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Originally Posted by tom sawyer
Why would eating a low carb diet with adequate calories, trigger a starvation response? I would think this is only true if the appetite suppression you experience, leads to a very low calorie intake to the point where you ARE in starvation mode.
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The only way to catabolize body fat is by triggering an energy deficit some how. Low carb is not absolved. YOur body doesn't care how this energy deficit is being made. Some methods are more extreme than others (e.g. doing a semi-fast is much more extreme and hurtful to the body than smaller modest caloric deficits). Eventually, though, the toll is the same. The only differences between the approaches is
how long it takes to get into this state. Persist in fasting and within days you'll be conserving lots of energy. Do a "sensible diet" with no brakes that results in stead weight loss, and after a couple of months you'll be where the faster was within a week.
We are the products of thousands of years of selection. Your body is not stupid. It is designed to regulate and conserve tissue stores to ensure survival. If these are being depleted, it will try to protect itself. The starvation response is dependent exclusively on the difference between energy available for use (both on the body and from diet), and the actual need for energy. If you are losing weight, you are creating an energy deficit. Your body doesn't care if you do it slowly and more healthfully with atkins or if you're a mentally disturbed anorexic. The only difference between the methods is how soon and how severe your symptoms will be.
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I am more inclined to believe what that Ellis fellow said, that people given license to eat as much fatty food as they desire, overeat and take in more calories than they can burn.
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I do agree that a lot of people who stall out on Atkins are simply comfortably eating to complete fullness, enjoying that satisfied feeling of being "stuffed" after a meal, etc.
Not always, though. Relative to how little I
was eating, I wasn't losing that much weight. I even entered
ketchup and onions in fitday, and I always overestimated serving sizes. I don't think over eating was the culprit for me in so much as energy conservation was. Don't get me wrong I
was still losing, however it was slower than it should have been for a healthy person.
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One thing that jumping back and forth between carbs and fats as primary energy source might do, is to keep you from metabolizing the fats efficiently. The long-term response of increased enzyme production might never kick in if you keep your body thinking it is going back to carbs as the energy source. This may keep the "metabolic advantage" at its maximum.
One thing the carb cycling may offer, is a way for people who are mentally unprepared or otherwise unable to stick to low carb for life, to be able to utilize lc as a weight loss tool. Knowing you can have your carby foods now and then, probably is a lot easier to live with for many folks.
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I do think it has psychological benefits as well. This was my original theory.
However, in my own personal experience, I really think there's more to it than that.
It's also more than a long term enzymatic shift, since the results of calorie staggering are immediate and appear within days (as my experiences, and the studies suggest). Technically if you were stalled due to an enzymatic adaption to using a certain kind of energy, the staggering part wouldn't work. Changing your diet back to a higher calorie, higher carb would.
Also, more evidence against the theory is that when people do carb and calorie staggering, it's mostly calories that are changed. Carbs are barely changed at all. In my case, I eat slightly more carbs but way more calories.
I'm not saying these other factors don't exist (psychological factors, avoiding making enzymatic adaptations to a fat based metabolism), I merely think they are less significant than the thyroid connection.
(and considerably higher carb/fat/calories :P)
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