I alway think that starving youself is the worst way to diet as you end up feeling so depleated and miserbale you either binge or it doesnt even matter that your "thinner" because you are miserable!?

Healthy is alway best - i try three meal a day - if i diet then just change what i eat or the order i eat in (like not mixing carbs and proteins)

I have to agree with the others - this sounds like a VERY suspicious proposition, and I'd steer well clear of it if I were you. Much as we'd all love to just shift the excess weight in one week, you're still best looking at a weightloss of 1-2lb per week.

Er, with all due respect, upon what are you basing this disparagement of Low Carb eating? Because there is a HUGE amount of medical research to substantiate this approach, and I think lumping Low Carb in as "a scam" alongside all the moneymaking fad diets is neither fairminded nor particularly well informed.

Granted, I'm a trifle biased because I'm finding it tremendously successful and consider my present eating pattern to be pretty damned healthy (and have thus far been 'ripped off' of nothing more than a few quid for a few books). Still, that aside - do you have something more substantial than an ability to sniff out a scam as a basis for your mistrust for Low Carb?

Ketosis isn;t a natural thing to do to your body. And no decent athlete alive would low carb - in fact, you take on MORE carbs before a run. Sorry but I've been here a long time and seen the meal replacement people come and go ditto the low carbers. Temporary weight loss but not sustainable. About 3 years ago I tried South Beach - the MINUTE I stopped I not only regained all the weight (freakily fast as well, like in one or two weeks) but another stone on top, which I then had to lose over a long period, exercising like a maniac and eating clean.

Been there, dunnit got T shirt. Low carbed. Got too FAT for T shirt.

The drastic starvation diets (1000 cals and less) will b4lls up your metabolism. Fact.

BTW I used to Fitday everything I ate and some days my carbs were through the roof 'on paper' - but despite PCOS (which makes weight loss 3 times harder) - I lost the whole 40lb, without ever reducing my carbs - just stuck to wholefoods and 'real' foods.

I'd double check the origins of that 'research'. Is it on low carbing sites, by any chance? Who paid for it? All the proper hard research I've seen says low carbing is bad for your body and any weight loss quickly reversed when you stop - and as I want to be able to live an active life (I go running 3 times a week, amongst other stuff) I have no intention of cutting out carbs.

Also if I recall, South Beach (allegedly a more healthy version of LC) advocated all this chemical rubbish like no sugar jelly (ever read the ingredients on there?), and chemical sweetners (rerad the research on asparatame then try and put it in yer body). I eat organic wholefoods - not chemicals.

I love the take of the X Weighted trainer on all this - Paul Plakas - should see what he says about low fat and low carb 'foods'. Good luck with your weight loss but tbh if it's typical of a low carber's, I wouldn;t get too used to it and I'd hold on to those larger outfits cos you will be needing them unless you want to drastically reduce a vital foodgroup for the entire rest of your life.

Well, I can't speak for South Beach with absolute certainty, but with Atkins the whole point is that you DON'T return to your previous eating patterns. It's a lifestyle change, not a temporary measure, and you continue to limit carbs (albeit much less strictly) once you've reached goal and you're in maintenance. It's pretty much like realising you've got a food allergy, and adapting your eating habits accordingly.
Oookay. This is going to be news to Jerseygyrl, over on the Carb Counters forum; she successfully shifted the weight by following the program to the letter four years ago, and she continues to follow the maintenance program (as one is supposed to), and she hasn't regained.

She's (understandably) a passionate advocate of Atkins, based on her own experience - me, I think that different plans work for different people, and that the key thing is to find something that you CAN live with, and CAN stick to. Clearly you didn't stick to Low Carbing, and as a result it wasn't a successful plan for you. From the sounds of it, you didn't take on board the fact that, yes, it IS for the entire rest of your life. Certainly with Atkins, the literature's pretty clear on this. Also with Atkins, it's explicitly clear that one should be eating normal foods, not chemicals. Splenda is the only sweetener recommended by Atkins - sugar alcohols are not, and neither is aspartame.

Let's see - I'm looking at a 600 page book about the recent history of nutrition research, detailing the scientific basis for Low Fat and for Low Carb that I've just plucked off my shelf which has a bibliography 73 pages long. Not really planning on copying all of that out for you right now, so I'm going to just go with a 'No' by way of answer. (And, no, the writer wasn't funded by anyone. It's an independent study.)

Is it particularly illuminating? The inverted commas seem to imply that you're not talking about normal foods like almonds, seaweed, strawberries or chicken, but rather about premade things? In which case it doesn't make much difference to me what Mr Plakas opines. If he has something insightful and substantiated to say about normal food, though, by all means give me a link.

!!!

...why thank you. That's not at all mean-spirited or *****y.

...increasingly I'm getting the impression that you didn't realise that that IS the deal with low carbing. It's a lifestyle change, not a quick fix. So, yes, I do plan to reintroduce more legumes, more fruit, some whole grains and the occasional starchy vegetable once I've reached goal, but that's about it. Flour and sugar make me feel like crap, and I don't miss them. I'm eating lots of vegetables, fish, chicken and meat now, along with melons and berries and nuts and seeds. I also eat cheese and sometimes cream. Occasionally I'll use a sachet of sucralose to sweeten something. I could quite happily carry on eating this way for the rest of my life.

I am glad that you've found a weight loss plan that works for you. I understand that low carbing was not the best way for you to lose weight - although it doesn't sound like you were following it properly from what you've written here. I'm finding it enjoyable and effective.

One of the things that I really appreciate about this site is the fact that it's generally supportive, and that posters - particularly the successful ones - generally recognize that we all have unique physical and psychological relationships with food, and so what works for one person may not work for another.

But I regained my weight adding those 'healthy' carbs. As for Atkins, I know it's been said a million times but the man was morbidly obese when he died - the fact the odd person has success (if they rigidly stick to maintenance the rest of their naturals) doesn't really prove it works if 99% of them regain. I don't think a diet of meat and lard and cheese is what anybody's body needs - it appealed (briefly) because it seemed to be a magic bullet but it's largely discredited now, at least in the UK.

BTW I was following it to the letter. I have a degree in English so have no problems with comprehension of text.

From The Lancet - Atkins good for short term weight loss but longterm the worst sort of diet for weight regain:

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsst...2004/story.htm

Also, Dr Susan Jebb (who does seem to know what she's on about I've read a lot of articles by her - she advocates low fat, low GI 'real' food diets):

http://www.lovehealth.org/books/Atkins.htm

There are thousands more links you can find to back this up, but I'd be here all day - that's it in a nutshell

You can find lots of other stuff like these sort of diets increasing the incidence of certain cancers, and kidney damage. I have an endocrine disorder that means I gain weight easily and lose it very slowly and painfully - and many women with my condition (PCOS) have tried LC-ing. I discovered on the PCOS section of an LC forum, a few years back, the LC-ers were actually encouraging these women to take a supplement which all the research says can cause spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) - this in women who may have tried for a decade to conceive much wanted babies. When I pointed out on that forum the research and said ignore these LC-ers - they're so obsessed by losing the weight they are putting your chances of keeping a baby you conceive in big danger - I was flamed. Yet my inbox was snowed under by women with PCOS who had taken the LC-ers' advice - and wondered why they miscarried much wanted babies. So I think such forums are dangerous places where the singleminded obsession with this 'way of life' can even affect people's health. So it is a serious issue. You should have seen the messages I got from other women with PCOS who had been encouraged on that LC forum, to lose weight drastically, unhealthily and using this particular product to accelerate their weight loss, regardless of the risk to unborn babies.

Hopefully that gives you some insight into why I think some diets are dodgy.

Part of me would love to sit here and say - like I have in the past 'You go for it! Well done however you do it!' but I'm starting to think you know what - honesty and bluntness are the best policy. There are no magic bullets. And as for Atkins I think of it as the ultimate in the emperor's new clothes syndrome - if it worked, truly worked, Atkins himself would have been of a normal weight. Everyone thinks it so why not be honest - and say it.

...er, neither did Dr Atkins.

Well, I'll do you the courtesy of accepting this assertion, however mind-boggling it is coming after this 'meat, lard & cheese' thing. (Seriously - even on Atkins, you're explicitly supposed to eat shedloads of veggies, and I'd have assumed with South Beach that it was even more the case. Perhaps I have been misinformed.) Certainly with Atkins, you're supposed to increase your carbohydrate intake very gradually once you're no longer actively losing weight, in order to gauge the level at which you can successfully maintain. Personally, if I were regaining at that point I'd crank the carbs back down a notch. YMMV.

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience with people in a Low Carb forum back in the day. I suppose I can see how that might colour your views somewhat, but I'm sorry you can't look beyond that. I'm also a little bemused that you seem to be associating this kind of obsessive mindset solely with Low Carb dieters, rather than with dieters in general. In my experience there are reasonable people and crazy extremists in most groups, and I wouldn't judge a group, or indeed an ideology, on the basis of its least admirable representatives.

You mention the fact that many people pile the weight back on after Low Carbing - but you know, we can point that out about ANY weight loss plan. If there were some fabulous weightloss program out there that had a 99% success rate, I'm sure we'd all be on it - but as our relationships with food and weight are as complex as they are varied, it looks like that's not going to be happening any time soon.

Purely out of curiosity - do you consider Low Fat to be a scam too? Cutting out (or strictly limiting) an entire food group?

I don't think cutting out any food group is healthy - sensible reduction of something like fats which are proven to give you health problems (quite apart from obesity - strokes, heart disease etc) - well that's a different matter.

Not all fats are equal. I'd never eat processed food, or transfats full stop. I lost most of my weight in 2005-6 by sticking with 5% fat or lower, but because I have no problem with wholefoods, I'd eat butter rather than any form of margarine, for example, and as time went on and I listened to my body I realised I could do this safely... and am aware most foods have some % of fat in them - even lettuce! I

I think eliminating or drastic reduction of any food group is a totally unnatural thing to do to your body and I want to work with my body not against it then because I've done something utterly unnatural, have to slowly reintroduce whatever it was I cut out - there lies craziness.

With the fats, I'd err on the side of fats that are not solid at room temp and the fats in nuts, seeds, olive oil, fish etc but as I say was not too paranoid - if I wanted butter, I'd have it but in small amounts. Never anything processed, though, was my rule.

I personally wasn't affected so much by the idiots in the LC forum (elsewhere not on here, it was) but it annoyed me that they were giving appalling 'advice' to other women with subfertility who might lose much wanted babies because of trying to accelerate some already too fast weight loss results, with a supplement.

I think it's disingenuous and a cop out to imply there are moderates and hardliners and the hardliners bring the moderates into disrepute re. LCing - as surely the whole underlying premise of it (cutting off an entire food group) is pretty fundamentalist! The older I get the more bothered I am about the health side of things than the vanity and to me, LCing or meal replacement (and I don't mean a week on Slimfast I mean months on less than 1000 cals a day) speak to the magic bullet/quick fix mentality, at the expense of health. There will always be poster girls for any 'way of life' you care to find - but we should look at these things longitudinally. Longterm - how does it affect people?


I was born with a hole in the heart so eating shedloads of fat was never going to be an option for me, I'd never have considered Atkins even at my most desperate.

I don't think cutting out any food group is healthy - sensible reduction of something like carbohydrates which are proven to give you health problems (quite apart from obesity - strokes, heart disease etc) - well that's a different matter.

Disingenuous? And here I was trying to be courteous.

Your anecdote about getting hatemail from people on a Low Carb Forum who advocated a drug with nasty side effects contributed precisely nothing to the question of whether Low Carb is a "scam". It was simply an ad hominem attack on Low Carbers ('those people are vain obsessive whack jobs - look, some of them were mean to me! They gave bad advice! They kill unborn babies! They're idiots!') rather than addressing the nutritional merits (or lack thereof) of the low carb way of eating. That was what I was responding to - and as a Low Carber, I thought I was doing it in a pretty fairminded fashion. My bad.

Really, no more fundamentalist than low fat. Your Susan Jebb advocates low fat, low GI eating - why do you consider this to be a sensible and moderate stance, whereas advocating low carb, low GI is a fundamentalist approach? In each instance you're talking about limiting a food group. And as you must be aware from following South Beach to the letter, Low Carbers DON'T "cut off an entire food group." They limit it. Big difference. (Similarly Low Fat people don't usually cut out absolutely all fat - they limit it.)

Yes, certainly I agree that going into weightloss in the belief that there is any quick fix solution, in the belief that somehow you can keep on doing what you've been doing in the past and somehow not continue to have the same consequences, is doomed to failure. What is required is a fundamental and permanent change in attitude and in behaviour, and those people who think they can adopt a particular pill or eating pattern for a fixed period, shift the weight and then they're done are asking for trouble.

However, I shall, respectfully, continue to disagree that Low Carb falls into this category, or is somehow in the same slot of unhealthy eating as 'months on less than 1000 cals a day'.

If it sounds to good to be true it generally is!! I have done plenty of 3 day diets, 7 day diets in my time, and yes you lose weight but as soon as you stop the weight piles back on.