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Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

How so what? A diet that says it's ok to eat a steak but an apple is bad because it has carbs in it?

There is nothing wrong with carbs, carb free diets work because it's easier to create a caloric deficiency not because you some how can eat 3000 cals of w/e and lose weight.

But in the long run they aren't healthy either try being on a low carb diet and exercise at the same time let me know how it's working for you. Especially endurance run for 10km> even 5km a few times a week after a month without carbs and tell me how you feel.

But nvm I see there is not point of even trying to talk with the folks in this thread everything that is remotely against low carb is being down voted to spam :)

Anyhow enjoy your lives just remember to see a doctor often.

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A couple of points:

1) The low-carb hypothesis is that there is a fundamental physiological reason that highly refined carbs cause weight gain. It goes something like this: highly refined carbs get stored by your body as fat. Because they get stored as far, they are unavailable to be used for energy. Because they are unavailable to be used as energy, you get hungry (this is your body signaling that it needs energy). So you eat more carbs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Do you have a specific claim as to how this hypothesis is incorrect?

2) It is a complete non-issue that it's hard to compete in long distance running races while on a low-carb diet, especially for people who are obese.

Running has an incredibly high injury rate (on the order of 20-90% of runners get injured per year, Google "running injury rate"). It's about the worst way imaginable for an obese person to be active.

Can you post some kind of evidence to support what you are saying? Because I have done keto (under 30g net carb a day until your body enters ketosis) while doing an exercise routine and after the first week or two to adjust, found no problems with energy levels.

The downvotes come because you are making assertions that have no medical support.

Professional athletes are using low carb diets (http://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-calcook-side-20130622-stor...)

And there is no real conclusions for long runners either (http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2014/05/26/bjsports-2014-0...)

This is somewhat amusing, considering that that is my actual current diet and exercise regimen (for the last several months, with the added restrictions of being almost entirely vegetarian and doing some light weight training and cycling), and I feel pretty awesome.

I do agree that this thread is very monoculture-y though, which makes me uncomfortable.

Being vegetarian and being "low carb" is to some extent oxymoronic, you are getting your calories from somewhere and if it is vegetarian it mostly going to be fatty acids and carbs.

A few months with "light exercise" doesn't mean anything, your personal feeling is also not a quantifiable metric, if you were actually setting yourself a specific physical goal like to run say 10KM under 40min, or deadlift X lbs you would not be feeling very well without carbs.

Overall what low carb diets excel at is to cut people away from "bad foods" which means it's very easy for them to be in caloric deficiency (sometimes considerably higher than what they should, you do not want to have a dietary caloric deficiency higher than 200 of your BMR (not the BRM part not total caloric expenditure), and 500 is the max for even extreme diets) but if you are already willing to not eat processed food cutting good carbs like rice, full grain, and many fruits and vegetables out of your diet is simply silly.

You can be vegetarian and eat a low carb diet. It's not as easy as eating meat and eating a low carb diet, but it's eminently achievable. Eggs, cheese, nuts, avocados, and oils will probably comprise most of your diet.

Beans and vegetables too! But yes, this is mostly right.

Rice is the food version of styrofoam popcorn packing. Its main quality is that it's cheap stomach filler. You can do better for yourself by using leaves instead.

> ... carb free diets work because it's easier to create a caloric deficiency not because you some how can eat 3000 cals of w/e and lose weight.

There is much missing / wrong with your logic and assertions - but this one is particularly telling.

Are you genuinely asserting that low-carb diets work because ultimately they involve less calorie consumption than a 'conventional' (carb-heavy) diet?

If so, this seems entirely wrong to me - low-carb diets typically involve the consumption of a greater volume of energy (calories) compared to what your BMR would suggest you need to not gain weight.

This is, as noted elsewhere, also ignoring the benefit of low-carb diets to your GL/GI rollercoaster.

>If so, this seems entirely wrong to me - low-carb diets typically involve the consumption of a greater volume of energy (calories) compared to what your BMR would suggest you need to not gain weight.

Eh no, now you are getting into the realm of physics, what happens often are 2 things. Some foods have overstated caloric values this is quite common.

Your body doesn't metabolizes some foods at the same rate, especially true when you adjust your diet considerably and your body isn't used to produce enzymes in the required amounts, as well as other environmental factors like fiber content (lower fiber count would mean lower caloric value while higher fiber count would increase the caloric value even tho fibers themselves have no intrinsic caloric value on their own) and gut biome.

If you think you can eat say 500-1000 cals over your daily allowance with any diet and not gain weight, man you have really really been sold hard on this.

I feel you are intentionally conflating / confusing the discussion.

For example:

> If you think you can eat say 500-1000 cals over your daily allowance with any diet and not gain weight, man you have really really been sold hard on this.

No one's saying this - at least, the article isn't, and nor am I.

I will say that you can easily eat 500-1000 cals over your daily allowance with a particular diet (notably low-carb) and not gain weight - and that's what you seemed to be arguing against earlier.

I've got 3 years of carefully recorded data that demonstrates this is the case -- but I'm just one of a huge number of people who have proven this out over the years.

So I'm not clear what point you're trying to make.

You are not calculating the calories correctly then, either the input, output, or your metabolic factor.

low carb != zero carb

Zero carb (or if too reduced) is really not sustainable

And you're right, eating an apple is ok.

https://reddit.com/r/zerocarb - plenty of people sustaining zero carb for years.

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