The Carb-Sane Asylum

S ummary: Continuing on with discussion of:   Effects of a low carbohydrate diet on energy expenditure during weight loss maintenance: randomized trial Previous posts in this series: Part I: Critique of the Study Design Part II: $12 Million for 12% Weight Loss? Part III: Some "Early" Lessons Part IV: Insulin Resistance Does Not Hamper Weight Loss This post should perhaps have come first, but it has taken a while to look deeply at the data for the primary outcome -- total energy expenditure measured by doubly labeled water -- and related outcomes of intake and resting energy expenditure. In this study, all participants were paid to participate, AND provided free food for ~8 months.  Said food was professionally and meticulously prepped, weighed, measured, individualized to provide each subject with some pretty exact caloric level and macronutrient composition.  The test phase (in other words, the study proper) involved maintaining a consiste...

I received a link to this interesting post by Zoe Harcombe in the Inbox the other day:   What's this 'trying to eat more fat'?!   Zoe writes: Hi all - I've spotted a couple of comments from people saying that they're trying to eat more fat and the second one got me worried enough to start a thread. ... The Harcombe Diet is a diet based on a 5 day Phase 1 which is mostly meats and veggies (unless you are, as Zoe was for 15 years, a vegetarian, then you can substitute some brown rice, which makes no sense from a protein standpoint, but whatever).  Once you've cured your candida overgrowth which is one of the  prime reasons for obesity according to Harcombe, you move to other phases of the diet.  Harcombe believes in the separation of fats and carbs at meals on a metabolic "food combining" basis.  You don't want to eat carbs with fat because ... well ... the insulin!  Despite negativity about low fat diets, Harcombe counsels food separation and ...

UPDATE:   Link to Transcript Dr. Loren Cordain and Nell Stephenson (the Paleoista, who co-authored a cookbook with Cordain) were on The Dr. Oz show today.  I taped it.  Cordain describes the diet of having all healthy aspects including: high protein diet  (say what?) lots of fruits and veggies that contain beneficial phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals high in long chain omega 3 fatty acids Nell takes over with the nos -- classifying these as inflammatory foods dairy grains legumes refined sugars

I don't know what it is about the CDS (Calorie Denial Syndrome) sufferers out there, but it seems that every couple of months or so we get a new wave of posts about calories from various corners of the Incestral Health Community.  For the most part, and as usual, these "complaints" are made against elaborately erected strawmen.  One must erect these to counter the obvious, you see.  But the CDS know better than the scientists and spin ever more convoluted explanations for why a calorie is not a calorie.  Of course it's not.  But newsflash!  Those who acknowledge the supremacy of calories in the overall picture recognize that nutritive intake is not solely for the purpose of energy production.  There.  Half your scarecrow strawmen now lie rotting in the field (or perhaps some David Duke inspired mental picture ... grin).

If Jimmy Moore ran an open and honest ship over at his blog, I would leave a respectful (as I always did) comment there in support of the comments Angelo Coppola of Humans Are Not Broken blog (and Latest in Paleo podcast ). I guess since he invoked his name in his  10 Critical Issues The Paleo Community Must Address * Jimmy allowed Coppola to respond in what the astute observer would recognize as a rather critical manner.   In his first response, Angelo corrected Jimmy that his blog has nothing to do with broken metabolisms and such, but then bravely went on to suggest some other things the community really needs to do.  I copy the relevant excerpts here because some of these have been discussed by yours truly numerous times, however flawed the delivery may appear to some in the audience.  I'll bullet point it for ease on the eyes:

Some say it doesn't matter.  I think that a group of Low Carbers -- near as I can tell, most are not even former LC'ers but currently following the lifestyle -- has resurfaced and weighed in on the Jimmy Moore David Duke controversy is a testament that it does.   This should keep people busy for a while. Check out these links and spread the word! Some think Jimmy's crusade against Kimmer was restitution for his part in her scam in a quest for redemption.  It was not.   Jimmy was knee deep in that whole scam.  What Kimkins boils down to is this:

The recent post on the Harcombe Diet reminded me of some things that I've posted here regarding the separating carbs and fats in one's diet.  Almost a year ago now, I wrote this post:   Separating Fats & Carbs In that post I laid out my rationale for this dietary strategy to prevent obesity.  It is also a strategy I generally employ to this day for maintaining my losses thus far.  Personally, I doubt this is a viable ad libitum  strategy for weight loss that I'll discuss later.  

We've discussed this lady before here at the Asylum, but I was recently made aware of some additional information about her that folks might find interesting in assessing the information she promulgates or to counter those who tout her work in LC circles.   Let's review. Zoe Harcombe is the author of a few diet books who hopes to take the world by storm and fix the obesity epidemic in the UK.  She has a story to tell about weight loss after a history of eating disorders in college and 15 years of maintenance.  But as commendable as conquering ED's is, there's no indication this woman ever had significant excess weight she had to lose.   

This study is cited in the Westman, et.al.'s LC Nutrition & Metabolism Effect of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet on Appetite, Blood Glucose Levels, and Insulin Resistance in Obese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes (The full text is not supposed to be free, but through this link I was able to access it as a "patient", if it doesn't work for you, ask in the comments and I'll be glad to email you the PDF I saved) Although this is a relatively short and small study, it demonstrates what many in the LC community are strangely averse to acknowledging -- that LC leads to a spontaneous caloric restriction in most low carbers.  These folks restricted their caloric intake by an average of just over 1000 cal/day (median around 750).  Here are the dietary differences: Before:  Carb intake ranged from 182g/day to a whopping 552g/day and averaged just over 300g/day.   After:  Carb intake ranged in a ketogenic range of 14-32g and averaged 21g/day -- VLC The difference, an avera...

Westman, Volek and Phinney were among the contributers (and Westman headlined) the following, partially Atkins Foundation funded, review: Low-carbohydrate Nutrition and Metabolism I can't recommend reading this highly enough. I've listed the references in a separate post , numbered (the formatting farkled the last few but I'll let you count ;) ) For a non-gimmicky discussion of how low carb diets REALLY work for weight loss, this is where it's at!

One of my big issues with TNA is the concept of subtracting sugar alcohols from Net Carbs. IMO, the most fraudulent practice in the LC field is the total subtraction of SA's in the calculation of net carbs.  There are 1.5-2.5 cal/g for most of them (except erythritol which is 0.2 cal/g) and these calories are from carbs! Here's what TNA says on the subject: "When it comes to low-carb foods, you subtract grams of sugar alcohols (including glycerin), as well as of fiber, from total grams of carbs to get the Net Carb count." "Many low-carb products are sweetened with such ingredients as glycerin, mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, isomalt, lactitos and maltitol. ... Because sugar alcohols are not fully absorbed by the gut, they provide roughly half the calories that sugar does, although each one varies slightly. The incomplete and slower absorption results in a minimal impact on blood sugar and insulin response. This means that sugar alcohols don't sig...

This post is a general review of: The New Atkins for a New You by Drs. Westman, Phinney, and Volek. I probably haven't posted enough here to expose my sometimes cynical side of low carb eating, but if there are any visitors from the LC-www who recognize me, you've probably have seen this side of me.  I didn't expect to learn anything groundbreakingly new in this book but was curious to see what was updated and how it was presented by these respected researchers.  Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. Overall Rating:    ☼ ☼ ☼  ☼ ☼ The Good:   Reads well Well organized Success stories are separated (so folks like me can skip over them ), and appear to avoid the sensational (based on my skimming of a few). Referenced throughout Encouraging Lays out the plan clearly Focuses on long term way of life over a "diet" Acknowledges that for Maintenance there are two paths -- one of which being maintaining a significantly restricted carb intake for life....