[I]Eat low carb = you CAN’T GAIN fat.
Eat low carb ≠ you WILL LOSE fat. [unless, of course, you create a caloric deficit].[/I]

Shouldn’t it be, “… unless, of course, you DON’T create a caloric deficit” ?

Am I just being dense? It would seem if you eat low carb AND create a caloric deficit, you will lose more than if you eat low carb and NOTcreate a caloric deficit.

???

Also, I was intrigued by your statement, “At these low-caloric intakes, calories are what counts. Not diet composition.”

If I read the quotation from the study correctly, the LC group ate 1086 calories, and the “big breakfast” group ate 1240 calories.

So, health benefits of LC aside, it doesn’t matter what the ratios of fat, protein, and carbs you eat at this level of calories in terms of weight loss? At what point (caloric-wise) does it start making a difference?

I’m 5’6, age 53, in menopause (we’ve chatted before) and currently … ugh … 190 pounds (up 40 pounds in the first 18 months of menopause). I’ve done my BMR, etc. and it came to somwhere around 1800 calories per day. Then, to create a caloric deficit, the calculation was to deduct 500 calories per day. That takes me down to about 1300 calories a day. Are you saying that it doesn’t matter if I’m LC or HC (other than being ravenously hungry all the time on HC) at this level?

By the way, my appointment at Women to Women is in 2 weeks (though I’m seeing a different NP this time). I can’t wait to actually get tested and be treated with the exact dosage of bio-identical hormones that I need. And yes, I’ll go for the creams and gels this time! Thanks once again for steering me in the right direction.

You had me worried about my equation until I went back and looked at it. It’s the ≠ that’s confusing you. That sign means does not equal. So if you read the sentence with that in mind it says: eating low-carb does not equal losing fat (unless, of course, you create a caloric deficit).

Yes, you will lose (probably) at the 1300 kcal level irrespective of what kind of a diet you are on. At high calories – as in maintenance – there is a metabolic advantage in that most people can eat a greater number of calories (as low-carb – gotta keep the insulin down) without gaining weight than their metabolic rate would imply that they could. This metabolic advantage doesn’t just appear at the higher calorie intake level. It starts smaller, earlier and builds. So it depends on where (calorically) this starts for you. If it kicks in at the 1200 kcal level you won’t lose as much on HC as you would on LC. In any case, even if you lose the same, you’ll be hungrier and miserable on a low-cal, HC diet.

Good catch. I didn’t even notice it. Truly sloppy.

I’m off topic. Sorry. One question and one comment.

FIRST-QUESTION
Dr. Barry Sears of the Zone philosophy stated in one of his books that it’s METABOLICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to lose more than 1.5 pounds of fat in one week. I must surmise from this that if you create a calorie deficit from, say, exercise, you will eat more and not lose fat, or lose lean mass, instead of fat? Or I must surmise that extra fat burned will be transformed in to muscle? Or I must surmise that if you’re carb restricted, the fat cells will be open to be released and used, but there’s a limit of how open? Can you think of any reason why he would say this?

SECOND-COMMENT
I just read Taubes’ article, “The Scientist and the Stairmaster”. It seems to me that he’s saying that exercise is not the base of the pyramid, to use a Zone diet book analogy. Exercise is a tool, along with fish oil, micronutrients, and stress reduction, to accentuate the base of carb and calorie restriction – as well as It comes back to the commentors calculation:

Eat low carb = you CAN’T GAIN fat.
Eat low carb ≠ you WILL LOSE fat. [unless, of course, you create a caloric deficit].

Exercise helps create that deficit. Sure exercise makes one hungry. So does fasting. So does an emotional stressor, for some. It’s HOW you eat to relieve the hunger. I didn’t see the email that he sent you. But I read his article. From the article, Gary says,

“They [lean people like Lance A.] are people whose bodies are programmed to send the calories they consume to the muscles to be burned rather than to the fat tissue to be stored…The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin…with…LPL…This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates…”

It seems that you all are making the same points. Exercise, particularly in moderation, is not THE silver bullet for weight/fat loss.

Best Regards, Will D.

Another choice for the answer to your first question is that he may be wrong. And I think he is. It is not metabolically impossible to lose more than 1.5 pounds per week.

Gary feels that exercise of any kind will not lead to weight loss. He believes that it will be compensated for by increasing food intake somewhere along the way. I’m not sure I agree. I do believe, however, that a good low-carb diet will take off the avoirdupois much faster than anything else including a lot of exercise.

You are correct on the difference between the means. Embarrassingly I must admit that I’m somewhat of a stat geek. Quick calculations come up with a t-statistic of approximately 3.8. You would have to go out to infinity and at some impractical level of significance to find a t-statistic greater than that. So yes, the differences in weight loss were significant.

I can’t imagine someone not discovering this so I’m erring on the side of selective results.

Brian

Thanks for running the calculations. I don’t have the software and didn’t want to do it by hand. I could pretty much eyeball those numbers, however, and tell that there was significant difference in weight loss.

MRE

I just love your blog!

I received an e-mail from the researcher’s son Dr. Salomon Jakubowicz in Venezuela this week who said the media distorted what her research was really all about. Here’s exactly what he wrote to me in response to my blog post about his mother’s “study”:

Regarding my mother Daniela Jakubowicz’s study she tried to make a low-carb diet including breakfast for both subjects and controls but the journalists increased the importance of the carbs during breakfast incorrectly calling it a “High-Carb And High-Protein Breakfast.” She does know that protein’s satiety power is bigger than carbs or fats. Your review is challenging although not very respectful for a health researcher.

So, if the media misinterpreted the data (gee, what a surprise!), then why doesn’t she respond? I contacted her son back and requested a podcast interview with Daniela Jakubowicz to clear the air. We’ll see if she takes me up on this offer.

I don’t know how much the press distorted her findings, but assuming she was quoted correctly in the articles I linked to, she seems to go along with the brunt of the articles.

Mike

I’m a big fan of all your books and Protein Power was amongst the first books I read (when it first came out) on the subject of low-carb eating and on eating the ways of our ancient ancestors. It also had the effect of whetting my appetite in doing more research by reading the various books out there on the subject of eating the low-carb way and on diets in general. One of my favorite web sites to visit, besides yours of course, is the Weston A. Price site.

Personally, I’ve been eating 3-4 eggs (lately fried in coconut oil) every single morning for the last 13-14 years, mainly due to being a bodybuilder. I don’t have much else with the eggs except a cup of black coffee and a TB of Cod Liver Oil. I used to have cheese omelettes…but as you pointed out so succinctly in a recent post…you still have to be careful of the calories. I love cheese, especially in my eggs, and having it around the house I would find myself eating it whenever I felt having a little snack. Needless to say, the weight started creeping up, so I had to swear off eating cheese. Now I’ll only buy it once a month. But what amazes me to this day, and what keeps me from ever changing my daily morning ritual of eating eggs, is how I can go almost all day long without feeling any hunger. I try educating a lot of folks about this phenomenon, but they’re all telling me I’ll be dropping dead of a heart-attack any minute.

My other meals consist mainly of salads, tuna fish, red-meat/chicken from pastured animals and organic raw dairy from pastured cows.

Question: Have you had a chance to review Mastering Leptin by Byron Richards as of yet? Of all the books I’ve read lately, this one seems to be one of the best of the bunch to go along with Taube’s Good Calories, Bad Calories. In writing his book he uses over 800 references to make his point. The only thing I’m not crazy about is in seeing him hawk all those supplements on his site. The Rosedale Diet by Dr. Rosedale appears to be another good one based on the leptin theme, but Dr. Rosedale mainly encourages snacking while Richards does not.

Keep up the great work, Dr. Eades! Looking forward to reading your new book when it comes out later this year.

Best Regards,
SkyKing

I’ve browsed both books, but haven’t read either in detail. I suppose I should get around to doing that.

MRE