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Comment by brianmwang | Hacker News Reader

It's ridiculous to claim that you can eat as much protein and fat as you desire and not gain weight.

Not really. Sure, if you're force-fed bacon and eggs, you might still gain weight, but the point is that fat uniquely "sates" us, and that they key word is "desire" -- you stop desiring more food.

In my experience, you can indeed eat as much protein and fat as you desire, and not gain weight, because you literally stop desiring to eat more, significantly before the point at which you would gain weight.

That's what's "special" about refined carbs -- you can keep wanting to eat slice after slice of pizza, day after day. Basically nobody can do that with fatty steak. Just try it, and you'll see what I mean.

What's your evidence for this? I've definitely lost weight going on a low carbohydrate diet, and I ate as much protein and fat as I wanted. (I tried to keep the fats mostly "good fats".) Maybe if you don't eat any carbohydrates, you just don't end up wanting to eat as much.

I agree that satiety from your macronutrient breakdown is a huge factor here. But some go so far as to claim you can eat FAR beyond your daily caloric burn in protein and fat and still lose weight. I have yet to meet anyone who can credibly back up that statement.

Part of the point here is that you don't know you daily caloric burn. It's not even possible to measure the calories in the food you eat precisely enough so that you could actually maintain weight homeostasis by literally counting calories. And if you get it wrong by even 20 calories a day? In 20 years you will gain over 40 pounds, by the calories in/calories out way of thinking. Clearly there must be some homeostatic mechanism controlling the weight in humans and other animals in the same way that homeostatic mechanisms control your body temperature. The Taubes argument in a nutshell is that excess carb consumption, especially fructose because of how it causes fatty liver issues, throws that homeostasis out of whack.

Make sure you're not simply stocking up on proteins. This can cause you to lose a lot of water, leading you to believe you're losing 'weight'. You might be, but in this case unfortunately, water != fat. Though if you're just 'eating as much [as you want]', you're probably fine.

Though, in all honesty, I don't care so much for special diets. Me, I prepare my own food and don't eat the refined crap, and I'm as healthy as a horse. My ancestors did not evolve to eat that crap.

I kept the weight off for quite some time, so I doubt it was all water. I also fit into my old jeans. My brother just lost about 75 pounds on a low carb diet. That is certainly not 75 pounds of water! I don't know if he also ate as much as he wanted, though.

I do have to say when I went on the low carb diet, it did make me very cranky for the first week or two.

Did you track caloric intake (accurately) on a daily basis? Do you have a base line estimate of how much you burn?

Eating as much as you want can be different things for different people. I know if you gave me a rib eye and eggs cooked in butter or eggs and bacon I could more than eat my fair share of calories burned for the day in that single sitting. No problem. I've done it, multiple times.

I found I got fatter on a too high fat diet. The amount of food, in quantity/volume, not calories, was less since fat has double the calories of carbs and proteins and I always could fit in more.

No I didn't track caloric intake. Why would I do that? One of the selling points of these low carb diets is that I wouldn't have to track such things -- that all I would have to do is not eat many carbs and that I would lose weight.

I'm certainly not claiming that this style of diet would work for everyone, but it certainly seems to work for many people. One thing I noticed is that when I wasn't eating carbs, that eating a rib eye with eggs and butter and bacon didn't seem nearly as appealing in large quantities as it otherwise would have. The diet did take away a lot of the pleasure of eating, which may be in part why it worked. I just ended up not being terribly excited by foods without carbs in them and consequently perhaps didn't over-eat. I would have killed for a saltine, though.

Another thing I noticed is that I wouldn't lose weight if I ate lots of nuts. It seems likely that the reason for this fact is that nuts are just too high in fat to eat in large quantities and continue to lose weight. But the diet warned against eating many nuts.

In any case, I think the point is not that you can eat any amount of fat and protein and lose weight, but rather than you can eat as much as you will end up wanting. (With the exception of nuts.) And that you won't end up feeling hungry.

It's ridiculous to claim that you can eat as much X as you desire and not gain weight, for most X except maybe celery.

The point is that protein and fat satisfy hunger in a way that our bodies have evolved to process. And the fact is, after eating a bit of protein and fat, you won't DESIRE to eat any more.

Seriously, read this book, it will change your life. http://www.amazon.ca/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307272702

Satiety is mainly due to dietary protein intake because of its glucagon activity.

I'm going to get downvoted, I can see it coming. However, it must be said, because I'm sick of seeing Taubes used as reference.

Taubes is a loon.

He picks out pieces of studies to back up his statements to sell more books and make more money on speeches. What he says is basically what people want to hear.

Just because Gary Taubes says it's true does not make it so. Has anyone gone and reviewed the studies in full that he has referenced? Does everyone just take his word for everything he says? There is a lot of love for Taubes on Hacker News. I expected people on here to be much more knowledgable about this topic, but I'm severely disappointed to find out that it seems the majority of Hacker News users fall into the typical American fad diet beliefs (previously, it was no fat and now it's no carbs). What's next?

People who believe Taubes usually fall into one of the following categories being thrown around the fitness community: Ketard, Carbphobe, Carb Taliban, to name some.

Even if that's true, the food industry does all kinds of lobbying and has ties with agricultural companies and has instilled upon us this conventional wisdom that whole grains are great for you and calories in = calories out with no distinction between types of calories.

Yeah, so two wrongs don't make a right, but I think he's justified that he feels like making extreme conclusions will make people question the conventional wisdom that has been steering us in the opposite (and in my opinion, wrong) direction.

Every study I have ever seen that put low carb diets head to head with other diets result in at worst, equivalent weight loss and usually more weight loss, with better other bioindicaters. Unfortunately many of these studies are brain dead in that they only weight body weight and not body composition, but given that other studies have shown that high protein diets lead to better muscle preservation, and a low-carb diet is generally higher protein than a low-calorie diet, I would bet money that even in studies where low-carb diets produce equivalent weight loss they have produced superior fat loss and superior muscle preservation.

I'm going to get downvoted, I can see it coming. However, it must be said, because I'm sick of seeing Taubes used as reference. Taubes is a loon.

Yeah, well name calling isn't a good argument so the down vote foresight was an easy one to call. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

At least Taubes uses a few scientific studies to back up his point. If you have better science to backup whatever your position is I would love to see them.

Do you think the two hundred and fifty MDs and PhDs that just this month signed[1] his petition[2] are also loons?

Or perhaps you think Walter Willett M.D., Ph.D., and David Ludwig M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard--two of the foremost nutrition authorities in the US--who agree with Taubes, are also loons?

Maybe you think all of these individuals simply don't bother to do due diligence on what they read? Or maybe you think they are suffering from insufficient intellect such that they're incapable of detecting your accusations of cherry-picking and snake oil?

I'm also a bit lost with your characterization of a low carb diet as a fad diet. Surely you understand that this is the diet our ancestors were exposed to during millions of years of hominid evolution?

[1] http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/response-to-nytimes-the-f... [2] http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/response-to-nytimes-the-f...

And?

Is that the claim being made here?

What's your point?

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