Hacker News Reader

Comment by kichuku | Hacker News Reader

I would like to share an anecdote. In March 2016, I was weighing 96 kilograms (211.64 pounds). I made just one change during that time which is to stop having anything with sugar. I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey. The rest of my diet remained the same and my activity level remained the same ( I work in IT as a network engineer in a desk job)

In October 2016, I was weighing 72 kilos (158.73 pounds). I am still maintaining that same weight between 70 to 72 kilos since then. Incase if it is relevant, I am a 29 year old guy with a height of 172 cm (5 feet 7 inches).

Along with that, I got several other benefits such as being more energetic, not feeling sleepy all the time, general improvement in mood etc.

All this just with stopping of sugar and nothing else changed.

I can share even more side benefits which I got, but it will seem more unbelievable because I have observed that the general population is still unaware of the extremely harmful effects of sugar.

EDIT: I had typed October 2017 when I had intended to type October 2016. It was just 7 months.

View on HN

Oddly enough, I can share an anecdote too. After a health scare, I decided to change my diet. I didn't think that I was self disciplined enough to count calories, so I arbitrarily eliminated certain things from my diet, most notably butter.

My exercise didn't change much: Cycling to work every day. I got a new bike, but it didn't make me go that much faster.

Within a few months, I went from 175 to 150 pounds (about 79 to 68 kg), and have kept it off.

Now, this goes against the current "ketogenic" hypothesis, and is actually kind of puzzling, but I realize that butter makes things tasty, and I was just eating a lot less food overall because it was less pleasant. So it probably was a reduction in carbs.

It took more than a year before I could enjoy a piece of toast without anything on it.

If butter is the only thing you removed from your diet, you must have been eating an incredible amount of it?!

There is _no_ amount of butter (or fat, in general) that you can eat that will make you gain weight, provided there is no sugar in your diet. You will physically not be able to eat more than your body can deal with, this is because fat, unlike sugar, triggers the i-am-full hormones which make food impossible to eat.

No, that is plain wrong. Calories count, no matter where they are from.

Ketogenic diets might increase your metabolism and reduce your appetite and hunger, which makes weight loss easier, but you'll still gain weight if you eat too many fat calories each day. Even if you cut out carbs entirely.

"Calories count, no matter where they are from."

This is the exact point the article is proving wrong.

It doesn't really prove it wrong. If you eat 3000 calories of butter every day, you're gonna get fat. In that sense, a calorie is a calorie.

"a calorie is a calorie"

This is the exact point the article is... arguing against in a very convincing fashion

No, the article is saying that people are getting obese and diabetic because of sugar.

Its further pointing out that there are calories ("sugars") which make it much easier to gain weight. I didn't disagree there either.

The article never claims that you can eat any amount of calories as long as you leave carbs from the table. And thats the only thing i pointed out. Because thats just plain wrong. If you eat too many calories, you will gain weight. And if you're predisposed to obesity, you will eat more calories when you're flavouring stuff with sugar. This will, as the author pointed out, cause you to get even more obese and eventually get diabetes.

You are getting lost in semantics, because if you are saying:

there are calories ("sugars") which make it much easier to gain weight.

Then a calorie isn't a calorie.

Calories are calories (it's literally a measure of energy!) The packages they come in will effect hormonal and psychological responses differently which may affect the amount you would take in if intake is left unmonitored. To that extent, it's wise to take in foods which don't nudge you towards over consuming, but if you can be disciplined and take in a quantity of energy less than you expend on a consistent basis, eating that intake as sugar rather than other macros isn't going to magically make you gain weight.

You are making the same semantic argument I was criticizing. In the context of this discussion we aren't talking about the literal measure of energy, but the package. I.e., is a quantity of sugar that has a calorie of energy the same to the body as a quantity of fat or fiber that contains a calorie of energy. That's what someone is claiming when they say a calorie is a calorie. And to that question, the evidence bears out that it the effects are not just psychological, and don't just affect desire to eat. If you took two twins, and fed one 2000 calories of cane sugar a day, and fed the other 2000 calories of raw broccoli, after a month, they wouldn't have the same weight.

Sure, it is a measure of energy, but it is not a measure of of how much energy we as humans will utilize from the food. Some calories are much more efferent for us to extract than others. Some can't be extracted at all.

Are you aware of how calories are measured? They essentially set the food on fire and count how long it takes to go out.

Does our body digest things by acting like a furnace? No. There are different ways to extract energy from food and our body does things that aren't accounted for by the nutrtional facts blurb on the box. In some cases the food will just go straight through you, such as when you eat loads of fat. All those "calories" don't necessarily translate into x pounds on your body in new fat.

>In that sense, a calorie is a calorie.

This has been thoroughly disproven for ages -- starting with the naive assumption that you can just eat X amounts of anything and it doesn't affect anything else in your health/apetite/metabolism.

I know we like to one up each other on HN, but you're just talking past the main point.

Calories matter. If you eat too many, you get fat. Some calories might be "better" than others, but they are a standard of unit of energy for a reason. A calorie is a calorie.

Would you like to try the butter diet? I can guarantee you you'll get fat.

>Calories matter. If you eat too many, you get fat. Some calories might be "better" than others, but they are a standard of unit of energy for a reason. A calorie is a calorie.

That's quite irrelevant though (besides tautological), as we don't just eat calories, we eat food that has calories and tons of other stuff in different arrangements.

A calorie being a calorie doesn't cover whether the food you got the calorie from makes you satiated, or conversely makes you eat more, or makes you feel more energetic, or makes you store it as fat, or brings hormonal changes, etc.

A "milligram is a milligram" too, a standard unit of weight, but 1mg of cyanide can kill a person, and 1mg of water won't do anything to them.

>Would you like to try the butter diet? I can guarantee you you'll get fat.

Again this presumes that people can just eat, regardless of what they eat -- and continue to eat it without that affecting anything else. I guarantee you if I ate just butter, I'd threw up after several hundred grams, and feel quite bad and stop the diet after some days.

We're not disagreeing, just talking about different things.

Surprisingly, you wouldn’t. I basically have been on your “butter diet” for over a year. I get about 80% of my calories from fat, much of it saturated. The rest is protein. I’ve lost about 50 pounds, normalized my blood pressure & cholesterol, and feel amazing.

How many calories were you eating pre and post diet?

2 sticks of butter is almost 1800 calories, that would be a weird diet with lots of hunger. There probably are a lot of sources of fat that work better than that.

To illustrate the point: dietary fiber, which contains a lot of calories, is not digestible. Eat as much as you can, but you will not get one calorie of energy from it. So just based on that, where calories come from matters.

There is a difference between fat metabolism and sugar metabolism. They use different metabolic pathways, in other words the process by which a fatty acid molecule becomes ATP (the ultimate source of cellular energy) is very different from how fructose (which has to first be converted to glucose in the liver) becomes ATP.

This is exactly what puzzles me. Increasing your metabolism should increase your body temperature, all other things being equal. I still suspect that sheer reduction of calories is the main driver of weight loss, and if anything, fine-tuning one's metabolism plays a minor role.

I'm just talking anecdotally here but yes, the body temperature does increase significantly. Keto wasn't for me, especially because of the increased food budget, but it sure did help with my chronically cold feet/hands.

But I'd still agree with your second assessment: the biggest contributor is the decreased hunger/appetite after the first few weeks.

No, butter makes the other stuff more delicious, making you eat just a little more each time.

Doesn't fat make food more satisfying, making you feel fulfilled sooner?

Needs a citation I guess.

https://www.ncbi.nqlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10435117

For most people high fiber foods are better.

It is a study of 14 people that self reported how hungry they were and how much they ate on their own. I don't think we can get to advice stating "most people" should do anything from that. It is an example of how bad science gets translated to bad advice and bad behavior. Not picking on you, you are responding rationally to a headline or blurb about the study. But it is a worthless study.

There are more studies. That was an example. Go look around for the others. Most importantly try it for yourself. It is pretty easy to figure out.

I don't know why @gras's comment in this thread is marked as dead, but I agree with them.

Reposting the question from the comment:

> Doesn't fat make food more satisfying, making you feel fulfilled sooner?

You can click the comment permalink (the age indicator) and on that page you have the option to vouch for the person /comment if it seems appropriate. I did so and they appear to be visible again. I've seen it take two vouch operations before though.

Ah, the vouch option seems to only be available on the comment permalink, and not on the general comments page. TIL, thanks!

I think this is important, and that the food industry has been progressively making food more and more yummy over the past few decades. So far I really don't have a good answer for how to reduce consumption without reducing pleasure, at least in the short term. Developing a taste for food that isn't designed to be addictive, probably requires a long term change of habits.

>So far I really don't have a good answer for how to reduce consumption without reducing pleasure

Salt.

Good one, with that comes increased water intake due to increased thirst, therefore quicker satiation due to being full quicker.

Restaurants like salt because customers won't order water (even though tap water is free here in NL it makes one look as too much of a cheapskate); they'll order a drink like wine which they can upsell and already has large profit margins.

Nephrologists won't be happy though (although it does generate them more customers, they probably got more than enough as it is).

My suggestion would be: less salt + umami + herbs.

Herbs is a bit vague, it really depends on the dish (and there's more than herbs; look at things like garlic, ginger, and turmeric you can buy these dried as well, in same tins or glasses as herbs are).

Personally, I'm a fan of the Italian spices as well as mixes like baharat and ras el hanout even though I don't have a background in any related culture (I'm Dutch).

You can achieve umami in various ways: yeast extract, Vetsin, E621, MSG, etc. In the end its all the same, but I put the one consumers fear the least first in the list wink

The reason why our satiety mechanisms don't work is because carbs upregulate insulin, which supresses leptin [1]. Leptin and ghrelin are the two main hunger hormones; leptin tells our brain we're full. The signal doesn't work too well in the presence of high insulin, and gets worse with insulin resistance, causing people to have a "second stomach" for sweet foods.

https://olumialife.com/knowledge/how-does-insulin-affect-lep...

I find a great substitute is olive oil where I'd use butter for non-cooking (eg. instead of butter on pasta or instead of butter on bread). It's not quite as tasty but still a huge improvement over dry, and it's healthier.

For cooking, I understand olive oil is unhealthy (I think you create carcinogens as a side-effect), as are many other oils, but that coconut oil doesn't do this because of its different melting temperature.

Ah, but coconut oil has other potential issues. I would not put it in the healthy category, despite its current popularity.

> For cooking, I understand olive oil is unhealthy (I think you create carcinogens as a side-effect), as are many other oils, but that coconut oil doesn't do this because of its different melting temperature.

I believe the situation with oil is a bit more complicated than that, and you're generally fine with olive oil unless you make it smoke, which is fairly non-trivial to do, despite its low smoking point. There seems to be some debate on the topic: http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/cooking-with-olive-oil-fa...

Coconut oil in particular actually has a low smoking point. If you want to be safe, you want Avocado oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point

I encourage you to try some top-shelf olive oil, if you haven't already -- I find that it blows butter out of the water in most cases.

I initially felt the same way as you wrt tastiness, but had a friend bring me back a tin of oil from Italy recently and whoooo boy it's just the most phenomenal thing. Add a bit of salt & pepper to a shallow bowl of oil for dipping bread.

Coconut oil is a (mostly) saturated fat; olive oil and sunflower seed oil are (mostly) unsaturated fat.

Olive oil with herbs is amazing. Give it a whirl.

As I mentioned above, removing butter also resulted in the elimination of other things from my diet.

Perhaps you removed bread?

Yes, that was probably a lot of it. I have no doubt that my caloric intake decreased more than just from butter, and next on the list would most likely be carbs. I started eating more of some other things such as lean meats and beans.

I tend to think good quality butter, especially grassfed & unpasteurised, is very healthy in moderate amounts (great vitamin K2 source).

Imagine somebody whose favourite snack is a nice slice of baguette with butter slathered on it.

By cutting butter, he's also effectively cut an unnecessary carb-heavy between-meal snack, since he doesn't want the baguette without the butter.

It sounds like they learned to enjoy the plain bagel.

I was just eating a lot less food overall because it was less pleasant. So it probably was a reduction in carbs.

It literally says in the text that he ate less overall.

> So it probably was a reduction in carbs

No, it was a reduction in calories, quite simply. If anything, butter is very heavy on fats and low on carbs...

> It took more than a year before I could enjoy a piece of toast without anything on it.

Sounds like in his particular case, reducing fat (butter) also reduced carbs (toast).

FYI: The butter in my fridge has 743kcal per 100g.

Could you share how much butter you bought per month and what the package size was?

I'd estimate that my family of four was going through a pound of butter a week. As I mentioned above, I doubt that butter alone was the cause, since the butter was always accompanied by something else.

My whole family has reduced our butter intake quite drastically, so I don't have a good estimate of how much I was personally consuming.

Before assigning top much blame on butter, remember that being on any diet, including e.g. taking only placebo diet pills, will lead to improvement. When you are on a diet you are on a diet you pay attention to what you are eating, and that helps in itself. This is probably why there are so many kinds of diet - most diets work.

If I have to choose between "don't eat artificially added sugar but don't feel like I'm eating less" and "don't eat butter, and by extension eat less because food tastes worse", I can tell you I'll choose the former in a heartbeat.

The new bike could've made your commute more efficient.

The main difference was more closely spaced gears (9 instead of 3) allowing me to find a better cadence at higher speeds. So I was going faster and working harder. No free lunch. But it wasn't enough to account for my weight loss. My commuting is only about 1600 miles per year.

Now I'm riding single speed, so who knows.

I remember reading a study that indicated that simple carbs combined with fat are worse than either fat or simple carbs alone. I can't find the study at the moment, but the gist of it was that a high fat, high sugar, meal will be metabolized differently than either in isolation and also that it triggers cravings for more fat and sugar.

So, a keto diet is fine. Eating bread every now and then is fine. But, something like a fast food meal consumed with a sugary soda may be particularly unhealthy and may cause you to eat more and crave more similar foods.

I don't know all the mechanisms at play, and I don't think even experts have a really good understanding of how our very complex digestive and metabolic systems (and the bacterial colonies that live in our guts) interact. It's clear that caloric reduction works for weight loss, even if you're eating mostly carbs or mostly fats. Some people report better management of cravings and hunger on different kinds of diets, and the research indicates that a low-fat or low-carb diet results in weight loss at about the same rate (contrary to popular belief about low-carb diets lately).

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/low-carb-v...

But, really, if you run a caloric deficit, you'll lose weight. Cutting arbitrary foods can do it for some folks. Some folks like keto or other relatively extreme restrictive diets. Some folks do intermittent fasting (I've been intermittent fasting for several months and have lost a little over 20 pounds). No matter how you do it, if you cut 500 calories off of your diet, you'll lose weight at a healthy clip.

I saw that study. I never saw if they kept the amount of protein people ate constant. Do you know? It seems mysteriously lacking the third macronutrient. And I can't tell from the article if there was a control "eat fat and carb" group.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dissociated+diet

I remember seing a book about that diet 20 years ago by a singer:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raffaella_Carr%C3%A0

No, that's definitely not related to what I'm talking about. I don't believe I've ever seen any good evidence related to the notion of "alkaline" and "acidic" foods. The top result for "dissociated diet" doesn't sound credible at all, to me. (Sure, it offers reasonable advice, like "eat lots of vegetables", but its reasoning is completely made up, as far as I can tell.)

And, the example meal plan on the same first result page is for a 1200 calorie diet! That's a massive caloric deficit for any adult; of course you'll lose weight if you follow it!

I was specifically talking about a study on sugar and fat and how they might trigger cravings and overconsumption, and possibly also cause metabolic effects that can cause weight gain and other problems, and not at all about alkaline/acidic food combining theories.

Sorry, IIRC it was called alimentación disociada in Spanish. I tried the probable translation, made a search and assumed the links were pointing to the same thing. I just browsed the book 20 years ago and it said nothing about ph, but about avoiding certain mixes of proteins, carbs and fats. The owner of the book said it had helped him a lot, but I didn't take much interest because that guy was not exactly thin and low-carb worked fine for me... actually it seemed like a softened keto diet, designed to make it a little funnier.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I've got several friends who believe in various forms of the pH diet. They also tend to be folks who believe in a lot of other woo, so I'm a bit trigger happy in shooting down pH-based diet theories (those diets are particularly ridiculous because they often categorize quite acidic foods into the alkaline category and vice versa). If there's ever been a good study about it, I'd certainly read it.

I think there's a lot of superstition in general, but one could certainly have independently noticed that eating sugar or fat alone (say butter or honey) is somewhat self-regulating. You get sick of it pretty quick. But, put them together in a pie or pastry or donut or something and suddenly it gets really easy to eat hundreds of calories worth of sugar and fat in a few quick bites.

Its part of the Fit for Life diet and that's debunked [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fit_for_Life#Controversy

I haven't seen a specific study but I have read assertions along the same lines: either low-fat or low-carb can work.

I believe the insulin-centric explanation (I'm a low carb eater and this is the perspective I tend to see) would be something like:

- Low carb and high fat: The fat goes to your fat cells (that is, whatever fat you don't burn for fuel immediately after eating), but since your insulin is low the fat is readily burned off relatively soon.

- Low fat and high carb: The carbs cause an insulin spike, and insulin inhibits fat burning, BUT since you haven't stuffed much fat into your fat cells, there isn't much to burn off when your insulin eventually comes back down. You need to be relatively insulin sensitive, so that your insulin level does come back down. Even if you're insulin resistant, this diet might still work if you eat only a tiny amount of fat.

- High fat and high carb: Fat goes to your fat cells and insulin levels are high, which inhibits fat burning, so you gain fat faster than you burn it.

(Edits: I thought Markdown lists would work but they didn't.)

"Low carb and high fat: The fat goes to your fat cells (that is, whatever fat you don't burn for fuel immediately after eating), but since your insulin is low the fat is readily burned off relatively soon."

- The fat you eat does not have to be stored as fat, the raised insulin levels are necessary for the body to store energy as fat.

"Low fat and high carb: The carbs cause an insulin spike, and insulin inhibits fat burning, BUT since you haven't stuffed much fat into your fat cells, there isn't much to burn off when your insulin eventually comes back down. You need to be relatively insulin sensitive, so that your insulin level does come back down. Even if you're insulin resistant, this diet might still work if you eat only a tiny amount of fat."

- Carbs can be converted to fat via lipogenesis.

And in fact they have to be converted to fat. There are only two other options:

stored in muscles as glycogen - however, the muscle stores can only store up to 1600 calories so they may be full. Also, once sugar gets into a muscle it can't get out - it can only be used by that particular muscle.

used by the brain - however the brain doesn't need more than 500 kcal per day. (and can live with as little as 120 kcal / 30g of glucose provided that the rest of the energy is supplied by ketones)

So... exercise doesn't help lose weight, but it sure helps prevent weight gain when eating carbs. With the amount of carbs we eat nowadays and the low amounts of physical activity, its no wonder at all we store a lot of fat.

I quit sugar over two years ago. It has had zero noticeable affect on my average weight. Dieting is the only way I've been able to keep my weight in check. Anecdotal evidence has little value.

I hear these anecdotes in many forms, and in my experience the real shared causative factor is making a decision to change, and acting on it. I don't know if it matters what that change is, as long as it's healthy and changes the math of caloriesin - caloriesout. In other words, I wonder if it's the decision and willingness to make hard changes, rather than the specific nature of those changes, which is the real active ingredient in weight loss; I suspect so.

Examples:

Started walking.

Started cycling.

Cut out processed foods.

Switched to a specific lifestyle diet.

Took up some kind of sport.

Cut out sugar/went Atkins/Keto/Paleo.

I don't think there's a wrong way to break a series of bad habits and build new ones, and I think the hardest part is deciding to do it, and sticking with it.

You're likely correct in most situations. Some people have major hormone imbalances that may prevent weight loss (or make it difficult), like the article suggests, but for most people it's as simple as eating healthier and exercising. It's not sexy, new, or fun, so people are always looking for the magic bullet.

I'm a sugar bug, I can buy a bag of Reese's and eat the entire thing without problem. When I eat more sugar, I gain weight, when I eat less, I lose weight, and exercise obviously has its natural results.

Here's an anecdote the other direction.

One of our employees decided to cut out fast food completely. Total weight loss in over 6 months of doing this? 0 pounds.

Why? Because his at-home diet was still full of sugar and carbs (and he admitted as much..."I'll never give up bread!")

Meanwhile, I did a low-carb "lazy Keto" diet where all I did was keep carbs under 20g net per day. I continued to eat fast food at least a couple times a week (I ate a lot of burgers with no buns.)

Total weight loss? 25 pounds over 8 months, and have kept it off. I started the diet December 1 of last year, so it's now been almost a year.

It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in, no matter how organic or home-cooked/homemade those carbs may be.

low-carb "lazy Keto" diet where all I did was keep carbs under 20g net per day

Looks like a strict keto to me, anything under 30g net carbs per day will put you into ketosis.

Another anecdote: I'm in the "I'll never give up bread!" camp; I have never been on any kind of specialized diet, and I have never been obese. At one point I wanted to lose 10 LB, and I just counted calories, and it worked, albeit slowly.

Given that bread is a fairly old food, while the obesity problem seems recent, something seems off with the idea that we should all be on a keto diet.

I think sugar is really what pushes societies from healthy and slightly stout to obese and diabetic, since those diseases are issues of insulin resistance. If you eat too much sugar, your insulin resistance will go through the roof because excess fructose (which makes up ~50% of sugar) leads to a fatty liver, which leads to insulin resistance. The liver is the only organ that can process fructose. Bread, on the other hand, will get metabolized into glucose (oversimplifying a bit here) and every muscle in your body can use glucose for energy, so it's a lot more evenly distributed.

If you're in the "I'll never give up bread!" camp, I would encourage you to try and find sugar-free bread. I tried doing that, and let me tell you, it is extremely difficult. Even your healthy looking whole grain, multi-seed, organic superfood bread usually has a ton of sugar. But it can be done :)

The million dollar question is: "Did you (w/your N=1) try the exact same calories as your keto diet, but then with more carbs?" No, you did not, and because it is hard to eat foods which adhere to the keto formula you lose weight on a keto diet.

What people also fail to mention with their anecdotal evidence is their age and gender. It is relevant because young bodies and brains are still growing, increasing calorie demand compared to a middle age adult.

> It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in, no matter how organic or home-cooked/homemade those carbs may be.

It really is the calories that do you in, no matter what type of calories or how you restrict yourself otherwise. All the diets are just some kind of abacadabra (or facade or placebo effect if you will) to make you focused on your calories intake, for example with specific rules about having to avoid certain products or ingredients which make it difficult to follow so that e.g. the subject cannot snack in between meals.

If you take in a lot less calories than the amount you require, you'll burn fat quicker. You'll lose weight quicker as well (although if you also start exercise, muscles weight more than fat). A lot more calories leads to building up fat quicker and gaining weight quicker. Both, eventually, until you are on the level of your calorie intake.

It furthermore also stands to reason that something with sugar is more difficult to limit than keto products because the former is more tastier. From an evolutionary PoV it makes sense because the sugar from fruits was a quick way to give us energy.

Furthermore, you should ask yourself whether the ingredients of the high carb food are needed. You'll find that you don't need them in the first place, possibly not in the amounts you eat them, but if you eat one cookie with the coffee in the evening that doesn't suddenly "ruin your health" because it is high on sugar. It doesn't "ruin your diet" either. The problem is that people cannot stick with one cookie in the evening with coffee. They snack far more, between meals. Yeah that adds up. Look on the packages and do the maths.

All the bad stuff is on the packages as well, very convenient: saturated fat, sugar, and salt. What a coincidence that our governments demand this being listed!

Carbs increase insulin. Insulin increases the level of lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in your body. LPL dictates how much energy you store as white fat. No carbs --> low insulin --> low LPL.

So FWIW @ericabiz is correct "It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in".

You also responded to @kichuku regarding sugar being sugar:

> The natural in sugar is irrelevant. Sugar is sugar; as in fructose is fructose, and glucose is glucose.

Not exactly. Fructose doesn't initiate an insulin response in the body... so it doesn't increase LPL... there are other problems with fructose but the 'natural' in the sugar shouldn't be dismissed.

> So FWIW @ericabiz is correct "It really is the carbs and sugar that do you in".

Its not. The people who are obese mostly [1] consume too much, and often carbs are the culprit. If they reduce their calorie intake, they lose weight. It doesn't matter if they use a keto pseusoscience with that, go to a dietist to follow a raw food pseudoscience diet, or diet solo without a dietist limiting caloric intake on sheer willpower (a proven method based on decades of science). Even people who don't get into a "state of ketosis" because they diet on raw food or willpower lose weight. The thing they all have in common is: limiting the caloric intake.

[1] "Mostly" as there are some diseases which are exceptions, an example could be thyroid problems. I'm not gonna comment on this, not familiar with all the English terms on the exceptions.

> Not exactly. Fructose doesn't initiate an insulin response in the body... there are other problems with fructose but the 'natural' in the sugar is important.

Cane and beets are natural sugar as well. All sugar is natural, except artificial sugar, but then we call it artificial sugar. The term sugar doesn't tell us which sugar (e.g. glucose or fructose or lactose) but neither does the term natural sugar.

Its akin to denoting to stating "[..] fruit apple [..]". An apple is always a fruit. There is no need to underline that.

"keto pseudoscience" is loaded phrasing for a mechanism that has been understood and uncontroversial for 200 years.

If you are unfamiliar... the core insight is that obesity is an endocrine disorder; your hormones — not your caloric intake nor the amount you exercise — is the primary reason you gain or lose fat.

Here is a short explanation as to why this is:

* [enzymes] whether you store fat or not is determined by enzymes — specifically hormone sensitive lipase (HSL) and lipoprotein lipase (LPL)

* [hormones] production and inhibition of those enzymes is controlled by your hormones — including insulin, adrenaline, cortisol, estrogen and others.

* [diet] the easiest way to control your insulin levels is to keep your blood sugar low; the easiest way to control blood sugar is to eliminate carbs from your diet.

As I mentioned above... this can be simplified as...

No carbs —> suppressed insulin —> maximum HSL production.

'limiting the caloric intake' -- as you suggest -- is a blind alley when discussing this mechanism. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to lose weight. Your body won't draw on your fat reserves if it doesn't have to. i.e. it will happily extract the energy it needs from your gut all day long, provided your gut is full. That means you are partially correct; if LPL is low and if you are in a deficit then the body will draw down on your reserves and you will lose weight. But the opposite isn't true. If LPL is high, irrespective of your deficit or your willpower, then you won't lose weight. Conversely 'eating too much' isn't a diabetes risk... provided your hormones are in order.

If you have any sources that contradict the endocrine hypothesis, I would be keen to see them.

> "keto pseudoscience" is loaded phrasing for a mechanism that has been understood and uncontroversial for 200 years.

Certainly not 200 years, and also certainly not "understood and uncontroversial". Atkins/keto goes against the conventional science of dieting from the 20th and 21st century because it doesn't follow the caloric intake affecting weight loss premise (though it can have that effect, like almost every diets can). It goes against the convention that saturated fats are unhealthy, and should be severely limited. Finally, we should remember that transfats were only in recent decades found unhealthy, mostly due to research in 00s by M. Katan. Your Atkins diet during its hype in 70s didn't exclude transfats.

> not your caloric intake nor the amount you exercise

I didn't claim the amount one exercises significantly matters in weight loss. In fact, I wrote throughout the thread that muscles increase weight.

However, having more slightly more muscles than the default 9 to 5 job (lack of muscles) helps with doing tasks like grabbing your bicycle to do a grocery, assembling an Ikea wardrobe, carry your toddler around, that type of activity. Being fit allows endurance. Both are arguably useful motivators.

The Atkins hype is recent (and the keto hype is more recent), not 200 years old. Its also not established by our governments (the equivalents of NHS, Voedingscentrum, etc).

Voedingscentrum has this to say in summary: "Het Atkins-dieet levert gewichtsverlies op, omdat de voeding in totaal minder calorieën bevat. Uiteindelijk gaat het erom de gezondheidswinst die dit oplevert vast te houden met een gezond, gevarieerd en volwaardig eetpatroon.

Diabetes-patiënten en mensen met een gestoorde nierfunctie kunnen dit dieet beter alleen volgen in overleg met hun arts en onder begeleiding van een diëtist." [1]

Which boils down to: "The Atkins diet achieves weight loss because the diet contains a total of less calories. Ultimately, it is about retaining the health gain that results in a healthy, varied and full-bodied eating pattern.

Diabetes patients and people with impaired renal function are better off only following this diet in consultation with their physician and under the guidance of a dietitian."

Compared with various other diets they're not even that negative about Atkins. Many alternatives are worse established.

If you got any sources where government organizations like the ones I mentioned recommended 200 years ago the Atkins or keto diet I'd love to read about that. Or perhaps sources where they actively recommend it to this day, including the theory behind it. Any government health service sources supporting it, also welcome. The burden of proof lies at you.

And of course there are tons upon tons of articles which suggest Atkins/keto don't work, complete with test subjects losing weight at start, finding diet not practical, and a yo-yo effect. Here's a quote from one of the many [2]: "[...] These observations led Sacks et al. to conclude that behavioral factors rather than macronutrient composition are the main influences on weight loss [...]" Recommend reading entire article.

[1] http://www.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/verzadigd-vet.asp...

[2] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe0810291

Small point first… eating the same amount but exercising more equals a caloric deficit in the same way that exercising the same amount but eating less does. I am not following your point about muscles specifically but I think we can let that go provided you agree that being in a caloric deficit needn’t mean you eat fewer calories. That is all I was trying to say regarding exercise.

Second point… confusion is not the same as controversy. Even though people might be confused how the mechanisms and pathways work doesn’t mean they are controversial. Hormones dictate weight gain and weight loss. See pregnancy or puberty or menopause. (You even mentioned Thyroidism.) It’s not controversial. Calling it pseudoscience seems over the top. See the green house effect (first argued in 1824) for an analog.

Third point… my claims pertain to the biology not to the marketing behind certain diets. I don’t believe that the atkins diet is ketogenic… nor do I think the Voedingscentrum is correct in saying the diet has a ‘varied and full-bodied eating pattern’, but I also don’t care. As you say… it is hype. But if your counter-examples have no explanatory power, then they are just as worthless. More on this below. In the very least don’t equate the hormone hypothesis with an endorsement for Atkins.

Fourth point… I concede that my rhetoric is not iron clad. Since science is a process and certainty is always a question… it is hard to ever win an argument about this stuff… as Katan points out doing double-blind studies is near impossible so that makes claims in nutrition science doubly fraught. Having admitted that… I stand by my statement that the hormone hypothesis is not controversial. Yes the lipid hypothesis had sway in American culture in the mid 20th century but evidence to back it up was never produced. If any controversy existed, I would say it lay with the lipid hypothesis not with the endocrine one.

As to the bonfides for sugar induced obesity I would point to Jean Anthelme Brilliat-Savarin (writing in 1825), Alfred Moore (writing in 1860), John Harvey (writing in 1861) , and William Banting (1863). Their accounts were accepted by medical schools in the US and the UK, with varied levels of understanding, through to the 20th century… where Thomas Cleave and John Yudkin were their antecedents. Does that make my 200 year claim iron clad? Not really but I think it is good enough for arguments sake.

Last point… you haven’t made a case for an alternative to the hormone hypothesis. The links you included don’t do it. Your examples don’t do it. The Katan article doesn’t say that low carb doesn’t work… let alone provide an alternative mechanism for losing weight. As I wrote above… caloric reduction is a associated with instances of losing weight… but it doesnt CAUSE you to lose weight. Hormones do.

I'm 17x cm and weigh 7x kg. I run (mostly 10K, completed a half-marathon recently) and lift weights semi-regularly. I have a relatively low sugar intake. I don't feel energetic at all. I get home from work and more or less lay down until I fall asleep. Gabriel Iglesias seems to be way more energetic than me.

Jaggery seems to be 50% sucrose, and honey is mostly glucose and fructose. Shouldn't it have the same effect on blood sugar levels?

Had the same, was diagnosed with sleep apnea.

> I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey.

...which are also 80+% sugar.

Honey has a lower glycemic index/insulin response than sucrose.

It's a bit better than sugar, yes, and I suppose you would tend to eat less honey than sugar.

Jaggery though... I can't imagine it has a GI much different from sugar?

I think it's not just about GI, jaggery would have more GI, I am not sure, but you could think of another angle - jaggery is unrefined sugar retaining the dietary fibre - that could result in a lower GI also some other benefits which we might be still discovering.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730183

but it occupies liver with processing fructose which iirc is disruptive to ketone production and does maintain a level of blood sugar that prevents body from entering ketosis.

If you’re purposefully consuming normal levels of carbohydrates you’re not going to be in ketosis anyways. Unless you’re maintaining a ketogenic diet there’s no reason to worry about your glycosis/ketosis state after a meal. A teaspoon of honey isn’t going to ruin your body. Likewise, if you’re over indulging it doesn’t matter much if it’s “better” sugar or “worse” sugar. I’m willing to bet the poster isn’t drinking a honey sweetened soda.

Therefore you cannot look at each component in isolation.

More anecdata:

* I did the same at the beginning of the summer, cutting out most processed sugar (glucose) and corn syrup while increasing fruit intake (but not by much).

* I also starting skipping meals/moving meal times around, and eating less at dinner, but otherwise did not change the things that I ate.

* I am exercising a lot less than before, owing to a foot injury in the middle of the summer.

I've dropped nearly 20 pounds, from a starting point of just above 200 pounds to between 182 and 185 (varies by day). I think a decline in daily caloric intake owing to fewer sugary foods and smaller meal portions can explain the weight loss. I hope I can keep it up, because I do like sugar and because we have kids there is a lot around the house.

I mentioned this to a relative who is a GI doctor and researcher and he says it's easier for men to lose weight than women through diet.

Exercising less can also make you loose weight. Muscles are heavier than fat, if you loose them you'll get lighter.

Consider maybe cutting out your kids' sugar as well. No need for them to be eating all those sugary foods if you've found it to be unhealthy (and it is).

Can confirm a very similar experience: a drop of 12kg from 86 to 74. No change in physical activity. Also work in IT. Only dietary difference is cutting out all sugar and as many carbs as I can.

I cut thirty pounds in four weeks (yes, thirty pounds in four weeks, the first twenty of which were gone in two) by making no change in my behavior or diet other than cutting out the sugar I was putting in my coffee. I drink coffee all day long as a programmer, and used quite a ton of sugar. Double or triple what you're thinking. Anyway, the only change I made was cutting out that sugar, and I dropped thirty pounds in four weeks.

Good for you! You should know, though, that this is primarily water weight lost, and it's common when first starting a diet. 30lbs of fat lost would be a caloric deficit of around 100k calories. Don't get discouraged if you can't replicate that result with further time. What's the change in your waist size been like?

Well, I didn't start a diet. All I did was cut sugar. I did and still do run a couple of miles and lift weights a few times per week, and ate the same meals every day (because I buy in bulk and prepare them ahead of time). I track all my food and water intake and exercise activity with my Fitbit (unintentional plug). It was an environment with tightly controlled variables. Nothing in my routine changed except the subtraction of sugar from the coffee I was drinking.

> I continued to take other natural sweeteners like jaggery and honey.

The natural in sugar is irrelevant. Sugar is sugar; as in fructose is fructose, and glucose is glucose.

Can you elaborate how much sugar you consumed on a daily basis?

You say you cut out sugars, but then mentioned using honey as a sweeter which is nearly 100% sugar and 40% fructose.

I assume you mean you cut out white sugar? Sucrose?

I lost ~10Kg and all of my belly fat after cutting off cakes and cookies (the only sugary things left in my diet). I still eat plenty of carbs though (bread/pasta/semolina/müesli/fruits and sometimes honey). I've stabilized at a weight slightly below the one I had when I was 18.

It freaked me out initially, I didn't expect such a large (or any) drop.

That's a remarkable effect. How much sugar were you consuming before you altered your diet? What were the main sources of sugar in your diet?

Honey is made of sugar...

Are you referring to 'sugar' or carbs?

In other words you eliminated a significant portion of your daily calories, resulting in a net loss of calories per day.

Had you been overeating something other than sugar (eg fried food) and eliminated that instead the outcome would have been the same.

Your comment directly contradicts everything claimed in the article. Specifically, it makes the case that all calories are not created equal, and sugar in particular heavily impacts metabolism and fat accumulation.

Whether this is true is up for debate, but you haven't brought any evidence to the table.

You must mean "stop having anything with added sugar" because humans need sugars to survive, nearly all food has natural sugars in it, and if you ate 0 grams of sugar for more than a couple of weeks you would die.

I'm being a bit pedantic because it's important to understand that moderation is the key, not trying to completely eliminate one family of molecules from your diet.

if you ate 0 grams of sugar for more than a couple of weeks you would die

No you absolutely would not. Your body can synthesize glucose from protein and fat, you can survive indefinitely on zero sugar. This is called ketogenic diet.

Considering that many essential nutrients are provided by plants which also provide sugars, you'd have to eat synthetic 'food' in order to avoid all sugars.

I guess technically you are right, even meat has some carbs in it because muscles hold some glycogen.

The closest thing I can quote is the experiment that Vilhjalmur_Stefansson and Karsten Anderson took part in, eating only meat for a few years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carb...

http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com.cy/2009/09/two-brave-m...

In the end, the one-year project stretched to four years, during which time the two men ate only the meat they could kill and the fish they could catch in the Canadian Arctic. Neither of the two men suffered any adverse after-effects from their four-year experiment. It was evident to Stefansson, as it had been to William Banting, that the body could function perfectly well, remain healthy, vigorous and slender if it used a diet in which as much food was eaten as the body required, only carbohydrate was restricted and the total number of calories was ignored.

> I guess technically you are right, even meat has some carbs in it because muscles hold some glycogen

Near-zero because muscle glycogen is used up upon death in a process called "rigor mortis" (not the case for liver glycogen however AFAIK). The fatty marbling luckily remains.

> Considering that many essential nutrients are provided by plants

None that I can think of that are proven "essential" in the absence of all carbs. "Phytonutrients" aren't proven essential. Vitamin C ("ascorbic acid") is 100% inessential & optional in the presence of plenty of the (actually essential) ascorbic molecules that are all furnished by fresh meat, including carnitine, creatine etc.

For homo sapiens, there is no essential carbohydrate and no essential plant food. Something to chew on!

Late edit: of course none of this disputes or negates "that many essential nutrients are provided by plants" --- many indeed are. Just none that are essential that aren't furnished in sufficient amounts in a sizable helping of fresh-fatty-mammal-meat =) but the parent didn't even say "only by plants" so not sure why I reacted as if he did

IIRC both combat divers and people with certain kinds of epilepsy benefit from carb free diets as it reduces risk of passing out (for combat divers with rebreathers) and epileptic attacks (for epileptics).

What do you think a 'carb free' diet excludes? What does it include? I'm asking, because I'm genuinely confused by the fact that all plant (veggies, fruits, seeds/grains, all of it) matter contains sugars. Do a lot of folks really sustain themselves on meat alone? Hell, not even my 100lb german shepherd can live on only meat (IIRC carnivores frequently eat stomach contents of herbivores they kill/find to get nutrients [hint: it would include sugars])

A carb-free diet eliminates plant sugars as well, yes. Many survive & thrive on meat alone.

I am vegetarian on a very low carb diet. No fruit, no high starch vegetables. It is possible to eat zero added sugar and almost zero natural sugar. As mentioned above your body can synthesize glucose from protein, to the extent that on a keto diet you must be sure not to consume too much protein, lest your body convert it to glucose.

"if you ate 0 grams of sugar for more than a couple of weeks you would die"

This is completely false. Indeed, depending on your body composition, you can do a water fast for two weeks and be completely fine. I've done it, I know.

Getting this stuff right can change lives; please think twice about engaging in uninformed pedantry and FUD.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com