You're underweight. I'm also 5'7" and the low side of a healthy weight is around 130lbs. Why are you restricting calories so drastically? May I suggest you have an eating disorder?

Yes I know I am underweight, I am restricting my calories for life extension purposes and no i have not got an eating disorder. I consume 1800k/cal per day and am mostly sedentary. From all the tests I've had done my doctor believes that I am very healthy, although he says to keep an eye on the weight... which has been stable for quite some time now.

http://calorierestriction.org/cr_not_an

I used to think like you, Dave, till I met simply too many people who reported feeling worse, hungrier, etc low carbing.
My sister, a runner, ate MORE on low carb and never felt "satisfied". She was doing a very simple atkins induction. She also started breaking out in acne. This is exactly how I get on high carb, strangely enough.
I've heard similar anecdotal stories from forum members.

Perhaps the issue was HOW they were low carbing. Maybe not everyone is designed for ketosis. I know, I simply cannot hack super low carb. I lose weight like a champ, and my appetite is suppressed, and I never ever experience a drop in blood sugar... but I feel horribly lethargic and am prone to hypotension. This is well after induction.
Perhaps this is because I tend to hypoglycemia, or I might have some other metabolic/endocrine condition. But it's not as simple as "the less carbs the better" for everyone.

I do best when carbs are above ketosis but still objectively low.
I also do best when my meals are small, frequent, not too high in protein (higher in fat relatively), well rested, hydrated (with water), and walking regularly (active). I am also starting to suspect, thanks to new information presented to me, that salt aggrivates my blood sugar too (since I notice that when I eat excessively salty food, ESPECIALLY if it is higher protein/lower fat... I get into a "blood sugar cycle" of mounting insatiability and hypoglyemic episodes... if I try to resist the biological urge to eat a lot and often, I have binge eating episodes).
I have always been a salt craver, and, I crave salt especially when my blood sugar is poorly controlled. Strangely I never was a sweet craver and I can consume artificial sweeteners without any problems at all (assuming they are nutritionally sound with fat and protein and low carbs). Although when my sugar actually is messed up I do crave sweets then (sweets and salts).

Anyway, TMI I know but I'm just trying to illustrate we really are all unique.
I don't believe high carb is the best for anyone.
But I also don't believe "low carb" defined as "the less dietary starches and sugar the better" is true for everyone, either.

Are you saying it is the rule, rather than the exception, for healthy people to continue to lose weight following a VLC diet even when consuming 4000 calories per day? Even when metabolic work done is average?

Awww.
People, myself included, would love to simplify the body like this. It would be grand if you could predict your health & appearance simply by calculating "calories in - calories out = result".

In the end, it's all about metabolism. Metabolism is like a play, and it's enzymes, hormones, and other cofactors are actors. They make the show, without them, there is no production. If they are absent or off kilter the performance will be bad.
Now, metabolism is largely controlled by genes, but, it is always able - and designed - to respond to environment. Calorie counting exclusively assumes it is only quantity of food eaten that affects metabolism. This is ridiculously untrue. Our metabolism is affected, and profoundly at that, by what we eat, and how we live as well.

I'm not against counting calories, I think it is an excellent tool for manipulating your metabolism more favorably. Counting calories is a very good way to make sure those "actors" that want to burn fat are high, whereas the "actors" that are best at making fat aren't represented as much. But to pretend as if calorie levels are the only, or even primary, source of consideration is wrong. '

It all comes down to metabolism, and metabolism is so much more complex than the nutrition facts on a box of wheat thins.

Low carb works for many reasons, one of which is a restoration of intake regulation.
Over eating is a symptom of problem, metabolic problem most often. We like to pretend those who over eat are all lazy, weak willed, and / or emotionally disturbed. This gives us who are naturally metabolically normal an ego boost. Fat people also provide as a convenient scape goat to relieve our own moral hangups and pressures.

I'm sure mental state and "morality" of a person might affect food intake patterns. It might be the difference between why one person binge eats with shame, another compulsive eats with indifference to their bodies, and another simply eats a lot without any emotional distress about themselves or their actions at all. Emotions affect how we eat, or when we eat over a short-term continuum of time.

The actual physical HUNGER, the wanting for food, over a long term period of time... that is physically real. It comes from the endocrine system, the nervous system, it results from metabolism. It is out of our control. The only way to control that (that is, to suppress it), is to feel no choice but fight your body's normal workings for the rest of your life. Or, in other words, to develop an eating disorder (a mental problem where in which your mind disrespects your body's need for food for emotional gratification).

Well I think MOST people can find something that works for them if they try hard enough and are motivated enough to learn and do it.
If you mean to say that, if you follow the instructions of any diet you will achieve an equal/ideal health state, then, that is quite blatantly false.

I agree that how one acts on a diet is their responsibility.

But, we also can't overlook that there are simply BAD diets out there.
For example, even though weight watchers is much more sane today, back in the low fat heyday it would have been impossible to work it for a carb sensitive person (who, btw, are MOST people with obesity/overweight).

Our choices are not just the result of drive/ambition/responsibility. We are limited by our knowledge, too. If you don't KNOW that carbs are doing this to your body, how can you ever be expected to "take responsibility"?
I think you can't understand, whoa, because you are a naturally thin person with a healthy metabolism. To you all calories ARE the same. You can never know what it feels like, then you might understand. I wish it were so to me, but, it's not.

Oh whoa you lucky normal person you .
It doesn't matter if it comes in a bag, sold to me by a hippy, with the words "organic" and "natural" on it. If it has gobs of carbs, it's trouble. Carbs break down into sugar fast. For whatever reason my body can't handle it. They make my body overproduce insulin. If my body overproduces insulin I feel like crap.

Your breakfast was 54% carbs, 30% fat, 15% protein. Assuming for a moment I could ever eat that much (your breakfast has almost half as many calories as I eat on a maintenance day )... I would most definitely get a pretty bad hypo from that. Especially considering how many calories it had (700+), nevermind the fact it contained nearly 90 carbs in a single meal!

As a rule of thumb it seems whenever I start going much over 25% carbs I'm looking at blood sugar problems.

Me too !
I love discussing ideas.
I hope he doesn't think he's unwanted.

Thank you for giving that explanation woo...

You are right, I can't say I've been in your position or most other peoples around here. I could eat what I wanted and would not always still be at a low bmi.

Anyway I'm always interested in learning so thanks for the good explanation about yours and other people sitaution and metabolism and stuff

IS NO ONE GOING TO COMMENT ON THE WOOO/WHOA MONIKER THING???

Before I got to be 30 or so years old, I could eat a lot of anything and never gain weight. I was 5' 11" and weighed 155. I would go to all you can eat fried fish or pizza places for lunch and pack the food in. Things changed as I aged and I started slowly gaining weight even when I kept the calories low.

I couldn't lose the extra poundage until I switched to low carb.

Dodger:

Just a hunch, but did you also quit smoking somewhere around the age of thirty? (Just sounds like an awful lot of folks that I know. Self included)

Sometimes I wonder what is so defective about me that I piled on the flab even as a toddler . This must be genetic for me or something. Seriously sometimes I fantasize about what it must be like to be young, thin, and eating regular food like apparently most people did...

The only time I was ever thin (pre-Atkins ~ 20) was when my cousin put me on a low carb diet at 6 years old. That lasted a summer then she moved and it was back to regular food. Ironic, right?

LOL I noticed that too
Mine is a relic of the time I registered, though. There was this internet thing going around, Bubb Rubb & Lil' Sis...
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/bubbrubb.html

Bubb Rubb says "Its the woo WOOO" about his whistle tips. This was apparently very hysterical to me at the time. I really wish I made my name something different, because, most people have never heard of Bubb Rubb and either think it's nonsense gibberish or some kind of narcissistic statement (like I am trying to say I'm "THE WOO"). My name, I think, is probably a big reason people misinterpret my intent in my posts (because it looks arrogant). I never realized at the time how invaluable this forum would become to me. Ah well.

No problems,

Thank you for clarifying.
It is hard to understand people's intentions on thenet sometimes!

No hard feelings

I've always found your posts insightful and informative, I've never taken them for arrogance.