I'm curious as to why you feel the need to be looking at images of different low carb gurus in order to see how much they weigh? What are you trying to prove to yourself? that low carb doesn't work? That certain gurus are charlatans? are you looking for an excuse to eat a different way?

I eat this way for health, just as many other people do. It would be nice to lose weight, but with certain extreme metabolic challenges, it isn't always possible to become lean and slim. To me, judging the merit of someone's message based on their size is disturbing. I've lost nearly 70lbs, but it seems that anything I say, according to you would have less merit (because I'm still really fat) than another person who lost 70lbs and became slim. You're not even looking at people's stories, just looking at an image and making a judgement based on that.

Lee

Again...those who are genetically prone to obesity/diabetes tend to "self select" in disproportionate numbers to LC. This creates the FALSE illusion that LC doesn't work that well. Those people would be even FATTER on high-carb diets.

Obese people also tend to self-select to bariatric surgery more than slim folks. Many who've had the surgery are still quite fat. Just less fat than before. Should we conclude that the surgery makes people fat, just cause fatness correlates with that surgery?

Yes, another good example.

Lee

That reminds me of the diet soda study I read about a few years ago that stated that diet soda drinkers tend to be overweight. My thought was that I don't know ANY naturally skinny folks who drink diet soda, I mean, why would they?

Thank you for link, JLx.

In the comments section, a couple of people have asked Laura about her weight loss on low carb. She said that she'll make this the subject of her next blog posting(s).

Exactly. I am very skeptical that diet soda contributes to obesity. I know waay too many sugar-phobic bodybuilders who stay lean and mean drinking the stuff.

But I will say that I'm a bit wary of aspartame and Acesulfame Potassium (Ace-K) used in diet coke and other diet sodas. ACE-K causes insulin release. I think the fears over aspartame are very overblown, but there is at least some evidence to suggest it MIGHT have some adverse affects on brain. But so does sugar in excess.

I have studies sucralose very in-depth, and feel it's very safe. One study supposedly indicated it might shrink thymus-gland when consumed in VERY high doses equivalent to drinking like 200 diet sodas per day, but they were not able to reproduce that result.


Besides...all substances are toxic in high enough amounts. Even water. The dose makes the poison. 50% of artificial chemicals have been shown to be carcinogenic in VERY HIGH DOSES. And about 50% of NATURAL chemicals (Yes nature is full of chemicals!) have also been shown to be carcinogenic in VERY high doses.

Mother nature is not the warm, fuzzy and benign force many would like to believe. And man-made chemicals are not all toxic forces of evil.

Here's the blog post on her weight that About.com's Laura Dolson promised a couple of weeks ago:

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/b/201...ty-part-one.htm

In fact, it can be a marker of how well low carb diets "work" when even people with serious weight and health issues find improvement with them.

Thank you for that link about Laura. Her final paragraph really sums it up:



I haven't lost as dramatically as some here; but these kinds of discussions make me realize I was fortunate in losing 70 pounds. That's probably midway in drama. But I'm still figuring out how to deal with the ten or so pounds left, which are amazingly stubborn; yet I still feel fortunate. It could have easily been my last fifty, or hundred!

Another way to think about it is, how much would Laura/we weigh and how would we feel if we had continued on as we had been doing before LC? - Fat, bloated, sick, hungry, obsessed with food and without hope of ever being able to live comfortably at a lower weight (even if not our ideal weight).

I'd mention, too, that comparing low carb to vegans is deceptive, in that vegan is an extremely limited and (by regular standards) extreme diet.

If you're looking for a closer comparison, you'd compare vegans to zero carb, meat only folks.

I do think veganism is an eating disorder... just not necessarily anorexia.

I agree with the last two posts, veganism is more extreme then a low carb diet and if veganism isn't a full blown eating disorder, it certainly can lead to one. Some of the things I read and believed when I was vegan still make me worry about eating too much protein and fat. They convince people that if you eat anything but plants you're doomed for some catastrophic disease or another, its just a matter of time. Even when the science says otherwise, they still hold on to their misguided beliefs. Its like a religion to them and they are very strong believers in their doctrines.

I'm a vegetarian (following a low carb plan), but I have some friends who are vegans and they're not all that extreme. A vegan diet suits their bodies & their philosophy towards the planet. They're never condemning of how others eat. Granted this is my limited pool of friends, but saying they have a borderline eating disorder seems rather dismissive. It's how they like to eat. How is that bad?

Humans can't digest plant fiber, therefore can't absorb the nutrition contained therein, therefore a plant-only diet constitutes a deficient diet for humans. Humans who choose to eat only plants know this yet choose to eat only plants anyway. While I could argue many different ways why a vegan diet could be defined as an eating disorder, this fact above summarizes the bottom line of all those arguments. It is irrational.

This irrational decision could be simply a conscious choice driven by sympathy for the animals who suffer. But I don't think that's the whole story. The decisions we make, we make them with our brain, and this brain is a biological organ, just as sensitive to the deficiencies we develop eating any other deficient diet, of which there are many to choose from besides a plant-only diet. The standard American diet is one such deficient diet. Put it this way, a deficient diet makes a deficient brain, and a deficient brain makes deficient decisions. The simplest way to illustrate this is with the common advice to eat before going out shopping for groceries. Another one is the proverb healthy mind in a healthy body. Even the sympathy for the animals who suffer is taken to the extreme with the vegan argument.

On the flip side we have low-carb, one effect of which is an improvement in various cognitive abilities that often starts with the disappearance of something we call brain fog. Suddenly, we can think clearly. One of the things we come to realize after we went low-carb is that the primary aspect of low-carb - cutting carbs - is also part of all the other diets that have some effect on fat mass and other factors, albeit to a lesser degree. Accordingly, this particular aspect could be a factor in the continuing decision to eat only plants, as it legitimizes the original choice by making it appear good for us, at least in the beginning. But then, compared to the SAD, starvation looks good for us too, at least in the beginning, for the same reason - cutting carbs. I don't mean to say this realization above inherently comes from cutting carbs, a sort of inevitable natural consequence of cutting carbs, but it is certainly not part of any other diet as far as I know. After all, many simply eat low-carb without caring or knowing much about why and how it works, and low-carb works just as well for them as it does for anybody else anyway.