Do calories count or not?
 

I'm interested in the differences among the various low-carb approaches. Here's one that intrigues me. Diana Schwarzbein (TSP) says even when trying to lose weight, do not worry about calories; eat (good) fat and protein until you are comfortably satisfied; give quantity no thought. Your body will naturally limit consumption of fat anyway.

But Michael and Mary Eades (PPLP) say to watch fat calories if you are are not losing weight (and wish to). Only on maintenance can you ignore calories from fat and protein.

This is a direct conflict. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks.

Sheldon

The problem I see with eating until "comfortably satisfied" is some don't feel satisfied until they have eaten far more than they need, so they don't lose.

But Schwarzbein says this does not happen with fat and protein, although it does with carbs. This is the issue I am raising. She explains the biochemistry of this effect, generally, that the brain gets the message early in the process that it has had enough.

Sheldon

Hi Sheldon,

I guess the short answer is yes, they do.

The longer answer is...depends on your plan.

Atkins says not to count calories, just carbs and to eat until you are full, not stuffed. Difficult to assess after a long time of carb addiction where (this!) one has/had been used to stuffing one's face with starches.

Sugar Busters say not to count anything, just select from low GI carbs and don't overfill your plate.

But surprisingly, the big problem we often find on this forum, is that people tend to undereat. Coming off low fat/low cal diets, their caloric intake can be as little as 800 cal (for body weights of 200 lbs at times) and their metabolisms come to a screaming halt. This is partly encouraged by the ketotic loss of appetite, and it can be very difficult to encourage folk to understand that they CAN lose weight by eating more.

This has caused much controversy here, with our suggestions of eating between 10-12 times bodyweight being roundly criticized at times.

Personally, I found while I was eating 13-14x my bodyweight, I was unable to lose. Under 10x and I'm just too hungry. If I keep between the "magic" 10-12x I have success.
I should point out that I don't set out to count calories; it is a Fitday by product of my carb counting.

Some folk do just fine without ever counting anything - others of us need to keep track.

Is that some sort of answer? :)

Cheers.

:rose:Rosebud:rose:

Not everyone has the same reaction to their "full" messages. I would tend to agree with Quilter. Some people do not get the message they are full until it is way over what they needed to eat. Depends on the individual's system and how messed up it is.

I don't think biochemistry or not you can group everyone in the same box. Making a blanket statement of what EVERYONE is suppose to experience is far different than real life.

Thanks, Rosebud and agonycat. But let me suggest that it can't really depend on the plan. No plan is good if it conflicts with our biochemistry. We can't have the tail wagging the dog. I fully accept there are individual differences. And I also accept that people may not be tuned in to their brain's signal that they've had enough. They have to work on that.

Having said that, there is nevertheless a basic biochemistry common to all human beings, since, well, we're all human beings with the same long evolution. After all, we believe that the carb-sugar-insulin theory is applicable to all people, no? What do we tell skeptics who come here and insist that low-carbing isn't right for everyone? The variables can't swing that wildly, can they?

Moreover, I thought our basic outlook is that in the absence of insulin, calories from fat cannot get stored as body fat. So how can one get fat or fail to lose fat by eating fat and low-carb? (I'm assuming a regular exercise program, of course.)

So my question remains: if low-carbers wishing to lose weight watch for the signals that they are satisfied, do they need to worry about calories? Who's right, Schwarzbein or the Eadeses?

Sheldon

P.S.: I am not trying to be provocative. It just sounds that way. I'm searching for the answer and I know this forum will help.

I think AC nailed it on the head, here. So many of us hit LC after years of yoyo low fat dieting and our metabolisms can be pretty badly damaged.

Atkins (I haven't read Schwarzbein - yet) also agrees that eating high fat and low carb gives us a metabolic advantage so that in the absence of insulin, fat cannot be stored as fat.

But there is a caveat. If you eat too darn much of it, some of it will inevitably be stored as fat.

When I started, I figured I could eat just whatever I liked, when I liked. Didn't work that way. In fact, Dr A and SB (my latest read) both say to restrict to a point.

Is that any help?

Roz

Where does Schwarzbein say this? On p. 124, she has a heading, "You Can Overeat Carbohydrates, but You Cannot Overeat Proteins and Good Fats." She goes on to explain the biochemistry, summing up, "If you ignore the feeling [the nausea from eating too much fat/protein] and you keep eating, you will either become further nauseated or vomit."

Then on p. 251, she writes, "Eat fat with every meal. Listen to your body. It knows its fat-intake limits. Do not worry about fat grams; your body takes care of this through the feedback mechanism of satiety. If you eat too much fat, you will get stick to your stomach and possibly even vomit. You should eat as many healthy fats as you want, varying your selections."

Sheldon

Hi mate,

SB=Sugar Busters. As I said in my last post:


Roz

I misunderstood the "SB."

Can you show me where Atkins says to restrict fat?

Sheldon

I'm losing track of just what exactly you mean here, Sheldon.

As I explained earlier, Dr A does not give us a licence to gorge ourselves. Some folk can eat enormous amounts of protein and fat - they won't lose weight!
That's why he says to eat until you are full, but not stuffed.

That's also why Sugar Busters says to not overfill your plate and not go back for seconds.

Roz

Let's get back to the beginning. My topic was "Do calories count or not?" Atkins and Schwarzbein say no. The Eadeses say yes, if you can't lose weight. They are in direct conflict. I'm not talking about gorging. I'm asking if a weight-loss stall can be explained by the consumption of too many calories through fat/protein. We have a disagreement among the authors and I'm trying to sort it out.

Thanks. :)

Sheldon

My last reply here. :p
Atkins does not say that calories do not count. He makes a point of saying not to overeat.

As it's after 2AM here, I'm off to bed. G'night!

Roz

Can I put in my non-medical 2 cents?
 

When doing Atkins in my 20's, I ate all of the protein I wanted and lost 40 pounds. After not sticking to the WOL and gaining, I went back to the Atkins WOL in February of this year and gained. I lowered my calories from 1200 to 1000 to finally 800 before seeing a loss. I have now finally lost 5 pounds in the past week (I was 229).

Sorry to interrupt, I just felt like sharing my experience.

My doctor says my 30 year old body does not need the calories my 20-something body did.

Thank you for listening/reading,
Julie

P. 73 of Atkins: "Count carbs, not calories." He also disparages what he calls the "'calorie-is-a-calorie' mind set."

Sheldon

Have you ever had a great deal of weight to lose or has 15 pounds been it? If you ever had to work at it for as long as I did, you would know that there is only so much you can eat of anything and then you gain weight.

I think the point is being missed. I'm sure that Schwarzbein and Atkins have worked with people who had a great deal of weight to lose. I don't see how my personal situation is relevant. (But to answer your question, I have not had to lose more than 15 pounds). This is not about being sensitive or insensitive to someone's situation.

Let me be clear: I am not taking a position on this matter. I am asking a question in order to resolve a conflict between Atkins-Schwarzbein and the Eadeses. (Does anyone disagree that there is a conflict?) This is about physiology. Do fat calories matter or not? I'm seeking an answer based on science. I'm not the one who first raised the question. It is is raised in the very literature we tout.

Cheers,

Sheldon

Sheldon....

Let's look at what the authors have to say. The Eades' say not to worry about calories or fat grams unless you're not losing weight which would mean to me that if you're not losing weight, you need to start counting calories and/or fat grams because you are, in fact, eating too much. Dr. Atkins also says not to worry about counting calories, but also cautions that the metabolic advantage of low carbing is not to be used as an excuse to gorge yourself; "eat until satisfied (ie no longer hungry), not stuffed". If calories don't count, why the caution to not gorge yourself on protein and fat? So far, I don't see any disagreement here.
Then we have Diana Schwarzbein (who I have to confess, I haven't read yet and don't even have any of her books other than her cookbook) who maintains that it's impossible to overeat protein or fats because they are self-limiting and to a certain extent, I believe they are (although I'm not one to ever say that anything is impossible, especially when we are talking about human behavior). If you don't think so, try sitting down and eating an entire stick of butter sometime. If you succeed in eating the entire stick without getting sick, then you have a far stronger constitution than I do.
Okay...so one author says you may have to count calories if you aren't losing weight, one says don't count calories, but don't gorge yourself either and the third says don't count calories because you won't need to...the way you're eating is self-limiting. Does this mean that one of them has to be wrong or does it simply mean that they are reporting what their experience has been in their respective practices? Dr. Schwarzbein, if I remember correctly, deals primarily with women who are very focused on counting calories as a whole and also usually very portion-control minded from previous dieting experience. I honestly don't know for sure.
Some people, however, either don't listen to or simply don't recognize the "I'm full" signals that their bodies send them. Those are the ones that I think probably would benefit from counting calories to avoid overeating.
Each of these authors has a slightly different perspective on calories, but I don't think that they necessarily disagree with each other and I think that the best place to go to resolve the "conflict" as you see it is to go to the authors. How about sending an e-mail to Dr. Schwarzbein asking directly how many calories a day would be appropriate for weight loss assuming that your body does not tell you when it's had enough and see what she says? I honestly can't speak for her and why she says what she does.
Personally, I think that calories DO matter. It only makes sense that if you take in far more calories than you expend, that unused energy has to go somewhere. It doesn't pass unused out of your body (most of it DOES get digested) and they don't just magically disappear simply because you are following a low carb WOE, so what is your body to do with the excess? Store it. The metabolic advatage is simply this: your body uses more energy to burn fat and protein for energy than it does to use carbs and sugars, so you can consume slightly more calories on low carb than you can on low fat/high carb and still lose weight, but that doesn't give you free license to go hog wild. Fats and proteins are far more satisfying than carbs and sugars and in the case of many people (although not ALL) are self-limiting. Most people can only eat so much of them before they feel uncomfortably full or nauseated, but there will always be a few who can eat far more than they need.

The question of whether a conflict even exists is dependent upon how complete you want to assume each author is being. Let's assume that for 95% of the population that they can eat without worrying about calories at all because a combination of mechanisms will come into play to prevent them from overeating.

So one author that is primarily trying to address that 95% says that you don't have to count calories. They are trying to emphasize the "proper way" to approach things that is appropriate for the vast majority of people. Are they claiming that calories absolutely, positively do not matter? Not necessarily. They are stating a general rule that applies to the vast majority of their readers. They may then just ignore the other 5% or they may have a section for further reading that goes into more detail for those 5% who are not being successful using the general rule.

Another author chooses to address the calorie issue up front in order to be more complete even at the risk of overwhelming many people with too much information or leaving people confused about whether they should count or not count.

Is there a fundamental conflict between the information being provided? Or is it simply a different style of presenting information relevent to a certain target audience?

You have to look at what the main gist of the underlying principle is and who the target audience is.

Audience: People that have been, for the most part, totally focussed on counting calories as the end-all, be-all of losing weight.

Main Principle: That with a low-carb diet, counting calories is not important for the vast majority of people for a combination of reasons:

a) The body will not use dietary fat for energy in a highly efficient manner and hence a greater number of dietary calories will be wasted.

b) The body will have a hard time storing excess calories as fat (hard time does not equate to absolutely impossible).

c) With a high intake of fat, the body's satiation mechanism will normally come into play well before the total intake of calories becomes excessive.

Because of these factors, the vast majority of people do not need to worry about counting calories because, if they follow the plan, they will tend to not consume enough for it to become an issue.
The authors are trying to break their typical reader away from a very deeply engrained mindset and also need to keep their approach reasonably simple to understand, comprehend and apply. Hence they emphasize the "rules" that will work for the vast majority of people and rely on side-notes and such to address the people that do not fall into "the vast majority" - or ignore the issue altogether. Each author must decide how much detail to go into, when and where to go into greater detail, how much simplification is too much simplification, what fraction of all readers they want to cover. Each author comes to a different set of answers and a different approach on how to address these areas.

Dr. Atkins' method is a good example of this:

Yes, on page 73 he says to count carbs and not calories. And that is the central theme of his approach. But to read from that one statement that he maintains that calories don't matter is to ignore several other parts of his book.

For instance:

Page 143: "Athough there is no need to count calories, they do matter." He then proceeds to explain why how a low-carb program stacks the calorie deck in your favor and concludes with the statement, "But understand that this does not give you a license to gorge."

He then proceeds to address the minority of people for whom the "count carbs, not calories" rule doesn't work in the section on Metabolic Resistance.

On page 272 he states, "I realized that a small but intensely suffering segment of my readers would need to know how to overcome metabolic resistance." He then goes on to say, "The Fat Fast is one controlled carb program where you do have to count calories."


Are you seeing how it isn't so much a matter of the authors contradicting each other - at least not in the big picture, certainly they are not all in 100% agreement with each other on all of the details and it is unlikely that they ever will be - nearly as much as it is a matter of each author making decisions about what subset of the total information to include (as there is NO WAY to include it all) and making choices on how to present it.

Individuality is the Key
 

I think that even tho, there may be some similarities in losses, and gains, it all falls back on the individual metabolism. My son, is 22 y.o. w/ CP, he eats 3000-5000 calories a day,both high carb, high fat & high protein, and it is like "pulling teeth" to get him to gain weight! He has no aerobic activity or exercise to burn it off...
I have been on Induction since last Friday... I don't know how many calories I am eating in a day... I generally eat something about every 2 hrs., why? Because the very act of eating boosts metabolism, & since I have no exercise to speak of,(not beyond my normal day to day mommy duties :) ), I want to help my metabolism out a bit.
When I get through with this Induction thing, then I will evaluate if I am satisfied with the results, if I want to stay on it, or keep with it. I am not having a problem with the foods I eat, and am even getting over the "kill for a candy bar" feeling :P If I get into a stall period, then I will evaluate & tweak it if I have to.
I think anyone can gain given the RIGHT COMBINATION of foods that it would take for them to gain! My son, how I WISH he would gain some more, but then I have the other side of the coin,where it would be harder to lift him,do transfers and the such. He is healthy,& the dr. remarked that he is one of the healthiest individuals with Cerebral Palsy that he ever seen as far as weight. Those w/ Cp will have a 25% faster metabolism than the general population.. wish I could bottle his metabolism & sell it~ I'd be a millionaire!
I hope that I made some sense and conveyed what I was trying to, without all the fancy gobbledeegook and technical talk about how our bodies do this or that. :wave:

calorie counter : protein ? fat ?
 

My understanding is that it is true that although carbs may be absent in a diet, too many protein calories -> glucose conversion -> insulin -> fat storage (or at least cessation of fat loss). A reason for many stalls.

So theoretically, if fat excess does not follow the same path as protein excess, does going on a 100 % fat diet of unlimited quantities of fat mean that weight loss is inevitable ?

The answer depends on what the body does with excess fat in the absence of protein and carbs. I'm not sure anyone knows for sure but the logical answer seems likely to be that excess fat calories over the bodies energy requirements are discarded. However why should the body look to its existing fat stores for energy in the presence of sufficient dietary fat ? and people do get fooled: they look at their purple Ketostix and think they are losing fat, however in the 100 % fat diet described, the Ketones would be largely being generated from dietary fat.

The short answer would then be that logically, calories do count: the body is happy for you to consume fat only if you want, but if you consume equal to or greater than its energy needs, you will lose nothing.

In summary: you need to go into calorie deficit to lose weight: but if you eat just enough protein for your bodyweight and add additional fat such that your total calories are less than the bodies requirements, you will lose. But all of the rules that apply to high carb, low fat calories restriction diets apply here too: eat too few calories, metabolism will slow, muscle gets utilized.

Just my views of course, but it's starting to make sense ...

I don't think there's one absolutely right answer here. A friend of mine and I are both following the LC lifestyle, and both of us wanted to lose about 5 more pounds. We both switched from half and half to heavy cream in our coffee, which saves a couple of carbs per cup but triples the fat calories. He lost weight, I gained, because the extra fat put me over 12x my body weight in calories. I went back to half and half and am now re-losing the weight I gained. FOR ME, the extra fat calories were worse than the few carb grams I saved. For him, it had no effect.

Schwarzbein says you can't overeat fat? My personal experience would seem to indicate otherwise. YMMV.

Thanks
 

Thanks, everyone. This is exactly the informative discussion I had hoped to stimulate. Very helpful, indeed.

A couple of comments. According to Atkins, "Fat Fast" is an extreme solution for those suffering metabolic resistance, a disorder. We should keep that in mind.

I see that, theoretically, Schwarzbein does allow that excess dietary fat could be stored. I say "theoretically" because she also seems to argue that in practice, this will not happen because of the body's reaction to excess dietary fat at a sitting. (Do people continue to eat even when nauseated? I ask this purely for information.)

Here's the relevant passage, from p. 128, "But if the snack is made up of protein and fats, your body can use these foods first for building materials (cells, enzymes, hormones and so on), leaving fewer calories to be used as energy or stored fat."

She makes this point in her discussion of why a fat calorie is not equal to a carb calorie. This section is worth the price of the book. Since calories are measured under laboratory conditions (i.e., it's a measure of how much water is heated when the food is broken down into its elements: hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon), it tells us little about what happens when fat is ingested. Why? "But when you eat the same piece of chicken, your body does not break the chicken down into its basic elements. The protein and fats in the chicken are only partially broken down into amino acids and fatty acids, which are then used to build new proteins (muscle, hair, skin) and fats (myelin sheaths, cell membranes and hormones).

"Since the chicken was never broken down to its basic elements but instead was reconfigured into new proteins and fats, all of the bonds were never actually broken. Therefore, all of the potential energy was never released as it is in a laboratory setting. Because proteins and fats are not broken down into energy and are used instead as building materials, little or none of the proteins and fats goes to fat storage."

Carbs are different because they are not used as building materials.

This makes sense. But I am not a physiologist or an endocrinolgist (unlike Schwarzbein), so I can't be sure. That's why I raised the issue.

I'll leave it at that. Thanks again.

Sheldon

I see that Sheldon and I were posting at the same time, so this post is primarily in answer to peterj's question about "fat only diet leading to weight loss".

In the 1930's there was an experiment in New York where Arctic explorer V. Steffansson & a colleague were monitored by Bellevue Hospital. For one whole year, they ate only meat (protein and fat) with NO carbs at all and totalled about 2500 calories per day. At the end of the year, Stefansson had lost 6 pounds and was found to be in very good health. This was one of the earliest studies on low (or no) carb eating, based on what he found among the Eskimo/Innuit of the Arctic.

Since the body can convert protein and fat into whatever it needs and there are vitamins and minerals in the fresh meat, this experiment shows that weight maintenance is possible and will not necessarily result in endless weight loss, even at the no carb level. And yes, the body can synthesize a form of Vitamin C from fresh meat. (Sailors used to get scurvy on long voyages because they ate mostly preserved/salted meat.

No, you would not do well on a "fat only" diet. You would lose pounds but the body would be cannabilizing its own lean muscle mass to try and keep the heart and other organs going. Eventually, the organs would fail and a person would die, albeit weighing less than when they started the 'fat only' eating.

Protein is essential to life, and so is some fat. Only carbs can be dispensed with, although there are side effects of doing that.



:wave: