Yeah. But that’s not really the point. The reason low carb diets lead to weight loss is because they restrict calories. I’m aware of many dieting tricks that can assist, but a calorie deficit must be created in order for weight to be lost.
This may seem self evident, but there is still debate about it. Carbs are not magically evil, they are just a macro nutrient that happens to be a large share of the calories in a typical Western diet. That’s it. No magic.
If you don’t eat after 6pm, never eat dessert or fast food, eat a larger breakfast, have a salad or X raw vegetables everyday, drink X water everyday—these can all help you lose weight. But there is nothing magical, or even scientific about any of these tactics. It’s all stuff we’ve known for 100 years.
Likewise, if you walk 2 miles a day everyday for a year, you’ll burn X calories that will lead to X weight loss. It’s just math.
My point was to specifically disparage diets like the Atkins Diet. It does nothing apart from restricting calories, yet libraries have been written about the magic of how and why it works. It’s all just noise aimed at selling books, etc. to people who are looking for help.
The reason low carb diets lead to weight loss is because they restrict calories. I’m aware of many dieting tricks that can assist, but a calorie deficit must be created in order for weight to be lost.
No one in this thread is disputing that you need a calorie deficit to lose weight. My contention is that this is merely the beginning, not the end. Let’s refer to the following passage from the linked article:
Translation of our results to real-world weight-loss diets for treatment of obesity is limited since the experimental design and model simulations relied on strict control of food intake, which is unrealistic in free-living individuals.
A diet should be realistic for free-living individuals. An obese person who wants to lose 50+ lb. could expect to be at it for the better part of a year. A diet that leaves you hungry all day is doomed to fail: it’s unrealistic to expect pure willpower to last that long. That is the point of my post about hunger control. Disregarding it or dismissing it as a mere trick is to ignore that a very important part of dieting is making sure the dieter sticks to the diet.
My point was to specifically disparage diets like the Atkins Diet. It does nothing apart from restricting calories, yet libraries have been written about the magic of how and why it works. It’s all just noise aimed at selling books, etc. to people who are looking for help.
Quite the contrary. The Atkins Diet is not just about losing the weight. It also includes a plan to keep it off. Maintaining weight loss is generally harder than losing the weight in the first place. Yo-yo dieting) is a very real problem. The problem with naive calorie restriction is that it doesn’t instill good eating habits that can be maintained once the weight-loss period ends. The Atkins Diet addresses this and is designed to ease one into eating habits that will maintain the weight loss.
A diet should be realistic for free-living individuals.
It isn’t unrealistic to create a reasonable calorie deficit for awhile...and I have no idea what a “free-living” individual is. It may be difficult to lose weight, but it’s like anything else that is difficult. It requires focused effort over time. Habits can be hard to change. There are plenty of tricks and hacks to help. Avoiding carbs is a good one becuase it will autmotically eliminate 25-60% of an individual’s daily calorie consumption. That’s all it will do. You could avoid fat, too. Same effect. Fat and carbs = calories. No magic.
A diet that leaves you hungry all day is doomed to fail
Yeah, but strawman. Dieting involves some hunger. It’s not going to kill you. It’s just part of the adjustment to a more healthy level of consumption.
The problem with naive calorie restriction is that it doesn’t instill good eating habits that can be maintained once the weight-loss period ends.
Naive calorie restriction is just regular calorie restriction with a negative name. Good eating habits entail calorie control. That’s not naive. It’s basic.
Weight loss is generally really simple. We should be grateful that this is so. Every discussion I’ve seen on LW makes dieting much more complicated than it need be. It’s very hard for many people, but that doesn’t mean it’s complicated.
Naive calorie restriction is just regular calorie restriction with a negative name. Good eating habits entail calorie control. That’s not naive. It’s basic.
By “naive” I just mean calorie restriction without any other consideration. For example, a diet where one replaces a large pizza, a 2-Liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and a slice of chocolate cake with half a large pizza,1 Liter of Coca-Cola, and a smaller slice of chocolate cake is what I’d consider naive calorie restriction. I don’t know that anyone would seriously argue that the restricted version even remotely resembles good eating habits.
Lest you accuse me of straw-manning, let it be noted that many obese people subsist on a diet consisting of fast food and junk food. In fact, malnutrition is a very real problem among the obese. That’s right: you can eat 5k+ Calories a day and still exhibit signs of malnutrition if all you eat is junk. When I speak of instilling good eating habits, I have in mind people who exhibit severe ignorance or misconception of basic nutrition.
Avoiding carbs is a good one becuase it will autmotically eliminate 25-60% of an individual’s daily calorie consumption. That’s all it will do.
A low-carb diet is not just a matter of eating what you normally eat, minus the carbohydrates. That’s going to end about as well as a vegetarian diet where you simply cut out the meat from your normal diet. You run into a micronutrient deficiency that can end up causing problems if the new diet is sustained for several months.
Yeah, but strawman. Dieting involves some hunger. It’s not going to kill you. It’s just part of the adjustment to a more healthy level of consumption.
It’s an empirical fact that some foods are more filling than others and keep you feeling full for a longer period of time, even if the number of calories consumed is the same. That’s why people care about the glycemic index. I have tried losing weight several times over the last seven years or so. There are diets where you feel satisfied most of the time, then there are diets where you finish a meal feeling as hungry as you did when you started. The psychological difference between the two is quite profound and hardly warrants the charge of “strawman”.
By “naive” I just mean calorie restriction without any other consideration.
Well, of course. I never said or implied calories were the whole ball game. You’re conflating weight loss and nutrition throughout.
A low-carb diet is not just a matter of eating what you normally eat, minus the carbohydrates.
No, but you’d be hard pressed to make up those calories by eating proteins. That is quite the point.
It’s an empirical fact that some foods are more filling than others and keep you feeling full for a longer period of time, even if the number of calories consumed is the same.
I’ve mentioned satiation as a real issue that ought to be addressed by any rational diet plan.
But, again, it isn’t the aim that a diet should involve no hunger when compared to your current meal plan. That is just plain silly and irrational.
Losing weight is like any other pursuit—it requires the expenditure of resources: Will power, focus, effort, energy, discipline. It may diminish your capacity to pursue other things for a time. It doesn’t mean you have to be bedridden or incapacitated. Again, any other pursuit is like this: Working long days on a big project at work, training for a taxing athletic event, studying for difficult classes and exams, etc. Dieting is a significant project to take on.
There seems to be this idea floating around that you can diet, lose lots of weight, and not have it consume some bandwidth in your life. BS. There are some great, rational hacks available, but it takes some sustained work to lose weight. There isn’t anyway around that.
You’re conflating weight loss and nutrition throughout.
Short term, the body is resilient enough that you can go on a crash diet to quickly drop a few pounds without worrying about nutrition. On the other hand, nutrition is an essential consideration in any weight-loss plan that’s going to last many months. That’s why I associate the two.
But, again, it isn’t the aim that a diet should involve no hunger when compared to your current meal plan. That is just plain silly and irrational.
Certain approaches purport to do this very thing by means of suppressing the appetite so that one naturally eats less. Consider, for example, the Shangri-La diet.
I will grant that if one wants to lose 2+ pounds a week over a long period of time, then the pangs of hunger are unavoidable.
There seems to be this idea floating around that you can diet, lose lots of weight, and not have it consume some bandwidth in your life. BS.
Agreed. This is especially true if there’s a psychological component to the initial weight gain. For example, stress eaters will have to either avoid stress or figure out a new coping mechanism if they want to lose weight and maintain the weight loss.
Yeah. But that’s not really the point. The reason low carb diets lead to weight loss is because they restrict calories. I’m aware of many dieting tricks that can assist, but a calorie deficit must be created in order for weight to be lost.
This may seem self evident, but there is still debate about it. Carbs are not magically evil, they are just a macro nutrient that happens to be a large share of the calories in a typical Western diet. That’s it. No magic.
If you don’t eat after 6pm, never eat dessert or fast food, eat a larger breakfast, have a salad or X raw vegetables everyday, drink X water everyday—these can all help you lose weight. But there is nothing magical, or even scientific about any of these tactics. It’s all stuff we’ve known for 100 years.
Likewise, if you walk 2 miles a day everyday for a year, you’ll burn X calories that will lead to X weight loss. It’s just math.
My point was to specifically disparage diets like the Atkins Diet. It does nothing apart from restricting calories, yet libraries have been written about the magic of how and why it works. It’s all just noise aimed at selling books, etc. to people who are looking for help.
No one in this thread is disputing that you need a calorie deficit to lose weight. My contention is that this is merely the beginning, not the end. Let’s refer to the following passage from the linked article:
A diet should be realistic for free-living individuals. An obese person who wants to lose 50+ lb. could expect to be at it for the better part of a year. A diet that leaves you hungry all day is doomed to fail: it’s unrealistic to expect pure willpower to last that long. That is the point of my post about hunger control. Disregarding it or dismissing it as a mere trick is to ignore that a very important part of dieting is making sure the dieter sticks to the diet.
Quite the contrary. The Atkins Diet is not just about losing the weight. It also includes a plan to keep it off. Maintaining weight loss is generally harder than losing the weight in the first place. Yo-yo dieting) is a very real problem. The problem with naive calorie restriction is that it doesn’t instill good eating habits that can be maintained once the weight-loss period ends. The Atkins Diet addresses this and is designed to ease one into eating habits that will maintain the weight loss.
It isn’t unrealistic to create a reasonable calorie deficit for awhile...and I have no idea what a “free-living” individual is. It may be difficult to lose weight, but it’s like anything else that is difficult. It requires focused effort over time. Habits can be hard to change. There are plenty of tricks and hacks to help. Avoiding carbs is a good one becuase it will autmotically eliminate 25-60% of an individual’s daily calorie consumption. That’s all it will do. You could avoid fat, too. Same effect. Fat and carbs = calories. No magic.
Yeah, but strawman. Dieting involves some hunger. It’s not going to kill you. It’s just part of the adjustment to a more healthy level of consumption.
Naive calorie restriction is just regular calorie restriction with a negative name. Good eating habits entail calorie control. That’s not naive. It’s basic.
Weight loss is generally really simple. We should be grateful that this is so. Every discussion I’ve seen on LW makes dieting much more complicated than it need be. It’s very hard for many people, but that doesn’t mean it’s complicated.
By “naive” I just mean calorie restriction without any other consideration. For example, a diet where one replaces a large pizza, a 2-Liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and a slice of chocolate cake with half a large pizza,1 Liter of Coca-Cola, and a smaller slice of chocolate cake is what I’d consider naive calorie restriction. I don’t know that anyone would seriously argue that the restricted version even remotely resembles good eating habits.
Lest you accuse me of straw-manning, let it be noted that many obese people subsist on a diet consisting of fast food and junk food. In fact, malnutrition is a very real problem among the obese. That’s right: you can eat 5k+ Calories a day and still exhibit signs of malnutrition if all you eat is junk. When I speak of instilling good eating habits, I have in mind people who exhibit severe ignorance or misconception of basic nutrition.
A low-carb diet is not just a matter of eating what you normally eat, minus the carbohydrates. That’s going to end about as well as a vegetarian diet where you simply cut out the meat from your normal diet. You run into a micronutrient deficiency that can end up causing problems if the new diet is sustained for several months.
It’s an empirical fact that some foods are more filling than others and keep you feeling full for a longer period of time, even if the number of calories consumed is the same. That’s why people care about the glycemic index. I have tried losing weight several times over the last seven years or so. There are diets where you feel satisfied most of the time, then there are diets where you finish a meal feeling as hungry as you did when you started. The psychological difference between the two is quite profound and hardly warrants the charge of “strawman”.
Well, of course. I never said or implied calories were the whole ball game. You’re conflating weight loss and nutrition throughout.
No, but you’d be hard pressed to make up those calories by eating proteins. That is quite the point.
I’ve mentioned satiation as a real issue that ought to be addressed by any rational diet plan.
But, again, it isn’t the aim that a diet should involve no hunger when compared to your current meal plan. That is just plain silly and irrational.
Losing weight is like any other pursuit—it requires the expenditure of resources: Will power, focus, effort, energy, discipline. It may diminish your capacity to pursue other things for a time. It doesn’t mean you have to be bedridden or incapacitated. Again, any other pursuit is like this: Working long days on a big project at work, training for a taxing athletic event, studying for difficult classes and exams, etc. Dieting is a significant project to take on.
There seems to be this idea floating around that you can diet, lose lots of weight, and not have it consume some bandwidth in your life. BS. There are some great, rational hacks available, but it takes some sustained work to lose weight. There isn’t anyway around that.
Short term, the body is resilient enough that you can go on a crash diet to quickly drop a few pounds without worrying about nutrition. On the other hand, nutrition is an essential consideration in any weight-loss plan that’s going to last many months. That’s why I associate the two.
Certain approaches purport to do this very thing by means of suppressing the appetite so that one naturally eats less. Consider, for example, the Shangri-La diet.
I will grant that if one wants to lose 2+ pounds a week over a long period of time, then the pangs of hunger are unavoidable.
Agreed. This is especially true if there’s a psychological component to the initial weight gain. For example, stress eaters will have to either avoid stress or figure out a new coping mechanism if they want to lose weight and maintain the weight loss.