As mentioned in my previous post, it seems counter-intuitive as to why a calorie unlimited, carb-restricted diet could produce more weight loss than a low-fat low calorie diet.

Two scenarios could potentially explain this paradoxical phenomenon, both of which seem to shed positive light on carbohydrate-restricted diets.It is possible that the simple act of eating high-protein, high-fat foods causes people to spontaneously eat less total calories. It has been tested and proven many times, that subjects who eat a high-protein meal report being more satisfied and often eat less in the following meal (see satiety). With this explanation, it seems that the regulation of calorie intake does not happen consciously, but rather at the cellular level, sending signals perceived consciously as fullness.
Another explanation, championed by many low-carb enthusiasts, is that carbohydrates, especially refined ones, cause weight gain via their stimulatory effects on insulin, the main hormone required for fat storage. Our fat tissue is regulated by multiple hormones circulating in our blood streams, but the most powerful regulator is insulin. The regulation is quite simple: when insulin is high, the body switches to storage mode, and excess calories are stored in your fat cells; when it is low, energy from your fat cells can be mobilized and used as energy throughout the body. 

Many foods spike insulin to varying degrees, but breads, pastas, sugars and refined flours are particularly potent. The USDA-promoted diet, consisting of 65% of one's daily calories  deriving from carbohydrates, stimulates net insulin secretion to a greater degree than a low carbohydrate diet. As the theory goes,  this excess insulin release may be chronically directing more calories into your fat cells as opposed to your body to be burnt for fuel. This, in turn, will cause the person to remain hungry since a certain amount of necessary energy did not reach the cells but rather was stored away as fat, perpetuating a vicious cycle of hunger co-existing with adipose tissue growth.

This hypothesis implies that calories are secondary in relation to how many carbs you eat. Many of the studies listed below which measured calorie intake seem to support this theory, since the subjects consuming the carbohydrate-restricted diet did not report eating less calories, and often lost more weight. However this is still unclear.

The mechanism by which this extra weight loss occurs remains controversial, but the positive effects of losing the weight is not. In general, the weight loss seems to be most dramatic during the first six months and sometimes levels off after a year or two. The subjects become less compliant to the diet as time goes on, making it impossible to tell if the diet doesn’t work after six months, or the subjects are just not following it properly.

Regardless of the mechanism, carbohydrate-restricted diets seem to be the most effective way to lose weight based on the clinical data. From a practical standpoint it seems logical that the majority of calories consumed on a successful diet should come from the most satiating nutrients. The clinical trials suggest that the simple act of placing someone on a carbohydrate-restricted diet is the only intervention required for the patients to lose weight. Their own internal hunger and satiety mechanisms regulate their food intake, which seems to make calorie counting unnecessary.

In 1944, scientist Ancel Keys began what would become one of the most interesting and horrifying experiment on diet and health in history. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, as it was called, starved 36 men and monitored the effects for over a year in a highly controlled, laboratory setting. Treated as lab rats, these subjects volunteered their bodies, minds and freedom for science in order to further understand the physiological and psychological torture endured through human starvation. 

Consuming such few calories had rather dramatic side effects: after a few months, there was a large increase in depression, hysteria, hypochondriasis, self-mutilation, and declines in sexual drive. The subjects were constantly thinking and dreaming of food. There were large declines in their basal metabolic rate to try to adapt to this dramatic new level of calorie intake. When the subjects were finally given the opportunity to eat as much as they pleased, many ate until their stomachs were packed to capacity, yet still felt hungry. 

What is even more interesting than these responses is that they were almost entirely forgotten in the treatment of obesity. 

By today's standards, the subjects in the Minnesota study were not eating a starvation or semi-starvation diet. They were eating 1547 calories a day, almost precisely the same amount of food prescribed today to men their size who want to lose weight. For the men enrolled in the starvation study, their calculated calorie intake that would supposedly elicit weight loss of 1 pound per week was 1570 calories, according to the widely-used Mifflin St Jeor equation. How can anyone be expected to lose weight this way and keep it off?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, weight loss is the result of following a simple formula. To get rid of excess body fat, all you have to do is “use up more calories than you take in. Since one pound equals 3,500 calories, you need to reduce your caloric intake by 500—1000 calories per day to lose about 1 to 2 pounds per week.” We should therefore limit the amount of fat we eat, since it has 9 calories per gram.

This simplified logic suggests that the underlying regulation of our energy intake takes place at our mouths. Once it enters the body, it does not matter whether you ate 100 grams of sugar or steak, the calories will be utilized, stored, and distributed equally. This also places the entire blame for becoming overweight or obese on the person's conscious behaviors, and creates an incredible lack of empathy in the medical community. People get fat because they eat too much. It is just that simple. 

But what if instead we asked the question of why? 
Why are they eating too much? Maybe, just like every other self-sustaining behavior in every creature on the planet, our decisions and desires to eat more or less are regulated at the cellular level. What if they eat too much because they are fat? What if eating too much is correlated with -  and not causing - obesity? 
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Why is there no mention of the hormonal and biochemical regulation of our fat when we talk about gaining or losing fat? It makes no sense and it is why I have created this website. It seems to me that if we want to learn what makes people fat, we should study the fat. 

By definition obesity results from too many calories being stored in one's adipose tissue. Why are more calories being stored in adipose tissue as opposed to being used for fuel? What hormones are involved in either directing calories to be stored in our fat cells or inhibiting those stored calories from being mobilized into the bloodstream?

There are multiple hormones that regulate your fat cells, but by far the most potent one is insulin. When insulin is high, calories are taken up into the fat cells by an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase. Insulin also simultaneously inhibits the release of calories into the bloodstream from the fat cells via its effects on another enzyme (Hormone sensitive lipase). This is true and uncontroversial. 

 The next absolute truth is that the most potent stimulator of insulin is carbohydrates. This is somewhat controversial because protein spikes insulin as well, but fat does not. So a diet composed of 60-65% carbohydrates, 10% fat, and 30% protein, the generally accepted healthy diet, is quite good at stimulating insulin when compared to a low carb diet composed mostly of fat and protein. The more insulin there is, the more calories are stored as fat. At least according to every biochemistry textbook. 

What makes this idea even more palatable is the amount of clinical evidence there is to support it. If a low-calorie, low fat diet is the best way to lose weight, than one would imagine that some shred of clinical evidence exists to prove this. In fact, quite the contrary is true. A low-fat, low calorie diet has never outperformed an ad-libitum (eat to your heart's desire), high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate diet. Never. Read more about this in the related science section. 

The randomized clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of low carb diets compared to low fat diets come to a few consistent conclusions:

• The low carb group usually - but not always - loses more weight. However, the low fat group never loses the most weight.
• The low carb group sees larger increases in HDL (good cholesterol, and much larger decreases in triglycerides, with small or non-existent increases in LDL (bad) cholesterol
  
• The low carb group sees more weight loss despite always reporting feeling full
• The low carb groups always see their LDL particles in their blood switch from small, dense, atherogenic particles, to large and fluffy. Small, dense LDL particles are associated with heart disease.

All of these beneficial effects are seen with one broad sweeping recommendation: Limit your carbs. No calorie counting. No food journals. Just limit carbs and eat until you are full. 

There are two possible explanations for the observed weightloss. Either something about a low carb diet causes you to spontaneously eat less, thus losing weight via the conventional explanation. Or, the alternate hypothesis would predict, that the extra weight was lost because of the net decrease in insulin levels. 

In my next post, I will address this issue. 

The Ancestral Weight Loss Registry is an international registry dedicated to those who have tried a low carb or paleo diet and want to share their story. Whether you were successful or not, I believe that compiling data on the experiences of thousands of people who want to improve their health eating diets high in meats, fats, and vegetables will be enlightening and exciting.

I have been researching this topic for the past four years, and along the way have been compiling every clinical trial I can find relating to the harm, health, and efficacy of low carb diets, whether it be their effectiveness for producing weight loss when compared to a low-fat diet, their effects on blood lipids, or the potential deleterious effects that diets high in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol may have on heart disease. All of these topics can be found in the Related Science section. 

My hope is that this site can be a place where people all over the world who would like more information about getting healthy on diets low in carbohydrates can come and learn from the registry data, from clinical trials, and from each other in the forum. As the registry grows, I will periodically publish trends about what works and what doesn't. I hope to illuminate associations between certain behaviors, consumed foods, or practices and successful or unsuccessful outcomes that can guide future low carb consumers on a path to success.

Please e-mail us at [email protected] with questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Larry