This may have been posted before but I missed it.

Jimmy Moore of Living La Vida is experimenting on himself and losing weight again finding that high protein was a problem for him.

We think we are eating right, low carbs and yet we are not losing? Why? He found he needed lower carbs and protein, and higher fat.

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/...-day-1-30/14409 ~

Fascinating read....

Interesting that he's just getting to that... in this forum, upping the fat percentage is old hat.

Atkins "fat fast" should make almost anyone drop weight quickly but it is generally unsustainable due to very poor palatability.

Jimmy has been glorifying fat intake for more than a year now. I think the ketosis monitoring is keeping him on track with the carbs he was consuming. He was probably suffering from carb creep in a big way. People seem to revile Ketostix for their false negatives, etc., but I found they really helped me for the first two months. I had to up my carbs to shift a month long stall but I am still at 70% fat.

Edit: just checked MYPLAN and I am now at 60% fat! Didn't even realize it.

Its more about the protein - some people are so metabolically damaged that they have a big insulin response to protein. With insulin levels really high, ketosis is just not going to happen as you won't burn your own fat. By lowering protein and upping fat, calories are kept stable and insulin levels reduced.

Lee

That is what I have found for me, it is not just upping fat, it is lowering protein. I cannot eat more than a bare minimum of protein and not stall. 0 carb or not. I have to have 70%+ fat in my day so I am adding butter, coconut oil and olive oil all the time.

I think that feeding experiments show that protein, even in healthy people, provokes as sharp an insulin response as carbs (see the heading "MYTH: Carbohydrate Is Singularly Responsible for Driving Insulin"). Apparently, amino acids drive this insulin response directly, without first being converted to glucose. And apparently, glucagon that the body secretes during protein consumption doesn't cause fat to be released from cells to cancel insulin's effect on fat-burning. Since protein stimulates insulin secretion, it would cause a rapid drop in blood glucose if no carbohydrate is consumed with the protein. Glucagon prevents this rapid drop in blood sugar by stimulating the liver to produce glucose.

So, when Moore restricted his protein intake, he was reducing his glucagon production, and thereby reducing his glucose production, allowing lipolysis to occur.

I found this out for myself when I got my new blood glucose/ketone meter back in January, and went through a few days of obsessive self-testing. After a high-protein meal (lean steak, for instance), my blood sugar would quickly drop from its normal high 80s into the mid 60s. This explained to me why I still occasionally have hypoglycemic symptoms despite having been VLC/ZC for the last five years.

OK, I read the article on the undeserved reputation of insulin and I have a few issues with it.

He talks mostly about healthy individuals, if you're obese, particularly as obese as Jimmy Moore and myself, you're not healthy like a 'healthy lean person'.

Insulin and glucagon not balancing themselves out causes reactive hypoglycaemia - which I certainly had during my large sudden weight gain, and to a lesser extent still, in that when I eat carbs or protein my blood glucose falls, it doesn't rise, it just doesn't fall as much as it used to, and metformin has helped with that. Unhealthy individuals do not react the same as healthy ones.

His own chart shows higher insulin release in obese people, and he himself suggests a low protein, low carbohydrate diet - of course you can't take protein too low as a certain amount is necessary - but yes to minimise the insulin response (and glucagon response) as low protein as is healthy and low carb with high fat is best - or as I have done, have fewer meals.

I don't think that carbs on their own causes weight gain, and metabolic syndrome - I believe that fructose causes the initial damage in susceptible individuals and then after that it depends on how much damage has been done as to how much carbs and protein someone can ingest and how often, and still lose weight. Regarding CICO, I do believe that for each individual there is an amount above which weight loss will not occur, but its not as simple as CICO and differs from person to person - just as some people can eat vast amounts of calories and not gain weight (and certainly even when they do gain, they don't gain according to any formula.) If I ate 6, 300 calorie meals a day of processed foods including sugar and white carbs, I would gain weight. 6 meals of 300 calories low carb food, and I wouldn't lose weight, and might still gain - but 1800 calories once a day and I'm losing weight - my own experience tells me that its not just about calories.

Yes a diet needs to be something that can be maintained long term and even lifelong. Diet composistion and frequency of meals do matter to those of us with big metabolic and hormonal challenges. I also believe there is an addictive component to certain foods, but I don't believe that eating bland foods is the answer or that 'food palatability' causes obesity - to me that's just a way of saying people eat too much of the foods they like - eating bland foods isn't going cure an addiction to sugar, in my experience eating bland foods just makes you want the forbidden foods even more. When people have an addiction to a food (a real addiction, not just 'I really like cheese'), the food generally includes fructose - they eat lots of fructose containing food, and depending on genetic susceptibility, eventually damage occurs and weight starts to rise.

Show me a fat population that doesn't consume large amounts of processed fructose, or show me a lean population that does.

Lee

Jimmy's problem is that he eats too much. Even good food isn't good for you in excess.

But I know he's trying to beat that; it's both a habit and a soother, so it's difficult. And his own brother died a year or so ago, having never gotten a grip on it, so I give Jimmy a lot of credit.

Um, his brother has been dead for almost four years. Thankfully he doesn't seem to be using that for an excuse for being fat these days, at least not publicly.

I agree that Jimmy eats too much, but he's also notoriously devoted to frankenfoods. I know he got off diet soda, but only after years and a lot of denial that the sodas had anything to do with him gaining weight.

I used to follow his daily food blog, and I saw very few frankenfoods there. He photographed his meals every day and posted them on the blog, and they looked pretty darn good to me, and I am pretty much of a purist with regard to eating healthily. He was addicted to the soda, and always acknowledged the struggle to stop them, but in the end getting off them didn't stop him gaining weight, so perhaps he was right.

He does say in the blog that he is not counting calories. I am even tho my fat level is over 70%

AJ, you put it in an easy to understand explanation. Thanks.

Thank James Krieger, who wrote the very clear and thought-provoking blog post from which I drew my explanation.