Discussion Board

Question: Do low carb diets work?

Answer: It all depends on how one defines "work."

Last night I spoke to my Mom. She has been trying to lose weight through vigorous exercise, but has been, not surprisingly, unsuccessful. However, she says that soon she will adopt a low-carb diet in order to lose weight.

She says that many people she knows have lost weight on low-carb diets.

A friend of hers has lost about 12 pounds on a low-carb diet.

Her youngest sister has "maintained" her weight on a low-carb, high meat diet.

My Mom's youngest sister's father-in-law lost some weight on a low-carb diet and was able to reduce his diabetes medication. However, since he has heart disease, his doctor was very critical of the low-carb diet because the doctor believes that eating eggs and sausage every morning will do damage to the cardiovascular system. (ya think?)

I did not argue with my Mom. I simply said, "uh, huh," when my Mom said, "You can not argue with this diet. It works." However, I did mention that I have been able to get my weight lower than it has ever been since I was in high school by adopting the McDougall diet.

My impression is that a diabetic can enjoy some great "results" in the short term on a low-carb diet. They can enjoy weight loss and as a result can reduce their diabetes medication.

However, I think this tends to be short term. Ultimately, the health problems associated with a low-carb diet pile up.

Another thing is that for some people eating the Standard American Diet, low-carb might be an improvement. Sure. They still eat meat, dairy and eggs. But as they so no to french fries, potato chips, coco-puffs, cookies, loaded baked potatoes and donuts, they are actually avoiding some fat and some highly processed carbohydrates.

Unfortunately, if people enjoy even modest success with a low-carb diet, they will not be very open to adopting a whole foods plant based diet similar to the one recommended by Dr. McDougall.

Sounds like you have it figured out accurately. My conclusion, after what I have read and heard 2nd hand, is low carbers do not have an eye on the future. All they are worried about is that immediate 20 or 30 they want to lose. A year later, after it has come back(mysteriously), they say something like, "Well, I guess I need to go low carb again...." Is there a 20 year Low Carber that not only has kept the weight off, but all their numbers are perfect? I don't think it is possible.

As an aside, I spent some time on Loren Cordain's paleo website recently, and left feeling like I had been in the mind of a madman!

That is the tough part. When people have success in losing weight, they only look at things from that angle. And weight loss will generally improve many areas of health, so from that perspective, low carb "works", but it isn't healthy overall.

Even when I was doing it, I intuitively knew that it couldn't be healthy consuming so much meat and fat. I regret the 5-6 years I put my health at risk low-carbing but I honestly believed carbs would make me gain weight.

The thing is, the longer you low carb, the less it seems to work. That's because you're becoming more and more insulin resistant with all the fat in your cells. I actually found this WOE because I became concerned about insulin resistance, since I could no longer seem to lose on LC. Initially, it worked, but, over time, I gained back the weight I'd lost and then some. It was a constant struggle, yet it never occurred to me to count calories. I was deathly afraid of carbs, so I'd beat myself up and blame any carb I might've consumed for the gain, but never look at the amount of fat! It's a really warped mentality.

I'd suggest showing your mom "Forks Over Knives". Show her how thin people are on this plant-based WOE and how much healthier it is for her arteries. Then, know you've done all you can whichever way she chooses.

Great idea. The problem is that my Mom rented "Forks Over Knives" several months ago and she sounded like she enjoyed the movie very much.

But because she was already convinced that low-carb is as good as whole foods plant based or perhaps even better than whole foods plant based and because she enjoys eating eggs, salmon and cheese, my Mom never really considered going on a diet recommended by Dr. Campbell, Dr. Esselstyn or Dr. McDougall.

I think for many people, a whole food plant based diet might seem healthy. But they might think, "Hey, there's more than one way to eat healthy. Low-carb is healthy too and it fits in with my lifestyle better than whole foods plant based does. And I don't really want to give up meat and cheese. So, I think I will go low-carb."

For some people, only when they decide that they aren't getting the results they want with low-carb would they seriously consider going to a low-fat, high-carb, whole foods plant based diet.

And many people approach diet and health from a superficial perspective. Weight loss equals health in their minds. It's not entirely true. But it is a simple concept. So, people accept it.

I belong to the National Weight Control Registry. They survey people who have lost weight and KEPT it off. Their surveys show that you can use just about any method to lose weight, but <1% of responders were able to maintain there weigh-loss usng a low-carb diet. The most popular method for long term weight maintenance? Low-fat and high-carb. So the best diet for losing weight and reversing disease (as opposed to just controlling it) is also the best for keeping the lost weight off!
Kate

I read that about the registry, Kate. It was part of the clues that I began to assemble that low carb was the wrong diet to follow. I was on several low carb discussion boards, and what began to strike me is how few people there had actually met their goal weight. Many had lost a lot of weight - over 100 pds in some cases - but they usually plateaued, gained some, if not all, of it back, and stayed stuck at some point well above their ideal weight.

Nobody could explain these stalls. They tended to blame the dieter, claiming "carb creep" (that they must be consuming more carbs than they were counting), but, personally, that wasn't the case for me. I ate fewer and fewer carbs, yet had an increasingly harder time losing.

It's so obvious to me now that it was calories! The more fat/meat I ate (actually the more compliant I was to the diet) the more calories I consumed. And this is why almost none of the low carbers can reach goal or maintain it. The less they weighed, the fewer calories they needed, but they rarely considered this, after being able to eat "unlimited" quantities of rich foods and not count calories from the start. Yet, it's almost impossible to get all the way there eating rich, fatty food.

You did a great job in zooming in on the key variable: What people mean by "works."

When people talk to me about my diet, and start in with what "worked" or have some evaluative framework, or ask why they should eat either the way I eat, or vegan, or vegetarian, I feel I need to contextualize the discussion. Usually I ask, "What do you want to accomplish?" Then I tell them what I want to accomplish: Live longer, not become debilitated as I age by diseases caused by diet, not suffer pain as I get older from diseases of deterioration or organic failure (arthritis, diabetes, congestive heart failure), feel fit and without avoidable physical limits, and die a short and late death, not a long, drawn-out and painful deterioration ended by either a painful hospital bed stay or a traumatic episode with the feeling a elephant is sitting on my chest.

I don't ask for much.

Losing weight is a bonus, but it is only a factor because of the first 40-some years of my life eating a SAD.

But if losing weight is it--and for most people, I think it is, at least initially because that weight is the only visible symptom, and thus the only acknowledgeable symptom, of their bad and deteriorating dietarily induced health--then lots of stuff "works," and low-carb does too. Note that virtually no one (there are a few exceptions) says, "I know that John/Judy lost 40 pounds and has never regained it after 5 years." They talk about someone who has lost a dozen pounds in the last few months.

Well, that's easy: Water loss from a dehydrating diet; glycogen depletion from a diet lacking enough carbohydrate to keep the body energized. Boom, minus 12 pounds. And plus enervation, acid reflux, inability to concentrate, bad sleep, corpse-decay breath, accumulating fat deposits in the circulatory system, and accumulating body fat.

It "works." Because all they measure it by is one thing: Weight. True, no one can limit the effects to that one thing; you can't do low-carb and lose weight and not get the rest of the effects. But that's not what they want, so they don't look at those things. Until one or more of the other effects become so bad that it makes the weight loss drop in importance below the new pain they've brought on with the diet. (For my wife, when she tried Atkins, it was the acid reflux--which also made sleep impossible--and the constant mental fog.)

So maybe ask "What do you want to accomplish?" And if it's just "to lose weight," ask: "Why do you want to lose weight?" If you can drill down, maybe you can get to "to be healthier." Then you have a better way in, if they can say themselves what their deepest goal is.

Kate, do you have a link to information about this I can steer people to? I have some people I know, who in spite of the transformation they're seeing in me are now trying the low-carb approach and I'd love to have some solid evidence to share with them against it.

-Norm

Norm,

http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/su ... istry.html

http://www.nwcr.ws/Research/published%20research.htm

Kate

In Dr. Atkins Nutrition Breakthrough, he says that often diabetics on his diet start to lose their low blood sugars and the numbers start to creep up. He claims this happens to diabetics who have lost weight and who are at a normal weight. They have to use more meds and insulin. I noticed this with the low carbers on the diabetes support group. The more their sugars climb, the fewer and fewer carbs they eat, the more and more insulin they need.

Weight loss improves diabetes. Weight loss on just about any diet will improve blood sugars. But what is happening? I think they are becoming more and more insulin resistant. And who knows what is happening to their arteries?

Dr. Atkins then says he has devised a Meat and Millet diet for diabetics which uses more grains in the diet. Yet he does not eliminate fat and meat.

So there is evidence that you do lose weight but that does not necessarily mean good health. You do not read from Esselstyn that the patients in his study lose weight and their health becomes worse.

On a more personal note--although the evidence is anecdotal and not a result of a study, my brother was faithfully following South Beach for a few Months. He did lose some weight but his blood pressure and cholesterol remained high. He was on blood pressure meds and statins. I visited with him for a couple of weeks and cooked plant based meals for him. He switched to plant based and after a few weeks his blood pressure went down. His weight went down. Over a few months his numbers went lower and lower until his doctor was finally convinced to take him off the blood pressure meds and the statins.

Didi

This is interesting because my Mom has been telling me for the past year that my diet (a.ka. the McDougall Diet) might be great for dealing with heart disease, but for diabetes my diet contains too many carbs and that for diabetics the low carb diet is the way to go. Not true.

Do Low Carb Diets Work?

No.

I followed one low carb diet after another for over the last decade. I won't even go into the reasons for this insanity - doing the same thing over and over when it doesn't work - except to say that the latest research and doctors' opinions of the early 2000's saw a major shift from low fat support toward low carb support. That coupled with the fact that diabetes runs rampant in my family, and I was frightened and listened to my doctor.

Low Carb diets never helped me lose weight. I lost a little, always gained back with the next handful of healthy, low carb nuts.

Ultimately, low Carb diets made me gain weight.

Low Carb diets raised my blood pressure and cholesterol, and now I am on statins and high blood pressure medication.

Low Carb diets made me tired and depressed.

I might add my low carb diet was healthier than most, with lots and lots of low starch veggies (the worst of them like Atkins limit even veggies, although they'll never admit to it).

I would never recommend a low carb diet, no matter what form, to anybody. I've beat up on myself enough for my stupidity in continuing to follow them. The most important thing is that I've moved on and am confident I will regain my health to what it was before this low carb fiasco.

p.s. I thank God I never developed diabetes along with elevated BP and cholesterol.

I don't know, I hear Atkin's blood pressure is the lowest it's ever been.

Mark

Once Atkins lowered his blood pressure, we were confronted with a bunch of Atkins rip-off diets, like Paleo and the Dukan diet. But if the underlying principle behind low-carb is wrong, why do we think that cheap copies of the original will work?