Low Carb DownUnder has been releasing a large collection of new presentations from last year. Without many conferences there has been a dearth of new talks. But some good ones here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUMUhp1pSyM

Today was Dr David Diamond, "'Should You Be Concerned About High LDL-Cholesterol on a Low Carb Diet?'"

Dr Paul Mason, who organized this round up of LC stars, on "Why your doctor thinks cholesterol is bad - Big Pharma deception'"

Dr. Stephen Phinney - 'The Realities of Sustained Nutritional Ketosis' (Or Why is Keto so Hard?) This part starts at minute 57, about sodium, potassium, and adding fat for maintenance, etc.

EDIT: I think that four phase LC weight loss chart, same as one from the New Atkins book that I shared many times here may have contributed to my never reaching goal on LC/ Keto. Some add fat for maintenance and that works well… but it didn’t for me, maybe because that much fat in food was distasteful to me?

Many more virtual video presentations, twenty posted in the last four months, including the amazing Dr Richard Bernstein!! Still going strong.

Thanks, Janet, and I love the quotes in your signature - advice that works! Too bad it wasn't promoted 50 years ago.

Thanks Deirdre!
I edited the part above about adding fat for maintenance. Do you eat a higher fat diet to maintain?
I did not reach goal and maintain until I lowered the fat. Different diets for different people, tastes, but I wonder how many this approach works for?

Marty Kendall writes about "Keto Lie #11: You should eat fat to satiety to lose fat"….but what about this as a maintenance strategy? If keto is "hard" to sustain, is it because this advice doesn’t work for some?

I didn't consciously ramp up the fat to maintain, I basically lost weight and maintain eating the same real foods. Though I did dabble with trials of more fat, less fat, more carbs, fewer carbs, more protein, less protein over the past 50 yrs. And always came back to the same conclusion. Bullet-proof coffee & fat bombs aren't the answer. Excess lean protein (skinless chicken breast, whey powder) make me ravenously hungry the same way junk food does, whereas chicken w/skin, salmon, regular-lean meat, not extra lean, do not.

In maintenance I am still very sensitive to carbs and found that upping net carbs even just from 30g to 50g made me stop losing and crave more carbs and other junk. This seems to be intrinsic to me since it has been true ever since I first calculated my CLL (net carbs to lose ~20g) and CLM (net carbs to maintain ~35g) on the Atkins Diet in the mid-1970s and checked again in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s & today. For simplicity I just aim for <30g from good nutritional sources.

Since I'm 67 and want to maintain muscle mass, I aim for a minimum of 82g and average ~100g of protein and eat fat that comes naturally (chicken w/skin, salmon, regular-lean meat, not extra lean) keeps me satiated. Also aiming for an 8-hr eating window and not bringing trigger foods into the house (sugar, grains, dairy, peanut butter).

This all works out to C:P:F ratios of 10:30:60. 60% fat sounds "high" compared to the SAD, but during my SAD years I ate similar grams of fat but piled on an extra 700 calories of non-satiating & non-essential carbs and the weight that came with them.

Many Thanks Deidre! 30% protein is the % Dr. Naiman thinks would solve the obesity crisis. There wasn’t much discussion about protein a decade ago, other than "don’t eat too much" I think it is the remaining carbs and fat percentage that really messed me up. As I got closer to goal, the advice was to increase dietary fat because less energy is coming from your body. But that chart in talk above/NANY, fixed protein at a very low 15-18%, and dietary fat in maintenance at 70%. ( the numbers are slightly different in NANY attached below for a 5’ 10” man, but concept same ). Like you I also tried every variety of carb and fat adjustment out there.

To continue to lose the last few pounds, I now keep fat around 40% but can see it drifting higher in my future version of maintenance. But it will be markedly more protein and less fat than these "keto" phases. Thank you for sharing the details of your macros and foods. ..this is perfect! I eat around 20% carbs, but all from vegetables, berries and low fat dairy, focusing on their nutrients. Lean meat and low fat dairy satiate me, rather than make me hungry. My body may still be trying to replenish nutrients that were insufficient before.

Low Carb Down Under is Back!!

Recent in person conference on the Gold Coast in Australia. Grav gave his first full presentation at the conference, but that is not posted yet. A preview on his journal:

https://forum.lowcarber.org/showthr...483#post9436483

First lecture from Gold Coast now posted on YouTube … brilliant! ⭐️. Dr Matthew Phillips on "Metabolic Strategies as Therapies for Cancer and Neurodegeneration". https://youtu.be/jK0BkTPUGQY

My reaction was similar to another comment..where has he been hiding? I follow the keto/cancer literature, have not heard of him before. No matter, here is a very clear explanation of how fasting and/or a LC diet (meat or plant-based..he's diet agnostic ) may improve mitochondrial dysfunction. Based in Hamilton, NZ, some of the other studies he mentions on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are linked here:

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...hew-Phillips-15

Yeah, sorry I haven't posted my own write-up of the event yet. I took pages of notes while I was there, as well as literally hundreds of photos, but just haven't had time to get myself organised since getting back.

In the meantime, there is an official round-up of the conference on the Low Carb Down Under website, which includes a mention (and a picture) of yours truly.

Dr Phillips had also featured on Grant Schofield's PreKure podcast a few weeks ahead of the conference; that was the first time I'd heard of him too. We met briefly at Gold Coast, but we had missed each other's talks as they were both happening at about the same time in the separate presentation rooms.

I'll post more about my time at the conference when I can.

Is LDL-Cholesterol a Risk Factor for Heart Disease? A new study raises this question. The paper reporting it is entitled Association Between Hypercholesterolemia and Mortality Risk Among Patients Referred for Cardiac Imaging Test: Evidence of a “Cholesterol Paradox?”
Within each cohort, age was the most potent predictor of ACM [all-cause mortality]. This was followed by smoking, diabetes, and hypertension as significant predictors of ACM over the 9-yr study. Yet in all four patient groups, a history of high LDL cholesterol was associated with a reduced rather than elevated hazard ratio for ACM. So that makes it a "paradox" (for statinators, perhaps).

Brendan, we look forward to your write-up of the conference! No rush, LCDU, has in the past metered out the talks after editing.

And there is a new video today …Dr. Pran Yoganathan. I learned about him through Marty Kendall, he is a low carb gastroenterologist, "Are we fat hunters? ” https://optimisingnutrition.com/dr-pran-yoganathan/

This talk is more about the health system. His Instagram page is popular, thoughtful writing with some humourous photos.

What are the barriers to health?
https://youtu.be/xEyu7xVT2pY

Janet, thanks for providing the link to Yoganathan's presentation. Very powerful as he identified the many complexities we now must deal with in finding a healthy way of living. The players are many and the issues are complex, coupled with the fact that our healthcare is now managed by the companies who are solely influenced by the pharmaceutical companies and food manufacturers. Plant based? Great idea, how does one navigate to the sources that are healthy and glyphosate free not to mention the degradation in these fruit and vegetables that has occurred from lack of soil nutrients? Protein? Same question, but the additional complexities are the attacks from the plant-based crowd motivated by their own ethics, as the food manufacturers are happy to produce processed, plant-based foods because of price and the ability to control the market, improved health has nothing to do with it.

And then when one visits the doctor, which tends to happen more frequently as people get on in age, the added complexity now is to find a doctor who actually has the knowledge to treat the patient without paying attention to the standards of care conveniently developed by the pharmaceutical and medical management companies. My most recent doctor visit made the clinic very nervous when they discovered I was on zero medications. They frantically searched my history to push me back in the direction I started to go over 20 years ago before I drastically changed my lifestyle. At this point in my life, I'm managing my own care and will use physicians and medical centers only when I have an emergency I cannot treat myself. It's a wacky world as the price of healthy animal protein climbs by the day . . .

A recent comment on another thread was about an experience I've also had: where someone medical discovers I'm not taking any prescriptions. Comedy ensues.

It's a startling point where we would do better to subsidize the healthy food instead of the dangerous processed ones we throw money at now.

So I'm finally approaching the point of getting myself organised. I've posted about half of my own LCGC 2022 conference write-up in my own journal this weekend, hopefully with the rest to follow next weekend:

Low Carb Gold Coast 2022 attendance report: part 1

Low Carb Gold Coast 2022 attendance report: part 2