Quote:
Originally Posted by Arafura
There's a metabolic advantage with the Atkins diet, where by eating less carbs (under 20g), you actually burn more calories. Calories do count on low carb - they just count differently. One way it happens is that your body uses up calories converting protein into glucose for your energy source...with carbs you are providing your body the glucose right away.
Calories on Atkins could be getting wasted as the protein is being converted to glucose or they could be going to building muscle or to generate heat from the increased metabolism.
Hope this helps!
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you dont burn more calories by cutting carbs down and being in a state of ketosis. you burn more fat. big difference. calories are a unit of energy, nothing more. you can't expend more energy "just because". it requires increased physical exertion or a faster metabolism. not my opinion... thats the laws of physics.
it is commonly believed that a lot of the dietary fat consumed is not stored and passes through your system, which accounts for significant calorie increases in diet and simultaneous fat loss. for optimal fat loss, there is a ratio of fat to protein. can't remember what it is, but basically the bulk of daily calories should come from fat (75% or more if i recall).
also, you can't build muscle on a ketogenic diet anyway, primarily because you are in a constant of dehydration. the benefit of this diet is that it also is that it is somewhat anti-catabolic whereas other calorie restricted diets will often cause significant muscle loss with it not being uncommon for total weight loss to be 40-50% muscle mass. bodybuilders first recognized this fact in the 50's when "fish and water" diets became popular for cutting down without losing muscle mass, although no one understood how or why it worked.
the fact of the matter is that apart from marketing BS, misinformation, poor, unscientific and wrong assumptions by critics, there are not a whole lot of studies about ketogenic diets and its role in fat loss. the diet itself has been popular for almost a century as it was recognized for its role in controlling epilepsy in children. most of the studies about this diet revolves around its use in epilepsy and not about fat loss. one of the best contemporary writings about ketogenic diets and fat loss is a book by Lyle McDonald called The Ketogenic Diet.