I just updated my list of high quality studies (RCTs) showing statistically significantly more weight loss with advice on low carb diets. Do you know of any exceptions? As far as I know low carb is winning 14 – 0.
How many studies like these do we need before the diet advice to overweight people are changed? It’s hardly reasonable to keep giving the advice that has been shown to be the least effective advice fourteen times over.
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A couple of things:
1) The studies that are often cited to disparage LCHF are usually poorly executed effectiveness trials. Typically a LCHF diet is compared to a "healthy" weight loss diet. Subjects are randomized after exclusion criteria are applied which often eliminate the people who benefit most from LCHF like type 2 diabetics. The results are subjected to an "intention to treat" analysis which includes the results of people who dropped out or who did not necessarily comply with their assigned diet. This will dilute the benefits of LCHF if there is attrition in that arm. More importantly, attrition can be affected if the administration of the LCHF diet itself is done poorly, which is usually the case. A good example is the recent Foster et al study where they excluded T2D, restricted salt and encouraged water consumption, advised increasing carbs after 12 weeks and promoted high omega-6 vegetable oils. All of these errors skewed the study in favour of the control diet. Yet, the findings which found that weight loss at 24 months was the same, are reported as evidence that LCHF offers no advantage.
2) Yes, people on LCHF eat less. That is the whole point, FCS! They eat less because they have normalized their appetite homeostatic systems by reversing their hyperinsulinemia and leptin resistance by cutting carbs. People on a low-calorie diet struggle with this because the high carb content attenuates the diet's effect on those important regulatory factors. This is why on LCHF people spontaneously cut calories without feeling hungry all the time. Yet, instead of recognizing this as a desired feature of LCHF over low-cal the critics cite this as evidence against LCHF. Truly a Bizarro World response!
Thankfully there are some researchers who know what they are doing. The best studies at the moment are being done by Jeff Volek et al at UConn. Unfortunately, he struggles to get funding and can't get published in the high impact journals, the ones that love to publish the other poorly done effectiveness studies. Go figure!
Thanks for posting your comments on the post article. At least there is some hope when all the comments on such a terrible article are critical and offer a truthful rebuttal!
Not one supportive comment as of tonight.
Only one more. It will probably be done by Ron Krauss and it will not cite any of the others and will claim to have discovered low carb for the first time. The American Heart will then fund all of Krauss's buddies to re-do the studies you cited.
For a related story, check out my post on a blast from the future: http://wp.me/p16vK0-2Y
More and more scientific studies are backing up what many of us have known for some time now.
A strict low carb diet will win over the normal calorie counting low fat diet you see all over the television and media.
Sticking to the meat, fish, eggs and vegetables and staying away from white carbs and fruit, I eat a lot of legumes to boast the calories.
I get my protein from:
- Egg whites
- Chicken breast or thigh
- Beef
- Fish
- Pork
- Legumes
- Lentils
- Black beans
- Pinto beans
- Red beans
- Soybeans
Keep up the good work and spread the word. One day this will be the advice given to the general public and the low fat calorie counting will be a thing of the past.
Before, I could not 'put on' weight when I needed to. However, like everyone else, my hunger patterns 'normalised' and became a lot more comfortable.
I do wonder how much this would help anorexics. Just removing the inflammatory component of wheat might also prove useful.
However I seem to have a problem continuing to lose weight. I lost 10 pounds and am stuck at that weight for weeks. I don't know how to break this pattern. I am eating very low carb around 20 the same as in th beginning. This has led to me giving up on the diet before. I want o figure this out and continue to lose as others do. I would appreciate any suggestions that I can take to break this plateau.
But if you have gaind extra fat cells they dont disappear in a hurry, and they take any chans to be fild again.
Some peopel try to much, eating less, eating moore, moore fat, less fat.. then they just do LCHF to another crasy diet.
Try to relax, dont count that much and just eat good LCHF food for some time.