To use fat reserves (lipolysis), two conditions must be met:

- Insulin must be absent
- fat must be eaten

Going into starvation means no fat is being eaten. One condition is not being met. BMR will slow down to maintain calories in-out balance to avoid losing precious fat reserves. Fat reserves will remain intact after calories from fat eaten run out. Gluconeogenesis will begin, protein stores will be used instead of fat stores. Especially since you need proteins for building blocks, repair and maintenance. You will shrink alright but not by lipolysis.

Coming out of starvation will take a while because BMR is so slow from it. You wrote you eat about 10% carbs. That's ample enough to prevent lipolysis. Especially since BMR is so slow. Insulin is present, no lipolysis can take place. One condition is not being met.

Martin,
Are you saying calories don't count if carbs are very low?

I'm not the one saying it, Gary Taubes is:

http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/index.php

i disagree with you
but then again we learned from different people
i am from the "Bear" school of thought

here's my take - fasting is fasting, your body is incredibly efficient and adapted at keeping you alive, it is also very efficient at protein conservation, in fact so efficient that when you enter fasting your body begins to scavenge flawed proteins of all kinds from your cells (due to incorrect folding, dna errors, etc.), there are always tons of messed up proteins proteins scattered throughout your body, this is the result of the thousands of reactions that take place in every cell every second; while there are dedicated proteins that are assigned to clean this stuff up they often cant cope with the load, this is documented stuff im not making this up..; anyways in fasting mode your body gathers these up and burns them for fuel ALONG WITH FAT; the result of this is you clean our your cells and burn your adipose fat at the same time, thats why the energy boost when fasting is so intense (i cant even fall asleep i have so much energy), your body isnt going to be burning all protein thats silly you would get nitrogen poisoning, what makes you think your body wouldnt be burning the optimal fuel mix - 90% fat 10% junk protein recycling

once the junk protein is burned off (this could take many days depending on how messed up your body is), your body begins very strict protein conservation turning instead to full fat burning; your kidneys can recycle over 99% of the amino acids that pass through, your body knows it has fat reserves and its NOT going to be burning off your muscles while there's still tons of fat, evolutionarily that makes no sense: adipose fat> muscle tissue> internal fat< i believe is the order or things, your body would be willing to sacrifice muscle before its going to destroy your internal fat reserves (which cushion your organs)


its important to understand that this process is the same whether you start fasting after eating carbs or fat, its just that its much easier to slip into fasting on a high fat diet

the most important thing is not to eat ANYTHING during a fast, water excepting, that means NOTHING, no juice, no tea, etc. anyone thats ever done a several day fast knows how energetic and healthy you feel even after one day, the body is adapted to heal when your not eating, it cant fully work the healing processes and digest and absorb meals at the same time apparently, digestion is very stressful; ancient man was fasting so much of the time it was never an issue in the past, now with regular 3 meals a day you can see how the process is disrupted, however your body always has sleep, which is of course a multi-hour fast (thats why its called BREAKfast)...unless you dont give your body enough sleep that is, then your REALLY going to have problems

then again this is MY take on things, im not trying to pass this off as dietary law; however this is the opinion that Bear had as well although i dont think he went as far as to say protein salvaging took place

cheers

We learned from the same people. I simply chose to listen to everybody and make up my own mind.

So you didn't listen to Gary Taubes speak, I take it? Otherwise you'd have a much different perspective on things. His conclusions are rather compelling. He's researched, collected, analyzed and synthesized 5 years worth full time of all kinds of data on the subject in a single book "Bad Calories Good Calories". Now he's touring the country trying to explain it to various groups.

Forgive me if I don't take "Bear"'s hypothesis seriously at this point. Speaking of which, would you mind post a link to this Bear person or theory? I'd very much like to see for myself and make up my own mind on the matter. Thanks.

In the meantime, browse this website at your leisure. The Taubes video is linked to on the front page.

not sure what you meant by that...ive been on the site for months



you wouldnt take him seriously? you dont even know who he is, let alone read any of his work...notice i never said

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...13&page=1&pp=15

its 251 pages long btw

i will listen to the link you posted right now, but honestly this makes no sense, maybe it will sound less ridiculous after i listen to the guy?, what does that mean anyway "dont count" calories are calories, your body's energy source, fat 9 protein 4 carb 4 alcohol 5, and they all count

cheers

Arrogance is not the way to enlightenment. Thanks for the link.

the guy has an incentive to sell his book, while every person that i have studied had no incentive whatsoever, Bear never sold anything he simply shared his life-long research with us, with no benefit to himself whatsoever, in fact he got so swamped with emails after that he probably wasted a few full days just on answering questions

let me put it this way
if i had a bestselling book on Judaism out, would you take my theories as to who the "one true god" is 'seriously'?

edit::
do you understand the difference between fasting and starvation? fasting ends when all your subcutaneous fat reserves run out and your body turns to muscle catabolism, this is when starvation begins, it takes a LONG time to enter starvation if you have adipose fat reserves present

I'm only on the first page of that thread and already see that your conclusions are way off from his. A few examples to demonstrate.

First paragraph of his first post:

"No carbs = no insulin."

Third paragraph, first post:

"The conversion mechanism requires insulin..."

It goes on like this. I don't see at this point how you could have come to the conclusions you wrote about. You disagree with me yet I agree with this Bear guy.

BTW, did you read the entire thread? I won't read the entire thread. I don't see the point anymore. I got what I needed out of it already from the first page.

show me where i said that adipose fat storage doesnt require carbs and thus insulin production

this is the foundation of the zero carb diet

propensity of fat storage is a direct result of your gene pool, that is the basis for somatotype theory, but in every somatotype insulin is the fat storage factor

maybe you should read the rest of his thread, Bear never said you have to "keep eating fat" to lose fat, he also never said "calories dont count"... you have to eat less fat/protein calories than you burn or simply fast

im going to make this extra clear
IF YOU EAT AS MUCH FAT AS YOU NEED YOU WILL NOT LOSE WEIGHT
your offering no incentive to your body to give up its highly valued energy reserves if your eating sufficient amounts of calories

Bear made this very clear

edit:: i just watched Gary Taubes' 1h:11m, and honeslty it was a waste of time because i learned absolutely NOTHING that i didnt already know and write right here

"carbs invoke a starvation response from the body and facilitate the process of fat storage"

there you go i just saved over an hour of time for everyone else since every person even remotely familiar with Atkins knows this

Forgive me, you're right. I should read the rest of that thread. It's obvious that I need to learn about the subject. Perhaps in time I'll think just like you do and become one of the "Bear" school of thought. Silly me trying to think for myself. It's best to let others do that thinking and simply adopt their conclusions. My brain is useless and I should not use it for fear of breaking anything in there that I couldn't fix anyway.

You win.

the guy said nothing that Atkins didnt, what was the reason you insisted i waste over 1 hour of my time listening to him?

im very serious about that, his philosophy is "dont eat carbs you wont build fat"....wow...where have i heard that before

"The guy" also said that every time he spoke to scientist and he mentioned Atkins, they shut down, the discussion was over and that was that. From your last reply here, it clearly looks like you shut down, the discussion is over and that's it for that.

Like I said, you win.

this is a discussion thread on a forum

noone wins here, and the discussion isnt over until the thread gets locked

if you write something on a discussion thread be prepared to be challenged, to cop out with a "sorry i think for myself, you win" is pretty weak

once again i will mention the 2 things you said that i dont agree with and that i want you to substantiate

1)

2)Martin,
Are you saying calories don't count if carbs are very low?
Martin:I'm not the one saying it, Gary Taubes is


nevermind the fact that he never said "you can eat as much as you want just as long as you dont eat carbs, and you will lose weight", but maybe i missed it

these statements go against my diet, and since i started the thread its logical you discuss this with me

one of us IS wrong on those 2 points, thats just how it is, if you can prove to me your point i will gladly accept it and will make it mine, my only allegiance is to the most correct theory, not to Bear or anyone else

i think about everything in terms of survival, and in terms of surivival it would be SUICIDAL for the body to burn off your adipose fat while your EATING fat, UNLESS your eating LESS than your USING, your body doesnt think its fat, it values adipose fat as its most important survival measure in lean times (which in nature is almost always), thats why its so hard to LOSE it, the organism is built logically, intelligently if you will (without touching religion)

im a skinny guy, but even ectomorphs have pot bellies, this is no secret, i had one most of my life, and you know what when i first started zero carb i ate LOADS of food, probably at least 3000 calories a day, and i was VERY sedentary, guess what even at 0 carbs my stomach fat was STILL THERE after TWO MONTHS, it is only after i calmed down and got used to the diet and started eating less did i begin to lose my stomach fat, even after introducing dairy (which has some carbs obviously)

i hate online arguments as much as anybody, but this is a discussion not an argument, so be reasonable

We've already gone through the entire discussion without success. It is futile to try again knowing the outcome on your part.