(
*metabolic advantage—the idea that more weight is lost calorie for calorie compared with diets higher in carbohydrates. You can eat more calories on a low-carb diet as compared to a semi-starvation diet and still loose weight.)
I believe Anthony Colpo’s website the omnivore helped save my life with his many articles about low-carb diets and exercise a few years back. I had followed the Atkins diet and was having trouble staying on it, not because it didn’t work but because I was a “carbaholic” and thought I could go back to my regular SAD diet once I lost the weight. Mr. Colpo’s scientifically grounded arguments convinced me of the logic of low-carb for health in addition to a better way to lose weight. His book,
The Great Cholesterol Con, was a masterpiece and his
Their All Mad, was an excellent treatise against the metabolic advantage theory of low-carb. But I think it’s time for Mr. Colpo to relax his attacks on the low-carb gurus for pushing the low-carb diet simply because of their fallacious claims about a metabolic advantage. I do not believe their arguments to be completely without merit, just scientifically untenable. Thanks to Anthony, I can see that.
Of course Mr. Colpo is correct that there are no clinically controlled studies or reliable studies of any kind that show a metabolic advantage to low-carb diets—rat studies not withstanding. But I think he can’t see the forest for the trees.
Let’s come out of the scientific world and the world of low-carb fanatics—me the latter—and enter the real world. To use Dr. Robert Atkins as an example, lets take out all his theories of why low-carb works. To hell with insulin resistance, ketones and hormone deficiencies, whatever. The average pot bellied Joe does not give a damn about these things. Their only question is: “What do I eat?” and “Does it work? This is all the average person is after. When they have lost the weight they want they then go back to their old ways. Everyone seems to skip the parts about maintenance. Dr. Atkins’ only mistake in my view is in not emphasizing that it was not a diet but a permanent lifestyle change in eating habits. I read the first version—my mother’s copy-–so I know I missed that point. (The need for pasture raised organic meats and organic vegetables is another point never mentioned.)
Most people are not interested in the how or the why, they simply want results. The low-carb gurus deliver. There are those, like myself, that want to know the how and the why and can live with a shitty scientific explanation—as long as it works. Of course Mr. Colpo made me rethink but since I am still 35 pounds lighter and lowered my triglycerides to normal it really did not matter that Dr. Atkins was wrong on the science. When you combine the information in
Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution along with
Life Without Bread and
The Great Cholesterol Con you have a win win situation.
I am certainly not a scientist or a research writer but I will venture to say that satiety levels and appetite suppression are a vital function of metabolism—how can they not be? In my simple mind I am unable to see the law of energy conservation/thermodynamics (a calorie is a calorie) in a vacuum. I cannot re-tool this concept to apply it to human metabolism as if it were a closed system; we do after all have a mouth and an anus. I simply cannot remove satiety and appetite from this equation. And let’s not forget the role of insulin in this diet conundrum.
I firmly believe that satiety and appetite are an intricate function of our metabolism; therefore, if a low-carb diet leaves you less hungry or does not induce hunger and protein and fats keep you full longer then that is a metabolic advantage because humans can STAY on the diet indefinitely. Our hunger is suppressed and we lower our calorie intake without even trying. Taking myself as an unscientific example; twenty years ago I had no problem eating a gallon of ice cream in one day and then ordering a pizza pie for a late dinner. Now I can hardly finish two small pork chops. If I choose to go off my diet and eat pizza or candy I get hungrier within two hours or less. On my low-carb/high-protein/fat diet I sometimes have to remember to eat. That is indeed an advantage for one who has struggled with obesity since his early twenties. I do not think my experience is unique. In fact, we all know full well it is not.
I love contrarians like Mr. Colpo but sometimes he should just step back and ask himself if he is contributing to the better good or just screwing with the establishement to satisfy his idiosyncratic stubborness.
If a low-carb high protein/fat diet (low and high based on establishment determinations) prevents hunger and induces satiety, is this not a metabolic advantage if hunger/appetite and satiety are an intricate part of metabolism?
As Gary Taubes asks in his excellently researched book,
Good Calories Bad Calories, what is it about carbohydrates? Do excess carbs cause our metabolism to be thrown off kilter after decades of abuse? I believe that part of this answer has a great deal to do with age. Low-carb studies should be done with those over 35 years of age or perhaps even 40 to truly test this theory. After all, are we dealing with a broken system when we are talking about obesity and metabolism? Studies with genetically obese mice perhaps cannot be extrapolated to human beings (think arachidonic acid conversion in mice as compared to humans) but they do show us one thing; the law of thermodynamics can indeed be defied in a living system when it comes to fat!
So while I do love Anthony Colpo’s work and style of writing, I wish he would take a chill-pill when it comes to his castigation of the unproven metabolic advantage theory of low-carb diets.
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