Hacker News Reader

Comment by suddenclarity | Hacker News Reader

It has been the main view since at least the 80s but then we got a low carb high fat movement around 00s-10s that argued that carbs are a poison. Partly because if you stopped eating carbs, then you basically couldn't eat high caloric fast food.

So although common within the science community, many in the general population still have a negative view on carbs. I assume this article is aimed towards those.

View on HN

Your “partly because” is way too dismissive. Low carb diets work because they radically change your perception of satiation.

This article is aimed towards people building muscle which is very obviously very hard to do with a low carb diet, and is not actually descriptive of most people doing low carb diets (who are generally on such a diet to lose weight).

I've tried to do heavy workouts on low-carb. Like you said, it's very effective for weight-loss. But there were a lot of thousand-yard-stares I gave, trying to get the motivation to pick up the heavy weights.

It takes your body around six months to adapt to a ketogenic lifestyle. Your mitochondria have to breed new generations that activate the genes they have for optimally utilizing ketones as fuel. One of the weird side effects of this is building muscle rapidly and the other is muscle fatigue and DOMS nearly disappear completely, enabling you to push yourself much further. Dr. Shawn Baker (a beast of a man and heavy lifter) lives a zero carb lifestyle and holds multiple world records in rowing despite being in his 50s. A personal anecdote I have is that I moved houses a couple weeks ago. After spending an entire day lifting and carrying heavy things I was convinced I would be unable to move from the pain in the morning. (I'm in my 40s.) But after spending a year on a no-carb diet I had a little soreness the next day and then was fine the day after that. I've gotten noticably larger instead of noticeable sorer.

You really do have to reel in your expectations for those first six months but after that your gains take off like a rocketship.

Perhaps IIFYM just doesn't sell as many books.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com