proper time to eat carbs before bed

The total energy balance for the day will determine whether you store fat or not, it has nothing to do with starchy carbs at night or carbs at night or even carbs at all for that matter.

It really puzzles me how you can come out and write something so patently false. Fat storage and metabolism is principally governed by hormones - not calorie balance - and carbohydrates obviously factor into that.
 
It really puzzles me how you can come out and write something so patently false. Fat storage and metabolism is principally governed by hormones - not calorie balance - and carbohydrates obviously factor into that.

Welcome to the 21st century....I agree with him the only exception being what i stated......
 
Think about this..is it even for the day? Why is 24 hrs so magical? Thats just an arbitrary measurement so we can track...even day prob doesnt matter...
Overall I agree with this..however when it comes to competitive level BB nutritional manipulation for show prep and show becomes a diff story...

You're correct, the daily figure could just as easily be weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc. It's just easy to use the 24hr daily figure to keep the numbers easy to work with. Personally I find it easier to track my 3000-4500 calories a day instead of 21,000-32,000cals. I also agree contest prep is a slightly different beast with its own parameters for water manipulation, carb depletion, etc.

Welcome to the 21st century....I agree with him the only exception being what i stated......

It really puzzles me how you can come out and write something so patently false. Fat storage and metabolism is principally governed by hormones - not calorie balance - and carbohydrates obviously factor into that.

As Jimi said, welcome to the 21st century where we know energy balance will determine weight loss and gain. P-ratio among other things determines how much of a calorie goes to muscle building, energy needs, fat storage etc. The problem is nutrient mediated hormonal responses do jack shit to body comp if they still stay within physiological ranges. Sure if you pin slin you'd need to worry about carb timing and possible fat gains but tell me this: in a starvation diet and someone eats 400g of carbs in a sitting, are you still worried about insulin and fat? Why not? Bc energy balance is what determines whetebr the energy you take in will be used for.
 
It really puzzles me how you can come out and write something so patently false. Fat storage and metabolism is principally governed by hormones - not calorie balance - and carbohydrates obviously factor into that.

There's a study I'll try and find where participants took around 500g of carbs at once. Total DNL was around .4g. .4g of fat was made for eating 500g of carbs....why on earth anyone worries about spiking insulin is beyond me since those 500g certainly spiked insulin levels yet still only .4g of fat was created by the body.
 
So the stubbern belly fat that prevents me from being an underware model is not because I ate a sweet potato last night? But rather because I had too many carbs throughout the day/week/month??
 
There's a study I'll try and find where participants took around 500g of carbs at once. Total DNL was around .4g. .4g of fat was made for eating 500g of carbs....why on earth anyone worries about spiking insulin is beyond me since those 500g certainly spiked insulin levels yet still only .4g of fat was created by the body.

Yes, it would be interesting to read how they possibly could claim to measure that.
 
Yes, it would be interesting to read how they possibly could claim to measure that.

Here's an article by Dr. Layne Norton

Dr. Layne Norton said:
Dr. Layne Norton
PhD Nutritional Sciences

Carbs at Night: Fat loss killer or imaginary boogeyman?

There are quite a few things that everyone in the fitness industry KNOWS. You have to eat 8 meals per day, consume 400g+ protein per day, do fasted cardio, use heavy weights to bulk up, and light weights wit high reps to tone up***8230; oh wait, those are all BROSCIENCE! Don***8217;t get me wrong, bodybuilding and fitness have been on the cutting edge of many dietary and training interventions that mainstream science is only now catching up. Unfortunately, the vetting process for many of these protocols isn***8217;t exactly stringent. Thus, many things become accepted as fact, when in reality they are BROSCIENCE. The debate about whether or not it***8217;s ok to have carbs at night has been all but settled in the fitness industry. You simply can***8217;t consume a shred of carbohydrates at night or you will store fat faster than vampire rises after the sun sets! That is, according to many fitness ***8216;experts***8217; out there, most of whose credentials are worth about as much as a thin sheet of slightly used one ply toilet paper. So Anthony Collova, owner of Broscience.com and IIFYM.com asked me to look into this fitness factoid to determine if eating carbs at night was actually detrimental to your body composition or if it was all broscience.

So where did this ***8216;no carbs at night***8217; thing come from?
In order to properly asses this fitness ***8216;fact***8217; we need to understand why limiting carbs at night is recommended in the first place. Most ***8216;experts***8217; who recommend limiting carbs at night do so because their assertion is since you will be going to sleep soon, your metabolism will slow down and those carbohydrates will have a greater chance at being stored as fat compared to if they were consumed earlier in the day where they would have a greater probability of being burned. Seems reasonable, but broscience always ***8216;sounds***8217; reasonable. They also often assert that insulin sensitivity is reduced at night, shifting your carb storing directionality towards fat and away from muscle.

Let***8217;s tackle the issue of metabolic rate slowing down at night time first. The logic behind this theory seems reasonable enough: you lie down in a bed and don***8217;t really move, just sleep, so obviously you are burning less calories than if you are awake doing stuff, even if you are just sitting in a chair or couch resting, you have to burn more calories than just sleeping right? At first glance this seems to jive with work from Katoyose et al. which showed that energy expenditure decreased during the first half of sleep approximately 35% (1). However, these researchers did show that during the latter half of sleep energy expenditure significantly increased associated with REM sleep. So, there are rises and falls in sleeping metabolic rate (SMR), but what is the overall effect? Interestingly, at the very least it does not appear that the average overall energy expenditure during sleep is any different than resting metabolic rate (RMR) during the day (2, 3). Additionally, it appears that exercise increases sleeping metabolic rate significantly leading to greater fat oxidation during sleep (4). This seems to be in line with data from Zhang et al. which demonstrated that obese individuals had sleeping metabolic rates lower than their resting metabolic rates, whereas lean individuals had sleeping metabolic rates significantly greater than their resting metabolic rate (3). So unless you are obese, not only does your metabolism NOT slow down during sleep, it actually increases! The idea that you should avoid carbs at night because your metabolism slows down and you won***8217;t ***8216;burn them off***8217; definitely doesn***8217;t pass the litmus test.

So the whole ***8216;don***8217;t eat carbs at night***8217; thing is definitely broscience right?
So far, the fear of carbs at night certainly smells like broscience, but before we render a verdict, let***8217;s examine things further. There is also the issue of insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance to address. This is where things get interesting. Compared to morning meals, levels of blood glucose and blood insulin definitely remain elevated longer with evening meals (5, 6). Ah ha! There it is, proof, that you shouldn***8217;t consume carbs at night right? Not so fast. Though insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance appear to be worse at night compared to a morning meal, it is important to keep in mind that a morning meal is after an overnight fast and the fast may improve insulin sensitivity. Perhaps a more fair comparison is a mid day meal vs. a night time meal. In this case there is actually no difference in insulin sensitivity or glucose tolerance (5). Therefore, it appears that insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance are not necessarily impaired and night, but rather are merely enhanced by an overnight fast.

Does any of this science mumbo jumbo actually make a difference?
While it is great to talk about mechanisms and nitpick every intricate detail about metabolism, at the end of the day, we have to examine whether or not any of this stuff makes any difference. Fortunately for us, a recent study published in the Journal of Obesity examined this very question (7). These researchers from Israel put people on a calorically restricted diet for 6 months and split them into two groups, a control group and an experimental group. Each group consumed the same amount of calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat but they distributed their carbohydrate intake very differently. One group (control) ate carbs throughout the day, whereas the experimental group consumed the majority of their carbohydrate intake (approximately 80% of the total) at the night. What they found after 6 months may shock you. Not only did the experimental group consuming the majority of their carbs at night lose significantly more weight and bodyfat than the control group, they also were better satiety and less hunger!

Whoa hold up***8230; less hunger? I don***8217;t buy it.
You heard me right, they were less hungry. Now I***8217;m sure all of you that have been following typical fitness protocols where you eat 6 times per day and have most of your carbs earlier in the day are thinking ***8220;man if I went more than 2-3 hours without carbs I***8217;d be starving!***8221; Well my friends you are buying into a vicious cycle I***8217;m afraid. Let me explain: when you eat small amount of carbs frequently you are basically titrating in glucose to your system. To dispose of this glucose your body releases insulin to drive blood glucose into cells. Over-secretion of insulin however may cause hunger to rise (typically about 2-3 hours post meal, the approximate time course of an insulin response), but no problem, you are eating every 2-3 hours anyway right? Just titrate in some more glucose. Unfortunately this makes you crave and consume glucose like clockwork and tricks many people into thinking that they NEED carbs every 2-3 hours or they would be hungry when in fact the opposite is true. If you ate carbs less frequently with further time between carb dosings, you would be less hungry because your own body would ramp up systems that deal with endogenous glucose production, and keep your blood glucose steady. When you consume carbs every 2-3 hours however this system of glucose production (gluconeogenesis) becomes chronically down regulated and you must rely on exogenous carb intake to maintain your blood glucose levels. Now if you transition from eating carbs every 2-3 hours to further apart for the first few days you may be hungry until your body has adjusted to using gluconeogenesis to maintain blood glucose rather than just eating carbs every 2-3 hours, but once you do adjust, you will find that you are far less hungry. Bringing things full circle, this is exactly what the researchers found! These subjects were hungrier in the first week of the diet compared to 90 and 180 days into the diet where they were much more satiated.

So what***8217;s the explanation for the night time carb group losing more body fat and being more satiated than the control group (maybe we should call them the ***8216;bro***8217; group)? The researchers postulated that more favorable shifts in hormones may be the difference. The baseline insulin values in the experimental group eating the majority of carbs at night were significantly lower than those eating carbs during the day (7). So much for carbs at night decreasing insulin sensitivity huh? Additionally, the experimental group had much higher levels of adiponectin, a hormone associated with increased insulin sensitivity and fat burning. They also had a trend for slightly higher leptin levels. Furthermore, the night time carb munchers had lower levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol and higher levels of HDL (good) Cholesterol. Overall the people eating the majority of their carbs at night lost more bodyfat and had better markers of health by the end of the study than those who ate more of their carbs during the day time.

So what***8217;s the verdict?
I am not ready to say that we should all be eating the majority of our carbs at night. I would like to see this study repeated but with a bolus amount of carbs eaten at one meal in the morning to properly compare it to the single high carb meal at night, whereas the previous study compared a bolus night time carb meal vs. several feedings of carbs throughout the day. It may very well be that the beneficial effects of the diet in this study was more associated with limiting carb dosing (and insulin secretion) to a single bolus rather than spreading them throughout the day. However, I think what can be said with relative certainly is the notion that consuming carbohydrates at night will lead to more fat gain, or impair fat loss compared to consuming them at other times of the day. So write it down ***8220;Don***8217;t eat carbs at night bro***8221; has officially been BUSTED as BROSCIENCE!

Literature Cited
1. Katayose Y, Tasaki M, Ogata H, Nakata Y, Tokuyama K, Satoh M. Metabolic rate and fuel utilization during sleep assessed by whole-body indirect calorimetry. Metabolism. 2009 Jul;58(7):920-6.
2. Seale JL, Conway JM. Relationship between overnight energy expenditure and BMR measured in a room-sized calorimeter. Eur J Clin Nutr. 1999 Feb;53(2):107-11.
3. Zhang K, Sun M, Werner P, Kovera AJ, Albu J, Pi-Sunyer FX, Boozer CN. Sleeping metabolic rate in relation to body mass index and body composition. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 2002 Mar;26(3):376-83.
4. Mischler I, Vermorel M, Montaurier C, Mounier R, Pialoux V, Pequignot JM, Cottet-Emard JM, Coudert J, Fellmann N. Prolonged daytime exercise repeated over 4 days increases sleeping heart rate and metabolic rate. Can J Appl Physiol. 2003 Aug;28(4):616-29.
5. Biston P, Van Cauter E, Ofek G, Linkowski P, Polonsky KS, Degaute JP. Diurnal variations in cardiovascular function and glucose regulation in normotensive humans. Hypertension. 1996 Nov;28(5):863-71.
6. Van Cauter E, Shapiro ET, Tillil H, Polonsky KS. Circadian modulation of glucose and insulin responses to meals: Relationship to cortisol rhythm. Am J Physiol. 1992 Apr;262(4 Pt 1):E467-75.
7. Sofer S, Eliraz A, Kaplan S, Voet H, Fink G, Kima T, Madar Z. Greater weight loss and hormonal changes after 6 months diet with carbohydrates eaten mostly at dinner. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2011 Oct;19(10):2006-14.
 
Beyond all the reading I've done on the subject, you're going to have an uphill battle convincing me that "calorie balance" is the key to fat loss when I personally went from spare-tire 165 to reasonably lean (see avatar) 190+ without giving any thought AT ALL to caloric restriction. On the contrary, I significantly upped my food consumption. Focus was solely on:

A) improved hormonal milieu via TRT
B) Improved diet LOW on carbs and HIGH in protein

I find it bizarre that a STEROID forum should be so invested in denying the efficacy of hormones in weight loss - it flies in the face of the personal experience of probably just about everyone posting here. If it were true, 95% of the threads on this board would be pointless.
 
Beyond all the reading I've done on the subject, you're going to have an uphill battle convincing me that "calorie balance" is the key to fat loss when I personally went from spare-tire 165 to reasonably lean (see avatar) 190+ without giving any thought AT ALL to caloric restriction. On the contrary, I significantly upped my food consumption. Focus was solely on:

A) improved hormonal milieu via TRT
B) Improved diet LOW on carbs and HIGH in protein

I find it bizarre that a STEROID forum should be so invested in denying the efficacy of hormones in weight loss - it flies in the face of the personal experience of probably just about everyone posting here. If it were true, 95% of the threads on this board would be pointless.

My job isn't to convince you of anything though, it's to help those that aren't versed in the subject matter and to present the information to you in a clear and concise manner, whether you believe the facts presented to you is beyond my control.

Just bc you gave no thought to calorie restriction or calorie intake doesn't mean you didn't do it without realizing it. Some ppl estimate their intake accurately others don't. Some feel full on just the right amount of calories for their goals while others do not. You not meticulouy calculating calorie needs and intake has no bearing on the fact that you did it without being conscious of the fact.

Your TRT regimen is irrelevant to this discussion. You were obviously hypogonadal and the TRT just puts you back into NORMAL/physiological ranges (and depending on the doctor you could have higher ranges than most of the population). Obviously if one is deficient in a hormone or a hyperexcretor of one this changes the parameters of my argument.

By cutting out carbs you have intrinsically reduced calories...which can rid you of a spare tire. You've already admitted to not counting calories so you cannot sit there and tell me it was due to cutting the carbs. This isn't even enough to pass for anecdotal evidence let alone controlled/objective evidence. Was it cutting the carbs that got you results or was it the reduced calorie intake? You are lying to both of us if you attempt to claim it was bc of the carb restriction bc again you have no clue what your intake was and can't claim it either way.

Upping your food intake means nothing bc you're not comparing isocaloric or eucaloric diets. Your comparing diets with unequal total calories which skews results from the very beginning of this conversation.

This steroid forum is about the EXOGENOUS use of hormones and how to run them safely. I fail to see what's so odd.

Your personal experience is faulty and biased so it's applicability is seriously in question (see paragraphs 2, 3, and 4). Appeals to popularity are logical fallacies and don't help your argument...who cares if it doesn't concur with the experiences of others if it's factually and scientifically correct? You're trying to impose a cause and effect relationship on personal anecdotes which can only show correlation. Correlation /= causation.

This entire post only speaks to your experience and not science. Furthermore, your experience is highly variable and uncontrolled since, again, you've admitted to not comparing isocaloric diets. If I said "I ate 17 BigMacs everyday then switched it to grilled 2 chicken breasts, 5tbsp olive oil, and 6 heads of broccoli and lost weight" would you take that as evidence? Would you not see the glaring deficiencies in my statement?

Calorie balance is what determines weight gain or loss and the macros (plus to a lesser degree training, genetic markers/hormones, etc) will determine where the weight comes or goes from (fat or muscle). If calorie balance didn't matter than I could eat 10,000 calories of broccoli and chicken and not get fat correct? Guess what, if you only burn 3000cals a day than where does the rest of the calories will go to? One cannot synthesize fat or muscle without the necessary energy (calories). Taking your argument to an extreme, I could never eat again and claim the fat loss was due to hormones when it was really due to calorie restriction. The Law of Conservation of Mass and the Law of Thermodynamics play an important part in this, much more important than hormones.

Finally, you are speculating (optimistically I might add) that endogenous hormones (within normal physiological ranges) has such a pronounced alecfect on body composition. You have not proven (nor has any study, author, dietician, etc) that a NUTRIENT-MEDIATED HORMONE RESPONSE means jack shit to body composition. No matter how many carbs you eat, insulin will only be spiked to a certain level which is still within physiological parameters meaning it's alecfect on the way you look is nil. Please show me any evidence you have proving this wild theory.

Here's the study I referenced earlier. I was off with the numbers (around 4g of fat was synthesized NOT .4g).

Am J Clin Nutr. 1987 Jan;45(1):78-85. Links
Carbohydrate metabolism and de novo lipogenesis in human obesity.

Acheson KJ, Schutz Y, Bessard T, Flatt JP, Jéquier E.
Respiratory exchange was measured during 14 consecutive hours in six lean and six obese individuals after ingestion of 500 g of dextrin maltose to investigate and compare their capacity for net de novo lipogenesis. After ingestion of the carbohydrate load, metabolic rates rose similarly in both groups but fell earlier and more rapidly in the obese. RQs also rose rapidly and remained in the range of 0.95 to 1.00 for approximately 8 h in both groups. During this time, RQ exceeded 1.00 for only short periods of time with the result that 4 +/- 1 g and 5 +/- 3 g (NS) of fat were synthesized via de novo lipogenesis in excess of concomitant fat oxidation in the lean and obese subjects, respectively. Results demonstrate that net de novo lipid synthesis from an unusually large carbohydrate load is not greater in obese than in lean individuals.

A whopping 500g of carbs! Surely they must have all gotten fat then, correct?
 
I also didn't mean to discredit your accomplishments. You have made tremendous progress as evidenced by your avi and I in no way meant to take away from that. All I was trying to do was point out that the reasons for your accomplishments aren't what you make them to be. Regardless you put in hard work and it shows.
 
I also didn't mean to discredit your accomplishments. You have made tremendous progress as evidenced by your avi and I in no way meant to take away from that. All I was trying to do was point out that the reasons for your accomplishments aren't what you make them to be. Regardless you put in hard work and it shows.

I'm somewhat humbled by your detailed and polite response, and it will take me a while to craft a response to all your points.
For now, I will say that your claim that I must have "subconsciously" reduced my calorie intake is at odds with the fact that I gained about 25 lbs over the same time period.

As I stated at the beginning of my post (and as you well know), I am not basing my view entirely on my personal experience, but list it only as a data point. Yes, a lot of my beliefs are based on my reading of Taubes' work, and I hope that the fact that I spent $12 of actual real-world money to send it to you is at least proof that I'm attempting a good faith debate on behalf of the truth rather than randomly attacking people on the internet.

What I took issue to is that you wrote:

"The total energy balance for the day will determine whether you store fat or not, it has nothing to do with starchy carbs at night or carbs at night or even carbs at all for that matter."

Will you not please admit that this is an overreach? For this to be true, you would have to either deny that carb intake affects insulin levels, that insulin levels affect fat metabolism, or both.
 
I'm somewhat humbled by your detailed and polite response, and it will take me a while to craft a response to all your points.
For now, I will say that your claim that I must have "subconsciously" reduced my calorie intake is at odds with the fact that I gained about 25 lbs over the same time period.

You and I have always kept it civil so I will keep it that way. No reason to start name calling and whatnot.

How long a time period are we talking about? To cut away at the fat you'd have to have been in calorie deficits at points throughout this process. That is unless you gained enough muscle mass to just define the fat mass you had in the beginning? Sort of attacking the BF% issue by adding muscle rather than cutting fat. Do you have measurements for the time during this accomplishment?

As I stated at the beginning of my post (and as you well know), I am not basing my view entirely on my personal experience, but list it only as a data point. Yes, a lot of my beliefs are based on my reading of Taubes' work, and I hope that the fact that I spent $12 of actual real-world money to send it to you is at least proof that I'm attempting a good faith debate on behalf of the truth rather than randomly attacking people on the internet.

I didn't know you had to pay for that book. If you'll let me reimburse you for it I gladly will. I thought it was a free gift coupon code thing you were just giving to me. Either way thank you for that and I don't question your motives on a good faith debate. I truly think Taubes to be wrong or reaching on most of his claims. I think he inappropriately/incorrectly applies results when they shouldn't be. I'm still reading his work and I'm sure he has more in not aware of but I've seen several rebuttals (extremely persuasive rebuttals with data) that dismiss a lot of his claims. I'm still not moved to the 'Taubes' side' lol.

What I took issue to is that you wrote:

"The total energy balance for the day will determine whether you store fat or not, it has nothing to do with starchy carbs at night or carbs at night or even carbs at all for that matter."

Will you not please admit that this is an overreach? For this to be true, you would have to either deny that carb intake affects insulin levels, that insulin levels affect fat metabolism, or both.

I will admit to I should have worded that more carefully, it should have said:

"Total energy balance (daily, weekly, etc) will determine whether net fat storage/synthesis is positive or negative. It has nothing to do with......."

^^^thgs how it should have read. As I wrote it it's not accurate bc all dietary fat gets stored as fat so you can store fat even in a calorie deficit. But the total energy balance will determine whether the net is positive or negative bc the dietary fat that's stored could be completely used during the day and you may need to tap into existing stores so while storage did happen, cumulatively fat would still have been lost.

I don't deny that carb levels affect insulin levels. They most certainly do, look at diabetics for example. I also don't deny that insulin can affect fat metabolism. Insulin can store fat just as easily as it can create muscle. What I AM saying is you have yet to prove (and Taubes as well as many others) that this has any clinically significant effect on body composition with isocaloric or eucaloric diets. You've shown that that's the biological/physiological response to carbs and whatnot but you have not shown me that it makes a difference.

If I took 2-4000corie diets and gave one 500g carbs and 100g fat and the other 0g carbs and 322.22g of fat, same total calories and same protein intake...you think the former will store more fat than the latter? Why bc insulin? At first it's actually the exact opposite. Dietary fat is stored immediately. It can be used for energy later but it's first and primary fate is storage. Meaning you'll store 100g of fat eating more carbs and 322.22g of fat eating no carbs. This will eventually balance out bc in the latter you have no carbs to turn to glucose and you'll use the fat for it. The differences between the two have been shown to be minimal/negligent. Most of Taubes' references for his claims to the opposite have come from rat studies (rats process nutrients vastly different than humans, they create fat from carbs very easily whereas humans do not), studies where the diets were NOT controlled or were controlled but with key differences making the results inconclusive, or acute studies (short term) and NOT chronic studies (>6-12wks). These errors completely change the outlook of his argument.
 
I though people were past thinking in these ancient terms anymore. Read Alan Aragon and Will Brink and Lyle McDonald....
 
You and I have always kept it civil so I will keep it that way. No reason to start name calling and whatnot.

How long a time period are we talking about? To cut away at the fat you'd have to have been in calorie deficits at points throughout this process. That is unless you gained enough muscle mass to just define the fat mass you had in the beginning? Sort of attacking the BF% issue by adding muscle rather than cutting fat. Do you have measurements for the time during this accomplishment?

This is over a time period of about 8 months. I don't believe that I was in a calorie deficit at any point. My weight increased steadily. Fat cells around the midsection are androgen responsive and my increased androgen levels due to TRT caused them to dramatically shrink. One of the many ways in which fat metabolism is more complex than a simple accounting of energy balance.

I didn't know you had to pay for that book. If you'll let me reimburse you for it I gladly will. I thought it was a free gift coupon code thing you were just giving to me. Either way thank you for that and I don't question your motives on a good faith debate. I truly think Taubes to be wrong or reaching on most of his claims. I think he inappropriately/incorrectly applies results when they shouldn't be. I'm still reading his work and I'm sure he has more in not aware of but I've seen several rebuttals (extremely persuasive rebuttals with data) that dismiss a lot of his claims. I'm still not moved to the 'Taubes' side' lol.

It was ungracious of me to mention the cost of a gift freely given. Absolutely no debt on your part implied, and if you read it or not is, of course, entirely up to you, though I hope you will.


I will admit to I should have worded that more carefully, it should have said:

"Total energy balance (daily, weekly, etc) will determine whether net fat storage/synthesis is positive or negative. It has nothing to do with......."

I still don't see how you can make such a blanket statement, when there are clearly so many other factors involved. Local fat deposits can occur at the site of insulin injections. Overeating?
Skin grafts displaced from their original site retain their hormonal sensitivity.
A famous medical case of a woman who was grossly obese from the waist down and very lean from the waist up due to a metabolic condition. Did she overeat only from the waist down?
These things would not be possible if net fat storage was a simple consequence of calories consumed vs. expended.

^^^thgs how it should have read. As I wrote it it's not accurate bc all dietary fat gets stored as fat so you can store fat even in a calorie deficit. But the total energy balance will determine whether the net is positive or negative bc the dietary fat that's stored could be completely used during the day and you may need to tap into existing stores so while storage did happen, cumulatively fat would still have been lost.

I don't deny that carb levels affect insulin levels. They most certainly do, look at diabetics for example. I also don't deny that insulin can affect fat metabolism. Insulin can store fat just as easily as it can create muscle. What I AM saying is you have yet to prove (and Taubes as well as many others) that this has any clinically significant effect on body composition with isocaloric or eucaloric diets. You've shown that that's the biological/physiological response to carbs and whatnot but you have not shown me that it makes a difference.

If I took 2-4000corie diets and gave one 500g carbs and 100g fat and the other 0g carbs and 322.22g of fat, same total calories and same protein intake...you think the former will store more fat than the latter? Why bc insulin? At first it's actually the exact opposite. Dietary fat is stored immediately. It can be used for energy later but it's first and primary fate is storage. Meaning you'll store 100g of fat eating more carbs and 322.22g of fat eating no carbs. This will eventually balance out bc in the latter you have no carbs to turn to glucose and you'll use the fat for it. The differences between the two have been shown to be minimal/negligent. Most of Taubes' references for his claims to the opposite have come from rat studies (rats process nutrients vastly different than humans, they create fat from carbs very easily whereas humans do not), studies where the diets were NOT controlled or were controlled but with key differences making the results inconclusive, or acute studies (short term) and NOT chronic studies (>6-12wks). These errors completely change the outlook of his argument.

Yes, I do believe that a diet lower in carbs (especially easily digestible sugars and starches) will cause most individuals to be leaner than they would otherwise be. Taubes' cites a great number of studies. I do remember some rat studies, but I would be shocked if they accounted for a large percentage let alone "most". The rest of your analysis I will have to let stand for the time being because I don't understand it well enough to try to refute it.
 
Ever watch the nutrition roundtable with aragon, brink and berhkman? Awesome .....

Yes of course lol. Will Brink is really one of the best. I know Aragon still looks up to him. I read the round table discussion about mtor and it's activation with Aragon, Hale, Brink, and Norton. Another great piece. Also Aragon got published in JISSN which was a meta-analysis on nutrient timing.
 
I though people were past thinking in these ancient terms anymore. Read Alan Aragon and Will Brink and Lyle McDonald....

I don't know what exactly you're referring to, but the notion of "calories in vs. calories out" is not exactly new but dates back to the 70s. Prior to that, people generally knew and accepted that certain types of foods (potatoes, bread) were uniquely fattening.

The process by which the experts "educated" people otherwise is fascinating science history and reads like a comedy of errors.

As for the authors you mention, I will have to check them out. I did buy McDonald's ketogenic diet e-book back in the 90s and was unaware that he had renounced carb restriction.
 
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I don't know what exactly you're referring to, but the notion of "calories in vs. calories out" is not exactly new but dates back to the 70s. Prior to that, people generally knew and accepted that certain types of foods (potatoes, bread) were uniquely fattening.

The process by which the experts "educated" people otherwise is fascinating science history and reads like a comedy of errors.

It actually dates back farther than that. It was one of the founding principles of weightloss. Things have, in a way, come full circle.
 
This is over a time period of about 8 months. I don't believe that I was in a calorie deficit at any point. My weight increased steadily. Fat cells around the midsection are androgen responsive and my increased androgen levels due to TRT caused them to dramatically shrink. One of the many ways in which fat metabolism is more complex than a simple accounting of energy balance.

It's possible to gain weight in a somewhat linear fashion while still having days of being in a deficit. It'll obviously slow total weight gain down but again without having accounted for the calories you cannot definitively say what your intake was one way or the other.

The other part again is t relevant to our discussion. You were at deficient androgen levels and take a therapeutic dose to maintain normal/healthy/physiologic levels. This change though comes from injecting the testosterone but you're making an ungrounded (IMO erroneous) leap of assumption that the nutrient mediated response of these hormones, nutrient mediated, will amount to the same drastic results when they will not.

Think of it like this: imagine you weren't on TRT and had good endogenous production. What OTC products or lifestyle factors can we use to raise natural test levels? DAA, get good REM sleep of 6-8hrs, don't take pain killers, exercise regularly, etc. Now would you say any of these actions would take you to the same results bc of the increased test levels? It would be a preposterous assumption to think that. The resulting increase in testosterone would be nowhere near enough to account for any significant impact on body composition bc you were healthy to begin with and the increase while possibly statistically significant, lacked any clinical significance or real world results.

And we go back to square one, Im not arguing about the processes or the if hormonal response exists, I'm arguing that a hormone response in a healthy individual to food/nutrition will not produce the results you'd like to believe they would. It's a leap of faith/assumption that they do, not a scientifically backed fact.


It was ungracious of me to mention the cost of a gift freely given. Absolutely no debt on your part implied, and if you read it or not is, of course, entirely up to you, though I hope you will.




I still don't see how you can make such a blanket statement, when there are clearly so many other factors involved. Local fat deposits can occur at the site of insulin injections. Overeating?
Skin grafts displaced from their original site retain their hormonal sensitivity.
A famous medical case of a woman who was grossly obese from the waist down and very lean from the waist up due to a metabolic condition. Did she overeat only from the waist down?
These things would not be possible if net fat storage was a simple consequence of calories consumed vs. expended.

Once again you're talking about unhealthy individuals and ppl with pre-existing conditions which can change things. Also hormones can affect WHERE the fat may be stored but I never said otherwise or even mentioned that before.

Yes, I do believe that a diet lower in carbs (especially easily digestible sugars and starches) will cause most individuals to be leaner than they would otherwise be. Taubes' cites a great number of studies. I do remember some rat studies, but I would be shocked if they accounted for a large percentage let alone "most". The rest of your analysis I will have to let stand for the time being because I don't understand it well enough to try to refute it.

Than why do ppl have such tremendous luck with extremely high carb diets? Then why does fat gain IN HUMAN STUDIES WHEN COMPARING ISOCALORIC DIETS not differ to any significant degree in diets with high carbs low fat and diets with no/lo carbs with high fats? Why doesn't every person who tries a keto diet have positive results? Keto is a minimal carb diet without the easily digested sugars for the most part like you said yet ppl still can get fat on one. Why is damn near every Atkins or Weight Watcher member still fat when they basically cut out their carb intake? It's bc it's calories are the root and primary factor.

I don't know how many off hand but he uses rat studies a good amount. What I'm saying with the rest of my analysis is that there's control errors or design errors, etc. I can't recall the study off hand but in general terms this study came to the conclusion that carbs cause fat gains even in a caloric deficit (basically what you're arguing can happen). They controlled the diets (meaning they gave them the food and measured it out to the gram) BUT a critical factor they forget to realize is that the group that included carbs ended up taking in something like an extra 300calories ABOVE AND BEYOND what the no carb group had. Well no shit an extra 300calories of ANY macro can lead to a positive net storage of fat. Other studies often cited don't have control groups, or the diets are reported by the participants (you have no idea how inaccurate these figures are), or the diets being compared had significantly different total calories (how can you compare a high carb diet to a low carb diet if one had 20% more total calories???), and other errors. The studies that actually took these factors into account show a much more different picture than Taubes would have us believe.
 
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