Low-carb, high-fat diets add no arterial health risks to obese

Good news, I would say:

Low-carb dieters showed no harmful vascular changes but also on average dropped 10 pounds in 45 days, compared to an equal number of study participants randomly assigned to a low-fat diet. The low-fat group, whose diets consisted of no more than 30 percent from fat and 55 percent from carbs, took on average 70 days, nearly a month longer, to lose the same amount of weight. [...]

However, Stewart does contend that an overemphasis on low-fat diets has likely contributed to the obesity epidemic in the United States by encouraging an overconsumption of foods high in carbohydrates. He says that high-carb foods are, in general, less filling and that people tend to get carried away with how much low-fat food they can eat. More than half of American adults are estimated to be overweight, with a body mass index of 26 or higher; a third are considered to be obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher. 

Full article here.

Energy expenditure in obese vs slim non dieters

Just before I get back to the prolonged fasting and weight loss post I thought I'd put this picture up.

It's slightly modified for clarity and taken from Fig 1 of this paper.



None of the 10 people in either column are being dieted, the graphs would be different under caloric restriction. I would, all things being equal (ie a linear relationship from thin through obese to a BMI of 50), expect the obese subjects to use/lose more adipose calories per day in proportion to their obesity if you suddenly withdrew all food.

They don't.

There's more on the study here, which has all of Fig 1 and has not been subjected to my activity with a rubber (OK, an eraser if that's less risque).

Peter