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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Data from almost all diet studies is self-reported (see comment by dkarl) and inherently unreliable, but it's the best we have. And his argument in this article isn't that carb cutting is the source of the weight loss, just that because we don't isolate the variables, we can't know for sure what the source is.

How did you lose that much weight over 13 months?

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> his argument ... we can't know for sure what the source is

This author's tone and content, in addition to other articles posted, leads me to believe he has a preconceived notion. The text is litered with example of this, like: “And if they’re trying to cut calories, they’ll be removing some number of total carbohydrates as well. And if these people lose fat on these diets, this is a very likely reason why.”

> How did you lose that much weight over 13 months?

Aggressively cut my calories and started going to the gym 5-7 nights a week. My exercise regimen focuses heavily on cardio, but I've gradually been increasing my resistance training. The bulk of the weight was lost in 6 months, about 40 lbs between Feb and July. The rest was a gradually lost before and after.

Most people find it very hard to cut significant amounts of calories and keep the number of calories lower over as long as 13 months.

Can you share what kinds of foods you cut out that were part of your aggressive calorie-cutting program?

How many calories of fat, protein, and carbs did you eat before and during your weight loss program?

I don't know. The only notable carb-cutting effort I took was removing most forms of soda from my diet. But obviously, this is not an isolated action as I've replaced it with water, tea, and coffee. All of those have substantially less calories.

They also have substantially fewer carbs--which is Taubes' point. By reducing your caloric intake you also reduced your carbohydrate intake, and so you don't know which was responsible for your weight loss.

That logic works both ways, though. If you cut soda to kill carbs, couldn't someone say, "Ahh, but you also cut calories! So it could have been that and not the carbs that did it!"

This is is what we call a non-argument. There is insufficient data to make a call either way. The author mentions this, but as I pointed out in other comments on this thread his agenda was clearly to push one hypothesis.

I still don't think that's the case. Ditching soda was one of the first things I did, and I only saw a bit of weight loss. It didn't really start until I started exercising. Which is far more plausible than some sort of miracle diet.

> There is insufficient data to make a call either way. The author mentions this, but as I pointed out in other comments on this thread his agenda was clearly to push one hypothesis.

I think that's actually Taube's main point - the data is insufficient, and the variables aren't being properly controlled. His suggestion that it was in fact the carb-cutting that was the most effective seemed secondary to me.

For the record, I lost 37 pounds in the span of roughly two months by cutting carbs. I ate more than 2000 calories per day (a fairly constant diet of bacon, eggs, cheese, steak, chicken, and broccoli), but kept my carb consumption under 40g of daily carbs for the entire two-month period, and still managed to lose what I consider to be a shocking amount of weight.

> Aggressively cut my calories and started going to the gym 5-7 nights a week... about 40 lbs between Feb and July

You consider this a success?

Considering the weight has not returned and I've drastically increased my physical fitness in the process, with an overall 100lbs over a longer term?

Yes. On a statistical and personal level, I am happy with my performance. I didn't think I had it in me, to be brutally honest.

And what was your starting weight? It's a lot more challenging to go from, say, 250 lbs. to 150 lbs. than it is from 350 lbs. to 250 lbs. (not that either is easy).

FWIW, I am down about 80 lbs. from my peak weight of 260+, but it took years, not months.

280 to 180. For the full 100 it might be closer to 14 months, I wasn't terribly careful with my recording at the beginning of my efforts.

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