The poor, misunderstood calorie

In brief, the protein leverage hypothesis (PLH) states that an animal will keep eating until a certain amount of protein has been ingested. If it’s a low protein diet, it will require more food and be more obesogenic; it it’s a high protein diet, it will require less food and may lead to weight loss.

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When I first read about it, I was excited. “Makes so much sense!”

Alas…

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Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

Hyperinsulinemia is sufficient but not necessary for weight gain.

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Since keto kept coming up equivocal or inferior to ultra-processed food (UPF)-free diets, some proponents kept trying to invent mechanisms as to why keto ackshually was superior O_o 

Let’s call this Keto Pseudo-Dominance.

-The best evidence was a spontaneous reduction in appetite. Unfortunately, it turned out that this was due to cutting UPF, not carbs per se, so it worked equally well on higher carb and even WFPB *gasp* 

Here’s where it went from there…

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Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

Many lines of evidence support this. Some do not.

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Liposuction: surgical removal of subcutaneous fat (frequently for aesthetic purposes). It’s the physical removal of adipose tissue and thus fat storing capacity in the relatively “safe” subcutaneous region. This causes fat to be stored elsewhere, “ectopically,” in places like liver.

Ruh-roh.

There’s also cryolipolysis, but we’ll get into that later.

Short and long-term effects of abdominal lipectomy on weight and fat mass in women (Seretis et al., 2015)

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For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.

Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

The carbohydrate-insulin model (CIM) discussion/debate h?a?s? ?r?e?a?c?h?e?d? ?m?a?t?u?r?i?t?y? ?a?t? ?t?h?i?s? ?p?o?i?n?t? hasn’t exactly aged like a fine wine.

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Disclaimers: I like the recent studies on ultra-processed foods (UPFs), but they’re neither necessary nor sufficient to explain obesity. Ditching them seems to do a lot for weight loss, however.

The CIM has been pronounced dead. Here is the most recent iteration:

I do not like this version, mainly because of the left side.

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For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.

Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

A Randomised Crossover Trial: Exploring the Dose-Response effect Of Carbohydrate
restriction on glycaemia in people with type 2 diabetes (D-ROC2) (Ozairi et al., 2021)

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n=12, t=6 days on each diet. Controlled for protein and they tried to keep fat composition relatively similar. They tried to maintain body weight but everyone lost a little; maybe water weight because even the highest carb group was pretty low carb, but we can’t say for sure.

Five groups is a little overkill imo, but cool to see. And interesting to compare these data with now three looking at “well-formulated” diets of varying carbohydrate composition.

The good news: low carb is just as good or better than keto! The other news: it’s also just as good as low fat. Lol

My 30000-foot (potentially controversial?) take here: low carb was fine for weight loss. I think people misinterpreted this to mean carbs are intrinsically obesogenic so lower is better (ie, keto) or complete elimination (eg, the “carnivore” diet). Tl;dr: plain old low carb has helped far more and harmed far fewer than the extremes.

For the rest of this article and more, head over to Patreon! Five bucks a month for access to this and all previous articles. 16% off for annual subscriptions! It’s ad-free and you can cancel if it sucks 🙂

For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.

Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

Trigger warning: there is a lot of talk about obesity pharmacotherapy below. I know, some people don’t like this. New paper, pretty interesting, couldn’t resist…

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In the past I’ve said there are many pathways to obesity & diabetes; not one common cause, and this would result in many different phenotypes and quite possibly different effective treatment modalities. 

For example, some people get impaired fasting glucose but normal glucose tolerance; others maintain normal fasting glucose but impaired glucose tolerance. 

Some people a large part of their annual weight gain (about half) in a short period around the holidays and either just not lose it the rest of the year or gain at a much slower rate.

Stress, injury, sleep,,, many factors.

There’s something called “restrained eating.” It’s where some people can have a cookie and be fine while others will have a cookie and think they’ve blown their diet for the day and follow it with an entire package of cookies. I got blowback for pointing out that this accounted for about 20% of people with obesity. I know some low carbers who think that number is closer to 100%, but it’s not. Maybe 30%. Not 30% of all people, but 30% of people with obesity.

Now this:

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For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.

Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

Spin doctor – A person who publicizes favorable interpretations of the words and actions of a public figure (or in this case, a diet).

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New study on low carb diets for diabetes. Surprise, surprise, HbA1c reduction paralleled weight loss in the short- & long-term.

I love me some low carb diet research, but this was a bad interpretation/spin of the study results:

Here’s why…

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Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

This has appeared off & on in the literature for some time now.

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Brain insulin signaling is a real thing. There appears to be two components: insulin produced in situ (within the brain) and acting on brain/neuronal insulin receptors; and insulin signaling in the brain induced by peripheral/pancreatic insulin.

It isn’t known if pancreatic insulin physically crosses into the brain, although it appears as though insulin increases in CSF after a meal.

For the rest of this article and more, head over to Patreon! Five bucks a month for access to this and all previous articles. 16% off for annual subscriptions! It’s ad-free and you can cancel if it sucks 🙂

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Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

IT DID NOT INCREASE HUNGER 

*phew* had to get that off my chest

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A couple new studies making the rounds on social media. Being misinterpreted, or misunderstood, or just lied about. So, just another Tuesday 😛

Tweet thread. Might be more succinct, Idk: https://twitter.com/CaloriesProper/status/1390471095652847617

Diets Varying in Carbohydrate Content Differentially Alter Brain Activity in Homeostatic and Reward Regions in Adults (Ebbeling, Holsen, Ludwig, et al., 2021)

Fancy methodology. In brief: 20-week weight loss diet, either high carb (60%), moderate carb (40%), or low carb (20%). Then during weight maintenance, they were brought in to have blood flow to specific brain regions before and after a meal of their respective diet.

They were focusing on “reward” centers of the brain, to see if any of these regions are hyper-activated by specific macronutrients (ie, carbs). And I’ll admit, the authors did just as much to lead the readers to their desired interpretation as did the people yelling about this study on Twitter.

For the rest of this article and more, head over to Patreon! Five bucks a month for access to this and all previous articles. 16% off for annual subscriptions! It’s ad-free and you can cancel if it sucks 🙂

For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.

Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper

Red MAD, Blue MAD.

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OMAD = One Meal A Day. AKA skipping breakfast & lunch then having a huge dinner. Don’t @ me “I break my fast at 6pm!” It’s still called dinner.

It’s a fairly rare practice, although both low carb OMAD & high carb OMAD groups have their respective echo chambers on social media. I said respective, not respectful 😛

Both groups also claim their method makes this type of fasting more tolerable, but I have doubts… in general (not OMAD), studies don’t show systematic differences in adherence/attrition/drop outs on HC vs. LC. But there are anecdotes, and that’s fine.

My only qualms (aside from the logical fallacy thing about how the people who don’t achieve success with a particular diet usually just move on to something else, whereas those who do tend to be very loud about it online)…

For the rest of this article and more, head over to Patreon! Five bucks a month for access to this and all previous articles. 16% off for annual subscriptions! It’s ad-free and you can cancel if it sucks 🙂

For personalized health consulting services: drlagakos@gmail.com.

Affiliate links: OMAHA. STEAKS. Check here for daily discounts and the best steaks of your life.

Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? TrueDark is offering 10% off HERE and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. Use discount code LAGAKOS for a deal on CarbonShades. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

Naked Nutrition makes some great products, including Naked Grass Fed Protein. Also, free shipping 

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE. 

Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else. 

calories proper