On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, Barry Adamski wrote:

> What have I learned?
> I added up my calories eaten from the month of February and added my calories
> from the weight loss I did experience during this month.  It came suspiciously
> close to where it is supposed to be via activity level/body weight charts.  In
> other words, I needed to cut calories too.

Ding!  Give the man a paleo cigar!

> I can not eat 4000 calories per
> day and lose weight.  I gain on 4000 whether in ketosis or not.

Same here, although I do think ketosis raises my weight-gain
threshold somewhat. But I don't have detailed enough records to
know for sure.  What *is* clear is that I must cut calories to
lose weight.

Incidentally, I got my wife to try Neanderthin, after over a year
of enduring my dietary eccentricity. She enjoyed the meat and
eggs and nuts, but didn't enjoy the rapid weight gain -- about 15
pounds in 2 months.  It wasn't muscle either.  She is now happily
losing that weight on Weight Watchers.

> The point???:
> While many are trying to tell you calories do not matter they sometimes still
> do.
> I have found the only significant short term benefit of ketosis to be a slight
> suppression of my appetite.  Enough so I don't binge at night.

Same here.  I find that low carb -- ketosis or not -- keeps my
appetite under control so that I spontaneously eat less. I am
still 10 or 15 pounds overweight, however, and have not lost any
weight (without gaining it back quickly) in over a year.  That's
because those remaining pounds are not important enough to
motivate me to heightened vigilance of calories, so I tend to
stay where I am.

My theory is that hunger attacks are caused by quick drops in
blood sugar, rather than absolute levels.  Since low-carb diets
seem to reduce the amplitude of blood sugar swings, they help to
keep the appetite down.  My wife, on the other hand, was
constantly hungry on Neanderthin and ate a lot more than normal.

> Other benefits:
> On the positive side I no longer require blood pressure medication, insulin
> injections and I sleep through the night most days.  I have enough energy to
> compete in Tae Kwon Do and beat some of the lanky smaller people I spar with.
> In short (hardly), I will never go back to eating high carb but am open to
> various LC ideas.

I think the other health benefits actually outweigh the weight
loss benefits. These benefits are probably mostly mediated by the
eicosanoid processes described in the Zone and Protein Power, but
the "foreign protein" phenomenon may contribute something too.

Todd Moody
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