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Avalon

Cool Calories, Hot Calories

Good Morning! I'm a little oblivy to how I'm actually feeling, but I am thinking that I sense a feisty something happening. Why is that do you ask? Okay this is why- Diet Hooplah! Calorie Taubes Hooplah! Everyone out to make a buck and never really saying what's going on Hooplah!

Not long ago I was the biggest Atkins convert around. Why? because Atkins works. As a Diet it works. And I firmly believe if it's not working, there's a reason. And what irks me more than anything, well close, is someone pooh poohing something without ever having read the book. Atkins is all meat, NOT! Read the book.

Anyway, I find myself in a weird situation. I'm eating potatoes. Eating potatoes and bread. Eating potatoes and bread and not gaining weight. In fact I have been losing weight. Except for the week at me Mum's. OY! (saved for Journal) I feel like I did back when I discovered Atkins! Like WOW! How can this be? How can this be?

Misinformation.

I want to read Taubes new book and will. And I won't comment on it until then. But this morning I was reading An Eades blog about Thermodynamics. I'm sure he means well. He's got a fan base. He's got books and stuff- it must be Great! I don't doubt his sincerity one bit. Man, where do I start?

Here's some bits of what I read:

Quote:
If we have a diet containing plenty of carbohydrate, the carbohydrate goes into the blood as sugar. There are very few chemical reactions along the way, and there is a loss of energy to the universe with each of these reactions. But, since there aren’t many conversions, there isn’t a lot of energy loss.

If we have no carbohydrates (or few) in the diet, however, it’s a different story. In order to maintain the necessary sugar level in the blood the body is forced to make sugar out of protein, which isn’t a simple operation. Look in any basic biochemistry textbook and you can see all the reactions required to convert protein to sugar, and each one of these reactions consumes energy just to take place but loses energy to the universe in the process as well. It’s much less efficient for the body to convert protein to sugar than it is to simply take the sugar as it comes in already formed.

And, consequently, one would think that a diet low in carbohydrate and higher in protein and fat (both of which have to be converted to sugar) would bring about a greater weight loss than a diet of the same number of calories but with higher levels of carbohydrate. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics predicts this very phenomenon. But despite this rather obvious notion that complies perfectly with the second law, many ignorant people continue to cling to the idea that ‘a calorie is a calorie’ despite that idea flying in the face of the second law. I suppose these people discount the second law. If so, then they should spend their time putting together a perpetual motion machine, which, if they could, would garner them a lot more fame than their inane posturing on the inevitability of the second law might do.

In the human body this inefficiency can be measured as an increase in metabolic rate and an increase in body heat being produced under laboratory conditions. One would assume that since the second law is inviolable and always in operation that people eating a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein would produce more heat than those consuming the same number of calories but composed of a much higher percentage of carbohydrates. And that is exactly what is found.

Precise measurement of heat and metabolic rate showed that when the women followed the high-protein, low-carb diet they produced almost twice as much heat as they did when consuming the higher carb diet of the same calories. In the higher-carb diet the entropy was smaller than in the higher-protein diet, which would be expected from the second law.


But...

Say by eating a high protein- low carb diet our body's temp revs up and we get hot and happy. Eades uses Automobiles as comparison and I found one problem. Do cars get hot? Do we want them running hot? In fact do we want any machine to run hot? Do we not attach fans to Computers and Stereos and ourselves to keep them and us cool? Do we want to run hot? Will we run hot and fast and burn out sooner than out cooler counterparts?

Many of these protein/carb calorie comparisons won't hold water when looked at from different angles. Which carbs, how many carbs makes a big difference and it is certainly easier to just say- meat and eggs lose weight. In an overly complicated world, meat and egg blinders can help save lives.

However, is it a good thing to make our bodies work so very hard as Eades says, to get sugar out of Protein? Something I fear I will be Googling- Cool Calories, Hot Calories Smile

Best wishes,
Avalon

Edit: Which by the way, may also tie in with Calorie Restriction and longevity.

Edit Part Duce: Or maybe- eat your meat COLD to offset the temp spike which might undo any benefit from keeping insulin in check Bonkers

or...

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/13/1539

Quote:
Conclusions Our findings suggest that 2 biomarkers of longevity (fasting insulin level and body temperature) are decreased by prolonged calorie restriction in humans and support the theory that metabolic rate is reduced beyond the level expected from reduced metabolic body mass. Studies of longer duration are required to determine if calorie restriction attenuates the aging process in humans.
adwred

I've heard that about CR - that possibly one of the advantages is that it slows down your metabolism, which slows down aging and cell death, etc. That's why the data on IF being possibly just as effective in increasing longevity is so fascinating to me, as it's not a calorie-restricted state. The whole idea is that you're not restricting calories significantly - just limiting your body's exposure to certain inflammation-encouraging hormones (i.e. insulin) for long periods.

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