Do Calories Count on a Zero-Carb Diet?
What do we mean when we say, “Calories don’t count.” To many people, we sound downright heretical. Everyone knows that a calorie is a calorie, right?
It isn’t. The faith in the law of thermodynamics is founded on two misinterpretations of themodynamic law, not the law itself.
First, there is the misconception that an association implies cause and effect. The law of energy conservation says that energy is neither created nor destroyed so the calories we consume will either be stored, expended or excreted. The implication is that a chnage in body weight must equal the difference between the calories we consume and the calories we expend. We may recognize it this way:
Change in energy stores=energy intake – energy expenditure.
The first law dictates that weight gain will be accompanied by or associated with positive energy balance but it does not say that it is caused by a positive energy balance.
There is no driver in this equation. It is equally possible that a change in energy stores could be the driving force affecting energy intake and adversely affecting our energy expenditure.
What if some regulatory function could drive us to gain weight, which would in turn cause a positive energy balance leading to overeating and sedentary behavior?
All who insist that overeating and sedentary behavior cause obesity do so on the basis of this same fundamental error. They observe rightly that positive caloric balance is associated with weight gain, but then they assume without justification that positive caloric balance is the cause of obesity.
So when we say that calories don’t count, we mean that they don’t count in the sense that they can be measured in your mind. This equation happens in your fat tissue. It has been known since the 1920s that our fat tissue is not a trash can waiting for us to burn the fat contained in it. Fat tissue has blood vessels and nerves running through it which connect it to the central nervous system. This is the primary reservoir of fuel for the body. A human with very little observable fat tissue can survive without food for 9 months or longer just on the energy contained in fat tissue. It is an active part of our metabolism.
We must understand that hunger is a request from our cells for fuel. Obesity is internal starvation. Sure, there is plenty of fuel in fat tissue, but our cells are not getting to it because it’s been trapped there due to high insulin levels. High insulin causes the body to put a crimp on fat tissue (much like we do when we bend the water hose) to create more pressure.
To reverse the condition, we have to literally overeat on fat and protein which will speed up the flow of fuel to the cells. This is the essence of the zero-carb diet. Your body will interpret that as having to reduce the fat tissue because the flow of fuel has increased too quickly. Your body made you fat to increase the pressure (i.e. the flow of fuel to your cells). Now, it will decrease the pressure because plenty of usable fuel is coming through the diet.
Please understand that paragraph regarding reversing the condition. Stop here and re-read it.
Obesity is your body’s way of compensating because it did not get enough fuel. Now that you are providing it, you must force it to compensate the other way. You do this by overeating of fat and protein. After a while you will recognize the time to stop eating because your hunger will normalize.
There will be no guessing because you won’t want to eat anymore. The closer you get to your body’s regulated weight, the louder this signal will become and most of us will settle on something like two pounds of meat and a half pound of fat per day.
Do not attempt to eat according to this ratio today! Let your body take you there naturally. That’s the key!
Cutting calories at this point works against you because you are keeping the flow of fuel low so the body has no reason to decrease your fat tissue. Semi-starvation only exacerbates the issue. When you see that fat tissue is large, you will want to cut calories. Take notice what happens to people who fast. They merely create a smaller version of themselves. If one gets fat in the stomach, they will always be fat in the stomach even though they lose weight.
On my low-fat diet back in 2005 when I started dieting, I lost 43 pounds by semi-starving myself. I still had bigger thighs, a big behind and love handles. They were much smaller than they were at 221, but they were still there.
No amount of crunches could fix the problem. However, now that I’ve lost weight correctly, my entire body has recomposed itself. My thighs are now in proportion to the rest of my body. My upper body is no longer bigger than my lower body.
How many times have you seen a person with skinny legs and a big torso?
Some people suppose that people like this are not overweight or obese especially if the fat is in the right places. However, it is not natural nor normal for any animal (including humans) to fatten for no reason. Therefore, it’s important to get to your body’s regulated weight in a way that will also allow your body to regulate your body composition. The zero-carb diet is the best way to accomplish this.
Share on TwitterIn: Obesity · Tagged with: Calories, Insulin
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on January 17, 2009 at 7:18 pm
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Charles, thanks for this post. In the para you ask us to re-read you say:
“…our body will interpret that …”
What is “that”? Is it overeating on fat and protein? Or is it the flow of fuel to the cells?
You also say:
“it will decrease the pressure because plenty of usable fuel is coming through the diet…”
Where:
it = your body
pressure = the flow of fuel to your cells
But this seems to imply that the fat in your diet is going directly to the cells as fuel, when hasn’t it been digested and is coming to the cells as carbohydrate? We burn – at the point of consumption – carbs, not fat, right?
on January 17, 2009 at 7:51 pm
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The point is that once food is digested and broken down to its components, the nutrients, fatty acids, amino acids and all nutrients go to fat tissue initially before being added to the bloodstream. Once they are in the stream, then they are offered to all cells, organs and tissues that require the nutrients. Carbohydrates are not burned for fuel, fatty acids are. Glucose get converted to pyruvate and is burned in mitochondria and the muscles take up the by products of this combustion as lactic acid which results in the burn that runners are familiar with. The cells trade their oxygen for this lactic acid. With fatty acids, the byproducts are C02 and water which are easily excreted and there is no burn. This process is for elimination, not for fuel. It’s well settled that fatty acids are the primary fuel at activities below 85% of exertion. The only controversy involves periods of oxygen debt. When you eat a proper diet without carbohydrates, you will find that you do not feel this burn and this settles the question.
During high insulin, fatty acids get trapped in fat tissue and are unavailable to the body as fuel. Therefore, the body acts as if it’s starving and this explains the behavior of the obese. Despite the abundant fatty acids in their fat tissue, they are unable to get to those fatty acids and use them as fuel. Obesity is internal starvation. Once insulin levels are lowered, then the fatty acids are released and this is how fat tissue shrinks regardless of the amount of calories consumed.
The argument concerning calories and mass is based on the idea of a closed system which the human body is not. Were we to eat 20,000 calories of food, we would not increase our stature. Sure, we might increase fat tissue, but not bones or anything that makes us bigger. Growth is hormonally driven and weight is also governed hormonally as insulin is the primary regulator of fat tissue. If insulin levels are high, fat will be stored in fat tissue. If insulin levels or low, then fat will be released and continue moving through the blood stream as it was designed to do.
Regards,
Charles
on April 7, 2009 at 3:40 am
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This is the best article I’ve read in a long time. .”Obesity is internal starvation.” I never thought about it that way. Thanks for taking the time to enlighten your readers.
regards,
Andre
on December 2, 2009 at 2:44 pm
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