There are two things about Taubes' book I had a problem with: 1) lifestyle and 2) exercise.

It is hard to convince anyone that a fast-food, couch potato lifestyle doesn't contribute to obesity. We eat way too many processed, unhealthy calories. You presented the evidence in another thread that we are eating over 2700 calories a day of processed crap. I didn't say he was wrong in his assertions; I simply said that he didn't stress the lifestyle factors enough.

Some people do get lean eating a lower-caloric more balanced diet of good carbs, fat and protein. You can't deny that. Look at Dr. Oz. The man is lean with a great body. He also exercises. You can achieve fat loss on high fat, but few people ever get to the point of leaness without exercise and watching calories. Taubes himself is not particularly lean, even though he is not obese.

It seems to me that most, but not all, people at some point in their weight loss must begin to consider calories to avoid being stuck in the simply overweight classification. There are women on this forum who have been low-carbing for years and haven't come close to a BMI of 22.

I simply think Taubes would have been taken more seriously if he had paid more homage to lifestyle factors and exercise. Otherwise, I think GCBC is a great work of investigative journalism.

One thing I notice is that most mainstream researchers believe in this part of Taubes's idea, that exercise does not increase weight loss. What they do seem to think from all the studies that have been done is that it's an important component of maintenance, which makes sense to me. I wouldn't say his views are so divergent from the folks at Duke, Penn and Harvard on this issue.

By the way, I've been exercising again after my hiatus to lose weight (got to my 30 pound goal - the last two pounds took a long time because I'd started running again!!!). Anyway, I am doing less running but more swimming now and I just took up the trapeze (bodyweight). Anyway, I stalled for a couple weeks when I started but adding more coconut milk and eating less often (IF lite) have helped me continue with my loss. I am determined to become one of the people who can train and lose at the same time. It's only been this week, but it seems to be happening and I feel good - no injuries and no fatigue.

Janine

GCBC isn't a 'how to' self-help diet book about how to lose weight, nor how to improve your lifestyle....it's about what the evidence says about weight management and various diseases associated with dietary factors versus what the general population is told the evidence says and how we got to where we are now.....I can't remember if you've said you read the book or not - have you? And if you have, have you looked at the references and looked up a good number of them? I have.

Go back to one hour a day, six days a week while eating LC and see what happens.

I'd say the people in my gym fall into three general catgories.

1) Conspicuously overweight people
2) Average looking people, not overweight, not exceptionally buff either
3) Noticably buff and attractive people

Exercise is almost certainly helping the people in category 2 not to gain weight, and the people in category 3 didn't get that way by sitting on the couch. And a lot of the people in category 1 will eventually hit category 2 and maybe even category 3 if they continue to exercise often enough and eat the right diet.

Having reviewed the photo galleries and profiles on this site, I'd say there are lot of people right here on this forum that went from 1 to 3 through a combination of diet and exercise.

The lady from the view who did a Larry King Live with Taubes, Gillian from The Biggest Loser, Dr Oz, and Andrew Weil--she asked Taubes a question about low carb making you slim. Whatever the exact question might have been, his answer was that he thought carbohydrate restriction would make a person as slim as that person could be. Not slim in comparison to the average person, but slim for that person. This is all paraphrased, and hopefully not misremembered.

Here's an abstract by Jeff Volek and others about a study where diet alone, diet plus aerobics exercise, and diet plus weight training and aerobics all caused similar amounts of weight loss, but more muscle was lost in the non weight training groups.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...Pubmed_RVDocSum

I got it from Adam Campbell's blog here

You can see that most of the weight lost is from the diet end. There's no mention of this being a low carb diet, though.

It's mentioned in the abstract that triglycerides were "significantly reduced for D and DES at week 6 and remained lower at week 12 for D, while triglycerides returned to baseline values for DES."

D was diet only and DES was diet, weight training and aerobic exercise. So in effect, exercise increased triglycerides vs diet only? Curiouser and curiouser.

Yes, I read the book. It is mostly a condemnation of the low-fat movement (and I agree with that). I think there is more involved that just carbs in weight management. Some people have PCOS and insulin resistance which make weight loss hard even with a low carb diet. And some people can eat fairly high carbs and not gain weight.

I also know that a lot people gain weight by having it creep up over the years (sort of like what Bray discussed) and not because of low fat or high carbs. He doesn't look at how thin people stay thin or why they are thin. There is some research there that wasn't addressed. I can only wonder what else is left out. I think it is more complicated than just carbs or everyone low carbing would be thin and that is not the case. I may be wrong, but I don't think people embark on a low carb diet to remain overweight.

Most people here read it because they are interested in low carbing to lose weight and many indicate a wish to be thin. I read it because everyone said it was interesting and it is. I also agree with Taubes' position on fat and cholesterol, yet, Agaston makes some points about saturated fat that Taubes didn't address.

He did a good job of debunking low fat, and I suppose if that was his sole purpose, he did that.

See, that's been my question. Is that really true?

On this point I totally agree...it's not just the carbs, although the excess we consume in this country sure isn't helping.

I personally don't think - flame away folks - that even refined versus whole grain matters all that much. I think what matters, when it comes to carbohydrate, is the context of the whole diet, including micronutrients.

When you start to poke around at the various data out there, lots of interesting and amazing trends emerge that have little to do with precise and exact ratios of macronutrients and much more to do with essential nutrients. For example, if you look at Japan versus France - two polar opposite diets that are both rich with protein (as percentage of calories and in absolute grams for population BMI/weight) and interestingly, whether it's in Japan (low-fat) or France (high-fat) rich with EFA's.



For a while, I found myself going off on that tangent - it really doesn't lead anywhere from an evidence-based perspective. From what I've read, the vast majority of folks around the globe who are *thin* and thin simply because there aren't enough calories in their country's food supply to make 'em fat. In the US, the thin are thin for any number of reasons - from malnutrition to extreme dieting to eating a way that works for them to working out to whatever.

My perspective is that "thin" isn't necessarily "optimal health" and that a BMI of 22 simply is not an ideal for everyone, just as everyone with a BMI over 30 isn't necessarily "obese" either.

Some carbs spike glucose levels more than others and the insulin connection was one of the most important things that Tabues discussed. There are ways of combining certain fibrous carbs with fat protein to produce almost no spike.



I have to agree with that. For most people, it will require caloric restriction and possibly more movement. In the undeveloped world, people do more physical labor and walk more. Our ancestors also did more physical labor and walked more. The studies based on exercise 3 times per week may be misleading in that regard. That's really not much exercise compared to years of physical labor and walking daily.



Do you think most people go on low carb diets for optimal health? Researchers like Bray want to see thin people and he is looking at the calories and habits of thin people. That's why the obesity cognescenti are not going to accept carbohydrates as the source of weight gain. And that's why I think Taubes failed to make his case with people like Bray.

Bray and others are fully aware that *thin* in and of itself does not make a healthy person....1 in 5 Type II's are thin, 1 in 5 women with PCOS are thin, folks with cancer are thin and fat, folks that die of heart attacks are thin and fat....*thin* is only how you appear and is not an indication of health and vitality, and Bray knows that.

Taubes couldn't make his case to Bray if you paid Bray a million bucks to actually listen because Bray is committed to his own theories and vested financial interests IMO. That doesn't mean that Taubes failed, it means Bray failed to have the scientific integrity and curiosity required to actually mull what Taubes wrote and consider the implications and how his own work may be erroneous - something Bray isn't about to do anytime soon and clearly showed his defensive stance in his recent review. When you're right, you don't need to be defensive - you have the data on your side....but Bray betrayed himself - he was defensive in his review...why? Taubes exposes his weakness and Bray ain't happy about that - and rather than be a man, step up and admit the problems over the years with much of what he's written and positions he's taken, he instead rips Taubes in the review without citing data that shows Taubes is wrong....in fact, I absolutely laughed when he cited himself as evidence that he's right! LOL

I used to bike 7 miles to a park to play tennis for 3 hours, and then bike 7 miles home. I did this several time a week every Summer. I still got fat because of my high carb high sugar diet.

I didn't mean Bray himself. I'm the one who called him a pharmawhore. I meant people who are fixated on calories and only calories and the BMI charts. The studies Bray mentioned on double-labeled water were done to contrast the calories taken in and expended in thin people vs. obese people.

Sure, not all thin people are healthy, but most people who diet want to be thin. Some of them go to crazy extremes to do it.

FYI, the new thinking in diabetes is that the thin type 2s have either MODY or LADA. I don't know if that is completely true, but it is looking that way.

Have you taken a look at farm workers (migrant), construction workers, the guys and gals on road construction crews, and others doing pretty darn demanding physical labor jobs lately? They're just as fat by percentage of population as everyone else...physical activity can play a role, but it's not the end all be all of weight management or weight gain over time.

Yes....and in those studies, the interesting thing is the heavier one is, the more they do eat.....but they have to eat more to maintain the higher weight. It's not like we should expect someone who weighs 300 to eat the same calories as someone who weighs 150 - the person weighing 300 absolutely has to eat more to maintain the weight.....even has to eat absolutely more just to meet BMR....but this fact is used to chastise the heavier folks as if they're somehow morally deficient because they are eating mroe!