My calories dropped in relation to dropping the number of carbs I took in. Cutting out a six pack of coke, 6 or more pieces of bread a day, candy, cakes and all the other junk I lived on cut several thousand calories a day out of my diet.

I check fit day now and then to see how I am doing in relation to calorie intake and find that eating until I am satisfied on Atkins keeps me at around 1600 to 1800 calories a day. Plus I exercise. At this rate, I won't have to worry about hitting a stall until I reach 180 or 160 if the 10x rule is correct. Give or take for workouts. If I see it slowing down or stopping, I will re-evaluate based on what kind of carbs I am taking in and how many calories I am getting.

I'm sick of them calling LC a "craze" and a "fad"...

Too bad they don't check out some of these message boards for LCers and see just how concerned most of us are about nutrition, health matters and how good we feel from having done LC.

They are having SUCH a hard time admitting they are wrong about the food pyramid. Like I'm going to listen to a damn thing those people have to say about what works for me! HA!

SLIM FAST SUCKS!

thanks Val you saved me loads of cals by typing my thoughts for me.

LOL

Lez

Personally I find if i follow DANDR and eat till I'm satisfied I eat a loss less calories then I use to. I also tend to have toruble getting in enough calories. The difference is I eat foods now that fill me up and KEEP me full vs. high carb which fill you up but you're hungry again in an hour (least thats how it was for me)

Low carb diets make it easier to eat a meal without second and third helpings. If this is the case, I do not need to count calories because I am in control of the amount of food that I eat. Hi carb eating over-stimulates the appetite. I wish doctors and experts would think before they speak.

For me, calories don't matter in the sense that I dodn't worry about them or even think about them If I am hungry, I eat. I don't have to think about how many calories are in something. This way of eating allows me to eat all that I want. I don't stuff myself, but I eat till I am satisfied.

Calories are calories whether you get them from fat, protein, or carbs. 3500 calories equals a lb of fat, even if all you're eating is protein and fat.

Cutting down carbs works because it lowers your cal count, and because it throws your body into ketosis, which is fat burning mode. Not that difficult. Doctors have known about ketosis for a looong time; its what your body goes into when you're very sick, as well, so that it can use the energy already stored to make you better.

I know a lot of people will disagree with the idea that calories are calories. I am reminded of the study done at Schneider Children's Hospital in New York, I believe. Teenagers on a low carb diet lost twice as much weight as the ones on a low fat diet, even though they consumed 600 more calories per day. How would you explain that?

There is the Harvard study.
3 groups 1 on low-cal, 1 on low carb with the same number of calories, and 1 on low-carb with 300 extra calories per day.
low cal lost an average of 17 lbs.
low carb lost an average of 23 lbs.
low carb +300 calories lost 20 lbs.

So the result was that low carb even with more calories is better then low cal with carbs>
BUT.. the 300 extra calories did make a difference to the low carb dieters.

danny

Here is another opinion

"Regarding the theory that if calories eaten equals calories expended, then you should maintain your weight, this would be pretty valid if fat was the clean-burning fuel that protein and carbs are. It appears that fat has about 30% exhaust fumes (ketone bodies), and, although some organs can use ketones as fuel (analagous to an afterburner in a jet turbine engine), a diet with equivalent calories but 75 gms/day more fat (low-carb vs low-fat) will produce more weight loss."
Posted by: Jim Pierce, MD

then how come I have a friend, who's about my age (47), who appears to eat and drink a lot more than me yet never puts on a pound, he's skinnier than a rail, we're talkin Mick Jagger skinny...

and we all know cases like that, there are people in this world who can eat a lot more than others without gaining weight. How do you reconcile this easily observable fact with a strict calories in/calories out model???

Richard MacKarness who wrote Eat Fat Grow Slim has the following theory:

"In 1950 at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, Professor Sir Charles Dodds, who is in charge of the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at the Middlesex Hospital, described an experiment he had carried out.

He took people whose weights had been constant for many years and persuaded them to eat double or treble their normal amount of food. They did not put on weight.

He showed that this was not due to a failure to digest or assimilate the extra food and suggested that they responded to over-eating by increasing their metabolic rate (rate of food using) and thus burned up the extra calories.

He then over-fed people whose weights had not remained constant in the past and found that they showed no increase in metabolism but became fat.

So two people of the same size, doing the same work and eating the same food will react quite differently when they overeat. One will stay the same weight and the other will gain.

We all know that this is true even without scientific proof and yet the fact has not been taken into account or explained by any of the experts who write popular books and articles about slimming.

They write as though fat people and thin people deal with food in the same way. Here is the medical correspondent of The Times (11th March, 1957) On the subject:

" It is no use saying as so many women do 'But I eat practically nothing.' The only answer to this is: No matter how little you imagine you eat, if you wish to lose weight you must eat less.' Your reserves of far are then called on to provide the necessary energy-and you lose weight."
The doctor who wrote these rather heartless words may fairly he taken as representative of medical opinion to-day. He is applying the teachings of William Wadd, Surgeon Extraordinary to the Prince Regent, who in 1829 attributed obesity to "an over-indulgence at the table" and gave, as the first principle of treatment, "taking food that has little nutrition in it."
Fat people can certainly lose weight by this method but what do they feel like while they are doing it? Terrible!

Ask any fat person who has tried it. Many of these unfortunate people really do eat less than people of normal proportions and still they put on weight, and when they go on a strict low-calorie diet which does get weight off, they feel tired and irritable because they are subjecting themselves to starvation. Worse still, when they have reduced and feel they can eat a little more, up shoots their weight again in no time, on quite a moderate food intake.

It is all most discouraging. "Surely there must be some better way of going about it," they say. This book explains that there is. To-day a lot more is known about how fat people get fat and why. Many of the facts have been known for years, but because they have not fitted in with current theories on obesity, they have been ignored.

In the last ten years, however, atomic research has given the physiologist enormous help in unravelling the biochemical reactions which go on in the body.

Radio-active isotopes have been used to " tag " chemical substances so that their progress through the body could be followed, in the same way as birds are tagged in order to establish the paths of their migration.

By this means, details of the metabolism of fats and carbohydrates, previously shrouded in mystery, have been clarified and with the new information so gained old experimental findings have been given new interpretations and the jigsaw of seemingly contradictory facts about obesity has clicked into a recognisable picture.

The first thing to realise is that it is carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and carbohydrate only which fattens fat people.

Here is what happens when Mr. Constant-Weight has too much carbohydrate to eat: The extra food causes an increase in metabolism that burns the excess calories consumed. Nothing is left over for laying down as fat.

When Mr Fatten-Easily eats too much bread, cake and potatoes, the picture is entirely different: his metabolic rate does not increase. Why does he fail to burn up the excess? The answer is the real reason for his obesity: BECAUSE HE HAS A DEFECTIVE CAPACITY FOR DEALING WITH CARBOHYDRATES."

Your friend is definitely a constant-weight.

And the current outlook on obesity still has not changed. People are still counting calories and reducing fat even though they are low-carbing.

"He took people whose weights had been constant for many years and persuaded them to eat double or treble their normal amount of food. They did not put on weight."

"He then over-fed people whose weights had not remained constant in the past and found that they showed no increase in metabolism but became fat."

This makes so much sense, evolutionarily speaking. If there's always food around, and you stay at a constant weight, the body will adjust to keep you at that weight, because it's not worried about running out of food.

However, if you've periodically starved in the past, the body will take any opportunity to "fill up the larder" because you've TAUGHT it that a famine might appear at any time.

Thus, I think keeping a steady, healthy weight with low carbing might eventually help heal the metabolism and create a resistance to gaining weight. It won't offset serious overeating, because we still have a carbohydrate-problem metabolism, but probably enough for an occasional indulgence.

Have you ever heard of a physician recommending slim fast? I sure haven't .

One thing to keep in mind, your body is not taught to have a good metabolism, it is darwinism. If your ancestors lived in an area where there was periodic famine, then people with genes that allowed easy storage of fat thrived, others died out. Over generations, we are left with a population that has great fat storage capacity. Then, McDonald's opened... :)

Areas where there was no starvation would have no genetic preference, expect if people prefered to mate with skinny people.

It will take many generations before our genetic codes catches up with our food plenty circumstances.

As Atkins warned, if you are fat prone, spending time on his diet will not alter your makeup. This needs to be a diet for life.

brobin

Yes, but when you are down to net 30 grams of carbs a day, the only place you can cut calories is fat. And it's working for me. Besides, I am still not on a low-fat diet at 100-125 or more grams of fat a day. And when I eat enough fat to fulfill my body's energy requirements, my body uses dietary fat for energy and leaves my body fat alone and the excess fat comes out the other end.

I read an article a couple years ago that said that your body would turn to body fat for energy even if you ate enough fat to fulfill its energy requirements, but I have found that for me, that's not true. When I eat a lot of calories (2500 to 3000), most of it fat, I maintain my weight, I don't lose.


I think this will work for me when I get my weight down, but until then, I need to cut calories. At least that's what's working for me now. But I'm also not worried about the occassional overfeed as long as I keep my carbs down.