Dear towerprncs,

You think reading diet books is confusing. You should try reading the scientific studies on nutrition that these doctors have to come to some conclusion about and base their books on. There is a lot of controversy out there.

Knowledge is power and the more you read and learn, the more the whole thing will come together for you and you'll decide what's best for you.

With most diets that are not lowcarb (even weight watchers), your total calorie count will be diminished from what you were eating previously. This may even be true with low carb diets. However, there are studies that have proven that on a low carb ketogenic diet, it is possible to eat more calories than the other diets and still lose weight.

About unsaturated fat: There are three basic types of fat. 1. Saturated 2. Polyunsaturated 3. Monounsaturated.

On a ketogenic diet, theoretically, most of the fat you eat is going to be used right away and not stored because you are not eating any carbs. Carbs create a fuel in your body called glucose. Without carbs there is no glucose so your body can only use fat as fuel by changing the fat to ketone bodies. Now most ketones need either glucose or insulin to store the fat as fat (according to a recent study I posted on the Research forum). Since most of the fat won't be able to store as fat, it is flushed out of the urinary tract. Eating large amounts of fat in the presence of more carbs would mean your body could store the fat. Therefore, on a ketogenic low carb diet, you can eat more fat than on weight watchers. It won't store.

The book Protein Power puts into perspective the different kinds of fat. Yes, unsaturated fats are better than saturated fat because unsaturated fats raise the good cholesterol (HDL) and/or lower bad cholesterol (LDL). The thing is that a porterhouse steak has 1/2 saturated fat and 1/2 unsaturated fat, so it isn't bad for you. UNLESS you have a reaction to arachidonic acid found in red meats and egg yolk. If you do have an allergy to arachidonic acid, your blood pressure may not go down until you cut out red meat and egg yolk. But you don't know until you try LCing for a length of time and if your blood pressure doesn't go down, you may have this problem.

LCing can be made slightly healthier for everyone if they ate only egg whites and chicken and fish and olive oil, but for the majority, the red meat and egg yolks are not a problem anyway.

Hope this helps.