Sweden Becomes First Western Nation to Reject Low-fat Diet Dogma in Favor of LCHF

[TroubleMan]

70. Calories is a good starting point,but you're not taking insulin and metabolic syndrome into account.

I lost over 100 lbs and kept it off for over 2 years now going low carb, and I did not reduce my caloric intake.

"Calories in - Calories out" is a good starting point, but it's more complicated than that. You're exactly right that you can't eat a bunch of crap and lose weight, no matter what the macronutrient content. Additionally it's true that ultra-low-carb reduces your hunger cravings, once you've become adapted to it (more on that below).

However, carbohydrates cause an insulin response in order to lower blood glucose levels. When this happens, you can't burn fat. The key to losing fat (not losing weight, but burning fat) is to keep insulin quiet. When insulin is quiet your body has the chance to free up fat and burn off any FFA's as energy.

Additionally, due to the low fat craze and other factors (such as the conglomeration of food companies that all now look to cut costs and maximize profits to the extreme), all of our foods in the last 20 years have been loaded up with sugar. Things that had fat in them, but weren't bad for you, got modified where they took the fat out and loaded it with sugar to taste better. For the first time in history, our bodies have been ingesting a massive amount of sugar and other carbs, about 10-20 times more, than we have before. This causes a massive amount of insulin to be running through our blood, in amounts that humans never had before.

Because of the constant exposure to insulin in greater amounts since childhood, a large amount of people develop insulin resistance. Their muscles don't refill with glycogen when insulin comes a-calling. However, now that their muscles aren't taking in blood glucose like they used to, in order to keep the person dying from hyperglycemia, insulin shuttles the nutrients into fat. When you're insulin resistant, any caloric intake is more likely to get shuttled into fat storage.

Yes a low-carb diet can reduce your weight by reduced caloric intake - any reduction in calories can temporarily lower your weight. However, a low carb diet eventually improves your insulin sensitivity - your muscles and other non-fat tissues start to demand the nutrients more, and less is shuttled into fat. It also keeps insulin quiet so that you can burn up FFA's for energy instead of redepositing them.

I chose to go low-carb without reducing calories, because I was looking long term. A dramatic lowering of calories can reduce your leptin levels, lower your T3, and reduce your testosterone levels (if you're a man). Depending on how fat you are, you can lower the calories for a long time without those effects (sometimes over several months), but eventually you'll get the negative feedback from lowering them too much.

One more trick that low-carb has going for it is that once you've become keto-adapted (i.e. ketones can now pass the blood-brain barrier), your body will burn off fat and use it for any caloric expenditure you may need for the most part. This is why you have less hunger on a low-carb diet. You didn't actually reduce calories, even though you ate less calories - your body ate the fat right off of you to make up for what you didn't eat (although again the reduced leptin levels will get you eventually, but I digress).

A low carb diet, however, isn't the best for everybody. Everybody's body is different, but seems to be best for about 2/3 of people, especially for the obese.

A great place for reading about this is Dr. Peter Attia's blog - he delves deeply into the science of it:
http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/do-calories-matter
http://eatingacademy.com/

Off subject, but somewhat germane, if you're into the science of biochemistry at the cellular level, his series on cholesterol, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. It's hours of reading, but it's well worth it. If you're interested, start here:
http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i