![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/images\/ErinBeforeAfter.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIf you\u2019re a regular reader, you\u2019ve already seen these pictures.\u00a0 But take another look.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/images\/RaeBeforeAfter.jpg\")
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/images\/MattBeforeAfter.jpg\")
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When people send me before-and-after pictures like these, they also usually tell me about their struggles losing weight \u2013 often covering many frustrating years — before Fat Head<\/em> inspired them to try a LCHF diet.\u00a0 Then they finally lost weight.<\/p>\n If weight loss is mostly about character, then here\u2019s what happened to these people:\u00a0 After years of being too weak-willed to simply eat less and move more, they finally developed the necessary discipline.\u00a0 The fact that Fat Head<\/em> convinced them to start eating bacon and eggs and dump the hearthealthywholegrains <\/em>just before they became disciplined was pure coincidence.<\/p>\n If weight loss is mostly about chemistry, then here\u2019s what happened:\u00a0 Something about switching to a LCFH diet caused biochemical changes that allowed these people to consume fewer calories than they burned without feeling hungry and miserable.\u00a0 They may have even felt more energetic instead of less while reducing their energy intake.<\/p>\n I of course vote for the second explanation, and the research backs me up.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at just a couple of clinical studies of low-carb diets.<\/p>\n In this one<\/a>, 10 obese subjects with type 2 diabetes followed a low-carb diet for 14 days and lost an average of 3.6 pounds.\u00a0 The researchers noted that the subjects consumed fewer calories than before, which completely accounted for the weight loss.\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 We\u2019re not claiming that low-carb diets make calories magically disappear.\u00a0 The money shot in the study’s conclusion is this:<\/p>\n \u2026 a low-carbohydrate diet followed for 2 weeks resulted in spontaneous reduction in energy intake to a level appropriate to their height. <\/span><\/p>\n Spontaneous reduction in energy intake.<\/em> If people aren\u2019t told to eat less but end up eating less anyway, what does that tell us?\u00a0 It tells us they aren\u2019t hungry.\u00a0 That\u2019s chemistry, not character.\u00a0 Character is (according to the calorie freaks) being hungry and not eating anyway.<\/p>\n Well, perhaps everyone enrolled in a diet study decides to eat less and lose weight to impress the investigators, eh?\u00a0 Perhaps we\u2019d see the same results with any diet.<\/p>\n Nope \u2026 at least not in this study<\/a> (and there have been several like it), which compared a calorie-restricted low-fat diet to a low-carb diet.\u00a0 This time the subjects were obese women who followed the diets for six months.\u00a0 Keep in mind that the women in the low-carb group weren\u2019t told to restrict calories.\u00a0 They could eat as much as they wanted as long as they stayed within their carb limit.\u00a0 And yet look what happened:<\/p>\n Women on both diets reduced calorie consumption by comparable amounts at 3 and 6 months. <\/span><\/p>\n The low-carb women weren\u2019t told to eat less, but they did.\u00a0 Now let\u2019s compare the weight loss:<\/p>\n The very low carbohydrate diet group lost more weight (18.7 lbs vs. 8.6 lbs) and more body fat (10.6 lbs vs. 4.4 lbs) than the low fat diet group. <\/span><\/p>\n Now, you could argue that if the low-carb group lost more weight and more body-fat than the calorie-restricted group, they must have ended up eating less.\u00a0 Maybe, maybe not.\u00a0 Maybe their metabolisms stayed higher.\u00a0 But let\u2019s suppose they did eat less, and that eating less completely accounts for the extra weight loss.\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 The point is that they weren\u2019t told to eat less, but they did so spontaneously. \u00a0Either they just happened to develop more character than the calorie-restricted group, or they weren\u2019t as hungry.<\/p>\n Studies like this one<\/a> say it\u2019s because they weren’t as hungry:<\/p>\n Symptoms of negative affect and hunger improved to a greater degree in patients following a low-carb ketogenic (LCKD) diet compared with those following an low-fat diet. Whether these symptom changes explain the greater short-term weight loss generally experienced by LCKD followers deserves further research.<\/span><\/p>\n I’ve lost count of how many people have told me in emails, in comments, in Facebook posts and in person that their appetites have totally changed.\u00a0 They don’t crave desserts and other sweets anymore.\u00a0 They aren’t thinking about lunch two hours after breakfast.\u00a0 They sometimes skip meals because they’re not hungry.\u00a0 They say “no thank you” when co-workers pass around donuts or pieces of birthday cake — not because they refuse to give in to temptation, but because the temptation simply isn’t there.\u00a0 A piece of cake is no more appealing than a bowl of dirt.\u00a0 They are eating as much as they want, but they want less.<\/p>\n When people change the composition of their diets and suddenly find they can eat less without feeling hungry for the first time in their lives, that\u2019s chemistry. \u00a0If feeling full and happy on smaller portions then leads to a spontaneous reduction in energy intake to a level appropriate to their height<\/em>, that\u2019s chemistry.<\/p>\n By the same token, when people try living on 1,200 calories\u2019 worth of low-fat Weight Watchers meals and end up ravenously hungry, that\u2019s also chemistry.\u00a0 Of course, people who are on diets that leave them hungry are supposed to rely on character at that point and voluntarily suffer the hunger pangs.<\/p>\n Bad idea.\u00a0 Hunger isn\u2019t some annoying sensation created by Mother Nature to torpedo your weight-loss efforts.\u00a0 Hunger is your body\u2019s way of saying I need something<\/em> \u2026 protein, nutrients, fuel — something that food could provide.\u00a0 If your body needs fuel and you refuse to supply it, you may end up with a slower metabolism.\u00a0 Or your body may cannibalize your muscles to make glucose.\u00a0 Or you may wind up feeling lethargic and depressed \u2013 emotions your body produces to discourage you from wasting precious fuel by being active.\u00a0 That\u2019s chemistry, chemistry, and chemistry in action.\u00a0 But once again, people made miserable by chemistry are supposed to suck it up, stick with the diet, and use the strength of their character to overpower the urge to eat — then go to the gym to spend an hour on the treadmill despite feeling lethargic, too.<\/p>\n That approach rarely works.\u00a0 Humans aren\u2019t supposed to voluntarily suffer.\u00a0 We\u2019re not geared for it.\u00a0 The diet you can live with is the diet that works with your body\u2019s chemistry, not against it.\u00a0 You can\u2019t go through life in a constant state of war against your body and your appetite, not if you want to be healthy and happy.<\/p>\n The people whose pictures grace the top of this post all tried to lose weight by going on other diets that made them miserable.\u00a0 They probably stuck with those diets for a good long while even when the diets clearly weren\u2019t working.\u00a0 Then they probably felt like failures when they couldn\u2019t stand it anymore and gave up on those diets.<\/p>\n Then they found a diet that worked because it didn\u2019t require them to suffer \u2013 in fact, they got to enjoy delicious, fatty foods they\u2019d been told were bad for them.\u00a0 They felt full sooner.\u00a0 They ate less spontaneously.\u00a0 They lost weight \u2013 lots of it.\u00a0 And it happened because of a change in chemistry, not because they finally developed superior character.<\/p>\n Does that mean character doesn\u2019t play into it all?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 It does.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll deal with that topic next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019re a regular reader, you\u2019ve already seen these pictures.\u00a0 But take another look. When people send me before-and-after pictures like these, they also usually tell me about their struggles… 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":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6358","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=6358"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6370,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6358\/revisions\/6370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fathead-movie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}