If you want you can try to look at my photos again. I just created the album tonight and I guess Picasa has changed the default viewing setting for new albums. Used to default to public, but now seems to be private, so I changed the setting.

I looked at the photos. I thought most of those women looked pretty good! As the page says, they are "real women". None of them look as thin as Dana looked in real life, but it's always hard to tell from photos. Interesting, though, how you can search on a certain height/weight and see women who fall into that category. I'm looking at ones who are my height/weight right now. Very interesting.

I can see them now, thanks! Dana really looks better in the photo you took.

Can you believe the fourth one is obese?! And what about the one at the beach? Overweight!

Really? Then maybe she is thin, but looks bigger in photos.

Sometimes I think every woman who is my height/weight looks smaller than me.

There are very few of those women who I would suggest should lose weight. Most are very healthy looking at those weights.

She's bringing up their size and saying this means low carb doesn't work. She's making personal attacks which is mean. But then I've noticed you have no problem in continuing them, so you probably won't get what I'm saying if you think that's acceptable. They both have talked about weight loss and regain, but they also both heavily promote low carb science and health. There is no false advertising - all the info she got on Jimmy Moore, she got from his own blogs and websites - the information is freely available.

And I'm judging how she's acting - I haven't once suggested anything about her weight - which would be what I'd do if I used her method of trying to win a scientific discussion.

Just because Jimmy has weight issues still, doesn't mean its due to low carb - there are other factors that effect weight.

And I have no problem with someone promoting health that may also help with weight loss and making money off of it. Or are they expected to do what is a full time job for free? What should they live off?

Is the argument that people promoting health and weight loss should be altruistic and take no payment? Or is it that those who promote health and weightloss should be slim? Or should they stay slim and have no regains - and if they do give up their self employment? Does this apply to other people who give health and diet advice - do they have to give up their careers if they gain some weight? Does it matter why they gained the weight - if they can give you and carbsane evidence of medications, illness, menopause etc, will that allow them to keep their jobs? Or are you and carbsane really telling us that if they regain 20 or 30 lbs that they're supposed to give up and go claim unemployment until they can find an alternate means of earning a living?

Or should they only give advice or make money if they agree with you and carbsane about what health and nutrition advice should be?





Are you saying that they're lying that they did this? Did Jimmy Moore not lose all that weight in a year on low carb? Did Dana not lose 40 lbs after giving up a low fat diet? Do you have evidence of this?

They both did these things and wrote about it and why not? They also talk about the science as they understand it.

How they coped with maintenance is another book. Oh, but you and carbsane have an issue with money making - should they do a maintenance book for free? And tell people that maintenance, for some, can be really hard, an ongoing struggle that you have to be commited to - wait Jimmy already gets this message across by detailing his ongoing struggle with weight loss which carbsane then used against him. I guess he's probably waiting to do the maintenance book until he's got that figured out for himself.

Lee

Wow, you seem to enjoy judging people's size.

Personally I look at someone and see a person, not a BMI.

But then I'm more used to being judged and my contribution ignored or derided due to my size.

Lee

If it's not acceptable to make money while promoting a particular method of weight loss, you know who we'd have left to do it? The government and it's MyPlate. How's that working for us? (Yet even the government has a vested interest in the grain growers.)

I thought they looked great and slim and couldn't believe they were actually obese/overweight, but you have already decided Carbsane and I are just mean, even though Merpig herself can see what Carbsane was trying to say, and nothing I can say will change that. I hope one day you will stop seeing attacks at every word and actually understand what people want to say.

That's not what she said. Low-carb has been promoted as a weight loss method, but see how well it's working for some of its staunchest proponents. So is it morphing into HAES (health at every size)? She is commenting on these people's weights because they have made their weights public so they can demonstrate that their method works.

"I thought they looked great and slim and couldn't believe they were actually obese/overweight"

MB's post raises a question: what exactly is obesity and the problem with obesity. If obesity is simply a number on a scale, without regard to physical size, health or fat percentage, then obesity is a completely meaningless term.

So, if people are happy, look great, healthy and doing well, why does the analysis change just because you learn their scale weight makes them "obese."

My mother and I are the same height. She weighs 20 pounds less than I weigh. I wear a smaller size. I also look leaner and trimmer. And I have better cholesterol, better glucose numbers, better blood pressure, etc. I have have lower body fat percentage.

On paper, she is an ideal weight (130) and I am overweight (150). (We are both 5'2".) But I wear 6s and 8s and she wears 12s and 14s.

Do I suddenly look worse or become less successful on LC simply because as a 5'2" woman, and I still technically overweight? She maintains her weight on skim milk, egg whites and wheat bread. She is also diabetic.

So by the scale results, her low fat, calorie restriction is much more effective and she is a low fat success story. And I another LC falure, since I only lost 80 pounds and then stalled, never making it out of "overweight" territory. Or am I an LC success, because I have cured my prediabetes, lost weight, gained lean muscle mass, have excellent lipid panel numbers, cured my isomnia and solved my chronic reflux issues?

Seems to me we are mixing up what is lifestyle and what is weight loss.

Carbsane calls the question on low-carb advocates because they are still obese, perhaps because her ideal of "low carb lifestyle" is "lose extra fat and keep it off."

Whereas I interpreted, leemack, that your ideal of "low carb lifestyle" is "you can lose pounds" and it's ok if you regain because that's a whole different thing, "weight maintenance."

When I read advocates on the web, I just ask that they practice what they preach, and then I can draw my own conclusions, and buy what they are selling, according to whatever conclusions I draw.

I wonder if what looks normal is effected by what we're seeing around us. I mean there are so many fat people now. I work in a law school, so I see lots of relatively young people, and it seems like more of them are fat than when I was the same age in the early to mid 80's.

A couple of years ago I was in a law school class when it hit me that not one female in the room was anywhere close to normal weight. We were all fat.

Was it like that 30 years ago? It seems to me it wasn't, but possibly I'm remembering wrong?

My mom and I went to a talk on the Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse in Kansas City last weekend. It collapsed 30 years ago, July 17, 1981. My mom bought the book they were selling. I couldn't resist looking through the photos from that time looking for fat people. There were a few, but not many.

Fat just looks normal now.

I agree that fat distribution and body fat percentages are better indicator of obesity, because lots of muscle, a large frame etc make a big difference. And pear-shaped women that carry all the weight on their bottoms and thighs are generally healthier than apples.

If you have a low body fat percentage, then you are truly slim, no doubt about it.

Yes, I think you've got a point when you say that there are different definitions of low carb success - or indeed the success of any way of eating.

I'm not really saying that weight regain should not be a concern, but that it is not necessarily an indication of the success or failure of the way of eating. There are lots of factors involved in maintaining a weightloss, as I've already mentioned, and indeed in losing the weight in the first place. The right way of eating is just one thing that needs to be in place - an important thing, but there are others. Obesity is a complex problem, and I suspect that anyone who becomes hundreds of lbs overweight is permanently damaged, and will always have problems with weight regardless of eating plan.

I don't believe that we can make assumptions about a way of eating just because some people regain some weight on it - I don't know any diet where most people who've lost a lot of weight, don't regain some. If that's the standard for assessing what the 'right' way of eating is, then there is none, because no way of eating works 100% of the time.

In an obese person, weightloss may be one way to measure health, but there are many others. The HAES community however, disagree that weight is an indication of health, and believe that a person can be healthy whatever size as long as they practice healthy behaviours. Carbsane appears to put much more emphasis on weightloss and regain - hence her issue with Jimmy Moore.

The question then becomes, what way of eating is the heathiest? And as you have pointed out, Seejay, it depends how you measure it, by weight lost, by weight lost and maintained, negatively according to weight regain, or by overall health?

Lee

Hm - now you have me thinking. There are ways of losing weight that end up harming a person, long-term, so that has to factor in there, when we look at regain later.

We all know about the damage to lean body mass with starvation diets.
I suspect there is also damage in *some* people by how they do low carb, like the reports of thyroid issues or, my own opinion, how eating excess frankencarbs and excess protein, can contribute ironically to a trend toward diabetic metabolism.

I guess my own measures are about the trends. Can I trend the right way - toward more health on all fronts, versus getting better in one area while worse in another. I do consider health to be not only the absence of symptoms (a la Groves' Trick and Treat) but also the presence of really great physical and emotional feelings. In my own case everything is wonderful EXCEPT I have so much bulk it's hard to move! other than that it is great. And I am losing very slowly so I'm hopeful about the bulk.

Yes and also the more overweight you've been, the more empty fat cells you have just sitting there - I expect that these may eventually be shown to exert some force in those who have lost a lot and are trying to maintain.

Like you, I'm losing slowly and am hopeful, but in the meantime have had health improvements. But finding how to lose weight on low carb hasn't been easy - its not as simple as eat this amount of carbs and you'll lose weight and gain health. Things like removing grains and dairy and also getting medication for insulin resistance, were all very important and took more research than simply following a set of guidelines.

I could eat 20g carbs a day but if I'm eating dairy I won't lose any more than water weight, regardless of carbs or calories or protein.

Lee