Is Low Carb the Way to Go?
The Study
Researchers followed 322 mildly obese, middle-aged employees at Israel's Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. Of the 322 workers, 277 were men and 45 were women. At the start of the study, the participants were randomly assigned one of three diets:
- A calorie-controlled low-fat diet based on the American Heart Association's guidelines (from 2000 rather than 2005)
- A calorie-controlled Mediterranean diet focused on fish, poultry, oil and nuts
- A low-carb diet focused on vegetable sources of protein and fat
The Results
The biggest weight loss occurred in the first six months, after which all the dieters regained some weight. At the end of two years, the low-fat dieters lost an average of 6.5 pounds, the Mediterranean dieters lost 10 pounds and those on the low-carb plan lost 10.3 pounds. While weight loss was arguably modest, there were some interesting differences: women lost more weight on a Mediterranean diet whereas men fared much better on a low-carb diet.
So is Low Carb the Way to Go?
- The study shows what we've come to accept. Sustainable weight loss is hard. Almost any diet plan that results in taking in fewer calories will lead to short-term weight loss. And a study where the participants are intensively counseled and sufficiently isolated will likely have its participants stick with the plan for longer.
- Some experts, like low-fat guru Dean Ornish, argue that a low-carb diet that focuses on vegetable sources of protein and fat is not a typical low-carb diet. A lack of animal products could account for some of the improvement in the low-carb group's cholesterol levels.
- Ornish also argues that the low-fat diet was not sufficiently low in fat to make enough of an impact.
- After the first two months of restricting carbs to 20 grams a day, low-carb dieters were allowed to consume up to 120 grams a day, which is much less restricting.
- If you're an overweight middle-aged man, low carb may be best, but if you're an overweight middle-aged woman, or if you have diabetes, a Mediterranean-style diet may work better. The study was overwhelmingly male.
Comments
After years (about 23/almost half my life) of being over my “body mass index”, being over-weight and then in the last 17 years or so of being in the obese range I finally was able to do something about it and lose the weight to get back down to my h.s./college weight range.
The key to my weight loss was to find a diet website, log my food and activities and stick to it. I had wanted to lose weight for years and years but just didn’t know how and went about it in the wrong way. In the end it was diet, exercise and a will to stick to it.
I’ve gained 10 lbs back from trips away from home in which I was eating out a lot and holiday eating in which I was splurging and didn’t pay heed to sticking just to my dietary needs. I’m now recovering from shoulder surgery and plan to get back to running moderately while I’ve gone back to watching my caloric intake again and getting back to my comfortable range where I don’t need to worry as much.
With the weight loss my blood pressure is once more in a fit range and I have fewer head aches. I’m also a bit more fit although I can’t say that I have more energy as some do when they lose weight. I’m still pretty lazy.
Even if no one reads this, I do not know whether I should protest the study or laugh about it. Dean Ornish, M.D. reports that the “low-fat”–here, scare quotes are apt–dieters dropped from 31.4% to 30% of fat in their diet. That’s not much of a drop and it’s questionable whether that qualifies as a low-fat diet.
As a patient, I looked at claims from the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute and guidelines from the American Heart Association, and other recommendations as fundamentally flawed. The notion that 30% of diet intake from fat qualified it as a low-fat diet had no objective support. It reflected, I believed, a notion that people gorging on hamburgers, french fried potatoes, cheese, etc., could not alter their diets to one that was truly low in fat, and 30% seemed a nonthreatening goal.
I dropped my fatty, 300 mg cholesterol level, after a myocardial infarction taught me something in 1988. I have stayed away entirely from fatty meats, cheeseburgers, etc. That and a statin have pushed my total cholesterol down to around 110 mg, but I can’t say it’s reversed my atherosclerosis. My HDL hasn’t been high enough; I’m taking niacin now and that might help to boost HDL, which in turn might serve to remove some of the junk narrowing my coronaries.
A week of eating a half-cup of peanuts for a week gave me angina. (I was testing that preparatory to a backpacking trip.) A foolish eating of fried steak an potatoes at an outdoor concert also gave me angina. I can’t find fat-free margarine anymore, so I’ve had my last margarine. For most people, unless they are familial hypocholesterolemics, and i know one such family, it’s best to cut back the fats and forget the Atkins diet.
On my Ornish-like low-fat diet–I occasionally eat turkey and chicken and do eat salmon and tuna–I have survived for 20 years, post MI. That diet and, more important, cutting back my food intake while exercising, have cut my weight from 190 to my present 148 pounds. I wanted to lose weight for years, but never did anything. Many men eat until they are stuffed, a legacy from their active, young years. So did I.
I’ve developed new eating habits. I’ve been losing weight since, I think, the year 2000. The key is to develop new habits that one will not reverse, the peril of crash diets.
As for the diet studies? Well, I no longer eat baloney. I get all the baloney I want in laughable diet claims, like that from the Women’s Health Initiative. Doesn’t any of the researchers have any common sense?