ArachosiA 78 said:
Unfortunately I cant watch the video you linked to right now because I'm at work, but it sounds interesting. I have known for many years now that refined carbs are terrible for you, and they are definitely not anywhere in my diet. I am on a low carb diet, but not super low. My carbs consist of yams, brown rice, oatmeal and green vegetables. No sugar, nothing refined. I eat a ton of lean protein, and a small amount of healthy fat. By following this diet and P90X, I have been losing about 2 lbs a week for 2.5 months now. So it does seem to be working...it's just that it's really hard to tell from where the weight is coming off.
I think what your advocating sounds like the Atkin's Diet. I tried this diet about 6 years ago, and I did lose a ton of weight very rapidly (40lbs in 3 months). I didn't exercise...just limited my carbs to under 20g a day. The problem is that anytime you lose weight that rapidly, you are very likely losing muscle mass as well (anything over 2lbs a week isn considered unsafe).. Currently, I have a decent amount of muscle that I worked pretty hard for, and I would be worried about losing any of it if I can help it.
I would consider following a very low carb diet again if I could be convinced that it wouldn't compromise my muscle mass. I'll check out your link when I get a chance.
Not necessarily Atkins. Personally, I'm doing something between Atkins and Paleo. But any diet that lowers the average level of insulin will work. There's genetic variation in insulin sensitivity, you may be one of the higher sensitive types. Not all vegetables are low insulin response, in fact potatoes are worse than sugar. Seriously.
I don't think it lowers muscle mass because I recall reading about studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s studying Pennington's diet (similar to Atkins), and there was even a study conducted by Ohlson "Weight Control Through Nutritionally Adequate Diets." The overweight female subjects both lost a lot of weight, but were noted to lose more dress sizes than weight would account for. In other words, they gained muscle and lost fat. This can occur if people are so insulin resistant that their muscles are deprived of energy and are cannibalized because of too much insulin in the past.
Another reason why I don't believe that a low carb, high protein, and high fat diet decreases muscle mass is because you're lowering insulin. This causes the body to either get calories from dietary fat and protein, or body fat.
In the reverse, a high carb, low fat diet, the body has too much insulin. It prevents the use of body fat for energy for muscles and organs. So if this individual, who will gain fat regardless, decides not to overeat to feed muscles and organs, the body either cannibalizes muscle for energy or reduces your metabolic rate (fatigue).
The reason why you lose weight so quickly is just biology. Insulin is THE hormone that controls fat regulation. It is secreted in response to carbohydrates...the faster it gets into the blood stream, the greater the response.
Your body has body fat triglycerides continuously going out of fat cells in the form of free fatty acids. If your insulin is high, your muscles and organs will not use these free fatty acids.
If your insulin is low, your muscles and organs will feast on them. Because you have a lot of body fat, and there's no more insulin, the body consumes them at very quick rate. The reason why there's no hunger on this diet is because muscles and organs energy intake dictates hunger, and they don't care if it's calories from recently eaten food or from body fat.
You can think of insulin as a vertical upward force. The greater the insulin, the greater body fat weight it supports. So if you lower insulin such that it supports 80lbs of body fat to 30 lbs of body fat, the body quickly goes towards that body fat level.