The Carb-Sane Asylum

Researchers in Sweden have just published the results of a two year dietary intervention involving obese postmenopausal women.   The results and implementation leave much to be desired in terms of providing any useful information vis a vis the diets tested.  I blogged on this HERE .  But if one looks past the diet comparisons, I believe there is some useful information to be had.  I would like to highlight this in this post and however many more I have the time for or choose to break it up into.   The study began with 70 mildly obese women as assessed by BMI.  Here's the tabulation:

Random Bump! Original publish date:  4/21/12 In writing up a post on metabolic rate and weight loss, I couldn't help but come across a ton of stuff I had in my draft bin and hard drive vis a vis exercise, lean body mass and metabolic rate.  This got me thinking about the usefulness of ELMM = Eat Less Move More as a strategy to flip the CICO balance along with other things we can do.  

I noticed a little traffic blip to my posts here on SuperStarch   scamming which reminded me that AHS13 panel member on keto diets for athletes, and woo woo peddler , Ben Greenfield, would have completed his ketogenic diet fueled triathlon by now.   He has .  And for $9.99 you can get the full scoop on how it went.  No thanks.  Still, from reading the comments, one can surmise how he fared. First, let me say this.  My hat goes off to anyone that can complete one of these races in any amount of time, etc. and all that jazz.  But at Ben's level, people don't generally compete in these things for recreation, there's money at stake -- whether it be endorsements/sponsorships or less directly involved in promoting his business.   So this was yet another publicity stunt, which is fine, but it doesn't seem to have been a success from any other viewpoint.   I'm not a fan of his delivery, but Durian Rider is in fine form there in comments la...

Remember "safe starches"?   This whole SuperStarch thing reminded me of that for some reason.  It was just a little over a year ago that Jimmy Moore sent out the email to all of the experts he considers experts to inquire over the safety of consuming starches.  It mattered not the quality of the response, he published them all up .  This post put the pry bar in whatever cracks there were in the community along carbohydrate lines and was the source of much of the antagonism Jimmy decries.  Some responses of interest: Jeff Volek : Claiming you need carbs to prevent scurvy is a red flag this guy is a nut job. Tell him to eat a red pepper. There is no evidence what so ever the human body has any dietary requirement for the nutrient class of carbohydrate (i.e., there is no defined condition associated with not consuming carbs). This comment just demonstrated that UCAN be an asshat in LLVLC-land so long as it's not against a low carber.   Next up, the othe...

I rarely devote posts to just a shout out anymore, but I'm going to make an exception here for Anthony Colpo who has weighed in on Tim Olson "Low Carb Athlete". Tim Olson: Another Low-Carb Athlete That Never Was? This dovetails nicely on my recent post on Olson:   Fat Burning Beast? We learn a few more details on Olson's habitual diet that includes lots of fruit, "cheating" on sushi, carbs like sweet potatoes before runs, etc. AC calls out Phinney's outright dishonesty in more forthright manner than did I.  But as more details came out, I think AC went easy on Phinney.  Riddle me this.  Is there an evil rotten vegan athlete out there who claims to compete on their diet yet is secretly downing pounds of bacon before races and picking up pats of butter at race aid stations?    Not to my knowledge. VLC stands for Very Low Credibility, apparently.   Don't give me all the good they do as an excuse for blatant dishonesty.

Preface:  When I write posts such as this one, that I know some will take in ways in which it was not intended, I usually spend a bit of time contemplating hitting the publish button.  This post comes off rather more wet blankety (is that a term?) than even some others.   But as someone who has struggled with the after effects of yo-yoing, LC and not, I do think it is worthwhile to shine a light on the reality of what is being promoted out there.

I gotta say, whenever I hear about these low carb athletes, blog posts and such flickering through the feed reader and such ... I tune out.   Why?  Because almost invariably when it comes to touting the superiority of the low carb diet, the tent gets very large indeed.  Anyone eating fewer carbs than the mythical "average" American consuming 500g/day is a low carber.  Which is ridiculous on its face, but makes for great hyperbole to blame the carbs for obesity and all manner of evil in the world.  In any case, when one looks a little deeper into the diets of these low carb athletes, they aren't really low carb at all.    I'm quite tired of this double standard applied by purveyors of low carb wisdom and light.  You see if a study shows even the slightest benefit to LC over the rival diet, it is touted as further evidence of LC greatness, even if after more careful consideration, it was hardly a low carb diet after all.  Yet that same di...

There's no denying it, TWICHOO is down to a broken toothpick where the science is concerned.  (See here for the toothpick reference if you're a newer reader.)   The remaining claim supporting TWICHOO rests on the action of insulin on the fat cell.  Insulin does indeed act to stimulate esterification and suppress lipolysis, favoring deposition and accumulation of triglycerides in fat cells.  They even teach this stuff in some medical schools I'm told!  So these days it's all about how carbs make you hungry and overeat (although overeating is so inane) because they stimulate insulin which traps all your fat calories in your fat starving the rest of your cells of energy.  Now, that part's not true, but let's for the sake of argument assume it is.  What, then, would cause you to lose weight and not be hungry?  Why anything that favors net mobilization of fat stores -- that is stimulates lipolysis and fatty acid release from fat cells.  This wil...

From the great research group of Keith Frayn, Aging Hippie linked to this article recently: PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND EXERCISE IN THE REGULATION OF HUMAN ADIPOSE TISSUE PHYSIOLOGY In composing this post, it started to get rather long so I'll break it up into parts.  I'm going to do a bullet-pointed summary and excerpts for you.  Direct quotes will be in italics, regular font is my paraphrased summary, and non-indented/bulleted text is my general commentary.

Originally lucky post #13 made on March 23, 2010 In light of all of the "fat burning" , respiratory quotient and mitochondrial mayhem discussions of damaged metabolisms, I thought this might be a fitting post to bump to the top today.  The take home message of this study, IMO, is that the body burns what it needs to burn, and hormone levels adjust accordingly, not so much the other way around.   Energy deficit without reducing dietary carbohydrate alters resting carbohydrate oxidation and fatty acid availability Reduced carbohydrate (CHO) availability after exercise has a potent influence on the regulation of substrate metabolism, but little is known about the impact of fat availability and/or energy deficit on fuel metabolism when dietary CHO availability is not reduced. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of a postexercise energy deficit, independent of CHO availability, on plasma substrate concentrations and substrate oxidation.

I get the feeling from the comments on my last Random Thoughts post and the NEAT post that folks think I'm pretty down on HIT resistance training or HIIT "cardio".  Not true.  But it would be fair to say I am pretty down on the "culture" surrounding these minimalist-time protocols.  I know, I know, telling people that they'll have to walk for an hour a day every day to stave off weight gain is so old school conventional wisdom and downright unsexy.  OTOH, it's highly appealing to us to get all the benefits of any thing doing it slightly differently in less time!  So it's not the merits of the methods themselves that I have an issue with, it's the whole "be super fit and buff in 10 minutes a week!" ...  implied:  and you can sit on your butt the rest of the time.   There's a distinct tone of discouraging good old fashioned "cardio" that frequently skirts close to putting down those who engage in it as stupid drones and need...

In the interests of saving a bit of time and gathering thoughts, I thought I'd jot down some would-be comment replies in a blog post instead.  First, so we're all (newer readers especially) on the same page, I did no formal exercise during the active weight loss phase and long plateau from sometime summer 2007 through spring 2009.  This was not really by design, but more out of fear as the last time I low carbed I experienced the racing heart mostly when doing rather short periods of pilates and such.  So I kept meaning to up the activity level a bit but never really managed to get around to it.  In 2009 I did start doing concerted cardio -- walking and biking -- and later some more cardio-like exercise DVD's.  As for strength training, the only formal training I have done was that 100 pushups thing that was popular in 2010.  I got to 100 "girlie" pushups and was on my way with the regular ones when I pulled something in my side that made rolling over in b...

Apparently not! According to this study , how one creates a caloric deficient can make a difference. The Impact of Exercise Training Compared to Caloric Restriction on Hepatic and Peripheral Insulin Resistance in Obesity Context: It has been difficult to distinguish the independent effects of caloric restriction versus exercise training on insulin resistance. Objective : Utilizing metabolic feeding and supervised exercise training, we examined the influence of caloric restriction vs. exercise training with and without weight loss on hepatic and peripheral insulin resistance. Design, Participants, and Intervention : Thirty-four obese, older subjects were randomized to: caloric restriction with weight loss (CR), exercise training with weight loss (EWL), exercise training without weight loss (EX), or controls. Based on an equivalent caloric deficit in EWL and CR, we induced matched weight loss. Subjects in the EX group received caloric compensation. Combined with [6,62H2]glucose, an ...

So Davy Jones of The Monkeys died this past week of a heart attack.  He was 66 years old.  The autopsy stated the cause of death as:   ventricular fibrillation resulting from severe coronary atherosclerosis.    Now Dana Carpender weighs in on her blog with Another "Health Nut" Dies Young .  That title rubs me the wrong way ... it's just that smugness doesn't go over well when one is not in stellar health themselves.   As everyone who doesn't live in a cave (and we assume that, having internet access, you do not live in a cave) now knows, Davy died two days ago of a heart attack at the age of 66. What has received less attention has been the mentions I have seen from those who knew him that Davy was a strict vegetarian, a devoted runner and "didn't have an ounce of fat on him." They're shocked that someone with such healthy habits could have died this way.

There was an article in the NYT that was passed along to me the other day: Exercise Hormone May Fight Obesity and Diabetes A newly discovered hormone produced in response to exercise may be turning people’s white fat brown, a groundbreaking new study suggests, and in the process lessening their susceptibility to obesity, diabetes and other health problems.

There's a nice conversation going on in the comments of my last post about the state of the nutrition and fitness communities.   One comment exchange just summed it all up and struck me as a "Nail ... Head" moment.  Before I highlight it, let's all think for a moment why we're in this in the first place.  For me?  I achieved significant but not complete weight loss and vastly improved health eating a pretty clean (no frankenfoods) VLC-based diet with planned cheats on those "normal" foods I enjoyed eating from time to time.  When the weight plateaued out, I wanted mostly to assure myself that the way I was eating was going to be healthy for me in the long haul.  And I've shared many of those concerns here before.  Regardless of how I felt, there was always this nagging concern over the shift of the distribution of where I carried the fat that remained, as well as racing heart issues I had experienced a prior stint eating this way.

Continuing on from Part I and Part II : Fat metabolism in formerly obese women Ranneries, et.al.  AJP-Endo, 1998. Overview:   An impaired fat oxidation has been implicated to play a role in the etiology of obesity, but it is unclear to what extent impaired fat mobilization from adipose tissue or oxidation of fat is responsible. The present study aimed to examine fat mobilization from adipose tissue and whole body fat oxidation stimulated by exercise in seven formerly obese women (FO) and eight matched controls (C).  They measured: Lipolysis in the periumbilical subcutaneous adipose tissue  Whole body energy expenditure (EE)  Substrate oxidation rates (glucose, fatty acids)  glycerol release (fat mobilization)

It's been exactly one year since this Gary Taubes interview with Jimmy Moore  aired.  In one of Gary's emails to me he stated that this was taped on June 14, 2010, two weeks after your's truly published "Da Bomb":   Glyceroneogenesis v. Taubes .  I'm not aware of what other bloggers were talking about this specific issue at the time.  I'm going to ask you to give me about 10 minutes of your time to listen to what Gary was saying then about errors in GCBC.  It is important, I think, to listen to his "voicey language" as I call it.  The hesitation, high pitch at some points, throat clearing, etc.  Because there can be no doubt that the question was set up between Jimmy & Gary to give him a platform to set the record straight.  He was prepared for this ... he was not put on the hot seat in any way, and Jimmy would certainly not be trying to trip the guy up.    FF to about the 38:30 mark

Wow!  Many recent events and blog posts about the web have hit a lot of my deja vu "memory nerves".  This has had me going to the draft bin looking for what it is I'm reminded of.  This one was sparked by being linked to a series discussing hunger and satiety over at gnolls.org.  I'm going to link you to  Part IV  as that is where the paper I'm discussing in this post/series is cited, but J. Stanton  has links to other installments.   So, most of this current post has been in my hopper since February!  But this article/study has actually been "on my plate" longer still, as the PDF was downloaded to my HD back in June 2010 after reading James Krieger's  piece on the ease of regain .   I'm going to break this up into three parts:   Part I dealing just with resting energy expenditure and its contribution to our overall "metabolic rates".   Part II will deal with the resting metabolism in terms of contributions of fat ...

This is a rather interesting find that Tsimblist posted over at the Meeting Rooms.  I thought I'd post it up here for exposure and comment.  Are these changes relevant to sedentary VLC/HF folks? Metabolic Consequences of Muscle Disuse Atrophy         T. P. Stein and C. E. Wade       J. Nutr. 135: 1824S–1828S, 2005. Abstract : In response to decreased usage, skeletal muscle undergoes an adaptive reductive remodeling.  This adaptive response has been found with disuse during human spaceflight, rat spaceflight, rat hind-limb unloading, bed rest, and aging.  The reductive remodeling of skeletal muscle with disuse is largely independent of the reason for the disuse.  The process involves more than a transition from slow to fast myosin fiber types.  There are associated metabolic changes including a fuel shift toward glycolysis, decreased capacity for fat oxidation, and energy substrate accumul...