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Beez,

Show me one study, where the put the Low Carb/no sugar diet up against traditional diets and exact calories were measured and show that those who lost weight on the low carb stuff actually increased their intake without increasing their burn... IE they ate more calories but did not have any more exercise of physical activity.

It doesn't exist. The typical american diet by and large is horrible... large depencies on breads which as I just posted 1 bun can have 2/3 of the calories of the meat and cheese inside of it! So by avoiding the bun the people avoid 1/3 of the calories they normally would have put in their bodies.

I'll believe your, unsubstatiated, claims that you can take in more calories on Atkins without modifying your burn and lose weight compaired to the caloric intake of the person before the diet. Show me any study that shows that conclusion in the general case, and then I'll change my tune.. but it doesn't exist.

Are there some people who react differently to different types of food? Sure there are, always will be, we are all unique individuals. However if the diet can allow you to "eat more CALORIES, and lose weight, without exercise or other increases of caloric burn" you are definately in the great minority.

Weight loss is simple mathematics, and I don't care who you are, or what diet you do.. .and yes not all diets work for all people, again we are all unique individuals. If you want to lose weight, you simply burn 3500 more calories than you take in per pound you wish to lose.. you can do this without changing your eating habbits by increasing your burn, through exercise or other method... you can do this by restricting caloric intake by changing your intake... or you can do it through a combination of the two.

At the end of the day every successful diet that works in the long term will at its core recommend BOTH less calories and more exercise. ANd suprise suprise, Atkins does both... though he plays the "eat only protien" card to get the caloric downplay, he still winds up with less calories in and recommends more calorie burn.

If the diet works for you then I am happy for you I really am, but pretending the magician truly is magical rather than using slight of hand or other principles to get the job done well is frankly self denial.

Look, I hate arguing with you, because I think you're right more than you're wrong. All the benefits you've mentioned are great, but I still don't think they tell the whole story.

I think one problem is that our means of measuring calories has gotten sloppy. Most labelers don't even measure anymore; they just go with the 4-4-9 ratio and leave it at that. But surely, you won't tell me that a gram of fiber will make you as fat as a gram of sugar - and yet, being classified as carbohydrates, they both count for 4 calories.

I don't even think THIS accounts for all of it - as for me consistently being able to eat more - maybe I'm a weird freak of nature, but I'm hardly alone. Let me relate to you some admittedly anectdotal evidence. During my years at MIT, I was a participant in several metabolic studies at the MIT Clinical Research Center. One of them was before I had been able to regulate my weight in any predictable way, and interestingly enough, it was a study comparing low-carb to low-fat diets. Everything going IN and coming OUT of my body was carefully measured. My metabolism was evaluated, and my theoretical caloric requirement was determined.

During the low-fat phase, I managed to still gain 3-4 pounds - even though the study was designed to MAINTAIN weight (the researcher was only looking to determine the change in the level of a certain thyroid hormone). The really funny thing was that using the same caloric values on the low-carb phase, I began dropping weight precipitously, even accounting for the extra urination. To offset this, she first made me drink one, and then finally TWO extra glasses of heavy cream every day (UGH!) during the study, to compensate for the unanticipated weight loss. I still lost 8-9 pounds over the four week study.

The researcher's name was Bandini, the study was conducted around 1986, and oh, by the way, she concluded that low-fat was better for weight loss, based on the level of the thyroid hormone in question.