isn't good. The one cruise I took eating felt like a chore. There were too many options to eat, but none of the food was very impressive.
- carlob 8y ago
  I don't know if this applies, but every time I travel in the US I'm amazed by the size of the portions when eating out compared to Europe/Asia. Could this be a factor?
InTheArena 8y ago
To be fair almost all of the research around this is still outstanding as basically anybody researching this hypothesis before about 2012 was committing academic suicide and open for vitriolic attack from the AHA and others. I highly recommend good calorie bad calorie to get a sense for how incredibly anti-science nutrition was at the time. No one defends the Keynes studies anymore, and most agree that simple carbohydrates are ground zero for diabetes and other “diseases of the modern world”. The only debate left is if it’s the only cause. In my case after looking at the material and doing a n=1 experiment with a ketogenic diet - the first one I actually ever lost weight with, I am sold that for my personal Metabolism that this is a effective tool.
- morsma 8y ago
  I concur! There's really no debate whether it's carbs or not, rather, what kind of carbs. We're starting to see that fructose containing carbs, e.g. Sucrose, HFCS, etc. Are those that in the long run sets one up for metabolic syndrome and and the inevitable accompanying diabetes. It also explains why cultures consuming relative large amounts of carbs in the form starch/glucose haven't had the issues that we're currently experiencing.
- old-gregg 8y ago
  I am fatigued from reading about nutrition, everyone claims to be "not an expert, but spent a year reading studies" and then proceeds to cite studies that support their claims. * It's all about calories! carbs/fats/protein ratio doesn't matter [1] * It's all about carbs! [2] Why don't PhDs themselves write an easy to read book about this? We have to rely on "translators" like Tim Ferris [3] and others like him [4] who cite contradicting studies. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246357 [2] http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/23/7/948 [3] https://tim.blog/2008/02/25/the-science-of-fat-loss-why-a-calorie-isnt-always-a-calorie/ [4] http://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/
  - js2 8y ago
    > Why don't PhDs themselves write an easy to read book about this? FWIW, the only reason I submitted this link is that it was reviewed by PhD Stephan Guyenet and incorporated his feedback. What I gather from having read Guyenet's blog over the years is: it's complicated. I don't think there's a single answer that applies to everyone. Within my own household, what works for me doesn't seem to work for my spouse.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
After 12 weeks on keto, I have learned something important about diets. Lonely? Need a friend? Would you like advice? If so, then post on social media about dieting. Everybody has an opinion and everybody is quite passionate about them. Having said that, my gut feeling is that we're going to see a sea change in nutrition over the next 5-10 years as the older generation dies out and new ideas take root. I'm seeing some exciting things in the keto community, including what looks to me like a lot of science and math that has a tremendous positive impact on folks. And it's not calories in, calories out. I'm able to do heavy cardio for 90 minutes without soreness. That's never been true for me. Exciting times. ADD: I clicked on the links, but I was unable to determine exactly what hypothesis the author was studying. Looked like just a meta review of a bunch of macro information, but maybe I missed it.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  > And it's not calories in, calories out. Based upon your last statement, I assume you're on keto for weight loss, if so how has weight loss been, how many calories are you eating now vs before, and how stringent was your measurement?
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    I'm in it for fitness, but I'm out-of-shape because I'm overweight. I have made it a point not to weigh and instead judge my progress on changing clothes sizes and aerobic capacity. I'm down an incredible amount, maybe 6 inches or more on my waist. Inflammation and joint pain are gone as well. In addition, I don't get tired as much. Basically my entire system has changed. What I'm religious about is logging everything I eat. So I log calories. And of course, I eat less of them. (I think this is one of the confounding variables when people look across studies simply at macros). So in a way, there is some thermodynamics at work, but the thing is: that's not the controlling factor. Limiting carbs changes my relationship to food. Once that's done, it doesn't matter so much how much I eat. I could go a day or two eating nothing. I still have hunger, but it's not an overwhelming feelig that drives eating too much like it used to be. Nowhere close. I'll probably weigh in another 12 weeks. I need to weigh sometime. I'm usually between 1200-1400 calories. I burn about 1300 daily on cardio. I have been pigging out the last few days, however, with my intake up around 1550 calories or so. In all honesty, I just don't feel like eating in the same way I used to. My relationship with food has changed in a profound way that is difficult to relate to people who haven't been here.
hourislate 8y ago
>Perhaps particular types of carbs, fats, or proteins — e.g. refined carbohydrates, or sugars, or something else — are reliably linked to obesity. But I haven’t investigated any of those hypotheses yet. It has always been my impression that Gary Taubes et al have always pointed to sugar and processed foods as the carbs we should avoid. How could anyone get fat eating broccoli, lettuce and healthy vegetables?
stefan_ 8y ago
People want to desperately believe there is some magic bullet food that makes them thinner, no one wants to change their behavior. The "commute by car" correlation with obesity, to name just one, is a lot better than the "food X" one.
- SirensOfTitan 8y ago
  The magic bullet is to find a diet that works for you in perpetuity where you can eat at or below caloric maintenance for your level of activity. That diet can’t be an on again or off again type of thing, it needs to be something you can stick with.
  - Terr_ 8y ago
    By definition any diet "below your caloric maintenance" isn't going to be something you can "stick with" with no interruptions... unless the deficit is so slight that you die from other causes first :p
    - allover 8y ago
      Well a more kind interpretation is that aiming for 'below your caloric maintenance' allows for the odd wobble/treat :)
    - SirensOfTitan 8y ago
      If you want to lose weight, you have to go below before you can stay at maintenance. :) Otherwise you won't stick with it.
- fbonetti 8y ago
  This isn’t a magic bullet. When you eat carbs, your body produces the hormone insulin in order to convert blood glucose into usable energy. Excessive insulin production triggers the body to store energy as fat. If you drastically reduce your carb intake, your body will enter a state of ketosis where fat will be burned as energy. Barring some rare medical or genetic issue, this WILL cause you to lose weight. It’s a scientific fact. Just take a look at type 1 diabetics prior to diagnosis. They’re skinny and frail due to being unable to produce insulin.
simonbarker87 8y ago
Is there a chance that we are over thinking this in the hope for a complex golden bullet when in reality the problem is simply eating more calories that we burn. I lead a very active lifestyle, I lift weights 4-5 times a week with a focus on progressive overload, I cycle commute and I mountain bike many weekends a year. When I want to gain weight (as is desirable when lifting) I eat more calories (aim for about 3,750 a day) and when I want to loose weight (like in the spring ready for the summer) I eat a lot less, around 2,500 a day. Doing this fluctuates my weight from my heaviest of 190 lbs to my lightest of 170 lbs. My wife does the same, our other friends who lift also do the same and when we eat more we get heavier and when we eat less we get lighter. What am I missing here? Because outside the body building world it seems everyone is hunting for a complex answer that from our perspective seems sort of solved.... unless you want to get silly lean, then it’s a different ball game. I’m not being flippant, I am genuinely curious. Eat less calories, mainly plants, do more exercise and reduce alcohol consumption (it’s got lots of calories in it).
- quaunaut 8y ago
  I'm not an expert by any means, but one thing that's worth acknowledging here is that diseases like diabetes are a question of when, not if, with 100% of the population. That is, if nothing else kills you first, you will get diabetes. At least, is the impression I've been led to believe from research and multiple physicians. If that's the case, then one must ask, "What's the most effective way of avoiding this?", and avoiding carbohydrates as much as possible sums that up well. It seems to completely drop the growth of diabetic symptoms to near-nonexistence, which seems to suggest that it might be superior for that range of diseases at least.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    People are absolutely not guaranteed to get type 2 diabetes. Diabetes was basically unheard of > 150 years ago and has steadily increased in prevalence since then.
    - quaunaut 8y ago
natural219 8y ago
As a keto practitioner, the obvious recommendation I'd add for further research is to distinguish between "low-carb" and "<20 grams of carb per day". For achieving ketosis, "low carb" is a completely orthogonal diet. I'm a little sad that he didn't discover this distinction early on in his findings, since the rest of this is very interesting and well-researched (just irrelevant to the keto question in particular). I'd also add that exercise is another important high-level distinction to make that confounds the rest of the discussion, particularly the analysis of paleo / ancestral diets, which presumably had very high levels of exercise compared to modern sedentarians.
6cd6beb 8y ago
>for example, I did not try to evaluate arguments about “good carbs” vs. “bad carbs.” That turned me off real fast. >Perhaps particular types of carbs, fats, or proteins — e.g. refined carbohydrates, or sugars, or something else — are reliably linked to obesity. But I haven’t investigated any of those hypotheses yet. That's much better, but implies the rest of the article doesn't address it. "Carbs" can mean broccoli or pure sugar. The difference between broccoli and sugar is "Complex Carbs" vs "Simple Carbs". Simple carbs come from things like sugar, they break down really fast and the foods that contain them tend to be very "Calorically Dense", or have a shitload of calories by volume. EG a small blizzard from diary queen has 660 calories(1). That's the same as 4.3lbs of broccoli (2) You can polish off a small blizzard after a meal. You cannot eat four pounds of broccoli in one sitting. 660 Calories is also a respectable size for a meal, given the generic daily recommendation of 2000 calories. Though again the blizzard's calories are being added onto a meal. Carbs are not bad. Any kind of diet with a "silver bullet" to eat or avoid is overly simplistic and probably just preying on the hopeful. Understanding what macronutrients are and where they come from and what they do, and eating a fairly restrictive diet is a solid and sustained way to lose weight. For what it's worth, I don't think carbohydrates cause obesity. I think widely available overly sugary garbage food does. I don't know where you live but you'd be hard pressed to find a plate of steamed vegetables and grilled chicken downtown. You can get fast food though. (1) https://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/Company/Nutrition/Treats/ https://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/Company/Nutrition/Treats/ (2) https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/broccoli-raw-425578799# https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/broccoli-raw-4255...
- timr 8y ago
  "'Carbs' can mean broccoli or pure sugar." And since this analysis is using published scientific papers, you can be reasonably sure that the investigators did not make these kinds of completely novice errors in methodology. Certainly not across the board. I have never seen a study of the issue that confuses simple sugars with cellulose. Nearly all studies are based on the glycemic index, and use high- or low-glycemic-index foods as their discriminator. Most scientists are actually pretty good at their jobs. Obvious factors are controlled wherever possible. If you want to make this kind of a critique to a meta-analysis, you're actually making an extraordinary claim, and you must provide extraordinary evidence of improbable, correlated errors in the underlying studies.
21 8y ago
Speculating wildly here, would it be possible after a meal to drink a liquid, which contains chemicals which bound to the carbs and makes them un-absorbable? Some sort of carb neutralizer? Basically vomiting your meal out like the romans did, but in a more elegant way.
- civilian 8y ago
  You'd probably want to drink it beforehand, but maybe! You'd have to make the chemicals also resistant to being dissolved and absorbed by stomach acids & the gut.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Years ago, there were ads for diet pills that supposedly did this, but with fat molecules instead of carbs. Maybe in a few years, we'll see a similar drug for carbs.
_bxg1 8y ago
Any "hypothesis" that tries to reduce something as complex as nutrition to a single factor is going to be easy to shoot holes in. This article sets up carbs as a straw-man. Simple carbs are calorie-dense and tend to increase hunger. There are many more factors at play, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that reducing your simple-carbs intake will probably help and not hurt your efforts to lose weight.
MisterTea 8y ago
tl;dr - cut out added sugar, and lower complex carb intake from your diet and be amazed. Last May (2017) I weighed about 215 lbs/~98 kg (my peak was 235 around 2012). I really wanted to lose weight and started at the most obvious place: what am I eating? Well after some basic research and thinking I decided that sugar was my target so I started reducing added sugar intake. Eliminated juices, soda, coffee with sugar, sweet and savory foods like bbq sauces, and all the sweet treats I loved to eat. At this point Ill admit that I had a sweet tooth and ate a lot of sugary foods and drinks. You'd always catch me with some chocolates or a box of cookies in the cupboard. No more. It wasn't exactly easy and it took some time to adjust my eating and whittle down my added sugar intake to almost nothing. The only sugar came from the occasional piece of fruit and yes, the rare cheat desert, maybe once every two weeks. It worked. By November I started to see results and people were commenting on my weight loss. I continued and this past January I started to realize my carb cravings were mostly gone. I can eat a breakfast of two eggs and some oatmeal and not be hungry until well after lunch. Your hunger goes down because all the carbs arent messing with your brain. BUT! I have to be careful, my hunger dropped to the point where I realized I was under eating and losing weight too fast. By march I was starting to look real skinny and a few people commented that I looked like a: crackhead, heroin addict, cancer patient, or anorexic. One guy took me aside at a party and asked if I was undergoing chemo. Now I weigh 158 lbs or ~73 kg. All that time I did not exercise. Just heavily adjusted my diet. I also bumped into a personal trainer last month who runs a free weekly crossfit bootcamp in a local park so I started that. I also used his advice for performing simple home exercises (screw gyms) and I'm already seeing results as in muscle definition. I am looking to put some muscle mass on to push myself back up to 165-170. Don't wanna get swole, just good hearty core strength. Maybe get back into boxing and judo/jujitsu. Far as carbs go, they really mess you up. The past three days I ate like shit, the worst in the past year. Pizza lunch at work, leftover pasta from a coworker with garlic knots, empanadas, I had a redbull, and some more pizza. I feel this heavy bloated feeling in my stomach. Ugh. So yea, carbs are bad, mkay. My diet? Nothing special but I avoid exceedingly fatty foods like cheese (I know, I know, the horror) and red meat as well as anything with added sugar, and excess bread. So mainly chicken, some fish, turkey for protein and I love green vegetables so lots of broccoli, spinach, brussel sprouts, kale, swiss chard, asparagus, and bok choy. I usually saute the vegetables in a pan with a little olive oil and lots of garlic (cant get enough of it) and cook the meat in the oven. Just keep a cabinet full of spices and you'll never get bored of eating. And one last thing, remember how said I had a sweet tooth? Well that went away somewhat and very sweet things that I used to like are now too sweet and somewhat repulsive and soda gives me a stomach ache. Amazing what a sugar "cleanse" will do to the body.

35 points by js2 8y ago

I think that exercise has a strong effect on mood, appetite, digestion, and metabolism. Grazing continuously probably interferes with the migrating motor complex, so we will tend to do better if we refrain from eating outside of mealtimes. Refined carbohydrates tend to be addictive due to the quick increase in blood sugar levels, and tend to make consuming unrefined carbohydrates seem less appealing. Eating some fat promotes satiety, which may help reduce over-eating. So, there are a lot of factors in play.

theothermkn 8y ago
> So, there are a lot of factors in play. I forget where I read this, or even the exact figure, but bowel movements for some subset of indigenous tribes was something like 4 pounds. I remember thinking they must be getting ridiculous amounts of fiber. I’m not one to advocate for “paleo” or any other diet based on “what’s natural,” but it does seem it’s at least possible that our metabolisms and blood chemistry may have “grown up” with a lot more fiber than we moderns typically get. Other factors, indeed.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I think we need to be careful assuming that having a 4 lbs poop is a good thing just because we used to do it. The Inuit's diet was nearly entirely from animal protein and fats, totally bereft of fiber. People can adapt to a lot of misery, and I wonder if the need to eat that much fiber was due to other concerns (for instance, not having access to higher energy concentrated food stuffs). Either way we can't say that just because someone once did it it's healthy, or a well adapted behaviour.
  - theothermkn 8y ago
    I’m not sure how much more circumspect I could have been.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  My grandparents and their great grandparents were from small villages in Greece. They used "frequent solid bowel movements a day" as sort of a at-a-glance measure of good health. I have heard of other friends who are from eastern european countries share similar stories. So there seems to be some sort of tradition there. Anyways, Single easiest way for me to get fiber back in my diet was to simply eat the fruit instead of drinking the juice. It had a bonus effect of cutting down the sugars as well.
oligopoly 8y ago
People underestimate the amounts they are eating. Then again some amateur athletes would do well to eat more carbs. Steel Cut Oats, rice and vegetables are good source for carbs

hulton 8y ago

For most people: If Calories In > Calories Out, you're going to gain weight if you're consistently eating that way for long periods of time. It doesn't matter where your surplus of calories is coming from necessarily. However, a surplus of calories coming from carbohydrates is more likely than fat and/or protein for most people. Having said that, high fat intake + high carb intake is also common for many people, especially if you eat out. http://www.bodyforwife.com/keto-and-low-carb-diets-kill-performance/ http://www.bodyforwife.com/keto-and-low-carb-diets-kill-perf...

InTheArena 8y ago
Weight is only one factor though. Congestive heart disease and diabetes and cancer are the real risk, and there is a ton of evidence that simple sugars a drive the growth of these diseases.
- hulton 8y ago
  No doubt.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

yosito 8y ago

A lot of people tend to focus on the macronutrient factors of weight gain/loss (carbs, protein, fat). To some degree, I think those have an effect. As do the total number of calories consumed/burned. But it seems evident, at least anecdotally, that there are many other environmental factors that signal to our bodies how much fat to store vs burn, and much food to crave. I spend a lot of time with long term travelers and an interesting thing I've noticed is that many men lose weight when they travel long term, while many women gain weight when they travel. I don't really think that can be explained by how many carbs they eat. At least, if that's part of it, it's a very small part.

oh_sigh 8y ago
It may be come down to behavioral changes while traveling. If your observation is true, maybe men tend to drink less alcohol while traveling, and women tend to eat more.
CPLX 8y ago
I noticed that I definitely lose weight when I am traveling and on vacation and I almost certainly eat and drink more. I'm pretty convinced it's because the regular office working lifestyle is really so sedentary in comparison. We're just used to it so we don't notice the stark difference.
- pfranz 8y ago
  Most people I know hate traveling for work because the food options presented are less healthy and opportunities for exercise are more limited so they tend to gain weight. I prefer more active vacations opposed to sitting on a beach, but I also love food when traveling so much so that I find more places to eat than reasonable meals. So even when being more active I tend to plateau or gain weight. The worst is traveling to a place where the food isn't good. The one cruise I took eating felt like a chore. There were too many options to eat, but none of the food was very impressive.
carlob 8y ago
I don't know if this applies, but every time I travel in the US I'm amazed by the size of the portions when eating out compared to Europe/Asia. Could this be a factor?

InTheArena 8y ago

To be fair almost all of the research around this is still outstanding as basically anybody researching this hypothesis before about 2012 was committing academic suicide and open for vitriolic attack from the AHA and others. I highly recommend good calorie bad calorie to get a sense for how incredibly anti-science nutrition was at the time. No one defends the Keynes studies anymore, and most agree that simple carbohydrates are ground zero for diabetes and other “diseases of the modern world”. The only debate left is if it’s the only cause. In my case after looking at the material and doing a n=1 experiment with a ketogenic diet - the first one I actually ever lost weight with, I am sold that for my personal Metabolism that this is a effective tool.

morsma 8y ago
I concur! There's really no debate whether it's carbs or not, rather, what kind of carbs. We're starting to see that fructose containing carbs, e.g. Sucrose, HFCS, etc. Are those that in the long run sets one up for metabolic syndrome and and the inevitable accompanying diabetes. It also explains why cultures consuming relative large amounts of carbs in the form starch/glucose haven't had the issues that we're currently experiencing.
old-gregg 8y ago
I am fatigued from reading about nutrition, everyone claims to be "not an expert, but spent a year reading studies" and then proceeds to cite studies that support their claims. * It's all about calories! carbs/fats/protein ratio doesn't matter [1] * It's all about carbs! [2] Why don't PhDs themselves write an easy to read book about this? We have to rely on "translators" like Tim Ferris [3] and others like him [4] who cite contradicting studies. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19246357 [2] http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/23/7/948 [3] https://tim.blog/2008/02/25/the-science-of-fat-loss-why-a-calorie-isnt-always-a-calorie/ [4] http://physiqonomics.com/fat-loss/
- js2 8y ago
  > Why don't PhDs themselves write an easy to read book about this? FWIW, the only reason I submitted this link is that it was reviewed by PhD Stephan Guyenet and incorporated his feedback. What I gather from having read Guyenet's blog over the years is: it's complicated. I don't think there's a single answer that applies to everyone. Within my own household, what works for me doesn't seem to work for my spouse.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

After 12 weeks on keto, I have learned something important about diets. Lonely? Need a friend? Would you like advice? If so, then post on social media about dieting. Everybody has an opinion and everybody is quite passionate about them. Having said that, my gut feeling is that we're going to see a sea change in nutrition over the next 5-10 years as the older generation dies out and new ideas take root. I'm seeing some exciting things in the keto community, including what looks to me like a lot of science and math that has a tremendous positive impact on folks. And it's not calories in, calories out. I'm able to do heavy cardio for 90 minutes without soreness. That's never been true for me. Exciting times. ADD: I clicked on the links, but I was unable to determine exactly what hypothesis the author was studying. Looked like just a meta review of a bunch of macro information, but maybe I missed it.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> And it's not calories in, calories out. Based upon your last statement, I assume you're on keto for weight loss, if so how has weight loss been, how many calories are you eating now vs before, and how stringent was your measurement?
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  I'm in it for fitness, but I'm out-of-shape because I'm overweight. I have made it a point not to weigh and instead judge my progress on changing clothes sizes and aerobic capacity. I'm down an incredible amount, maybe 6 inches or more on my waist. Inflammation and joint pain are gone as well. In addition, I don't get tired as much. Basically my entire system has changed. What I'm religious about is logging everything I eat. So I log calories. And of course, I eat less of them. (I think this is one of the confounding variables when people look across studies simply at macros). So in a way, there is some thermodynamics at work, but the thing is: that's not the controlling factor. Limiting carbs changes my relationship to food. Once that's done, it doesn't matter so much how much I eat. I could go a day or two eating nothing. I still have hunger, but it's not an overwhelming feelig that drives eating too much like it used to be. Nowhere close. I'll probably weigh in another 12 weeks. I need to weigh sometime. I'm usually between 1200-1400 calories. I burn about 1300 daily on cardio. I have been pigging out the last few days, however, with my intake up around 1550 calories or so. In all honesty, I just don't feel like eating in the same way I used to. My relationship with food has changed in a profound way that is difficult to relate to people who haven't been here.

hourislate 8y ago

>Perhaps particular types of carbs, fats, or proteins — e.g. refined carbohydrates, or sugars, or something else — are reliably linked to obesity. But I haven’t investigated any of those hypotheses yet. It has always been my impression that Gary Taubes et al have always pointed to sugar and processed foods as the carbs we should avoid. How could anyone get fat eating broccoli, lettuce and healthy vegetables?

stefan_ 8y ago

People want to desperately believe there is some magic bullet food that makes them thinner, no one wants to change their behavior. The "commute by car" correlation with obesity, to name just one, is a lot better than the "food X" one.

SirensOfTitan 8y ago
The magic bullet is to find a diet that works for you in perpetuity where you can eat at or below caloric maintenance for your level of activity. That diet can’t be an on again or off again type of thing, it needs to be something you can stick with.
- Terr_ 8y ago
  By definition any diet "below your caloric maintenance" isn't going to be something you can "stick with" with no interruptions... unless the deficit is so slight that you die from other causes first :p
  - allover 8y ago
    Well a more kind interpretation is that aiming for 'below your caloric maintenance' allows for the odd wobble/treat :)
  - SirensOfTitan 8y ago
    If you want to lose weight, you have to go below before you can stay at maintenance. :) Otherwise you won't stick with it.
fbonetti 8y ago
This isn’t a magic bullet. When you eat carbs, your body produces the hormone insulin in order to convert blood glucose into usable energy. Excessive insulin production triggers the body to store energy as fat. If you drastically reduce your carb intake, your body will enter a state of ketosis where fat will be burned as energy. Barring some rare medical or genetic issue, this WILL cause you to lose weight. It’s a scientific fact. Just take a look at type 1 diabetics prior to diagnosis. They’re skinny and frail due to being unable to produce insulin.

simonbarker87 8y ago

Is there a chance that we are over thinking this in the hope for a complex golden bullet when in reality the problem is simply eating more calories that we burn. I lead a very active lifestyle, I lift weights 4-5 times a week with a focus on progressive overload, I cycle commute and I mountain bike many weekends a year. When I want to gain weight (as is desirable when lifting) I eat more calories (aim for about 3,750 a day) and when I want to loose weight (like in the spring ready for the summer) I eat a lot less, around 2,500 a day. Doing this fluctuates my weight from my heaviest of 190 lbs to my lightest of 170 lbs. My wife does the same, our other friends who lift also do the same and when we eat more we get heavier and when we eat less we get lighter. What am I missing here? Because outside the body building world it seems everyone is hunting for a complex answer that from our perspective seems sort of solved.... unless you want to get silly lean, then it’s a different ball game. I’m not being flippant, I am genuinely curious. Eat less calories, mainly plants, do more exercise and reduce alcohol consumption (it’s got lots of calories in it).

quaunaut 8y ago
I'm not an expert by any means, but one thing that's worth acknowledging here is that diseases like diabetes are a question of when, not if, with 100% of the population. That is, if nothing else kills you first, you will get diabetes. At least, is the impression I've been led to believe from research and multiple physicians. If that's the case, then one must ask, "What's the most effective way of avoiding this?", and avoiding carbohydrates as much as possible sums that up well. It seems to completely drop the growth of diabetic symptoms to near-nonexistence, which seems to suggest that it might be superior for that range of diseases at least.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  People are absolutely not guaranteed to get type 2 diabetes. Diabetes was basically unheard of > 150 years ago and has steadily increased in prevalence since then.
  - quaunaut 8y ago

natural219 8y ago

As a keto practitioner, the obvious recommendation I'd add for further research is to distinguish between "low-carb" and "<20 grams of carb per day". For achieving ketosis, "low carb" is a completely orthogonal diet. I'm a little sad that he didn't discover this distinction early on in his findings, since the rest of this is very interesting and well-researched (just irrelevant to the keto question in particular). I'd also add that exercise is another important high-level distinction to make that confounds the rest of the discussion, particularly the analysis of paleo / ancestral diets, which presumably had very high levels of exercise compared to modern sedentarians.

6cd6beb 8y ago

>for example, I did not try to evaluate arguments about “good carbs” vs. “bad carbs.” That turned me off real fast. >Perhaps particular types of carbs, fats, or proteins — e.g. refined carbohydrates, or sugars, or something else — are reliably linked to obesity. But I haven’t investigated any of those hypotheses yet. That's much better, but implies the rest of the article doesn't address it. "Carbs" can mean broccoli or pure sugar. The difference between broccoli and sugar is "Complex Carbs" vs "Simple Carbs". Simple carbs come from things like sugar, they break down really fast and the foods that contain them tend to be very "Calorically Dense", or have a shitload of calories by volume. EG a small blizzard from diary queen has 660 calories(1). That's the same as 4.3lbs of broccoli (2) You can polish off a small blizzard after a meal. You cannot eat four pounds of broccoli in one sitting. 660 Calories is also a respectable size for a meal, given the generic daily recommendation of 2000 calories. Though again the blizzard's calories are being added onto a meal. Carbs are not bad. Any kind of diet with a "silver bullet" to eat or avoid is overly simplistic and probably just preying on the hopeful. Understanding what macronutrients are and where they come from and what they do, and eating a fairly restrictive diet is a solid and sustained way to lose weight. For what it's worth, I don't think carbohydrates cause obesity. I think widely available overly sugary garbage food does. I don't know where you live but you'd be hard pressed to find a plate of steamed vegetables and grilled chicken downtown. You can get fast food though. (1) https://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/Company/Nutrition/Treats/ https://www.dairyqueen.com/us-en/Company/Nutrition/Treats/ (2) https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/broccoli-raw-425578799# https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/broccoli-raw-4255...

timr 8y ago
"'Carbs' can mean broccoli or pure sugar." And since this analysis is using published scientific papers, you can be reasonably sure that the investigators did not make these kinds of completely novice errors in methodology. Certainly not across the board. I have never seen a study of the issue that confuses simple sugars with cellulose. Nearly all studies are based on the glycemic index, and use high- or low-glycemic-index foods as their discriminator. Most scientists are actually pretty good at their jobs. Obvious factors are controlled wherever possible. If you want to make this kind of a critique to a meta-analysis, you're actually making an extraordinary claim, and you must provide extraordinary evidence of improbable, correlated errors in the underlying studies.

21 8y ago

Speculating wildly here, would it be possible after a meal to drink a liquid, which contains chemicals which bound to the carbs and makes them un-absorbable? Some sort of carb neutralizer? Basically vomiting your meal out like the romans did, but in a more elegant way.

civilian 8y ago
You'd probably want to drink it beforehand, but maybe! You'd have to make the chemicals also resistant to being dissolved and absorbed by stomach acids & the gut.
majewsky 8y ago
Years ago, there were ads for diet pills that supposedly did this, but with fat molecules instead of carbs. Maybe in a few years, we'll see a similar drug for carbs.

_bxg1 8y ago

Any "hypothesis" that tries to reduce something as complex as nutrition to a single factor is going to be easy to shoot holes in. This article sets up carbs as a straw-man. Simple carbs are calorie-dense and tend to increase hunger. There are many more factors at play, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that reducing your simple-carbs intake will probably help and not hurt your efforts to lose weight.

MisterTea 8y ago

tl;dr - cut out added sugar, and lower complex carb intake from your diet and be amazed. Last May (2017) I weighed about 215 lbs/~98 kg (my peak was 235 around 2012). I really wanted to lose weight and started at the most obvious place: what am I eating? Well after some basic research and thinking I decided that sugar was my target so I started reducing added sugar intake. Eliminated juices, soda, coffee with sugar, sweet and savory foods like bbq sauces, and all the sweet treats I loved to eat. At this point Ill admit that I had a sweet tooth and ate a lot of sugary foods and drinks. You'd always catch me with some chocolates or a box of cookies in the cupboard. No more. It wasn't exactly easy and it took some time to adjust my eating and whittle down my added sugar intake to almost nothing. The only sugar came from the occasional piece of fruit and yes, the rare cheat desert, maybe once every two weeks. It worked. By November I started to see results and people were commenting on my weight loss. I continued and this past January I started to realize my carb cravings were mostly gone. I can eat a breakfast of two eggs and some oatmeal and not be hungry until well after lunch. Your hunger goes down because all the carbs arent messing with your brain. BUT! I have to be careful, my hunger dropped to the point where I realized I was under eating and losing weight too fast. By march I was starting to look real skinny and a few people commented that I looked like a: crackhead, heroin addict, cancer patient, or anorexic. One guy took me aside at a party and asked if I was undergoing chemo. Now I weigh 158 lbs or ~73 kg. All that time I did not exercise. Just heavily adjusted my diet. I also bumped into a personal trainer last month who runs a free weekly crossfit bootcamp in a local park so I started that. I also used his advice for performing simple home exercises (screw gyms) and I'm already seeing results as in muscle definition. I am looking to put some muscle mass on to push myself back up to 165-170. Don't wanna get swole, just good hearty core strength. Maybe get back into boxing and judo/jujitsu. Far as carbs go, they really mess you up. The past three days I ate like shit, the worst in the past year. Pizza lunch at work, leftover pasta from a coworker with garlic knots, empanadas, I had a redbull, and some more pizza. I feel this heavy bloated feeling in my stomach. Ugh. So yea, carbs are bad, mkay. My diet? Nothing special but I avoid exceedingly fatty foods like cheese (I know, I know, the horror) and red meat as well as anything with added sugar, and excess bread. So mainly chicken, some fish, turkey for protein and I love green vegetables so lots of broccoli, spinach, brussel sprouts, kale, swiss chard, asparagus, and bok choy. I usually saute the vegetables in a pan with a little olive oil and lots of garlic (cant get enough of it) and cook the meat in the oven. Just keep a cabinet full of spices and you'll never get bored of eating. And one last thing, remember how said I had a sweet tooth? Well that went away somewhat and very sweet things that I used to like are now too sweet and somewhat repulsive and soda gives me a stomach ache. Amazing what a sugar "cleanse" will do to the body.