Study lends support for the Mediterranean Diet and QUALITY of nutrient sources.
“…low-fat diets have the worst effect on metabolism…Participants on that diet also had increases in triglycerides, a type of fat, and lower levels of so-called good cholesterol…”
“…the low-carb diet had the biggest boost in total energy expenditure, burning about 300 calories more per day than those on the low-fat diet, about the same as an hour of moderate exercise. But that bump came at a cost: increases in cortisol, a stress hormone, and a measure of inflammation called CRP, which can raise the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes.”
“…the low-glycemic-index diet burned about 150 calories a day more than those on the low-fat diet without any negative impacts on cholesterol levels or various hormones, making it the ideal diet, Dr. Ludwig said. The glycemic index measures the impact of carbohydrates on blood-sugar levels.”
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
… But that bump came at a cost: increases in cortisol, a stress hormone, and a measure of inflammation called CRP, which can raise the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes."
[/quote]
I don’t like the sound of that! I’m on 60 or less carbs per day.
I guess that is why a combination of them is what works best for most. I have pretty high carbs on the 3 lifting days >400g and low fat <40g, 3days with cardio only is <40g carbs and >100g fats and 1 day that is evenly mixed. This is the way that my body responds the best.
[quote]Mateus wrote:
I guess that is why a combination of them is what works best for most. I have pretty high carbs on the 3 lifting days <400g and low fat >40g, 3days with cardio only is >40g carbs and <100g fats and 1 day that is evenly mixed. This is the way that my body responds the best. [/quote]
I think you got your signage the wrong way around.
Ok just tracked down the paper from JAMA to have a dig around.
I initially thought it was a bit dodgy because there were only 21 participants, but then I realised that all participants were given all 3 diets in (randomly assigned) rotation, which gives them quite a lot of statistical power to detect differences because in effect each individual acts as their own control in the balanced design.
Moreover because the order of diets is randomly assigned we can rule out the possibility that the change in numbers we see is some artefact of an order effect (i.e. switching from low-carb to low-fat causes some sort of response).
Here are the cortisol numbers: mean (95% confidence interval), units are ug/d
Pre-weight-loss baseline: 58 (47 to 73)
Low Fat: 50 (41 to 60)
Low Glycemic Index: 60 (49 to 73)
V Low Carb: 71 (58 to 86)
But here’s the nuts and bolts of the stats (had to go digging around for these as the comparisons are denoted by superscripts in the table). For those who care, they assessed significance using post hoc pairwise testing between the 3 groups, and corrected p values for multiple testing.
In effect, Low fat and Low glycemic CORT levels were not significantly different, nor were Low Glycemic/V Low Carb means sig. different. Therefore the sig. difference lies between Low Carb and Low Fat. From this you can infer that switching from low carb to low glycemic will not guarantee lower cortisol. To do that, one would have to switch to low fat BUT this study already shows that health markers for that group weren’t great at all. I know which I would choose.
Remember though that this is about weight loss (mean BMI of participants was 34.4, sd 4.9). I think it would be a bit of a leap to extrapolate these findings to people of a ‘healthy’ weight class directly. Also, the 4 week diet period for each rotation is very short. I wonder how much of this is a short term response versus what might happen in the long term. I note that the study authors raise both of these criticisms themselves.
[quote]BrentGoose wrote:
Ok just tracked down the paper from JAMA to have a dig around.
I initially thought it was a bit dodgy because there were only 21 participants, but then I realised that all participants were given all 3 diets in (randomly assigned) rotation, which gives them quite a lot of statistical power to detect differences because in effect each individual acts as their own control in the balanced design.
Moreover because the order of diets is randomly assigned we can rule out the possibility that the change in numbers we see is some artefact of an order effect (i.e. switching from low-carb to low-fat causes some sort of response).
Here are the cortisol numbers: mean (95% confidence interval), units are ug/d
Pre-weight-loss baseline: 58 (47 to 73)
Low Fat: 50 (41 to 60)
Low Glycemic Index: 60 (49 to 73)
V Low Carb: 71 (58 to 86)
But here’s the nuts and bolts of the stats (had to go digging around for these as the comparisons are denoted by superscripts in the table). For those who care, they assessed significance using post hoc pairwise testing between the 3 groups, and corrected p values for multiple testing.
In effect, Low fat and Low glycemic CORT levels were not significantly different, nor were Low Glycemic/V Low Carb means sig. different. Therefore the sig. difference lies between Low Carb and Low Fat. From this you can infer that switching from low carb to low glycemic will not guarantee lower cortisol. To do that, one would have to switch to low fat BUT this study already shows that health markers for that group weren’t great at all. I know which I would choose.
Remember though that this is about weight loss (mean BMI of participants was 34.4, sd 4.9). I think it would be a bit of a leap to extrapolate these findings to people of a ‘healthy’ weight class directly. Also, the 4 week diet period for each rotation is very short. I wonder how much of this is a short term response versus what might happen in the long term. I note that the study authors raise both of these criticisms themselves.
[/quote]
Thanks Goosy!
That puts it into proper perspective.
[quote]BrentGoose wrote:
Ok just tracked down the paper from JAMA to have a dig around.
I initially thought it was a bit dodgy because there were only 21 participants, but then I realised that all participants were given all 3 diets in (randomly assigned) rotation, which gives them quite a lot of statistical power to detect differences because in effect each individual acts as their own control in the balanced design.
Moreover because the order of diets is randomly assigned we can rule out the possibility that the change in numbers we see is some artefact of an order effect (i.e. switching from low-carb to low-fat causes some sort of response).
Here are the cortisol numbers: mean (95% confidence interval), units are ug/d
Pre-weight-loss baseline: 58 (47 to 73)
Low Fat: 50 (41 to 60)
Low Glycemic Index: 60 (49 to 73)
V Low Carb: 71 (58 to 86)
But here’s the nuts and bolts of the stats (had to go digging around for these as the comparisons are denoted by superscripts in the table). For those who care, they assessed significance using post hoc pairwise testing between the 3 groups, and corrected p values for multiple testing.
In effect, Low fat and Low glycemic CORT levels were not significantly different, nor were Low Glycemic/V Low Carb means sig. different. Therefore the sig. difference lies between Low Carb and Low Fat. From this you can infer that switching from low carb to low glycemic will not guarantee lower cortisol. To do that, one would have to switch to low fat BUT this study already shows that health markers for that group weren’t great at all. I know which I would choose.
Remember though that this is about weight loss (mean BMI of participants was 34.4, sd 4.9). I think it would be a bit of a leap to extrapolate these findings to people of a ‘healthy’ weight class directly. Also, the 4 week diet period for each rotation is very short. I wonder how much of this is a short term response versus what might happen in the long term. I note that the study authors raise both of these criticisms themselves.
Thanks for looking up the actual study. I was wondering if they specified fat sources for the low-carb group?
In other words, I’d expect to see differences in some of the health markers if people were eating salmon, avocados and nuts vs. fatty processed meats like hotdogs and full-fat dairy. I’d hope so at least.
Related - I believe someone here had a recipe for the “Backwoods Gainer Shake”. That’s hotdogs in a blender with some protein powder.
[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
Yup, another nail in the coffin for low-fat diets… but as ID said, interesting about the cortisol issue and low-carb… [/quote]
And more evidence that calories are not equal in terms of effects on metabolism.
For as long as I know…athletes have thrived on high carbohydrate diets…and I’ve personally thrived on a high carb diet. The brunt of my caloric intake comes from carbohydrates…complex and simple carbs. I can speak personally that I’ve increased my gym performance, strength, hypertophy…everything on 500+ grams of carbohydrate per day…
I’m sure some may thrive better on a higher fat diet…I’m not one of them.
[quote]
I’ll be moving my thoughts to the Supplements forum once I digest this paper, as a topic was started there to specifically discuss this.
But what I find curious after an initial skim is the statement that “body weight did not differ significantly among the 3 diets”. If all three diets were designed to be isocaloric (each contain the same amount of calories), a difference in total energy expenditure between the low fat and VLC diets of 326 kcal/day should have resulted in some degree of weight change over a 4 week duration, right?[/quote]
What are y’alls thoughts on this?
edit: even a difference of water weight would have been expected from a shift from high-to-low carbohydrate intake.
But then, I see from Fig. 1 that the subjects were not monitored two out of every four weeks of each diet, and the two week assessments were all under “free-living” conditions (i.e., no way to guarantee compliance).
A search for “log”, “journal” and “compliance” gives no results – how did these researchers make sure these people were doing EXACTLY what they were supposed to?
Note also that there is a difference in protein intake between LF and VLC diets – it is surprising that the researchers did not control for this as it limits what we can extrapolate from these findings.
It doesn’t help that Figure 3 is a mess to try and decipher. While we can see that not everyone had the same responses to each diet – in fact, shit looks all over the place for TEE – it’s tough to make out much more than that. I’d have preferred a table of the raw data to this graphic.
This study was done on ppl who dont trian balls to walls 4+ times a week. To me that makes it irrelevant to me at this time in my life. MOre relavant to my relatives and family who do not train
[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
This study was done on ppl who dont trian balls to walls 4+ times a week. To me that makes it irrelevant to me at this time in my life. MOre relavant to my relatives and family who do not train[/quote]
[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
This study was done on ppl who dont trian balls to walls 4+ times a week. To me that makes it irrelevant to me at this time in my life. MOre relavant to my relatives and family who do not train[/quote]
Exactly brah.
We aren’t trying to be peanuts.
Carbs are king for us brah.[/quote]
They should use you guys for studies of this sort (and those who follow similar training protocols). Low carb worked great when I wanted to lose fat before I had any muscle (and when i wasn’t balls to the wall as Ryan said), but sucked when I started fighting and trying to build muscle. That’s when I went back to higher carb and worked great. Diet should fit the individual. There’s no way I could train twice a day, 5 days a week, on a low carb diet. I tried it once, and failed miserably and had the worse weight cut of my life (cutting while fairly lean, not when I was fat).
Still, thank you for the study. This will help me with some of my overweight/obese clients
Thanks for looking up the actual study. I was wondering if they specified fat sources for the low-carb group?
In other words, I’d expect to see differences in some of the health markers if people were eating salmon, avocados and nuts vs. fatty processed meats like hotdogs and full-fat dairy. I’d hope so at least.
Related - I believe someone here had a recipe for the “Backwoods Gainer Shake”. That’s hotdogs in a blender with some protein powder. [/quote]
Powerpuff
No details on actual foodstuffs, but there was a breakdown of the macros.
Going to list these in order of Low Fat/ Low GLycemic / Low Carb (g). I’ve rounded some of these to nearest whole gram.
Protein: 105 / 105 / 151
Carbs: 310 / 205 / 50
of which:
Glycemic Index 68 / 33 / 28 (NB in GI units, not grams)
I have practiced and played football games lasting 3.5 hrs, on both a high carb, and high fat diet. I have felt better, performed better, recovered faster, and had less soreness on a lower carb higher fat diet.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown. I’d think people who want to try lower carb because it comes with the speediest metabolic rate might want to really think about keeping their fat sources as healthy as they can to hopefully avoid the bad stuff ID mentioned. At least that’s my thinking there.
Some of you have brought up your personal experience with manipulating carbs and athletics. True, it’s not the concern of MOST people in the US, who are really only looking at weight loss and maybe health markers.
I don’t have enough personal experience trying to diet since I started lifting to really say for myself. I usually just try to make sure I hit protein targets, eat healthy, and kind of let the rest fall where it may.
This spring I tried a lower carb plan, BUT I also added a lot of time on the stairmill and lower calories in general. This was on top of my normal lifting schedule, lots of walking, and 4 hours of ballet a week. This was my attempt to see if I could get seriously lean. Not only did I start to feel like I had no energy, but I started feeling really blue, which isn’t like me.
