Quote:
|
Thyroid slowing. Long term low carbing causes changes in T3 hormone levels which are often hard to diagnose. It can cause something called "Euthyroid syndrome." I learned about this from Lyle Macdonald's book, The Ketogenic Diet, which has cites to the relevant research. Getting help for this problem is very hard as your TSH will be fine and standard thyroid testing may not pick it up.
|
Don't blame the absence of carbohydrate for a problem that was certainly caused by the abundance of carbohydrate to begin with. As far as I know, there is no such thing as carbohydrate deficiency.
Quote:
|
Physiologically what seems to happen is that your body responds to months of ketogenic dieting by assuming you are starving--people who are starving are in ketosis all the time too. So it turns down the thermostat to conserve your body mass so you don't die. If this happens to you you'll know it. You'll feel exhausted and dragged out all the time, and the burst of energy most people feel when they start out low carbing will be a distant memory.
|
That is pure speculation. And, my personal experience contradicts the paragraph above. Almost two years after I have cut out all carbs, I have more energy than ever.
Quote:
|
I personally maintain now at an intake that varies from 70-110 grams a day (my ketogenic boundary is at about 65 grams a day.)
|
The toxic level for carbohydrate is 86 grams (70lbs per year) per day for 20 years. I fail to comprehend the reasoning behind increasing carbohydrate intake to toxic level.
Quote:
|
Fat-induced insulin resistance. There is some interesting research that has been discussed on the Whole Health Source Blog about how, and more importantly, why, palmitic acid, a saturated fat might raise insulin resistance in rodents. There are a lot of other studies over the years that have demonstrated that high saturated fat intakes of all kinds increase insulin resistance too.
|
The paragraph above implies that insulin resistance drives hyperinsulinemia. In fact, it's the other way around. It's hyperinsulinemia that drives insulin resistance. This "fat-induced" insulin resistance does not drive hyperinsulinemia (therefore can't cause obesity) because it's not insulin resistance that drives hyperinsulinemia.
Quote:
|
and that after many months of eating very high fat/low carb diets this increase in IR can become a huge problem especially when people experience "carb creep."
|
The paragraph above is logically fallacious. We can't blame fat-induced insulin resistance for the carb creep.
Quote:
|
If you are eating over 60 grams a day, cut back on the saturated fat and see if that helps.
|
The advice above is based on absolutely zero evidence of any healthful benefit whatsoever. In fact, it's based on the "fat-induced insulin resistance" logical fallacy.
Quote:
|
I am starting to think the very high fat low carb diet is only appropriate with extremely low carb intake levels.
|
Where is the evidence that a high fat diet is detrimental? There is none. How can we then conclude that a high fat diet becomes bad when we introduce carbohydrate? The logic escapes me. When we introduce carbohydrate to a high fat diet, then it stops being a high fat diet.
Quote:
|
For those of us eating low carb to control blood sugar, a higher carb intake may be necessary to keep ourselves from experiencing diet burn out.
|
To paraphrase Spock, that is illogical.
Quote:
|
If your blood sugar is under control at a higher carb intake, your health is fine.
|
If you carbohydrate intake is at or above 86g per day for 20 years, then no, your health is not fine at all, regardless of your blood sugar measurements. Further, blood sugar is highly inaccurate as a marker of health, or disease. I know one person, who is clearly obese and diagnosed diabetic, yet when he takes the GTT, he registers as normal.
Quote:
|
Stalling Is Built Into the System.
|
Really? What's the mechanism, then?
Yes, they do. But, alas, not as you see it now. The Thyroid slow down hypothesis is highly unlikely based on the simple fact that when we are actively losing fat, this fat is added to the total available energy, therefore we have more energy, not less.
Quote:
|
and the only way most of us (not all, but most) lose any more weight is by cutting back on our food intake.
|
Once I'm done ripping this piece to shreds, you'll see that this is the worst thing you can do to pass a stall.
The entire blog post is based on the simple Ein-Eout hypothesis. If we eat less, we shrink. Even when the article deals with hormones, i.e. the thyroid and the hormones it secretes, the underlying intent is to affect Eout, i.e. how much energy we spend and thus what kind of caloric deficit we can create. It's not what kinds of hormones control fat tissue, or how hormones and enzymes do their job, but it's all about Eout and how much of a caloric deficit we can create with those hormones so that the surplus fat is used up in the process. As we've seen elsewhere in some experiments, it's entirely possible to lose weight even in a very significant
apparent caloric surplus.
No, when fat loss stalls, the best thing to do is not to cut down on total food intake (to reduce Ein, which would cause Eout to decrease as well thereby making the problem worse), but rather to increase food intake in order to increase Eout.
Further, if the ultimate goal of that blog post was to end with "do it for your health, not for your weight", then the entire post contradicts itself by presenting advice to
increase carbohydrate intake for various reasons.
I forgot. When the system gets smaller, Eout gets smaller as well. In other words, when you lose fat, you lose fat slower and slower. Don't confuse slowing down with stalling out.