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> the uselessness of "calories in, calories out." There's nothing useless about energy balance. It can be misinterpreted and misapplied, but Taubes throws the

> the uselessness of "calories in, calories out." There's nothing useless about energy balance. It can be misinterpreted and misapplied, but Taubes throws the baby out with the bathwater and pretends it doesn't apply at all. For example, classical low-carber mythology is that on a low-carb diet you can eat virtually unlimited calories (as usually defined) and maintain weight, if perhaps not lose weight outright. As an example, there's an old post on Michael Eades's blog where he talks of a small woman allegedly eating 5000 calories and maintaining her weight. As explained in James Krieger's article, people's reports of their own calorie intake for studies have consistently been found to be way off the mark, to the point of being useless. When you actually measure what is being eaten under clinical conditions, the result is in line with the conventional theory of energy balance. The main benefit of low-carb diets for weight loss is that they spontaneously reduce calorie intake by cutting out whole groups of foods (by looking at studies it's been shown that any diet that restricts food choices like this will tend to induce weight loss but is usually unsustainable), and especially lots of highly palatable foods (to use Guyenet's terminology). But most longer-term comparative studies of diets that look at the performance past the 12-month mark show that low-carb diets don't fare any better on average than other standard weight-loss diets. The one exception is a study the low-carbers like to hold up as a vindication of their views; Lyle McDonald addresses that one here: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/comparison-of-the-atkins-zone-ornish-and-learn-diets.html http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/comparison-.... Two other pertinent articles by McDonald are http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/is-a-calorie-a-calorie.html http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/is-a-calorie-a-cal... and http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance-equation.html http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/the-energy-balance....

iand 14y ago
No. Low-carber thesis is that raising intake of fats suppresses appetite so you can eat what you like until you are full. The idea is carbs keep you hungry because of energy partiioning and so you over consume calories because you feel hungrier than you should. Taubes explains this very well in What Makes us Fat. His main claim is that the energy balance problem is a consequence of getting fat, not the cause.
- psykotic 14y ago
  You don't mention insulin by name, but that's what underlies Taubes's thesis about the link being carbs and obesity. James Krieger dispels much of that argument here: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319 http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319 > Low-carber thesis is that raising intake of fats suppresses appetite so you can eat what you like until you are full. Eating pounds of fruits and vegetables won't you make you full? Or rice and potatoes for that matter? Eating pounds of lean protein sources like tuna and chicken breast won't make you full? > The idea is carbs keep you hungry because of energy partiioning and so you over consume calories because you feel hungrier than you should. That isn't borne out by the evidence. The demonization of one macronutrient over another is baffling. If you subsist on calorically dense processed foods that are purposefully engineered to be high in palatability then you are more likely to overeat. Carbs aren't the problem. Neither is fat; dietary fat is very calorically dense, so it's easy to get lots of "hidden" calories from it, but that's the main downside from a weight loss perspective. It's not as simple as X is good, Y is bad.
  - iand 14y ago
    >Eating pounds of fruits and vegetables won't you make you full? Or rice and potatoes for that matter? Eating pounds of lean protein sources like tuna and chicken breast won't make you full? Of course it will. I didn't claim otherwise Fat accumulates due to an excess of calories. But this isn't the cause of us getting obese, it's a proximal cause, not the ultimate cause. What causes us to eat more calories than our bodies require?
    - psykotic 14y ago
      > What causes us to eat more calories than our bodies require? One big reason is eating foods that aren't filling relative to the energy and nutrients they provide. There's nothing unique about carbs in that regard. I can barely put away a 1000-calorie meal with an equal amount of calories from chicken breast and white rice (100+ grams of carbs just from the rice). Putting away the same amount of calories split between chicken breast and greens would be almost physically impossible--I ate a whole pound of grilled asparagus with my chicken breast on Sunday, and the asparagus barely amounted to 100 calories. But I can easily put away a 2000-calorie pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. If you think carbs are the calorically-dominant macronutrient in that pizza, think again. I'm not blaming the fat either. My point is that the issue goes much deeper than simple macronutrient composition.
jere 14y ago
>There's nothing useless about energy balance. It can be misinterpreted and misapplied, but Taubes throws the baby out with the bathwater and pretends it doesn't apply at all. For example, classical low-carber mythology is that on a low-carb diet you can eat virtually unlimited calories (as usually defined) and maintain weight, if perhaps not lose weight outright. On the last point, of course it's wrong. I never saw Taubes deny CICO as being true. He repeatedly states that, while true, it isn't useful for answering _why_ people get fat. It's as if I asked why some people are rich and others are poor. And you simply said that the poor people spent more money than they took in. It's true and yet utterly useless if you keep harping on that single point while ignoring inheritance, education, mental illness, drug abuse etc. You've further convinced me not to recommend GCBC to anyone, since I keep realizing its possible for people to miss the central point of the book. I'm totally in agreement on Guyenet's stuff, but he agrees with Taubes on CICO being not helpful: >This is where I agree with Taubes-- 1) the key thing to understand is what is causing the energy imbalance, and 2) the idea that "eat less, move more" is a practical fat loss strategy does not necessarily follow from the first law of thermodynamics. Taking in less energy and expending more does cause fat loss, but the problem is that it's difficult to maintain-- the body opposes changes in its fat stores.
jswinghammer 14y ago
Yeah calories matter but processed foods seem to be the real culprit. They make it easy to eat too much and get addicted to the fat salt sugar combo that leads to problems. I hate how grains make me feel so I am not going back. Losing weight is a side effect of having more energy via cutting out food that was toxic for me to be eating. This isn't religion but just empirical testing on my part. If it didn't work I wouldn't do it.
Evgeny 14y ago
The main benefit of low-carb diets for weight loss is that they spontaneously reduce calorie intake by cutting out whole groups of foods (by looking at studies it's been shown that any diet that restricts food choices like this will tend to induce weight loss but is usually unsustainable) Another benefit is that the low-carb diets provide better satiety. In studies, if people were advised to eat ad libitum, those who had to choose from low-carb foods eventually consumed less calories than those, who could choose from "regular" food.

iand 14y ago

No. Low-carber thesis is that raising intake of fats suppresses appetite so you can eat what you like until you are full. The idea is carbs keep you hungry because of energy partiioning and so you over consume calories because you feel hungrier than you should. Taubes explains this very well in What Makes us Fat. His main claim is that the energy balance problem is a consequence of getting fat, not the cause.

psykotic 14y ago
You don't mention insulin by name, but that's what underlies Taubes's thesis about the link being carbs and obesity. James Krieger dispels much of that argument here: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319 http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319 > Low-carber thesis is that raising intake of fats suppresses appetite so you can eat what you like until you are full. Eating pounds of fruits and vegetables won't you make you full? Or rice and potatoes for that matter? Eating pounds of lean protein sources like tuna and chicken breast won't make you full? > The idea is carbs keep you hungry because of energy partiioning and so you over consume calories because you feel hungrier than you should. That isn't borne out by the evidence. The demonization of one macronutrient over another is baffling. If you subsist on calorically dense processed foods that are purposefully engineered to be high in palatability then you are more likely to overeat. Carbs aren't the problem. Neither is fat; dietary fat is very calorically dense, so it's easy to get lots of "hidden" calories from it, but that's the main downside from a weight loss perspective. It's not as simple as X is good, Y is bad.
- iand 14y ago
  >Eating pounds of fruits and vegetables won't you make you full? Or rice and potatoes for that matter? Eating pounds of lean protein sources like tuna and chicken breast won't make you full? Of course it will. I didn't claim otherwise Fat accumulates due to an excess of calories. But this isn't the cause of us getting obese, it's a proximal cause, not the ultimate cause. What causes us to eat more calories than our bodies require?
  - psykotic 14y ago
    > What causes us to eat more calories than our bodies require? One big reason is eating foods that aren't filling relative to the energy and nutrients they provide. There's nothing unique about carbs in that regard. I can barely put away a 1000-calorie meal with an equal amount of calories from chicken breast and white rice (100+ grams of carbs just from the rice). Putting away the same amount of calories split between chicken breast and greens would be almost physically impossible--I ate a whole pound of grilled asparagus with my chicken breast on Sunday, and the asparagus barely amounted to 100 calories. But I can easily put away a 2000-calorie pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. If you think carbs are the calorically-dominant macronutrient in that pizza, think again. I'm not blaming the fat either. My point is that the issue goes much deeper than simple macronutrient composition.

jere 14y ago

>There's nothing useless about energy balance. It can be misinterpreted and misapplied, but Taubes throws the baby out with the bathwater and pretends it doesn't apply at all. For example, classical low-carber mythology is that on a low-carb diet you can eat virtually unlimited calories (as usually defined) and maintain weight, if perhaps not lose weight outright. On the last point, of course it's wrong. I never saw Taubes deny CICO as being true. He repeatedly states that, while true, it isn't useful for answering _why_ people get fat. It's as if I asked why some people are rich and others are poor. And you simply said that the poor people spent more money than they took in. It's true and yet utterly useless if you keep harping on that single point while ignoring inheritance, education, mental illness, drug abuse etc. You've further convinced me not to recommend GCBC to anyone, since I keep realizing its possible for people to miss the central point of the book. I'm totally in agreement on Guyenet's stuff, but he agrees with Taubes on CICO being not helpful: >This is where I agree with Taubes-- 1) the key thing to understand is what is causing the energy imbalance, and 2) the idea that "eat less, move more" is a practical fat loss strategy does not necessarily follow from the first law of thermodynamics. Taking in less energy and expending more does cause fat loss, but the problem is that it's difficult to maintain-- the body opposes changes in its fat stores.

jswinghammer 14y ago

Yeah calories matter but processed foods seem to be the real culprit. They make it easy to eat too much and get addicted to the fat salt sugar combo that leads to problems. I hate how grains make me feel so I am not going back. Losing weight is a side effect of having more energy via cutting out food that was toxic for me to be eating. This isn't religion but just empirical testing on my part. If it didn't work I wouldn't do it.

Evgeny 14y ago

The main benefit of low-carb diets for weight loss is that they spontaneously reduce calorie intake by cutting out whole groups of foods (by looking at studies it's been shown that any diet that restricts food choices like this will tend to induce weight loss but is usually unsustainable) Another benefit is that the low-carb diets provide better satiety. In studies, if people were advised to eat ad libitum, those who had to choose from low-carb foods eventually consumed less calories than those, who could choose from "regular" food.