"Brett Robson" <jet_boy@deja.com> wrote in message
news:c0kg4m01po4@drn.newsguy.com...
> The issue is that most of the carbs in the modern diet are empty calories,

That is true, but I think the main issue wrt weight gain is that pure carbs
do almost nothing to curb hunger. You could drink 1,000 calories' worth of
apple juice, and as soon as the liquid has left your stomache you'll be just
as hungry as before (if you haven't slipped into a sugar crash-induced
coma).

> potato chips,

Aren't most of the calories in potato chips from fat?

> the crappy bread in MacDonals that they have to call a bun because
> it isn't bread,

If all you ate at MacDonalds was the buns, you'd probably still be in pretty
good shape.

> Cutting out carbs is a shot gun approach but it should be obvious why it
works.

At ultra-low levels of carbs -- say, 40g/day or less -- your body enters
ketosis, which has a pretty marked appetite-suppression effect similar to
the effects of fasting/starvation. Thus, at these levels of carbohydrates,
most people will lose weight even if they eat as much as they want -- that's
because they simply don't want to eat very much.

The ability to lose weight without much hunger is very appealing to most
people, and for many even the fairly severe dietary restrictions of a
low-carb diet will seem worth it. The problem of course is after they have
lost the weight, going back to their old eating habits, and with necessarily
less muscle mass to burn off the calories.

One more permanent way that low-carb approaches can help lose weight is by
getting people out of these vicious cycles of scarfing down high-carb foods,
triggering a massive surge of insulin to tuck it all away into fat, then
being left with low blood sugar and craving for more carbs.

I should also say that Atkins only advocates these ultra-low levels for a
couple of weeks. After that, you're supposed to gradually increase carb
intake until you are losing weight at a steady but slower rate, then when
you approach your goal weight, raising carb intake until you stabilize. This
is all very touchy feely and new-math, but the result is that a lot of
Atkins followers aren't technically even on low-carb diets, which generally
are defined as no more than 100 grams of carbohydrates per day.

-- 
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom