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PHEW 11 pages of this in just a few days. I do not have time to read it all. Will throw in my 2 cents. I have been low carb. 20 carbs and under since November 22, 2014. I went very low carb in May of 2015 at 5 carbs and below. I am feeling wonderful with so much energy. I am 66 and laid a 6 by 4 + paver landing at the bottom of our steps. I had to rip out the old one and re-do it due to a ditch settled under it. I did all of that yesterday. and still had to do all chores around our house because my hubby is ill and on chemo.
I have lost 54 pounds. My doctor is thrilled with my progress and blood work. I still have 36 pounds to go and I am going to stick with Low Carb all the way. It is the one way for me to lose weight and keep it off.
I did Atkins 72 back in 1972 and stayed on it for over 15 years. I was healthy and strong and felt wonderful. Then I screwed up and let myself go back to eating sandwiches then cookies and cakes and I honestly was screwed. My carb addiction took over and it was all down hill. I gained about 70 pounds on top of the slow age creep of 20 pounds.
I have nothing to back this up. I believe LC is sustainable for any one that wants to lose weight and keep it off. I learned my lesson. I am too old to go through this relapse again. When I get to goal I might add back some low glycemic vegetables but I do not want those carb cravings to take over again.
Night folks. Chris
Editing to add since I do see mention of T3 and T4. Again not reading it all I need to get to bed. I am on Thyroid and have been since before I was even low carb. I do do better on Armour Thyroid or NP Thyroid,generic version of Armour. The synthetics Levothyroxine and Synthroid,same thing different name, do not work for me because I would need to take the Cytomil(spelling?) to get the T3 or T4 I needed. I do not take my temp. It has always been normal on the few occasions I did take it because I wondered if I was sick.
Thyroid medication would tend to normalize your temperature. Glad to see you are healthy!
My belief is that a wide range of macronutrient ratios can provide good human health (not an original thought, this is from others); unless taken to the point of extremism - very high carb, very high fat, very low carb, very low fat, and so on.
You say you believe that a wide range of diets can provide good health, yet you post studies that are ridiculous (800 calories and ZERO g of carbs) as proof that low carb is unhealthy. No carb and low carb are not the same thing. 800 calories is almost starvation.
A healthy low carb diet needs to contain vegetables. It also needs to contain enough calories so that a person can stay on it for a long time. I don't know very many people who can sustain such a low calorie diet for long periods of time.
The truth is that weight loss slows metabolism no matter how that weight loss is obtained. Your base metabolic rate is the number of calories a person burns if they did nothing but lay in bed all day.
I started out at 235 lb, 5'3" tall, 49 years old and female. I am currently 185 lb and 50 years old. My BMR has gone from 1660 calories to 1428 calories per day. That would happen no matter how I lost the weight and no matter HOW FAST I lost the weight. It just happens. It doesn't happen as a result of low carb, no carb, weight watchers, or whatever plan I followed to lose the weight.
Note that even at my ideal weight (est at 135 lb) I would still require 1200 calories per day just to lay in bed all day. That doesn't count ANY activity at all. 800 calories per day and zero carbs is one of the those extreme diets you rail against yet you cite it as support for your position.
I am very open minded but you will have to do better to convince me that low carb is a thyroid damaging diet. You will also have to do better to convince me that low body temperature, in the absence of other symptoms of low thyroid function, is a health problem.
OH GRRR I do not want to get into this. BUT His later books are crap. The best version of Atkins was the 1972 version. After that and especially after he died all they did was convert to make money off of selling CRAPPY product to people to make them think they were doing Atkins. Almost like big pharma keeping people sick to sell their drugs. Let the people think they are doing Atkins and they might lose a little weight at first because before they started doing their version, the newer versions of Atkins, they were eating easily 5 times the carbs they should have been eating. So any reduction helped them to lose some weight. But to eat those carb filled bars and SCREW net carbs. A carb is a carb. You can not excuse it being a carb just because it has some fiber in it. Hell I will pour half a cup of ground flax seed in a bowl of ice cream and will it be ok to eat because of the fiber in the flax? I think not.
For sure I am out of here. Good night. May we all wake up slender in the morning.
chris
I follow the version of Atkins from the 1990s. I find a difference between calculating net carbs when I eat vegetables and net carbs when I eat artificial sweeteners (sugar alcohols). I eat very very little sugar alcohols and on the rare occasion that I have them I count all those carbs. However, I do calculate net carbs when I eat vegetables and berries.
I forgot to include one very important bit of information. I am diabetic and if I want to avoid getting my feet/legs amputated or going blind, I MUST eat low carb. Sounds overly simplistic but very true. If you just want to lose weight there are many other approaches. I also forgot to add that I am on a Low Carb HIGH FAT diet and I use fat instead of carbs as my fuel. Not only that, I do not feel hungry even when I fast part of the day. If you cut out both fat and carbs, then yes you will feel very weak. I do not feel fatigued in the least and my sugar and lipid profiles are the best they have ever been.
I am also a Diabetic and must closely monitor my carb intake. I have to count carbs for every meal and snack, and adjust the insulin dosage for the amount of carbs. I was taught to stay at no more than 60 carbs per meal, and 15 for snacks. I agree if you cut out both fat and carbs, you will feel weak.
You say you believe that a wide range of diets can provide good health, yet you post studies that are ridiculous (800 calories and ZERO g of carbs) as proof that low carb is unhealthy. No carb and low carb are not the same thing. 800 calories is almost starvation.
A healthy low carb diet needs to contain vegetables. It also needs to contain enough calories so that a person can stay on it for a long time. I don't know very many people who can sustain such a low calorie diet for long periods of time.
The truth is that weight loss slows metabolism no matter how that weight loss is obtained. Your base metabolic rate is the number of calories a person burns if they did nothing but lay in bed all day.
I started out at 235 lb, 5'3" tall, 49 years old and female. I am currently 185 lb and 50 years old. My BMR has gone from 1660 calories to 1428 calories per day. That would happen no matter how I lost the weight and no matter HOW FAST I lost the weight. It just happens. It doesn't happen as a result of low carb, no carb, weight watchers, or whatever plan I followed to lose the weight.
Note that even at my ideal weight (est at 135 lb) I would still require 1200 calories per day just to lay in bed all day. That doesn't count ANY activity at all. 800 calories per day and zero carbs is one of the those extreme diets you rail against yet you cite it as support for your position.
I am very open minded but you will have to do better to convince me that low carb is a thyroid damaging diet. You will also have to do better to convince me that low body temperature, in the absence of other symptoms of low thyroid function, is a health problem.
The studies drove to an extreme on purpose. They did not stay on 800 calories and zero carbs for long.
I would never recommend 800 calories and zero carb diet. No one says that is the way people should eat long term, including the study you are referring too. However, there are people on 1000 calories a day and near zero carb. I totally agree with you, more calories is better.
Consider your metabolism after weight loss. A way of eating if you will, as opposed to a "diet". There is a difference with low carb, you will have a lower temperature and reduced T3.
Do a web search for "low carb diet causes hypothyroidism". There is a lot of reading available to you.
Low body temperature is a low cost, easily available method to assess hypothyroidism. You can then continue with all the other blood work if your temperature is low.
Edit: there are studies where people fast. It does not mean people fast forever.
If your weight went back up, it was because you were eating more calories. If you are happy and healthy at 60 g carbs, that is all that matters.
Everyone wants to blame it on calories without having a clue what I was actually doing. No, it was not because of calories, it was because I got lazy and didn't keep the carbs low. (That was awhile ago, by the way, not recently.)
The thing with the low carb diet is that I ate a LOT more food than I ever did regularly. I ate way more calories on the low carb diet than I did when I just ate "normal". You can't go eating a truck load of food, of course, just like you stated that it's not a good idea to try to reduce your calories to 800 or less...that's just asking for problems. But I most certainly did eat a lot more than I did before I started low carb. It wasn't just veggies. I did meat, eggs, and cheese. I had a lot of omelets. I had a lot of meat. I had cheeseburgers, (without the buns). I did have my salads, too, but I mostly ate the heavier foods, and a lot of it. The weight continued to come off, and, as I said earlier, I actually surpassed my goal without any hardship whatsoever, (except realizing that meant no more Chinese food take out...which sucked.)
Before I went to the low carb diet back then, my day consisted of this:
No breakfast
sandwich for lunch, a small bag of chips
sometimes a dinner, most of the time not, but if I did eat dinner, it was Cup O' Noodles, or those 99cent Banquet frozen dinners...you know the ones, they taste horrid, and they don't fill you up at all?
Once I went on the low carb diet, my day consisted of this:
Gigantic omelet with cheese and sausage, (not processed)
Chicken wrap, (except there was no bread, I used lettuce leaves in place of the bread)
BIG chunk of meat for dinner, beef, chicken, pork...I mean HUGE chunk of meat, and a small salad
Water or diet Coke, (I used to drink regular Coke, but found out I could drink Diet Coke, and while I know it isn't healthy, it did help me over my "sweet tooth" issue when first starting out)
Snacks were things like pepperoni slices, chunks of cheese, hard boiled eggs, things like that, and I had a lot of snacks.
I ate so much more on the low carb diet than when I wasn't on it.
BUT, when I got lazy, (where I worked didn't have much in the way of food unless you enjoy the cook taking out the garbage, coming back in and touching your food without washing his hands afterwards, or going to the bathroom, or picking his teeth, or blowing his nose...and he threw a fit about us putting lunch in "his" fridge so that really left me without a lot of choices...but yes, I could have found an alternative somehow, but I chose to be lazy about it since the easy solutions were taken from us, or the cook was too fricken disgusting that I would never allow him to touch my food, and no, we weren't allowed to make our own no matter how many of us told the boss how nasty the cook was...there, now you have the story), I went for easy stuff that I could microwave like pot pies, or burritos, or hot pockets. I still didn't eat breakfast, and for dinner I reverted back to more microwave stuff because after spending all day outside in the bowels of hell known as Miami in the summer time, the last thing I wanted to do was sit over a stove, cooking.
I ate less, and yes, I ate less calories. Two hot pockets a day does not equal a giant omelet, a chicken "sandwich" (lettuce for the bread), a cheeseburger, a couple of hard boiled eggs, pepperoni slices or beef jerky, salad, and a chunk of meat that was bigger than my fist, in calories.
Edit: Oh, and my body temp has not gone lower since I started that back in the 90s.
I follow the version of Atkins from the 1990s. I find a difference between calculating net carbs when I eat vegetables and net carbs when I eat artificial sweeteners (sugar alcohols). I eat very very little sugar alcohols and on the rare occasion that I have them I count all those carbs. However, I do calculate net carbs when I eat vegetables and berries.
Momma_bear, I would love to add in more veggies and use the net carbs. It just does not work for me. Until I dropped to 5 carbs a day and below I was constantly losing the same three pounds over and over and over. So sad to think 3 OZ of broccoli would put weight back on. But for me it does. I think I abused carbs so badly I am over sensitive to them. I am happy it will work for you. As said above when I do get to goal I will add more veggies=up the carb ladder a wee bit until the weight starts coming back . Then I will know when I have reached my critical carb level and will back down until there is no more gain and call it maintenance.
The doctors and nurses AND nutritionist , who take care of my hubby, watched my weight go out of control , high, then come back into control, lower, for the last three years. Knowing I am doing very low carb they are all for it. All of them. Then my own PCP is happy too. He said it is the best thing I can do for me. Yes my LDL went up a bit but my triglycerides are half what they were and HDL is twice what it was and my metabolic ratio has come down almost to normal range.
I eat up to 1000 calories on hungry or less. I do not log my foods until the day of eating is done so I do not restrict. Being very low carb curbs my desire for food. I was never a breakfast person and since I am not hungry I usually skip it and have my coffee with 2 TSP Heavy whipping cream and call it good. I eat lunch at 2PM and dinner at 7 and I am done for the day except for drinking iced or hot tea. I usually go along with three or four not hungry days and then one day I am really hungry and I never restrict low carb foods on that hungry day. The pattern has been I will usually drop a pound every 5 to 8 days. It all seems very slow but I look back and am very happy with how far I have come.
Because I never made that claim in the first place.
Again, learn reading comprehension.
You said you were going to be silent?
You can make 100 posts saying read learning comprehension, when you can't do it yourself.
From your earlier post:
"Why do you continue to ignore the fact that falling T3 while dieting is not the cause of body temp drop?"
It is, it is, it is.
You cite one source for a ketogenic diet where the author believes low T3 may be a protein sparing mechanism. No where does your paper discuss a relation of low T3 with low body temperature. This also was only in reference to a ketogenic diet, not to a low carb diet that provided sufficient protein to avoid ketosis.
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