Of course calories count. If you eat enough fat and protein, you body won't use its own fat. I believe that you cannot gain weight on beef and water since eaten fat will not be stored, but you still need to consider the amount eaten in relation to you energy requirements to loose weight. For obese people, this is not hard with low-carb.

If you do not eat enough, you will loose weight and die. There are nice inbetween points where you loose weight or don't. People on all meat diets can maintain weight, they don't always loose weight. Calories count.

An insistance that calories don't count reminds me of Anthony Colpo's insistance that they only count. They are both so black and white.

Leptin is another important weight loss consideration. Fat cannot be burnt if insulin is high and fat is not used if Leptin is low. Leptin is produced by fat. As you loose weight the body puts the breaks on. Your body does not want to loose weight, it wants to gain weight.

Goal weights are abitrary.

William Bennet wrote 'The Dieter's Dilemma' years ago. In it, he concluded that an effective method for dieting is to eat the same thing every day, with a very limited selection of food. For example, bread and water. But it can be something you like - the thing is, having to eat that and only that every day makes you lose your appetite for it and you end up limiting your portions.
I tried this by limiting myself to round steak and baked sweet potatoes. I couldn't keep it up. Without reflecting on what was happening, I came up with a 'new way' to diet, a 'better way' to diet. Really, what I was coming up with was variety.
'The Dieter's Dilemma' is about changing the body's 'set point'. All of the author's reflections on diet are good, in my opinion. He doesn't even approve of low-carb diets. Yet his observations are good.

George,

So much misinformation is disheartening.

Patrick

I will try to validate my assumptions with you.

Do you agree with the following three statements?

- The laws of thermodynamics applies to the human body as a whole, but they also applies to all systems inside our body and even to all cells individually.

- Our internal systems are all regulated in big part by our whole hormonal soup (not just insulin).

- These systems are also independent of each other, including adipose tissue. So if what regulates them is not in order, they will not react properly.

Until we have agreed on these statements we will not understand each other. If you do not agree, please let me know what your version of the facts is.

I will assume for now that you do agree.

Now our hypothesis says that obesity is a symptom of a problem in the regulation of our adipose tissue.

Here is how this works. Let's say you eat a good satisfying meal. Once this energy is in the blood stream, it is available to be taken up by the cells of your body, including your fat cells. Normally, a meal will give you enough energy to function until the next meal. Your liver (via glycogen from glucose) and your fat cells (via fatty acids) gather a great deal of energy a short time after the meal. This energy will be used in between meals.

Our body tries extremely hard to maintain our total energy at the same amount. So when your reserves starts to get under a certain point. You will start to get hungry. When you eat your next meal, you will eat until you are not hungry anymore. If you eat less or there is not enough food, then you will stay hungry for a while and if there are still no food coming, your body will start compensating. It could slow down and/or you could become fatigued and won't feel like moving too much. This will prevent you from using too much of your reserves. It's a simple evolutionary survival tactic.

Of course, even with this mechanism, you still need to use some energy. So gradually, you will use some energy mainly from the glycogen and to a lesser extent from the fat cells. Once there is no glycogen left, your muscles will start to be broken down to create glucose and your fat cells will provide energy too.

Once you start eating again, your body's priority will be to replenish these reserves to their nominal level. So whether you force feed or underfeed yourself, your body will do what it needs to do to bring back your energy reserves to their nominal levels. If you force feed a runner, once the food is digested, he won't be able to stand in place. He will definitely feel the need to get up and go running. Because his body is efficient at making available the ingested energy to his muscles, instead of storing it. Of course, if you prevent that person from moving, he will fatten up. But only temporarily, until he is allowed to move again, then he will quickly shed the extra pounds.

Now, if your fat cells are not regulated properly, weird effects could happen. They could store energy and be reticent to release the stored energy. This is where insulin can play a central role. If for some reason insulin stays too high all the time, your fat cells will have a hard time releasing their energy. This is what happens to people who are insulin resistant for instance.

So whatever is deregulating your fat cells could result in them storing energy but not releasing it properly in between meals.

When this happens, there is less energy available for the rest of your cells. You will have to compensate one way or another. You will be hungry faster, so you will eat more often and/or eat more at the next meal.

Your total energy is going up, but you did not start eating more for this to happen, you had to eat more or expand less for this to happen. In this case, the cause of your obesity is not overeating or lack of exercise, it is a deregulated homeostasis.

I hope this explains a bit more our point of view. Before we can go on to discuss any possible metabolic advantage, we must first agree on the way the human metabolism works.

So what are your thoughts?

Patrick

Thanks for saying this LAwoman!!
I'd like to add myself to your list of those who made their chosen goal weight and maintained.

I am so tired of this conversation that happens every single time a thread is started about eating low carb....its getting so very, very old.

Also, it is different for men and men will never, ever get that. So I take what they have to say with a tiny grain of salt.

I am sorry that my results do not fit parameters for proof that what I did is meaningful to other women....Nancy.
I think that my results should be taken seriously by other women as I did start out at 54 yrs old this time....after many, many years of failing and totally due to my not sticking it out because I felt too deprived being on a "diet" and breaking it. I had not gotten it yet that it wasn't about being on a diet.
I did hit 2 stalls....8 weeks in length each, before I took action to break them. Because I didn't let them go for months on end or even years, my experience isn't valuable?
I think that for those losing over 100 lbs, calories do matter when you are close to your goal. I absolutely could not eat the same amount of food when I was 170 as when I was 270 and see losses.....anecdotal? you bet!!
But just because its my anecdote it doesn't count? why? because I follow SB?

In order for this to be true. The mainstream Calorie Balance hypothesis must be false. Otherwise, it is the same formula for men and women and there would be no difference in weight loss.

I happen to agree with you that it's different, but in order for it to be different calories must not count.

Patrick

Get back to me on this after you reach your goal and maintain it for 1 year.

I've maintained my 80 pounds loss for 4 years now. And how does this change anything of the science. If we low-carbers are not proper on the science, how will the mainstream ever get there?

Patrick

Other woman, i.e. me. I'm just horribly stuck and looking for hints as to what might work.

I don't feel deprived at all on low carb, sans grains and stuff like that. Maybe just going a good long stretch without any significant breaks in my diet is responsible for that. I love cooking with low carb/paleo ingredients and always find interesting ideas for eating. I found that after awhile I kind of lost my interest in all those other foods. Your results are great and you should be happy! However, under it all maybe you've got a pretty good metabolism perking away.

Here's the thing, everyone usually stalls for a few weeks sometimes even a few months. But a few years? In the meantime I've tried all these variations that men, or younger women try and report success with and I end up actually gaining weight, like I did with my trial of Dr. K.

I agree, some of us can definitely eat more calories than our body can expend even on low carb.

I don't give SB much credit due to the hypocrisy of the author, as I've told you before. He knows that people shouldn't eat grains, he follows a more paleo diet himself as you reported after going to one of his seminars, yet he doesn't put that in his book because he wants to sell lots of copies and put his trademark on diet food and we all know that you have to eat healthy whole grains or you'll asplode. So he feeds this stupid grain myth once again perpetuating a media and marketing movement that is doing a lot of harm, IMHO.

And low fat? I'm not convinced it's healthy or necessary.

Outside of those two criticisms of the diet, it is still vastly better than the hideous SAD.

However, having said that, after I get done with my current experiment (which is so far a big huge goose-egg [Eades, latest diet book]) I'm going to experiment with lower fat and slightly higher carbs using non-grain/non-high fructose containing foods and see how that works.

I also haven't tried ZC. So I'll have to put that on my to-do list too.

Oh for goodness' sake. Cars of the same model don't always get the same gas mileage because there are so many variables involved... The type of driving, the octane of the gas, the additives, the tire type, how well the parts are performing. Download one of the metabolism course sections on iTunes University for free. It should be screamingly apparent within the first few minutes that the basic calories in calories out assumptions are bad bad bad bad ones. We have more variables than a car by some exponential factor and science doesn't even know what they all are yet. (Calories have a bearing but that's only a part... Not necessarily an overwhelmingly big part... at least not under all situations. I do watch calories but have to tinker with other aspects and often don't lose on very modest caloric intakes. On the other hand during random weeks when my body has decided it will lose weight nothing I eat seems to slow down the drop.)

I'm not addressing anything in particular that any of you said... Just saying my piece about it.

EDIT: Deleted

Glad to hear something is working for you! You really deserve it.

Bravo!!

And yes Judy your experience is GREATLY appreciated!! There are many of us that benefit so very much from it!

I don't normally post on these subjects because I get a little disheartened when these discussions always get so ridiculous...

I guess I just don't understand why people get so heated about this and are so quick to dismiss others experiences just because they are different from their own. As someone else posted on this thread, YMMV applies to all ways of eating. If whatever your doing is working great for your TERRIFIC and we love to hear about it. But no reason to get rude or insist that your way is the only way or discount other people's experiences. There are soooo many variables that there can't only be ONE way for EVERYONE. And the reality is that for any of us what provides successful results now...may not work in 6 months, a year, or 3 years from now. So those that so quickly dismiss another's person's experiences NOW may want to keep that in mind. They know not what the future holds for them & may eventually benefit from the same experiences they presently so rudely discount. Even if they don't, as always it comes down to YMMV. And it seem like we should all be able to share our experiences, whatever they are without the insults, and insistance that only our's has any validity....

Of course different things will work with different people. But most of the time it does not work for the reasons they think it works. That changes how useful the info is to other people.

Anecdotes are not science. I'm just trying to help people understand the basics of human metabolism, so that they can make proper choices for themselves and understand other people's anecdotes properly to apply it to themselves if needed.

Without this understanding some people are going to eat vegetable oils and/or artificial sweeteners, because it is low carb, and they won't understand why they are stalling on these.

Don't you agree that it's useful knowledge?

Patrick

This is, without doubt, the most interesting thread on the forum at this time.

Hope I don't intrude too much seeing how I'm a relative newbie -who incidentally has dreadful problems maintaining a huge loss leave alone losing more- but here goes.

Factors we all agree are involved in the mechanism of how LCers lose weight long term:
- Age
- Gender
- Weight lost
- Weight to goal
- Degree of insulin resistance
- Amount of time spent dieting
- Hormonal make up

Debatable factors:
- Set Point
- Thyroid degradation
- Carb Creep
- Adrenal degradation
- A function of the number of LC tweaks or types per period of time (e.g. how many times one moved from ZC to 100 carbs SB in a year)

What we're trying to establish for breaking stalls and maintaining:
- Percentage of optimal carbs
- Calories' Role

If listed this way it seems to me it's pretty clear that an equation with that many factors can not have one answer only. Someone said it best, we're our own experiment on LC and while we agree on some essential topics there is no right or wrong. But boy, do we all wish there was!

What I find more interesting as a scholastic question: Is there any example of someone going through a very long stall, not tweaking, changing lanes or doing anything at all different and yet their body shedding pounds again after a few months/years? Sure, it approaches the famous "definition of insanity" and it's unlikely anyone had the strength of will to experiment to that degree but do you know of any cases?