isnt it not the calories

missjam

Full Member
so i know 3500 extra calories more than your body needs equals one pound of fat gain... so im wondering if calories do count on atkins... ive heard people eating as much fatty foods as they want on here and restricting carbs... but how does this make sense... i know about ketosis but if we are still consuming huge huge amounts of calories arent we going to gain?
 
You can't gain weight without the presence of insulin. Insulin is a hormone released when you eat carbs (and protein in lesser amounts). It would be very hard to gain weight eating a high fat diet.
 
Also I eat what I want and its normally around 1600 Cals a day

Added to that the appetite suppression I dont think anyone would be gorging fat all day everyday. Its certainly not recommended xx

Sent from my Nexus S using MiniMins
 
I never bothered counting calories, I have no idea how many I consume per day, never needed to worry as I was losing :D
 
Hmmm, I eat a lot of fat myself
 
I wonder is this is the reason I didn't loose weight in Weeks 1 and 2? Too many calories from cheese I shouldn't wonder...
 
If you eat excess fat, you won't gain weight, but you won't lose it either. An explanation on where the excess fat goes is here The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D. » Thermodynamics and the metabolic advantage Scroll down to the addendum. It's a bit complicated, but it explains it better than I can.

Good link, thanks for that.

However ;) he seems to say a lot while saying nothing. OK that's harsh. He says why high fat diets don't make you gain weight. We all get it that insulin is the fat regulation hormone but he didn't acknowledge why the guy lost 1 pound on 4500 calories a day. This goes back to what Gary Taubes says about having a preset hypothesis about how it all works. He didn't explain why it was possible to eat 2000 extra calories a day and lose a pound. He just explained why he didn't gain which ignored a big part of the question - why he lost weight.

Without insulin what is holding the fat in our fat cells? Jimmy Moore (I think it was him, if not it was probably Taubes) said he knew someone losing weight on 6000 calories a day. Atkins said you can eat 2600 calories a day and lose weight. This goes against that article as far as I can see. Glucose is obviously sugar. It seems a bit strange to me that we supposedly need glucose, and therefore to be in glucosis, when many other scientists and doctors claim that fat, and therefore ketosis, is the body's preferred energy provider.

He also says 'The body requires about 200 grams of glucose per day to function properly'

In the Atkins book he says 'the two fuel sources are your body's alternative, completely parallel options for energy metabolism' (page 59). If they are alternative sources, why on Earth would one convert back to the other? It makes no sense! The alleged fact that only 70g of this can be replaced by ketones also seems odd. Why only 70g? Atkins says ketones are the exception to needing glucose. 'Ketones fuel the body in lipolysis just as glucose fuels the body in glucosis' (again page 59).

The Atkins view seems to be shared by many of the big names out there who do their research and can quote their sources:

Mark Sisson
Jimmy Moore (lost 170 pounds on Atkins)
Chris Shugert
Gary Taubes

and many more. It seems Atkins was lightyears ahead of his time and until someone can show me solid evidence of why he was wrong, i'm sticking with him! An example of this is him saying saturated fats are unfairly victimised. Apparently now even Jilian Michaels has said that they are not as bad as they are made out to be! It's the only diet i've ever been able to do (with the exception of the last 2 months...but that's my own stupidity)

Sorry to go into full on essay mode on you all :D
 
Last edited:
Right! I've had enough now. I inject insulin four times a day and one of those is a huge amount. I still lose weight on this diet. There is something unexplored or unexplained here. I think there is more research to be done.

All stored fat is stored as triglycerides. For fat to be stored as a triglyceride it needs to be 'comprised of three fatty acids linked together on a backbone of glycerol' (Diet Delusion page 387). On the same page there is a quote from the 'Handbook of Physiology' which states that the storage of triglycerides 'is decreased to a minimum in carbohydrate deficiency and accelerated considerable during carbohydrate availability'.

Going back to the above bit about glycerol Taubes says glycerol is produced from glucose and there is your answer! You have the insulin (the effect) but not the the carbs (the cause). If you have one without the other you cannot gain much weight (maybe a little from protein converted to glucose but not the huge amount which would come from eating high carbs and injecting insulin). This is why (IMO) Atkins suggests a low carb approach for diabetics. Taubes goes on to say in simpler terms storing fat in the fat tissue is a product of a higher carb diet (due to the glycerol and insulin which are both needed to store fat).

You have the insulin but the low carb approach is why you don't store fat.

Edit: This is what a triglyceride looks like

http://www.hydraulicspneumatics.com...es/02_01_2011/86940Simplified_00000059575.jpg

Insulin is the switch that turns fat storage on. Glycerine is the magnet which 3 fatty acids bind to.
 
Last edited:
so is the lack of insulin ketosis??? cos i'm on day 8 and mi little ole stick turned a lovely shade of deep pink and i had a little silent whoop of joy in the staff toilet today :D
 
so is the lack of insulin ketosis??? cos i'm on day 8 and mi little ole stick turned a lovely shade of deep pink and i had a little silent whoop of joy in the staff toilet today :D

The lack of carbs has forced your body to begin burning dietary and stored fat as energy. You're literally eating yourself ;) but the bad parts (fat) rather than the good parts (lean mass)!

Congrats. Nothing beats that stick turning pink/purple :p
 
Whoo hoo i'm eating myself (and theres a lot to go at) long may it continue!! x
 
Without insulin what is holding the fat in our fat cells? Jimmy Moore

Haha! Thats how I read that! I had to double check! im an idiot! lol! Felt so confused for a minute! lol! :D:D:D
 
J2BLUE, it's great to see another person as big a Taubes fan as me!! I'm still reading the Diet Delusion (its a hefty tome and not something you can really skim through so its taking a while!) and have ordered Why We Get Fat from Amazon (I really hope it arrives today!). I'm doing a lot of reading on this subject at the moment as I'm finding it fascinating, hence the link I found. No more time to post this morning, got to go to work now, but I'll be back here soon!
 
Hey, what happened to my post????

I thought you edited it. I must have been replying while it was edited (whether it was by you or not) and it still managed to quote it.
 
Back
Top