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Originally Posted by Kharma
Food for my own thought: I was recently told the Atkins article is very brief (as it's just meant to contrast the two diets), and it's missing much of the information that's in the books. E.g., obese people are supposed to decrease their proportion of fat, as has been said many times.
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Not by any scientist who has a working knowledge of insulin resistance and fat accumulation metabolic syndrome. Here's the problem with the Paleo thread:
1: The only source of information is a single person who has the books. The books were written about a decade ago, based on the model that JK developed
nearly four decades ago. He was right about some things -- and dead wrong, as per more recent science -- about a lot of other things.
2: The model mostly deals with the most nutritious foods to eat, not with losing weight. And where JK is wrong (using outdated and
disproven theory), he's wrong here most, and is completely contradicted by the science in
Good Calories, Bad Calories and many other more recent works.
3: When Atkins became the main go-to diet for losing weight, JK wrote a very succinct paper comparing the diets --
for weight loss --
only 5 years ago. The ratios he gives in that paper, the last word we have from him on the subject, are not the same as they were nearly 40 years ago. Clearly, he's learned a few things about obesity and how to treat it.
4: The best way to illustrate this is to simply do the math, which no one on Paleo has bothered to do. The source there claims that the book states that the obese (whom she distinguishes from the overweight, unlike JK in his latest thoughts on the matter!) are to eat this ratio: 1: 1: .5.
Let's do the math. You weigh 300 pounds, but your ideal weight is 60 kilos. Under this plan you'd be allowed to eat 60g protein (240 calories), 30g carbs (120 calories), and 60g fat (540 calories).
That's a grand total of 900 calories a day! And that, my friends, is unsafe, proven not to work in the long term, is completely unsustainable, and goes against everything we know about obesity from a scientific, medical point of view. Everything we know
today, that is.
Thirty to forty years ago the "calories in vs. calories out" theory of weight loss was in full swing. Furthermore, this outdated and disproven ratio goes against everything else JK preached in the books about why it's important to eat enough carbs to remain out of ketosis. He's very clear that this is major distinction of his diet compared to others.
As to
lowering the fat for the obese, here's what else JK wrote in the paper five years ago, which the Paleo thread conveniently leaves out:
"Dr Wolfgang Lutz, the Austrian medical practitioner and distinguished scientist, the author of the book “Life without bread”, whom a few years ago I personally familiarised with the principles of ON and the results achieved in its utilization in the treatment of a range of so-called ‘untreatable diseases’ recently wrote: “Dr Jan Kwasniewski, using
extremely high amounts of fat in the diet, has been achieving for some 30 years now, results which are much better than any achieved by other types of low carbohydrate diets”.
Do these words in any way remotely suggest to you a man who still calls for a 1: 1 ratio of protein to fat? I think not.
5: Dr. Bernstein is arguably the best expert out there for the treatment of diabetics who are obese. His advice? Keep your carbs reasonably low and lower your protein. If you don't lose weight, or stop losing weight before you reach a normal weight -- continue reducing your
protein until you lose weight again.
The question that needs to be asked here is this: are we willing to look at the science and follow that (even if we do this by mixing the old and still valid while disregarding
any theory that is no longer valid) -- or is it more important to be an acolyte and slavishly follow what an author created so many years ago? Naturally, the answer to that question must come from each individual, but it's no contest for me.
I'm eating low protein, lots and lots of fat - and just enough carbs to stay out of ketosis, which is about 46g a day. And that works out to 1600-1900 calories - not 900.
You may need to tinker at the edges of this WOE to get it to optimally work for you, but I don't see anything confusing about it. JK's last word on what to eat if you're overweight is crystal clear: 1: 2.5: .8 -- and you eat that way until you've reached 'normal weight range'. After that, you eat 1: 3.5: .8.
My 2cents; YMMV
Lisa
But I also was confused by the Paleo/OD thread where it seems that in the *book* (which of course I don't have) there are all *sorts* of ratios, the 1:2.5-3.5:.8 ratio may be considered "optimal" but is clearly not the only one, with all sorts of tinkering recommended for being *obese* as opposed to merely "overweight" with "obese" P/F ratios even being as low as one to one. Of course if I kept my protein to my ideal number but only had the same number of grams of fat I'd be well into starvation calorie territory. 
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