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Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/startrek/startrek_trailer3_large.html

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, I’ve slowed down a lot on the blog postings. Despite my goal of “a post a day”, I’ve realized that I just don’t have time for all the things I want to do in a given day without sacrificing something.

What is the thing slowing me down lately from what I want to do? Well, as you probably guessed based on the content of my recent blogs, it’s mostly the whole fitness thing. Relentlessly tracking food intake, hitting the gym, and living an active lifestyle takes a lot of time and mental effort. An overwhelming amount at first, but the amount required seems to be tapering off as I grow more comfortable with my new habits.

But in all of this, the quest for balance continues. I want enough time for my family. For my wife. For my blog. For my work. For my hobbies. Can I do it all in one day? One week? How do I achieve balance in so many areas of my life?

The further I get along as an adult, the more I’m starting to realize that, at least temporarily, one must become unbalanced to regain balance in life. As a for-instance, during college we spend an inordinate amount of time on studying and in class so that we can have the fundamental knowledge necessary to survive and do well in our chosen professions. Once in the workplace, the hard work in school simply fades back to quiet mastery of the subject at hand.

The same lesson seems to apply to physical fitness. I’ve simply never been a fit person, nor have I ever established a long-term routine, gained the background knowledge, or even developed enough of an interest in the topic to be effective at keeping myself fit. Now that I’ve realized some of the benefits, I’ve been consuming information like a starving man consumes food after a long fast.

Isn’t that the way it is with so much of life? To achieve true balance, I first must be unbalanced in order to gain mastery over an area of my life. Then once I’ve gained that mastery, the confidence and competence that come with such wisdom allow me to re-establish a new sense of order, with the new-found knowledge taking its place as part of a harmonious lifestyle.

I think I’ll come through it much better for the effort. But to achieve my long-term goals, in the short-term I’ve had to sacrifice some of my favorite pleasures. Thanks for hanging with me through the intermittent silence and myopic focus I’ve had lately.

–Matt B.

One of the revolutions in personal diet management in the 2000s has been online diet-tracking software. Two of the leaders in this personal tracking area are Fitday.com and LiveStrong.com’s The Daily Plate. Both play an important role in improving the health of Internet-connected people everywhere, but have strengths and weaknesses

1. Fitday.com. If you are extremely detail-oriented, you’ll love Fitday. It gives you details on everything you eat, and you can break it down by macro and micro-nutrients. If you purchase Fitday PC, you can track everything without having an Internet connection, and it offers much more detailed reporting. With personal customizable foods, easy data entry, and superb reporting tools, it’s a great combination of ease-of-use with advanced reporting and monitoring tools. Even more advanced reporting and utilities, as well as freedom from advertisements, are available with their Premium membership.

2. Livestrong.com’s The Daily Plate. This has a much, much larger database of foods than fitday.com because users can submit foods for everybody else. This makes it really nice for quick look-ups for on-the-go food tracking. You can even use an iPhone app to look up your food and put it in while eating on the road. Easy-to-use web interface, plugins to both Facebook and Twitter, it’s nice. Through their association with LiveStrong.com, The Daily Plate now has the benefit of large user groups, online forums, and social networking for fitness nuts. Big downsides: unless you buy a Gold membership, you can’t get detailed micro-nutrient tracking like on fitday.com, and eventually they delete your food history (not sure how far back it goes before they delete).

I used Fitday for my last twelve-week challenge; I’m using Livestrong’s Daily Plate this time around. I miss the detailed micro-nutrient tracking, but since I already have a pretty good idea of where my diet put me last time and I’m eating similar stuff (hey, I lost over 20 pounds of fat and put on 6 pounds of muscle, I’ll stick with the plan!) I know what the deficiencies tend to be. Basically I take a twice-daily multivitamin pack and eat plenty of spinach and other potassium-rich foods.

If you’re looking for some way to track everything you eat, both fitday.com and livestrong.com’s Daily Plate are superb resources with active communities of users and support. Heck, why not try both and swap between them based on your current needs? That’s what I’m doing, and both work really well to help me stay honest on my diet and fitness regimen.

–Matt B.

So on my “week off” from training — and with a very relaxed eating regimen — I decided to get my blood tested. This is after 6 months of low-carb and 4.5 months of lifting, with about 50 pounds of fat lost and 10-15 lbs of muscle gained. I was pre-diabetic before starting, and unfortunately diabetes isn’t really reversible… just controllable. I wanted a baseline of health markers before starting my next twelve-week fat-loss challenge.

According to my doctor, eating low-carb and lifting weights — or at least losing fat and lifting weights — is “the right thing to do for someone with a strong family history of Type 2 diabetes who is worried about getting it himself”. She’s Dr. Mardi Trunelli in Riverton, UT. Her husband body-builds, and I look forward to our next visit at the end of the twelve-week challenge I’m starting today.

Height: 6’1″ Weight: 220 lbs Body fat percentage: 18-20% (getting this tested at the “Bod Pod” tomorrow!) Resting heart rate: 72 Blood Pressure: 130/90 Cholesterol: 177 Triglycerides: 93 HDL: 54 LDL: 104-105 (derived figure) TSH: 1.9 Insulin: Normal CBC: Normal CMP: Normal

The good: * I’m pretty normal across the board. In the words of my doctor, “a perfectly healthy thirty-five year-old man”. * HDL above 40. * Triglycerides look really good. * LDL is close to optimal.

The bad: * I’m obviously still over-fat and showing the signs of it. I’m doing much better than when I was obese, but six months of right-eating and lifting won’t erase decades of zero exercise and eating crap. * Blood pressure is a little high. Given my low triglyceride numbers, according to my doctor it’s still very normal and not a significant risk because I’m under 40 years old, but I’d like to lower it to below 120/80. * Despite being “near optimal”, I’d like to get my LDL below 100, preferably below 60.

Prescription: More of the same, doing what I’ve been doing. Shed another twenty pounds of fat through low-carb eating and exercise. I shed 21 lbs of fat last 12-week cycle; can I do it again?

Yeah, I know there are people out there who got astounding results and double-digit fat percentage reductions during their twelve weeks. My eating plan is very sustainable, and from where I sit, I got into this for my health and hoping to avoid an early grave like my relatives. It took me decades to get this fat; it will take a while to come off.

–Matt B.

I admit it… I didn’t vote for the guy. But this quote today about his feelings on where our political party has gone in the past thirteen years or so sums is up perfectly.

“Our moral soapbox was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years,” he said. “For us to now criticize analogous behavior is hypocrisy. We’ve got to come at it a different way. We’ve got to prove the point. It can’t be as the Chinese would say, ‘fei hua,’ [or] empty words.”

Finally. A fellow Republican who gets it. I’m still a Republican because of the three tiers I consider fundamental to the platform:

1. Fiscal Responsibility
2. Strong military
3. Small government.

I watched my party rally behind George Bush Jr. in ever-increasing spending bills to fund a war that substantially weakened both our military capability through constant deployments and our National Guard through unheard-of mobilization levels. I watched as Homeland Security took over as arguably the most important and visible of all the Cabinet departments.

I’m sick of watching my party go down the tubes. Let’s get back to our roots: reduce government, reduce spending, keep the military strong yet little-used. And let’s stop being hypocrites who embrace those core values only when it’s convenient.

–Matt B. The Republican.

Santa Claus apparently is aware of my current fitness fetish, and graced me with one of the much-ballyhood, infomercial-promoted “Iron Gym” units. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a chin-up bar that you can hook to a doorframe and take down without any permanent mounting hardware.

Now, if you buy it off the infomercial, they’re going to up-sell you on so much crap and shipping costs that you’re going to spend $70 by the time you’re done. On the other hand, you can hit your local Wal-Mart, CVS, or Walgreen’s and pick one up for under $30. You don’t get the ab straps, you don’t get the extensions, and you don’t get the longer bar, but what do you get?

Yep, a solid chin-up bar for less than $30.

So I’ve been using this for the past couple of months. At first blush, I had to laugh, because the infomercials advertise how you’ll get a “ripped, muscular physique” using the Iron Gym. When you pull out the brochure included with the product, the very first page is five diet tips, and then one tip to tell you to do the exercises included in the brochure to build muscle.

Yep. Basically, I could sell a bronzed Nike tennis shoe and sell it as The Iron Shoe, and successfully claim that you can get a ripped, lean physique by following these five diet tips and holding this shoe up in the air for 10 minutes every day. And I’d be right. It’s the diet that makes your abs show up. All it takes is a low body fat percentage. No device will make them show through 20% body fat.

But I digress.

Anyway, if you are in need of a chin-up bar, the Iron Gym does the trick. I could do two consecutive chin-ups in January, and now I can do six. Then take a break, come back, and do six again. After several sets, eventually I fatigue the muscle enough that I can’t do at least four, and I call it done for the day. My eventual goal is to be able to crank through twenty chin-ups without stopping, and twenty pull-ups without stopping so that I can be that guy who cranks out the chin-ups and is ready for more.

I’ve done some ab work hanging from it, and am tempted by the ab straps to make those easier with less strain on my hands and shoulders. My ab workouts have reached the point that I need to do leg lifts, and doing so from a hanging or dip position gives much more resistance than doing leg lifts on the floor. My only difficulty is preventing my body from swinging, and I bet that the hanging straps — or some DIY solution, since I’m too cheap to lay out the 10 bucks to order them — would help prevent the swings.

Push-ups? Sure, it works fine, and I don’t get the pain I usually get in my left wrist after a set using this instead of flat-on-floor pushups. Extra star since this works as advertised, and if you really want to do hard-core incline chest exercises to rip the pectoralis major muscle, put your feet up on a chair.

Dips? Yeah, the Iron Gym sucks for dips. Get yourself a chair instead, it works better with a much better range of motion.

Sit-ups? My couch does a much better job at holding my feet down.

But for a chin-up bar that you don’t need to permanently mount and that doesn’t damage your house, it does a great job. I store it in the laundry room, hang it from the bathroom door frame for my chin-ups, then remove it when I’m done. It’s convenient, takes little space, gives me a nice upper-body workout when I can’t get to a gym, travels easily, and is worth the $30 for those features alone. I like the multiple grip positions; in particular, the two perpendicular bars seem to really help me chin-up without additional aggravation to my delicate rotator cuff.

The reality is, you could go to the hardware store and pick up some spare pipe and mounting hardware for $5 to install a chin-up bar in your house that will give you equal benefit. The Iron Gym’s real benefits are portability, ease of use, and convenience with a chin-up bar that isn’t an eyesore when it’s not in use. Plus it doesn’t scratch the doorframe; nobody needs to have any idea that I use the bathroom door-frame for home workouts.

I give it four stars out of five. It only loses the one star because the infomercial exaggerates its benefits; you need to diet to get a ripped, lean physique, and some of the exercises they tout on the infomercial simply don’t work as well as they let on. The Iron Gym helps with the upper-body workout, works as advertised for chin-ups, pull-ups, and push-ups, but won’t get you there by itself. And particularly it won’t get you there if you don’t use it.

If you’re in need of a home chin-up bar and will use it, go pick one up today. If it’s going to gather dust in the garage, or if you have space to mount a chin-up bar permanently in your house, give it a pass.

–Matt B.

Received a question regarding eating low-carb from a rugby player over on my my favorite bodybuilding forum; I’m a little out of my element here, since I don’t play rugby, but some general advice seemed in order to answer this guy’s questions.

Let’s talk about muscle metabolism briefly.

Your muscles basically operate in two modes: * Lipolysis * Glycolysys

Lipolysis is the basic process used for fat loss. Your fat cells release fatty acids (or you ingest them and they come through the walls of the small intestine), which are then broken down by the liver into glycerol and fatty acid chains called ketones or ketone bodies. Your cells absorb the ketone bodies for energy. While fat is over twice as calorie-dense as carbohydrates, it’s much tougher to liberate the energy and this metabolic pathway is slow; even absorption of ketones — which are a preferred fuel source for cells — is slow. Gluconeogenesis, another process fueled by the liver, provides glucose derived from proteins. This is one of the keys of why low-carb works: you take advantage of this slower metabolic pathway that requires more chemical reactions, thus you can eat more overall calories and still lose an equal amount of fat. Dietary fat and protein are also highly satiating, which helps the low-carb dieter too.

Glycolysis is the basic process used for carbohydrate metabolism. Your pancreas releases insulin, which binds to insulin receptors on your cells and provides, if you will, a “super highway” of energy to your cells, with the insulin receptor/insulin pairs acting as the traffic cops directing huge amounts of glucose into a cell. The cell can use the energy immediately (well, it takes mitochondria to get the job done, but let’s not complicate this), or store it with other ingredients as glycogen in organs and muscles, or store it as triglycerides if stored in a fat cell.

Whew! OK, brief biology lesson over. Sorry if it was review for you, but I think it’s useful for this discussion.

A lot of people wonder about the relative efficiency of glycolysis vs. lipolysis. The short answer is “we don’t know”. There hasn’t been enough science done to establish exact ratios, and as a matter of fact this “metabolic advantage” is a hotly-debated topic precisely because some research shows that it has a profound effect, and other research suggests such an effect doesn’t exist at all. Human trials are problematic for various reasons. Animal trials, on the other hand, demonstrate that high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets require 10%-35% more calories than calorie-restricted diets for equal fat loss while preserving muscle tissue.

That 10%-35% figure is difficult to nail down; we are not sure of the exact ratios, and once again it’s a contested area in the science right now. But I’m going to run with it for now, because it’s useful.

Back to rugby. If you’re on a strict low-carb regimen, another way of looking the fact of reduced calorie efficiency is that you’re operating at a 10%-35% energy disadvantage compared to your teammates and opponents. Your glycogen reserves will also be largely depleted, and such reserves provide the average person with enough energy for around two hours of strenuous effort. That number’s a bit fuzzy, too… after around 20 minutes of strenuous effort, your body kicks lipolysis into high gear anyway to supplement glycogen metabolism. That’s the heart of the “fat burning zone” stuff people like to discuss with cardio routines, because your body recognizes that glucose metabolism won’t be enough to get you through this strenuous exercise.

So what are your options if you want peak performance as an athlete, but you want to take advantage of the fat-stripping advantages of lipolysis in a low-carb diet? Well, for certain sports like bodybuilding, baseball, football, golf, and others where the focus is on brief, strenuous effort with rest periods between, you need do nothing. Your body will probably keep up just fine relying on protein and fat metabolism. If you keep well-hydrated and ingest some carbohydrate-laden drinks while exercising, you’re golden and your body should be able to keep up just fine.

For any sport in which the goal is just to complete the event rather than to win it (e.g. a marathon or century), you also need do very little. Pace yourself to stay out of the zone at which you deplete your energy stores; your pace will be a little slower, but your body would have been in lipolysis anyway to get you through the event. Keep ingesting carbohydrate-laden drinks during the event; marathon winners usually derive most of the calories they burn during the run while they are running from the drinks they ingest. The “carb-up” the night before such an event can actually hurt the performance of a low-carber during such a long run or cycle, and you’re better off staying with an eating pattern you know your body supports. Do make sure those sports drinks you consume during the run agree with you. Many a low-carber has been laid low during a marathon or half-marathon by explosive diarrhea because they drank an unfamiliar sports drink! Many steer clear of the carbs during marathons and do just fine on their lipolytic metabolism alone. But, of course, they aren’t really competitive; they just get it done at a pace they can sustain without that glucose superhighway working for them.

But what about sports that involve more constant and intense effort, such as basketball, rugby, and soccer(outside of the US: football)? For those, you’re going to have constant periods of running that are depleting your glycogen stores, plus bouts of strenuous effort that require maximum anaerobic effort that deplete your stored glycogen. Realize, I’m not a sports nutritionist and have no formal qualifications in this field (I’m a UNIX system administrator for a living), but I understand the science and think the following are logical conclusions:

1. Additional carbohydrates on the day of the bout preceding the event will almost certainly be useful, and used. No need to pig out on pasta here, just include more carbohydrates than those of us that have sedentary jobs where the only workout we get is in the gym.

2. Since you’ll be practicing daily, hopefully with intense effort, a generally increased level of carbohydrate is warranted day-to-day to ensure you have some glycogen available for the first twenty minutes of practice.

3. Consuming plenty of glucose-laden sports drinks during your match if you are on the field a lot probably won’t hurt your fat-loss efforts at all.

4. Creatine supplementation assists in the ATP cycle and muscular hydration. 5g per day during the season will help both build muscle and keep your energy levels higher during periods of prolonged exertion.

As always, measure, experiment, measure, adjust, repeat. I’d suggest just starting toward the high-end of the MANS program — around 50-60g of carbohydrate per day — and then evaluating your performance as you go along. Sugary sports drinks during your match will keep the insulin floodgates open for glucose metabolism, and may be all you need to keep your energy levels high throughout the contest.

Regards, Matt B.

A number of co-workers and I embarked on a twelve-week weight loss challenge recently. Here are my starting and final stats.

Starting weight: 235.35lbs, 25% body fat Ending weight: 224.75lbs, 18.6% body fat

So I gained 6.4 pounds of muscle and lost 17.03 pounds of fat at the same time. That means my lean muscular weight is now almost 183 pounds.

Whoah. That’s cool. That’s a solid twenty pounds of muscle as of today (February 16, 2009) from when I first started lifting in on October 15, 2008 with 163 lbs of lean weight.

Averaging this out, that means over the course of this program: * I lost one and a half pounds of fat every week. * I gained over half a pound of muscle every week.

I plan on starting over again on March 2, 2009 with a new twelve-week challenge, to see if I can push myself to the sub-10% body fat range at which I could finally see the six-pack that I know is lurking somewhere underneath this body fat.

To get there, I need to take the next couple of weeks and “re-feed” my body. I need to slowly ramp up the calories per day, and while this week I’m going to keep lifting and doing cardio, I’m going to take next week completely off so that my body can reset to get ready for the next challenge. I want to get back to my maintenance level of 3200-3300 calories per day while carefully monitoring body fat to make sure I’m not putting back on any of the hard-won fat losses. Ideally, I’d like to be up around 4000 calories/day to start my next fat-loss challenge so that I have plenty of room to keep reducing as “pool season” approaches, with a metabolism on overdrive and no worries about starving myself.

I’m totally surprised that, as a 35-year-old man, my body was capable of these kinds of muscle gains in such a short time. As a total beginner at the weightlifting game (other than a few months in high school when I was cheerleading and needed shoulder strength), I knew I’d get some quick changes right off the bat, but this is kind of amazing.

Here I am, six months from when I started just by trying to lose some weight on September 1, 2008, the day I finally looked at the scale after already losing some flab and saw it read 251 pounds. It’s been a fun journey so far.

I hate pain, and I always thought fitness involved lots of pain. Turns out that’s not the case if you do it right. It involves a lot of dietary discipline and a willingness to show up to the gym several days a week.

–Matt B.

Got this question in one of my forums, and I thought I’d address it here.

Does anyone know some high fat snacks that can be consumed on the move other then peppirami and nuts?

Try one of Mark’s low-carb protein bars from his web site: http://www.musclehack.com/homemade-protein-bar-recipe/

They take some preparation time, but are pretty good. Not really high-fat, but very high in protein.

Here are the snack foods I typically eat when I’m on-the-go and don’t have time to stop for a full meal:

* Low-carb Isopure whey protein powder. Some in a bag or a box and a spoon, it mixes fast and tastes fine with water.

* Fresh vegetables and some fruits. Never forget that most of your carbs should come from veggies, and most veggies are ready-to-eat raw! I like to eat green peppers as if they were apples. Cucumbers, too. You won’t go amiss with a small Clementine or Mandarin orange in your lunch sack, either; at only 7g of net carbohydrate, they work fine into a low-carb eating plan.

* Chewing gum. Look for some of the new Splenda-based varieties, but a piece or two that’s Sorbitol-based won’t hurt.

* Extra-dark chocolate. Look for 75% or higher. Lindt makes a wonderful, dark 85% cocoa bar that’s only 5g carbohydrate per serving. With only 2.5 servings per bar, too, even if you “accidentally” eat the whole bar you have not deep-sixed your eating plan too badly!

* Peanut butter and celery sticks. Tasty and easy to prepare ahead of time. Lower-carb if you use almond butter.

* Prepared meats. I often grill up a large number of pork sirloin, beef patties, fish, chicken breasts & drumsticks, and other meats on Sunday nights. I put them into bags/boxes and stuff them in the freezer, then when I’m packing my foods for the day I just toss them into my lunch sack. With one of your fresh, raw veggies, you have an instant lunch, and most non-seafood has zero carbohydrate!

* Protein pancakes. Lots of recipes abound; I use one calling for mostly soy protein and flaxseed meal. Prepare a few dozen in advance in practical serving-sizes, and buy those 1TBSP Tupperware containers to pre-measure your sugar-free, low-carb pancake syrup into. DaVinci Gourmet makes a great pancake syrup for the purpose with 0 carbs per serving. Toss these into the sack, and with 30 seconds of microwave-time you have a low-carb lunch that tastes awesome. Fork and knife optional but recommended!

* Last but not least, convenience bars. Atkins makes a large number of them that don’t spike your blood sugar. They advertise “2” or “3” grams of net carbohydrates, but let’s be real here. Most have around 10-12g of carb after you take out the fiber. That’s still pretty good, and easy to fit into 30-60g of carb per day, but don’t short-change your fat loss by believing the “net carbs” advertising claims without verifying it yourself. But let’s face it: low-carb junk food is still junk food. Don’t eat too many of these; they will stall your weight loss if you pig out!

Eating this way takes some planning to help you stick to it. Eating like a bodybuilder always does. Go cook up some food for this week in advance, and you’ll find all the convenience food you need for the rest of the week right in your freezer.

–Matt B.

I encountered this poorly-researched, inaccurate, wildly deceptive smear piece against low-carb eating this morning, and had to respond.

Just read all the posts by people who believe that dietary fat is “easily converted to body fat”, like this guy: I’m profoundly disturbed by quotes like this from people who, despite their impressive results, don’t know what they’re talking about:

Fats and oils are the worst nutrients for people who want to lose body fat. They contain the highest amount of calories (9) per gram, and the body stores them very easily as body fat…

Umm, yeah, there is no metabolic pathway for the human body to store the full calories of dietary fat as body fat. We can store protein as body fat after converting it to glucose. We can store carbohydrate as body fat after converting it to glucose. We can’t store dietary fat as body fat, although we can store a small portion of the fatty acids — called “glycerol” — in body fat. Ketones are used preferentially for energy by your body, and cannot be absorbed by your fat cells. But because your caloric needs are being provided by ketones, your body can store the glucose from gluconeogenesis of proteins and breakdown of carbohydrates into glycerol and glucose in your fat cells as triglycerides.

Now to address the specific points of the article:

Proponents say these diets also change your metabolism so your body breaks down more fats, and–voilà–fewer of the calories you eat are stored as flab.

Actually, this person is engaging in a straw-man hypothesis here. There is no magic changing of your metabolism. Converting proteins to glucose is a more “expensive” chemical reaction than converting carbohydrates to glucose. And only the glycerol portion of a fatty acid can be converted to glucose; the rest is ketones which must be used for energy by the organs of the body or else excreted in the urine.

Excretion of ketones in your urine if you are a healthy non-diabetic is a clear sign that your body is using fatty acids — either dietary or stored body fat — for energy in huge amounts. That’s the “metabolic switch” people are talking about. We’re not “changing metabolism so our bodies break down more fats”, we’re eating more fat and protein, which are more biologically expensive to store as fat than carbohydrates are.

Low-carb weight-loss plans do work–for a while. Pounds drop quickly at first because burning stored carbs (called glycogen) releases water. Quite simply, you lose excess water weight.

True, but only for the first three to five pounds. Beyond that, it’s stored body fat (and muscle, if you are not consuming plenty of protein). This is a classic case of telling part of the truth with a statement. The implication is that all or most of the pounds lost on low-carb are water weight, which is a clear falsehood.

Nutritionists say, though, that low-carb weight loss isn’t metabolic magic, just the working-out of nature’s first rule of weight loss: Eat fewer calories, and you will shed pounds.

This author ignores the key difference: low-carb eating allows you to eat more calories than caloric restriction while producing identical results. Yes, we burn more calories than we consume, that’s why we lose weight. All else being equal, however, a low-carber will lose more fat, retain more muscle, and suffer less hunger than a calorie-restricted or low-fat dieter on the exact same amount of calories per day.

That is the metabolic advantage at work.

Some low-carbers say this special way of eating eliminates cravings, but others feel headachy and nauseated.

I know of no low-carbers who stick with it for more than one month who complain of these symptoms on a regular basis. Then again, it may be that those who suffer these symptoms are unlikely to stick with it for more than a month. And the fact is, I got headaches before I started low-carbing; I get fewer now, but I still get them.

Burning far [sic] without carbohydrates produces substances called ketones, which can decrease appetite, but there’s a danger because sustained high ketone levels may deplete mineral stores in bones, leaving them fragile.

The author gets the facts wrong again. If you are burning bodily fat in any way, shape, or form, you are producing ketones and using them as fuel. The kidneys only filter ketones out of the blood into your urine if you are producing huge amounts of ketones. Ketones are a natural body fuel, and any person who is losing fat is producing and consuming ketones, whether on a low-fat, low-carb, or calorie-restricted diet.

High ketone levels only deplete mineral stores for Type 1 diabetics. Once again, someone confuses ketoacidosis with ketosis/lipolysis. They are metabolically opposite processes; ketoacidosis is caused by wildly high blood sugar resulting in extremely acidic blood and is a life-threatening condition, while ketosis/lipolysis is caused by your fat cells giving up triglycerides, and by digestion of fatty acids from dietary fats with no profound health implications. Ketosis/lipolysis caused by reduced carbohydrate consumption does not cause bone loss. That’s a stupid extrapolation from studies unrelated to a low-carb eating regimen.

…both groups achieved nearly identical weight losses after one year.

Unfortunate, but true. All eating plans to lose weight are hard. Although several have shown Atkins to have the highest retention rate, you’re talking only a few people out of each sample group who will stick to any eating plan. However, you can be certain that with identical weight loss, the low-carber ate more calories than the low-fat or calorie-restricted dieter. And there’s a good chance the low-carber has more muscle left at the end of the year, too.

When researchers at the National Weight Control Registry looked at the diets of 2,681 successful dieters who had maintained at least a 30-pound weight loss for a year or more, they expected to see many low-carb diet adherents. They were shocked to find just 25, or 1 percent of the total group. Their conclusion: Low-carb plans didn’t produce a lasting metabolic change that kept pounds off.

Umm, that’s not the conclusion I’d draw at all. We have thirty years of the low-fat mantra being pushed at the American population. In my opinion, we have this fact to thank for the current obesity epidemic. People are trying to reduce their animal fat consumption, and as a result growing obese on overwhelming amounts of carbohydrates trying to make up for the lost flavor and satiety. 1% of the total group is much more likely to be due to low-carb being extremely unpopular more than any other factor.

Oh, and we’ve already debunked the whole “lasting metabolic change” straw-man. No low-carber claims that eating low-carb will change your body so that you can go back to your old eating habits without gettinig fat again.

Unlimited access to bacon cheeseburgers is tempting,…

A bacon cheeseburger is off-limits to an Atkins dieter, too. Duh. Huge bun, enormous amounts of carbohydrates, ketchup with high-fructose corn syrup in it. Leave off the ketchup, leave off the bun, and it’s OK, but then it’s no longer a bacon cheeseburger.

…a low-carb diet that’s essentially an all-you-can-eat saturated-fat buffet may increase your risk of heart attack and stroke, the American Heart Association cautions.

The only reputable studies evaluating saturated fat consumption have been done in the presence of a high-carbohydrate diet. Yes, I agree, if you eat a lot of carbohydrates AND a lot of saturated fat, you’re in trouble. That’s the typical American diet right now, and it’s killing people left and right from diabetes and heart disease. I maintain, however, that it’s the overwhelming consumption of 300+ grams of carbohydrate per day — or more! — that is killing Americans. It’s that “high-everything diet” that’s so unhealthy.

All that sat fat can raise levels of heart-threatening LDL cholesterol–and at the same time shortchange you on the antioxidants from fruits, veggies, and grains that protect arteries from plaque formation.

LDL is not the threat. Small, dense LDL is the threat, and high amounts of saturated fat in a low-carb diet have been demonstrated to raise levels of large, fluffy LDL which are no health risk at all, while reducing quantities of small, dense LDL which are the actual risk factor in LDL levels.

Low-carb diets are also high in protein, which makes them risky for people with diabetes because they can speed the progression of diabetic kidney disease.

If you are already in acute kidney failure, urea buildup from protein consumption will kill you between dialysis treatments. If you are not already in acute kidney failure, low-carb diets pose no additional risk of kidney failure! In fact, it appears that “diabetic kidney failure” is due to out-of-control blood-sugar levels, not out-of-control blood-protein levels. The high blood sugar destroys the kidneys; protein intolerance due to urea buildup is just a side-effect as a result of eating a diet high in carbohydrates.

Low-carb eating is proven to keep blood sugar in control and is endorsed by the ADA for diabetic blood sugar management. Low-carb eating prevents diabetic kidney damage in the first place.

Many low-carb products undermine weight-loss efforts because they’re packed with as many–or even more–calories than “regular carb” versions. Many are also higher in fat. This is especially true of reduced-carb comfort foods such as ice cream, bread, pasta, and snack bars.

True. Off-the-shelf low-carb products often defeat low-carb dieters because those products aren’t actually low-carb. For instance, numerous so-called “low-carb” bars boast 20 grams or more of carbohydrate per serving, and claim that because those carbohydrates don’t raise blood sugar, the low-carb dieter should not count them. This is false advertising. Advertisers preying on ill-informed consumers is an age-old problem. Is this the fault of low-carb dieting?

No. These products contain enormous amounts of carbohydrates and attempt to pretend they’re low-carb by ignoring the low-glycemic carbs. THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT LOW-CARBOHYDRATE PRODUCTS. Stick to whole, natural foods on your low-carb regimen — as recommended by Dr. Atkins in his books — and you’ll experience much better success than eating so-called low-carb junk food that gives you explosive diarrhea.

“It’s the calories, not the carbohydrates,” notes Robert O. Bonow, M.D., former president of the American Heart Association. “America is gaining weight because people are eating more calories than they can burn and getting less exercise.”

Actually, as already mentioned, there is a metabolic advantage to low-carb allowing individuals to eat more calories on low-carb than on a low-fat or low-calorie plan and lose an equal amount of weight while retaining precious muscle mass.

Low-carb junk food is still . . . junk.

I agree, and such foods have no place on the plate of anybody interested in losing weight. But low-carb junk food is not the fault of the low-carb diet.

This anti-low-carb smear piece is appallingly poorly-researched and inaccurate. I’m amazed it ever saw print.