I see. I understand. You didn't actually read the studies that don't show a metabolic advantage, you're just waiting for one that shows a metabolic advantage. Well, like I pointed out, you linked to one study that shows a metabolic advantage using tobacco. But since you continue to claim that none exist, that is why I took it upon myself to remind you of the nature of the debate. Now if you refuse my explanation of the debate's nature, then I guess I'm at a loss for words.

If you're at a loss for words, then you're welcome!

And now I'm off (mammo time). I did look at the 99 studies and there was nary a one that would make you happy. You could have looked at them yourself. So, you're welcome!

Yeah, we can look for them ourselves. Thanks for reminding us of what we can do. How very a propos. You're too kind.

This is a false dilemma. It ignores the possibility that calories can affect hormones, and that hormones affect caloric intake. This is one of the main points of Gary Taubes's work. He's not trying to show that calories are irrelevant to body weight. He's trying to show that calories are not the whole story, because metabolism responds to the type of calories, as well as (not instead of) the amount.

If calories were irrelevant to body weight, anorexics would not become emaciated.

Ubizmo

I'm not really sure that the twinkie diet counts as monotonous. Haub varied the type of junk foods he ate considerably, and he made a concerted effort to count calories. Very few people will contest that intentional calorie restriction can cause weight loss, short-term.

There's a passage in Seth Roberts' The Shangri-La Diet where he writes about an experiment with leptin-deficient mice. (Ob/Ob. So no leptin.) Mice were fed by stomach tube, so that they didn't taste the food. The mice still controlled their own food intake, by pressing on a bar they could feed themselves. The mice that were fed this way were resistant to the obesity normally caused by a lack of leptin. When these mice were given a shot of calorie-free flavour, in addition to being fed, whenever they pressed the bar, this resistance to obesity disappeared. This is what kind of blows my mind; that leptin deficiency can be sidestepped in this way. This was still sort of a monotonous diet; one flavour. Maybe leptin deficiency keeps flavours from becoming monotonous?

Taubes has argued that when people cut calories, they generally also cut carbohydrates. I think we can probably rule this out for the potato guy.

There is no false dilemma. If calories affect hormones, then we can show this mechanism. If there is such a mechanism, and if we did show it somewhere, then where is the evidence? More precisely, what hormones do calories affect and in what way? I only ask this precise question to prevent you from going on and on in a hypothetical fashion. You know, to maintain crap down to a minimum.

I thought Taubes did a pretty good job of explaining that calories don't matter. I guess he wrote in such a vague and ambiguous manner that we could write it off as a question of interpretation, huh.

Starvation does not translate as is to semi-starvation. I got a chuckle out of your argument that anorexics would not become emaciated. I just thought you were funny there for a second.

At the rate of 4,000 calories per day for a month?

But there are similar experiments where people prove to be resistant to weight-gain when eating past appetite, with the SAD. People who don't get fat on the SAD in the first place tend to be resistant to the effects of overfeeding, compared to people who do. Is there any reason to assume that there aren't similar differences in people eating fat past appetite within the context of a low carb or even a zero-carb diet?

I've seen threads on other forums where zero-carber upped their fat intake, and failed to lose weight... but I don't think they ate past appetite. We need more guinea pigs.

The point is that calories don't matter. If there's something wrong with fat tissue, it's still going to be wrong even if we cut out all carbs and only eat the best food we can eat. It doesn't have to be wrong from the start, it can become wrong gradually, like it does for most people who grow fat and sick. But people's fat tissue don't grow defective because of calories. Fat tissue grows defective because of hormones and drugs. Cutting carbs merely removes one agent. Eating real food fixes another problem. There might be need for more therapies to return to a semblance of normal. Some take D3, others take T3, while still others take more extensive measures.

Do you think that growing fatter is merely the stuffing of fat in fat cells, and that growing leaner is merely the release of this fat? There's more to obesity than just excess fat accumulation. Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation. It's a disorder. It's not just (Ein - Eout). What else does this disorder represent besides obesity? There's heart disease, diabetes and cancer, to name a few. How can we expect to fix those problems just by cutting carbs? So why do we expect it with obesity? If the problem's already there, cutting carbs is just the beginning. But if the problem hasn't yet started, cutting carbs might prevent it from ever occurring in the first place.

It's a Festivus miracle!!!

Of course I don't. Do you think that the release of fat is unrelated to the ongoing needs of the body? That there is no circumstance where eating less fat will cause the balance of fat storage to be negative? Yes, the hormones are important. But if we change the amount of fat we eat, we change our hormonal balance. There's no reason to assume that this change in hormones will always be in our favour so far as fat loss is concerned. It makes sense that it might be-- eat lots of fat, your body "sees" fat as plentiful, so fat storage decreases, sort of thing-- but I can't say that this is a sure thing. We need a clearer picture, we need more studies. Low carb works. Some of the details still need to be fleshed out.

Personally I do think that if eating less results in a raging hunger, then it isn't working, you're probably forcing your body fat below its settling point. But if you can eat less fat without increasing appetite--maybe by upping protein a little-- and this results in fat loss, maybe you're on the right track.

If we got fat, we had to overeat. That’s always true; it’s obvious, and it tells us nothing about why we got fat, or why one person got fat and another didn’t.

It's not that calories are irrelevant to weight loss or gain; they're not. If they were irrelevant there would be no association at all between caloric balance and weight. But there is a loose and non-linear association. Calories just don't tell us enough of the story to be especially useful.

Ubizmo

I agree. But I think we can only do so much with diet alone because the previous diet did stuff that can't be fixed just by changing what and how much we eat.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that people can't, or shouldn't, try new things. Or even old things, if they haven't tried them yet. The thing about broken metabolism is, metabolism is horribly complex. There are many points at which something might go wrong. That everybody's metabolism would "break down" in the same way seems unlikely. One person's metabolism might defend against intentional overfeeding of fat, for instance, while another person's might not. There are people who get reactive hypoglycemia from eating protein, and people who don't.