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Comment by laichzeit0 | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. So this is another "diet" methodology focusing on fat people losing fat, but these same people are too lazy to calculate their energy requirements, energy input and energy output by counting calories and macronutrients?

I eat at 20% fat, 50% carb, 30% protein and I can gain weight, maintain or lose fat simply by adjusting my calories. It really is not rocket science. Self-discipline required, but if you lack that you have bigger problems.

TL;DR Overweight lazy people should eat less carbs and more meat if they can't be bothered to count calories

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I lost 10kg last year on a low-carb diet. The diet was "eat no more than two slices of bread's worth of carbs per day", and knowing what carbs are (including rice and sugar). There's very little management or tracking required, and certainly no need for a mental 'calorie dictionary'.

Counting calories is not as trivial as you make it sound, and I don't think it's warranted that you mock people as lazy for not doing so - especially when the other half of the equation is figuring out how much energy you actually use, which varies wildly with body type and lifestyle.

My main gripe is that low-carb dieting is being sold as a "one stop shop" for dieting. You'll notice how the undertone of the article is that it's more "healthy" and "lower risk" to eat low carb. This complete myth if you count your calories. It's the programming world equivalent of someone going "A call for Functional Programming" and then telling you how shit imperative languages are. If everyone just coded in Haskell the type system would take care of 90% of the bugs.

And no it's completely trivial to track your intake. You need at most a kitchen scale and an app on your phone. It probably takes me in total 5 minutes of my day to track everything. You greatly overestimate the difficulty.

Down 15kg since April, Keto.

I highly doubt that anyone doing Keto with a good amount of success is doing so without tracking macros.

It is ironic that you'd decry ignorance and oversimplification when in point of fact you are guilty of the same in doing so.

From the article itself:

"It included a racially diverse group of 150 men and women — a rarity in clinical nutrition studies — who were assigned to follow diets for one year that limited either the amount of carbs or fat that they could eat, _but not overall calories_." emphasis mine.

This particular study is touting the virtues of not tracking calories. It's basically what the entire article is about. Eating low carb without counting calories.

Do you work from home?

No I don't, but the only meal I eat at work is lunch and a few snacks, which I prepare the night before. I usually make lunch for the next 2 days to save time.

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