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Comment by pajaroide | Hacker News Reader

Lately I've been on a diet of vegetable fats and proteins, almost no carbs (only fiber). Lots of avocados and seeds (chia, flaxseed, sunflower, sesame) which have approximately 50% fat content 45% protein 5% fiber. I lost body fat while eating as much as I wanted of that, along with yoghurt, eggs, cheese and veggies, the only thing off the table is bread, although I eat some once in a while.

People eat too many carbs in their daily life and don't even notice and they carry lots of long term health risks.

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The macronutrient content of your diet has nothing to do with how much you gain/lose. The only way you are losing weight is that you are in a caloric deficit. Whether that's from increased activity, decreased energy intake, or a combination of these, there is no other way (besides liposuction).

The low-carb thing is just a trick to get you to eat fewer calories. Not to say it's not valuable - whatever works for you - but low-carb is much more about limiting calories through food avoidance than anything about carbs.

Although you did say "lately", and moving to low-carb will lead to a lot of initial weight loss. But this is due to water-loss as your glycogen stores are depleted (every gram of stored carb energy gets stored with 3-4 grams of water). Again, do whatever works for you, but it grinds my gears to see all this unfounded carb-hate these days.

The thing with carbs is that they don't really satiate you as much as fat and protein does. You'll stabilize on a much lower weight if you (partially) remove bread, pasta, rice etc. from your diet. It requires so much less willpower to lose weight without them.

But carbs are also less fattening than fat (on active individuals who constantly deplete glycogen stores, if you sit at work all day chances are you won't need many) when overfeeding.

Agreed. But it's not the carbs themselves, it's the calories in the carbs, and the fact that most of the snacks we eat are carbs. Avoid carbs and you avoid most snacks, which makes it easier to maintain a caloric deficit.

It was the same rational in the 1980s, but FAT was the villain then. Avoid fat and you avoid loads of calories (9kcal/g v.s 4kcal/g for carbs) which makes it easier to lose weight. But low-fat or low-carb is irrelevant if you're eating a surplus of energy, it's just going to make fat from that surplus irregardless of the macro proportions.

Or perhaps it is the insulin resistance you get from eating too many carbs.

What if the macronutrient content of your diet affects your metabolic rate? I mean I see the value of the "bucket with a hole in it" model of human weightloss but the body is a complex biological machine full of feedback mechanisms so maybe that model isn't always sufficient.

Macros do not significantly affect metabolic rate. Exercise does though.

Glycogen (carbs) is the preferred fuel for almost every cell in our bodies. All the fat & protein we eat that ends up used as metabolic fuel will first be converted into carbs. Now granted the thermal effect of these macros are different (it takes more energy to turn protein into fuel than it does to convert table sugar) but the idea that "you need to eat fat to burn fat" is a myth.

Many people think that ketones are the preferred fuel for every cell in our bodies.

everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but not their own facts. Glycogen is the preferred fuel, which are giant chains of glucose (carb) molecules. I've done keto, and you have to be very careful as even a small amount of carbs will quickly shift the body out of ketosis and back into using glycogen. Doesn't the fact that ketosis is so fragile indicate to you that it's not the preferred state? Homeostasis reigns, and the body gets away from ketosis whenever it can. It's an extreme state.

Do they? Everything I've read about keto diet is that it will make you less "short-term energized" - you're lacking glycogen, i.e. you won't be able to sprint as much.

If we are talking about control over body fat, it's not so much about metabolic rate, as about mobility of the stored fat. If your adipose fat does not respond to reasonable caloric restrictions, you're simply going to have a hard time.

It is not actually hard to burn mobilized fat. Each one of us burns a whole lot of dietary fat in a given year: a lot more than what we have stored in our bodies. Why is it that we can burn through all that dietary fat, far in excess of how much body fat we can burn in the same period? Because that fat it is mobile: it is circulating in the body in a form that is ready for use.

Thermodynamics provides us with a summary of what is going on, which doesn't reliably translate to a method. If we measure the total energy output of the body while and monitor the energy input, then the body mass and composition changes will be reliably related to those variables.

Not all body composition changes are favorable, though.

If you could simply cut 500 calories a day, and reliably have the deficit made up by burning body fat, it would be laughably easy for anyone to achieve a vanishingly low body fat level.

High fat/moderate protein/low carb (so not exactly the 50/45/5 ratio of the post you replied to) can affect insulin resistance. Are you implying that insulin resistance has no affect on weight gain/loss?

being fat/obese and/or sedentary is a major contributor to insulin resistance. Your protein/fat/carb intake is not a significant contributor at all outside how much of them you're eating is keeping you fat/obese. Calories > Macros

Dr. Attia, someone who exercises regularly, increased his insulin sensitivity 4x with just his macros. It would seem macros have to mean 'something'

Wow, I just disagree with everything you're posting on this thread. You're certainly entitled to your opinions, but be aware that people who do keto think you are just so wrong.

I've lost 33 pounds since May eating LCHF. I just eat until I'm full, and I feel much better. So really all I've changed are my macros.

Macros > Calories.

You should read a Gary Taubes book, and see what you think.

I disagree with what jp555 just said as well (from what I've read, I think that high-GI foods do negatively impact insulin resistance), but I think you don't quite understand his other comments. The point is, because you changed the macros, you're feeling full much sooner (because fat makes you more "full" faster than sugars), which causes you to eat less calories, which causes you to lose weight. Calories > Macros in that sense.

FYI beef spikes insulin higher than rice does. Insulin is released when we eat any food, both stopping the mobilization of fat and driving this food energy into cells to power metabolism. This is analogous to not drawing money out of your savings when you have cash in your hand.

As far as the spiking of insulin, it's just proportional to the rate in which food-energy enters the blood stream. It's not itself bad, and only when it does not work like this do we identify it as a problem (eg. diabetes). But there's this pervasive misunderstanding that spiking insulin is what causes insulin resistance. It's not from the insulin directly, it's from the chronic overfeeding (or other health problems) that's causing the insulin to stay high and drive the resistance adaptation. It's similar to the cholesterol myths. High cholesterol can be a signal that your immune system is dealing with inflammation; but it's that inflammation that is the problem, not the cholesterol.

My point was that the idea that carbs are somehow worse is fallacious. Chronically eating too much can contribute to insulin insensitivity; what you eat is much less important than how much you eat.

If you really want to keep insulin low and maximize fat mobility, nothing beats not eating anything at all. Light exercise like walking in a fasted state (more intense exercise shifts metabolism away from fat and back to fast-energy carbs) is a very effective tactic to target fat loss. But of course this needs to happen in the context of appropriate daily caloric intake. Never subjugate fundamental principles to minor details.

Caloric deficit determines how much weight you gain or lose, but the macros determine how much fat is stored.

I've gained a ton of lean muscle mass while lowering body fat, solely by eating high protein/fat diet.

That's not how it works, according to all the biochemistry text book I've read.

If protein is the blocks for building muscle, carbs are the mortar. You are not gaining loads of muscle without carbs. You just waste a lot of money on protein the body then has to (very inefficiently) convert into carbs. Even if you're young and less than advanced strength, you can only naturally grow 1-2 pounds of muscle tissue a month doing everything perfectly, no matter how much protein you eat.

Great to hear you're getting strong, but I think you'd feel pretty silly if you knew how much more effective you would have been if you ate carbs. You would have grown faster, and not had any more risk of getting fat.

Here's a quick run down of how it really works: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/how-we-get-fat.htm...

"People eat too many carbs in their daily life and don't even notice and they carry lots of long term health risks."

Stop spreading this. There are people eating +400g of carbs a day while being exceptionally healthy.

ketogenic diets have loads of health benefits (reduction of insulin sensitivity, reduced incidences of epileptic seizures, etc). I am unaware of studies that point to benefits of high carb diets.

You will need to provide source for the "People eat too many carbs in their daily life and don't even notice and they carry lots of long term health risks".

And preferentially one that also compares with asian diets since they have with lots of carbs.

Asians have a very high carb tolerance from having lived with a high-carb diet for thousands of years. Comparing your diet to an asian's is definitely not a good way to determine whether it will be healthy for you.

Got research sources? Sounds like the kind of thing someone makes up.

Can you give a link for a research showing that ?

You must think caucasians were feeding on meat every single day or something.

I remeber reading somewhere that the Asian biome has a composition that helps with the amount of rice indested.

"I lost body fat while eating as much as I wanted of that..." you clearly seem to know what you are talking about...

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