As for the calorie issue, no, it's not just about the number of calories -- that's the "metabolic advantage" of low-carb, that we can actually eat more calories and still lose weight. The short version is that you can't store low-carb calories as fat as efficiently as the same high-carb calories, because they don't generate as much insulin. You can't store fat without insulin, so the less of it you have, the less use you'll be able to get out of the calories. A calorie is not just a calorie, any more than a carb is a carb -- calories are a measure of POTENTIAL energy, not of how much energy (e.g. fat) your body will get out of them!

I posted a longer explanation of this process on another thread a week or two ago (http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...026#post1235026), if you're interested.