{"id":4717,"date":"2012-09-17T21:09:20","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T03:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/?p=4717"},"modified":"2012-09-17T21:09:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T03:09:20","slug":"intermittent-low-carb-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/2012\/09\/17\/intermittent-low-carb-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Intermittent Low-Carb Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stumbled across this article about a carbohydrate-restriction study<\/a> while looking for something else.<\/p>\n

British researchers took 88 women considered at high risk for breast cancer and divided them into three diet groups. One group adopted a Mediterranean-type diet with a limit of 1500 calories per day.\u00a0 The second group was told to restrict carbohydrates to below 50 grams two days per week, then eat normally on the other days.\u00a0 The third group was also told to restrict carbohydrates to below 50 grams two days per week, but also to limit calories to 650 on those two days.<\/p>\n

Here were the results, according to the article:<\/p>\n

At the end of four weeks women in both of the intermittent dieting groups had lost more weight — about 9 pounds — than the women who ate low calorie meals every day of the week — about 5 pounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

Women in the intermittent dieting groups also had better improvement than daily dieters in the levels of hormones — insulin and leptin — that have been linked with breast cancer risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notice that the women who restricted calories every day lost the least amount of weight on average.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t find a full paper on this study \u2013 the article mentions a presentation, so maybe there is no full study published \u2013 so we don\u2019t know if they measured changes in metabolism.\u00a0 We also don\u2019t know if the women who went low-carb twice per week reduced their calorie intake spontaneously.\u00a0 All we know is that the women who restricted calories every day lost less weight than those who merely restricted carbohydrates two days per week.<\/p>\n

I also found it interesting that both groups of women who restricted carbohydrates lost about the same amount of weight, even though one group restricted calories to 650 two days per week and the other group didn\u2019t.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen this happen in several studies now:\u00a0 people who restrict carbohydrates lose as much or more weight than people who restrict calories, even though the low-carbers don\u2019t restrict calories and are told to eat to satiety.<\/p>\n

If you restrict calories enough and can endure being perpetually hungry, you will lose weight.\u00a0 Nobody disputes that.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll also end up with a slower metabolism and be miserable much of the time.\u00a0 No thanks.\u00a0 Not when can I keep my weight down just by avoiding sugar and limiting starch.\u00a0 I’m never miserable while eating bacon, steaks, ribs, shrimp, chicken, eggs and butter.<\/p>\n

I know what I ate today (scrambled ham and eggs with onions and cheese for breakfast, Italian sausages and mashed cauliflower loaded with butter and sour cream for dinner), but I don\u2019t know how many calories I consumed today \u2026 or yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, or on any day in recent memory.\u00a0 And I like it that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stumbled across this article about a carbohydrate-restriction study while looking for something else. British researchers took 88 women considered at high risk for breast cancer and divided them into… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4717"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4722,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4717\/revisions\/4722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}