Sorry. We bio types tend to talk in alphabet soup.
TAG = tri acyl glycerol. It is the proper name of "triglyceride".
And don't forget, a TAG is made up of glycerol + 3 FFAs. The only difference between a free fatty acid (fat) and a triacylglycerol is the glycerol.
Here's a list of everything in a VLDL:
TAGs
phospholipids
cholesterol
cholesterol esters
apo B 100
apo C II
apo E
First, I described my experiences with diets and weight loss because it is typical, not solitary, and I'm sure they echo your own dieting experiences.
Well, no, Percy. Even at 42, if I go overboard over the holidays or something, caloric restriction works fine for me. And believe me, I eat nothing but crappy carbs (lunch today was a bag of "ketchup flavored potato snacks" made by Burger King). And I am the same weight I was in high school.
Let me ask you this: If caloric restriction worked when you were young and it no longer works ... and your carb intake remained the same for the first 2 diets ... why would you assume the carbs were the problem? That is
very strong evidence that it wasn't the carbs.
Wow, diagnosis via discussion board!
Would you have been happier had I said: "Studies have shown that a great deal of the initial weight loss with high protein diets is due to diuresis"?
You're only in week 3.
Diuresis, caused by low-carbohydrate intake and its effects on sodium loss, water loss, and glycogen depletion, is the primary reason for initial rapid weight loss on the LC-HP diet. Severely restricting carbohydrate also suppresses appetite, likely due to nausea from sodium loss and protein's satiating effect. In ketosis, the lungs exhale acetone, producing the halitosis typical of people on this diet. Difficulty tolerating ketosis symptoms presents one reason for nonadherence to LC-HP diets. Inadequate documentation exists regarding long-term, harmful effects of ketosis.[ 26, 27]
Should you recommend a low-carb, high-protein diet?
Nurse Practitioner. 27(4):52-53,55-56,58-59, April 2002.
You can't attribute all the significant weight loss reports from low carb diets to water loss, and even researchers who accept the dietary fat hypothesis grant the effectiveness of low carb diets.
I didn't say "all". You're only in week 3. And, as you said, nearly everyone gains the weight back after a high protein diet just like any other diet. Who cares how much weight you lose if you gain it all back anyway?
"The Atkins diet produces weight loss, as does the grapefruit diet, the rotation diet, and every other fad diet out there," says one of the researchers, Colorado's James Hill. "I haven't seen any data anywhere saying Atkins is better than these other diets for weight loss. Taubes is trying to fly in the face of the scientific evidence." Referring to the book deal, he says, "Taubes sold out."
Percy writes:
Low fat diets are at heart starvation diets.
What is your current caloric intake/day?
...low carb diets encourage the conversion of FFAs from triglycerides in fat cells...
No, they most certainly do not.
Are you talking about the carbohydrate hypothesis, or just diet and health in general?
Carb thing.
For example, Taubes omitted any reference to hundreds of refereed scientific studies published during the last three decades that contradicted his position.
Taubes proved as adept at clipping data as at clipping quotes. Thus he claimed that one of the "reasons to suggest that the low-fat-is-good-health hypothesis has now effectively failed the test of time" is "that the percentage of fat in the American diet has been decreasing for two decades."
That's true, but irrelevant. The amount of fat consumed has been steadily climbing, as has consumption of all calories.
Taubes also shoved aside decades of published, controlled, randomized clinical trials comparing nutrient intake and weight loss. His apparent justification in the article was that the "research literature [is] so vast that it's possible to find at least some published research to support virtually any theory." But that's sheer nihilism. Good science is cautious and skeptical, not permanently open-ended. That's why terms like weight of the evidence are used. And the evidence against Atkins-like low-carbohydrate diets is crushing.
In April 2002, for example, the Journal of the American Dietetic Association (JADA) published a review of "all studies identified" that looked at diet nutrient composition and weight loss. It found over 200, with "no studies of the health and nutrition effects of popular diets in the published literature" excluded...The conclusion: Those who ate the least fat carried the least fat.
One such meta-analysis, covering 16 ad libitum studies and almost 2,000 people, appeared in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders in December 2000. The conclusion: Those on low-fat diets had "a greater reduction in energy intake" and a "greater weight loss than control groups."
In a subsequent letter to the journal, three obesity research co-authors, including James Hill, director of the University of Colorado Center for Human Nutrition in Denver, noted, "What Taubes does not mention are the meta-analyses of intervention studies comparing ad libitum intakes of higher fat diets with low-fat diets that clearly show reduced caloric intake and weight loss on the low-fat diet."
Taubes also ignored the approximately 3,000 members of a database called the National Weight Control Registry. For 10 years, the registry has tracked people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year. The average member has maintained a loss of about 60 pounds for about five years.
Co-administered by Hill in Denver and Rena Wing of the University of Pittsburgh, the registry is aimed at finding out what works and what doesn't. According to its members, what doesn't work is a high-fat diet. On average, they consume only 23 percent of calories from fat. "Almost nobody's on a low-carbohydrate diet," Hill says.
Yet the published literature that Taubes ignored says otherwise. The aforementioned review of over 200 studies in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association expressly nixed the idea that any type of food converts less efficiently to body fat. "None of the popular diet research we reviewed suggests a metabolic advantage with respect to weight loss," it declared.
Stacking theory atop theory, Taubes roared on. Something called "hyperinsulinemia" could also favor the Atkins dieter, he insisted. When carbohydrates are ingested they are broken down in the intestine into glucose and other sugars. Glucose then stimulates cells in the pancreas to secrete insulin to remove that glucose and take it into tissues to be used as fuel or stored. Protein and fat consumption don't have nearly the same impact on insulin production because the whole point of insulin is to maintain the stability of the sugar level.
The Atkins hyperinsulinemia theory, ex-plained Taubes, is that carbohydrates can "cause a spike of blood sugar and a surge of insulin within minutes. The resulting rush of insulin stores the blood sugar away and a few hours later, your blood sugar is lower than it was before you ate." The brain receives a signal that the body needs more food, and the vicious circle repeats itself. Carbohydrates at the top of what's called the "hypoglycemic index" are the most evil of the evil, since they cause blood sugar to rise the fastest.
Schwartz was also the primary author of a study concluding that obese people whose systems secrete insulin at high levels may be protected against further weight gain.
Schwartz says it's not that he believes insulin can't play a role in promoting weight gain, but he rejects (Taube's insulin theory). "Before you draw conclusions you need data," he says. "There is no compelling evidence that in normal individuals day-to-day fluctuations of the blood glucose level are an important determinant of how much food is consumed."
The Journal of the American Medical Association was indeed scathing (re: Atkins Diet) ... Statements such as "No scientific evidence exists to suggest that the low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet has a metabolic advantage over more conventional diets for weight reduction," and "there is no reason to associate a diet rich in carbohydrate with obesity" hardly seem to acknowledge "that the diet probably worked."
Other terms the AMA used to described Atkins' theories included "nave," "biochemically incorrect," "inaccurate," and "without scientific merit."
(The AMA) also explained why the diet didn't work, mocking Atkins' basic thesis that fat and protein cannot cause weight gain in the absence of carbohydrate consumption as a "thermodynamic miracle."
Big Fat Fake
Percy writes:
If you're talking about the carbohydrate hypothesis, then as an independent variable in large, long term gold standard studies (Framingham size and duration) with the requisite procedures and set up as single-blinded, no, it has not been and is not being exhaustively studied.
The 200 studies analyzed by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders December 2000 study and the National Weight Control study mentioned above.
Edited by molbiogirl, : tweak
™ Version 4.2
