Thread: Low Carb - Low Calorie?

If you cut the calories too, your body goes into starvation mode and hangs on to weight and excess water...thinking it may need to save what it has for later...you need around 1500-1800 calories a day and even up around 2000 unusual--as high as 3,000 isn't totally unheard of though no one would recommend a daily diet of 3,000 unless you were running a marathon the next day! LOL

When I first started my appetite was naturally surpressed so that I ate less calories. My calories averaged about 1600 last month and probably since I started. I agree with Lori (of course how could I not when it's true) you can't eat too few or your body thinks it's starving.

When you cut the calories too low your metabolism will slow down - that's why low calorie diets never worked well. Dieters lost slowly on them because their metabolisms got sluggish - body thinks it has to save fat & fuel because of famine. The average body needs at least 2000 calories just to maintain life - that is for a serious couch potato. So eating 1800 calories a day is 200 less plus you burn extra calories with any activity / exercise you do. And w/ Atkins there is a metabolic advantage. The body is burning fat, not glucose, not lean body tissue nor muscle.

Also, a calorie is not a calorie. Dr. Diana Swarzbein explains in her book, The Swarzbein Principle, that to determine the calorie content of a food scientists break the food down into its simpliest form and then determine how much energy is needed to consume it (she explains better than I do). But the body does not break down and burn protein and fats in their simpliest form. So they are not consumed as completely as carbohydrates are - if you eat 350 calories of chicken your body doesn't burn the whole 350 calories because it is not completely broken down. I recommend reading her book for a good understanding of how the body works in these area - well written and easy to understand. I think her carb limits are a little high for me but otherwise it is excellent and worth reading.

So if you eat 1800 calories and it is 65% fat and 20% protein you aren't actually burning 1800 calories - a metabolic advantage for low carbers.
Karen