Well, it's that time of year when we'll all be making New Year resolutions (and then promptly forgetting about them ). There's been an upsurge in posts concerning low-carb (LCHF) recently, so if you're thinking of giving this a go after your holiday indulgences, herewith a short FAQ ... and a bit of mythbusting.
There is so much misinformation written about LCHF that many people who believe that they're "doing low-carb" or "going keto" are actually not. There are many ways to get low-carb wrong (the first few weeks are particularly critical). However, if you get it right, everything just drops into place.
What is LCHF?
It stands for "low carb high fat", but it's a bit of a misnomer. You'll certainly be reducing your carbs close to zero in the first two weeks, and adding quite a lot of fat, but after a few months the macronutrient profile will change, and your meals will not look radically different to anyone else's. You'll be eating a varied diet with lots of vegetables, nuts, some fruit, and a modest amount of animal protein if that's your thing. All the things that the experts say are good for us.
What is a "keto" diet?
Your body has many different possible fuel sources - some are derived from your diet and some are synthesized internally. They're all in use at any given moment, but your dietary habits will alter the ratio in which they are used. A "keto" diet is one which is very low in carbs, forcing your body to use mostly fat for fuel, which it burns in the form of acetoacetate or beta-hydroxybutyrate (ketones), fatty acids, or glucose,after performing various conversions. Unlike LCHF, a keto diet demands strict adherence to a low carbohydrate intake at all times.
My nutritionist says that all bodies need glucose, and if I don't eat carbs I'll die.
The nutritionist is wrong (most nutritionists are, most of the time). It's true that human bodies need some glucose, but carbs (starches) are not the only source. A fat molecule (a triglyceride) is built on a glycerol backbone, which your body can convert via a simple chain of reactions into glucose. Every fat molecule that's released from bodyfat storage undergoes this process; that is, every fat molecule delivers three fatty acids, and half a glucose molecule. Most of your body's organs can burn the fatty acids directly, or after conversion to ketones. Excess amino acids (typically liberated from cell reconstruction processes) are also converted to either ketones or glucose.
The only hard requirement for glucose comes from your brain, blood cells, and corneas, amounting to few hundred kCal per day.
So a low-carb diet causes fat-burning?
It's a bit more complicated than that. It's true that low-carb diets cause your body to rely heavily on fat for energy, but that isn't the primary reason why your bodyfat reserves become depleted. It's more accurate to say that, when you're eating adequate fat and minimal carbs, your body has no need to maintain a large mass of bodyfat. One of the functions of bodyfat is to buffer the large, uncontrolled power surge from a meal heavy in refined starches, so when you stop eating such things, your body has no need for all that bodyfat, and it will start to discard it.
I don't want to eat more fat. Fat causes heart disease.
It's depressing that this myth refuses to die. It just stumbles on like an ideological zombie, refusing to accept that its head has been cut off, and propelled along by nothing but voodoo. Nobody has yet pinned down what causes heart disease, but one thing now seems fairly clear: it's nothing to do with fat, saturated fat, or cholesterol. Interestingly, what put the final nail in the coffin was a series of scientific trials on drugs which either reduce total cholesterol (statins),reduced LDL (statins and PCSK9 inhibitors), or increase HDL (statins and niacin). All of them do exactly what they say on the tin. Unfortunately, what they don't do is have any effect on either heart disease or total mortality - in fact several of them caused additional deaths in the intervention arm of the trial. Ooops.
On the other side of the coin, millions of people are now eating LCHF diets, and steadfastly refusing to develop heart disease - in fact they're generally much healthier than people eating the Standard Western Diet, as well as being slimmer. The nutritionists call this a "paradox". Scientists call it "disproof".
What's the difference between LCHF and Atkins?
Not a lot. The main ones are:
a) Atkins went a bit overboard on his carb restrictions. His prescription for induction was basically spot-on, but he was incorrect about the general ability of humans to tolerate carbs. The vast majority of people can eat quite a lot of carbs - at least if not eaten at every meal - without gaining weight.
b) He suggested eating protein "ad lib", and many people thought this meant "eat as much meat as possible". All he actually meant was that you don't need to measure it. LCHF discourages excessive protein, for various boring reasons.
How do I do this right?
You'll proceed in two distinct phases - induction and weightloss. "Maintenance" is considered a third phase, but it's really a continuation of the second; you don't have to think about switching from "weightloss" to "maintenance" because it just happens all by itself.
In the first stage you'll go keto. You eliminate all visible carbs from your diet and add fat to your meals in quite large amounts; any source is acceptable, but highly-processed vegetable oils are best avoided (canola, corn, etc). Most people find the best way to do this is to add lots of vegetables with fat-based sauces or dressings; for example, by roasting vegetables in olive oil and butter. You can also add dairy fats ad lib to (for example) scrambled eggs, or coffee. Milk should be avoided at this point, but cream and Greek yoghurt are fine. All low-fat food substitutes should be avoided!
There is no need to add extra protein. You might find you're eating a little extra meat as you consume extra meat fat, but it's unlikely to be very noticable.
After a while you'll simply get sick of adding fat to your meals. This typically coincides with the onset of fat loss - you'll probably see it happening in your face any belly before it registers on the scales. Your appetite will drop and you will naturally dial back on the butter, cream, etc. Congratulations, you're now in the weightloss phase. This will continue for several months, during which time you'll feel inclined to add back the occasional dose of carbs (such as fruit or a slice of wholemeal bread), and there's nothing at all wrong with that.
How do I do it wrong?
There are unfortunately several ways to mess this up:
- Trying to substitute more protein instead of fat.
- Not eating enough vegetables (if you do this your meals will be unpleasantly greasy, and you may not get adequate micronutrients).
- Not recognising where the carbs are lurking; root vegetables and fruit are common culprits, as are things-in-packets that purport to be "low sugar" but are still very high in starches.
- Trying to do low-salt while on low-carb. Contrary to popular opinion, most people are eating too little salt. If you experience muscle cramps or weakness, you may have inadequate salt intake.
- Trying to count calories. You eat when you're hungry, and stop when you're full. Under no circumstances should you attempt to control your portions. Let your appetite tell you when enough is enough. It may get things a bit wrong for the first day or two, but it'll rapidly sort itself out.
For those who are interested, there's a group for LCHF:
Thanks moreless! I tried to boil it down to the bare essentials. We seem to get occasional upsurges in interest in LCHF, with the same questions being asked, so hopefully this will be of use to newcomers.
While the evidence for saturated fat causing heart disease isn't strong- the evidence that replacing it with polyunsaturated fat helps reduce risk is pretty good so it's worth bearing in mind when doing lchf
I think it's one of those esoteric debates that's best avoided because it invariably descends into a Holy War, but notice that that page restates the same tired old meme:
"A diet rich in saturated fats can drive up total cholesterol, and tip the balance toward more harmful LDL cholesterol, which prompts blockages to form in arteries in the heart and elsewhere in the body."
Not one word in this sentence is true.
Firstly, as noted, the statin trials definitively disproved the idea that LDL or cholesterol is the proximate cause of heart disease. Many of these drugs lower LDL by 30, 40% or more. If you use sensitive enough statistical tests, you can tease out a tiny positive effect on CVD for statins, but not for other cholesterol-lowering drugs; their effect on CVD is a rock-solid zero (although some of them cause different diseases, driving up total morbidity/mortality). The only possible conclusion is that statins achieve the effect that they do via some mechanism other than cholesterol-lowering, and there are various theories about this (eg., enhancement of nitric oxide synthesis, or anti-inflammatory effects).
The basic idea here is that cholesterol is some nasty gunk that oozes around uncontrolled, greasing up the works. It is not. It is an important structural molecule that (like everything else) is sent out into your bloodstream with a specific intent, and packaged up in such a way that it cannot go where it's not wanted. It gets picked up and recycled by structures designed to do such things. At no point does it just float around, wedging itself into your arterial endothelium and causing "blockages".
If we were to accept for a moment that the cholesterol theory were actually true, then reducing cholesterol by 30% would not actually do much good; your blood is, after all, circulating around and endlessly replenishing whatever is taken out at the capillaries. If this were a purely mechanical silting-up of the arteries, you would expect a 30% reduction in LDL (or whatever) to simply delay arterial blockage, not prevent it; to get any noticeable effect, you'd have to eliminate all cholesterol. That would indeed eliminate the possibility of heart disease, because you'd be dead.
Secondly, progressive "blockage of the arteries" is not a huge problem. Every aged corpse on the autopsy table shows some degree of arterial blockage. It's normal. Where things go horribly wrong is when arterial plaques cause clots, which break off and lodge elsewhere causing acute ischemia and/or infarction. Your body deals with slow arterial narrowing by constructing its own bypasses where necessary.
Thirdly, different fatty acids cause different responses in terms of cholesterol measurements; chain length seems to be of more interest to our biological processes than whether a fatty acid is saturated or unsaturated. Nobody has any idea what these differences mean. It's probable that they mean precisely nothing.
As for the issue of EFAs : these are available in adequate amounts and the correct ratio from, uh, animal fats. Particularly oily fish, which tend to feature heavily in LCHF diets.
Have you got links for the statin evidence - I'm curious as the meta analysis evidence summaries I can find are generally positive so I'd be interested in where the conflicting evidence is from and how much of it there is (I'm a medical librarian so it's a professional curiosity as I don't like to be missing resources when doing research! :-))
You'll get a much better view by reading the original studies - meta-analyses, by their nature, tend to discard information, which is a very bad thing indeed when the studies they draw upon are exercises in obfuscation.
Anyway, I'll root them out for you. I can't remember their names off the top of my head.
Thanks - meta analysis & systematic reviews consider all studies unless there's a reason they can't be compared - in which case they'll state why a study was excluded. Often that's due to a lack of clarity around the subjects or study parameters.
I do think if we're talking about medicine rather than diets we need to cite evidence as it could be worrying to people on that medication - and everything I've found says statins are safe and effective. I wouldn't want anyone reading this thread to get concerned about taking them if they've been recommended
I absolutely would want people to get worried about them, and I'll explain why when I have a moment. You're quite right that assertions should be backed up by evidence.
The main problem with meta-analysis is that you have to develop a consistent scale onto which you will drop all of your study results, in order to compare apples with apples. This is often very difficult to do, because different studies pick different endpoints according to the whim of the study designers (or, more cynically, in order to guarantee a positive result).
In fact meta-analysis is an inappropriate tool unless you're looking for evidence to formulate a hypothesis. Why? Because if any particular study was properly designed, and it produced a negative result (ie., the null hypothesis was upheld) then that result stands as valid. Nothing further needs to be done to make it more valid. If there was no effect, and the study was sufficiently powered, then there was no effect. QED, back to the drawing board.
The majority of the registered statin trials showed no effect. You are aware, I'm sure, that negative studies were and are simply buried, although less of that goes on since it became mandatory to register clinical trials with the regulatory authorities. Thus if you see a positive result from a meta-analysis done prior to about 2006-7, the most likely reason is that the meta-analysis was only able to find studies with a positive result.
A meta analysis would include negative results - they're not designed to prove a hypothesis but to assess the total evidence and improve understanding by the statistical analysis of multiple studies at once.
Systematic reviews & meta analysis ate the best evidence we have (the Cochrane review on statins is here - cochrane.org/CD004816/VASC_... ) because they combine and assess the totality of the available evidence.
And really you shouldn't be scaremongering about medication
It can't include negative results if they've never been published. And if you can only find a statistically-valid result by combining vast numbers of subjects, then by definition you're looking at a very small effect that may have no clinical significance, even if you've managed to achieve statistical significance. Meta-analyses have their place, but they can only be as good as the underlying data (or alternatively: garbage in, garbage out).
Do you disagree, then, that a single study that upholds the null hypothesis is valid in and of itself?
I'm not "scaremongering" here; I'm describing published data. As I said, I'll try to find you the studies I'm referring to, and we'll have another discussion about it.
The point isn't that it's the only way to find a statistically valid result - a large rct will do that. The point is that by combining results of many trials you can arrive at a better conclusion - more data is better than less.
One negative trial among a hundred positive ones is clearly an outlier - so yes a single null result shouldn't negate all the positive ones unless the positive ones can be proven to be faulty in some way
15 negative trials among 20 mediocre positives is a rather different proposition. That's the sort of ratio we're talking about here.
However, I would still argue that a single outlier (if the study is properly constructed) should be taken seriously, especially in the current climate when scientific fraud is accepted as normal.
Hi Toad, that is such a good post that I’ve cut&paste it into an email and sent it to myself to keep. I’ve also just read a post from Drummerswidow, and replied saying she should look for your post, as I didn’t know how to link her to it.
Dear Toad,Thanks for that clear,down to earth,easily understandable summary of LCHF. I've saved it on my lap-top just in case I get stuck counting cals and decide to change.
That's a good one. I've seen a couple of Ekberg's videos and he's generally good at explaining technical stuff for a non-technical audience. He crams a lot of useful facts into 25 minutes there, although his explanation of gluconeogenesis is a bit convoluted.
I particularly like his attitude - that human bodies are incredibly well-designed and possess multiple redundant systems and backups to make sure we keep going under all the situations nature might throw at us. This contrasts sharply with the typical medical view that all bodies are crappy Heath Robinson machines that break at the slightest opportunity, and therefore need to be dosed up with pills by doctors who, apparently, are so clever than that can improve on a million years of evolution.
I also completely agree with his statement that the best plan is to "mix it up" to mimic a seasonal diet. I've said something similar several times.
What irritates me is that there is no actual need to "prove" that humans don't need carbohydrates. Any medical textbook explains why we don't. The physiology is completely understood. It's rather mundane stuff. Yet the nutritionists still argue that black is white.
Thank you for taking time in writing this post.
Please if you are able to answer I would appreciate.
Some number of years ago after stomach by pass we get told to eat low fat as now with some of the large intestine is also by passed. We get told very little fat and more protein. More lean meat to eat first then veg, Can you give any answers to this . 😊
Well ... my first observation would be: if bariatric surgeons knew why people get fat in the first place, they wouldn't be performing radical surgical interventions. They'd be telling people how to eat right.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair
It's hard to answer your question without implying that your surgeon failed all his physiology exams. I doubt this is so: it is more likely, as per Sinclair's quote, that he's simply going through the motions without questioning what he's doing.
Let me ask you a question in response: has your stomach bypass and prescription diet made your life better? Is your body now the shape that you've always dreamed of? Do you enjoy your meals?
I realise that you have gone through a very unpleasant procedure and a lot of psychological stress prior to that point. I don't want to hurt you further by pointing out that your surgeon has done something completely unnecessary to you, but that's the truth of the matter. I personally can answer "yes" to all of those questions ... and I achieved that by eating more fat and less carbs, as opposed to having a stomach bypass. I'm not unique. I'm an ordinary human being and it's worked for many other human beings. So why did your doctor not try the same thing before making irreversible changes to your internal plumbing, on the rather dubious assumption that your body was badly designed?
As regards low-fat, high-protein diets:
- All British people are now on low-fat diets. Even if they're not doing it voluntarily (many are), they don't have much choice: supermarkets have put low-fat foods on the shelves front-and-centre. You have to look really hard to find the version that hasn't had all the fat removed. Sometimes there isn't one. Yet British people are still (mostly) overweight. Clearly, then, something is amiss with the idea that "dietary fat makes you fat".
- Protein is not a fuel source for humans. We are capable of extracting energy efficiently from carbohydrates or fat. That's all. We lack the specialised metabolic pathways that obligate carnivores possess for burning dietary protein. There is no sensible reason for telling people to eat more protein.
Firstly I admire your bravery in being so honest, quite apart from your expertise. I have a few anecdotes to add but they are of no scientific use to anyone really, just things I remember & practiced myself, given my limited knowledge. Firstly, the late DEREK COOPER of BBC RADIO 4's THE FOOD PROGRAMME reported on Margarine -v- Butter circa 1990's which kept me using butter without concern, and encouraged me to avoid all the 'hydrogenated fats' . I am always astounded to still see these 'tubs' in all supermarkets, many with ridiculously high prices compared to butter. Profit before honesty!
Secondly, I agree regarding hidden FATS in supermarkets, I have concluded that the only way is to cook 'FROM SCRATCH' as they say. I use 20% fat minced meat, all the fat/bones from a roast chicken I make into a soup afterwards. I use cream, full fat cheese, full fat yoghurt, cold pressed oils on salads etc etc. I use a variety of nuts (which I pre-soak in salt to remove the phytic acid). Overall, we enjoy a small amount of home-cooked meat & fish. Almost daily we eat beans or lentils in soups, stews, salads, dips. However, although I use wholemeal bread and rice, I have become almost 'addicted' to larger amounts of (albeit wholemeal) carbohydrates in my diet, which is why this post caught my attention.
I was raised in the 1970's on a diet of 'meat and 3 veg' and we rarely had biscuits/shop bought cakes. Pastry was made at home using half lard/half butter. We had cornflakes, porridge (with salt) and years later, I experienced the taste of other breakfast cereals which were loaded with sugar - I detested them - my palate was unaccustomed to the sweetness and has remained so. However, growing up we only ever had white bread, which became my GO TO comfort food in the form of TOAST. When raising my daughter I had switched to wholemeal bread but it remained my 'addiction'. For my daughter I always mixed 'sugar loaded' fruit flavoured supermarket yoghurts (peer pressure bless her) with plain yoghurt (now she will happily enjoy plain yoghurt on fruit/muslie). I added fizzy water to fresh orange juice to satisfy her occasional fizzy drink urges & I mashed pears/banana/stewed apples into porridge (still do).
Thirdly, my late father was type 1 insulin dependent diabetic all his adult life, as was his father, his aunt and also in my generation of same family, my cousin. Regarding so-called 'Health Professionals' my father told me that he often understood more about diabetes than his diabetic specialists ((he wasn't at all being arrogant, just honest )). The point I want to make is that, when I suggested I wanted to 'lose weight' my father said not to focus on calories but on CARBOHYDRATE CONTENT. He didn't call it HFLC diet but he said, if the population had to reduce their carbohydrate intake as he had to do all of his adult life (he was diabetic for 50+ years) he considered there would probably be less people overweight. Obviously he was not highly qualified in dietetics/nutrition, but he was using his own personal experience from managing his condition for all those 50+ years.
Anyway, this is just my personal experience. I'm not a professional or a saint. I'll take a look at the videos posted. One thing I have said to my daughter over and over again (when she was pleading for all the crap on the shelves, (usually boxes with cartoon animals on) "JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS FOR SALE IN A SUPERMARKET DOES NOT MEAN IT IS HEALTHY/GOOD FOR YOU". Huge money making companies know how to create PESTER POWER and they also know how to 'feed' INSECURITIES in people, for example with the so-called 'cholesterol lowering' spreads/margarines. Something else I learned is to always check who is paying someone/scientist/organisation/company to deliver evidence/trials to back up various health claims. The food industry is one of those industries where profit can come before honesty!
Hi Mr Toad. A really interesting blog...and the thread is so deep. Fabulous. The link with low fat and dementia is also growing. ( I've got the anacdotal evidence. )
I'm really sure the lchf is absolutely right for me. I just need to be patient. Almost two weeks now.
I am just trying to get my head around this advice. I haven't read every single post in the thread as it's quite a lot to take in and understand.
If all this is true why are the NHS not promoting it? When I was on here last time, the NHS 12 week plan was promoted and it was calorie controlled. And how can it be that Healthunlocked tells us that people on here are not doctors, and my GP would be telling me I should be worried about my cholesterol creeping up, and many fats are 'tupperware for your arteries'. I must say it's quite confusing. I recently gave up butter and cream as it was pushing my cholesterol up and the practice nurse at my free 50+ health consultation told me to stop eating them.
I am prepared to be open minded, it's just a big journey! And why isn't the NHS giving us better information??
Why indeed! We can only speculate, but my theory is that they can't, because:
1) They've handed over all control to the BDA for dietary advice, ie., a bunch of people who know next-to-nothing about physiology, biochemistry, pathology, physics, or indeed anything else related to nutrition. All the NHS diet-advice pages are written by the BDA and other unqualified content providers, not NHS doctors. Why the NHS would have done this is anybody's guess, but I assume the answer is "politics".
2) Even if the NHS do recognise, collectively, that their advice is wrong, how on earth would they explain that everything they've told us for years is the exact opposite of the truth? They'd be sued off the face of the planet, which would serve nobody's interests.
So over the past few months they've been quietly removing some of the outright untruths (for example, that fat makes you fat, or that it causes heart disease). But they haven't been issuing corrections. They have a half-hearted "low carb programme" aimed at T2 diabetics, which in itself is an admission that the mainstream advice for diabetics (low-fat and lots of carbs) is wrong. But it's going to be a long wait before the NHS starts issuing the proper advice. Until then, it's up to us as individuals to do our own research and look after our own wellbeing.
Incidentally, if you are 50+ then your cholesterol will "creep up". It's normal. Asserting that it's caused by butter and cream is a classic example of a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. All healthy older people have higher cholesterol. In fact it's those who have low cholesterol in old age who are statistically at risk of stroke and heart disease. I flagged up some research on this subject a while back:
Reassuring about the cholesterol, mine is still under 6, just about!
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I’ll add to Toad’s advice Sue that cholesterol is not one single number, high bad, low good. Your nurse should know this and give you your more than one reading. Cholesterol is the molecule that transports energy around our bloodstream to where it is needed. If we do not have enough cholesterol, our body makes it. What matters is whether high or low density lipoproteins molecules attach to it. Low density lipoprotein molecules and Very Low Density lipoproteins are the ones that fur up our arteries - those are the ones you don’t want. Recent research shows that low density fat molecules are created when excess sugar /carbohydrate is turned into fat, NOT when fat is stored. I suggest asking your nurse specifically for your LDL reading.
There’s a book called Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes that goes into all the research and US government messaging on these issues (which is the same as the NHS) on the question you are asking. Why have we been fed a pack of lies.
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Phew, I must say, this is a lot of info to take in and to quote Winnie the Pooh, 'I am a bear of little brain and big words bother me' Well, not all big words, but I need time to digest all this info!!! I will take a look at the book you recommend.
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I know. Sorry. But the short point is that a piece of cheese does not travel straight through your system to line your artery walls. Cutting out sugar & cutting back on carbs will help your cholesterol levels the most. X
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Yes, unfortunately these have been my weaknesses, I am sure along with many others! Hey ho!
I must admit that I don't feel great when I eat more than 1 fat loaded meals a day. I can feel bloated and get pain in my shoulder. I know we are all different but I don't have any current health problems.
May I respectfully ask ( as I'm genuinely confused ), why Slimming World members often reverse their diabetes yet eat as many carbs as they like ? ( Rice, potatoes, starchy veg etc. are all free foods on this plan ).
I had to Google this claim, and I have to say "I don't know", because SW haven't conducted a properly-controlled experiment or documented what these people are eating. I can take a guess though.
The claim is this:
"More than half (54%) of those who had been Slimming World members for six months or more and lost at least 10% of their body weight ... reversed their diabetes"
We're not told what "reversed" actually means in this context, but it's a weaselly claim anyway. If you look up the SW statistics, only 20% of members have maintained their weight loss at the two-year mark (which is in line with the general observation for all calorie-controlled diets). The claim therefore boils down to : "54% of 20% of our members reverse their diabetes".
So, about 10% of all members, then.
Contrast that with Dr David Unwin's success rate, which (IIRC) is about 60% of all patients achieving normal blood sugar control and coming completely off medications (complete reversal) plus a further 20% achieving a partial reversal (typically on some modest dose of metformin). Virta Health in the US claims similar results.
SW are talking about only those who lose weight. The reason is obvious: if you don't reduce your carbs enough to allow a metabolic reset, you won't lose weight. Losing weight and reversing diabetes are essentially the same thing.
The key point here is that SW is pretty flexible. They have some rules that you have to follow, but it's very open-ended. My guess is that certain people - those with an innate high carb tolerance - modify the content of their diets sufficiently that a metabolic recalibration can occur even in the context of a fairly-high-carbohydrate diet. If these people are going from a diet loaded with sugar and processed carbs (say, full of pot noodles, soft drinks, cakes, and suchlike) the mere act of removing these things may be sufficient to trigger the necessary metabolic changes.
It's pretty hard to become diabetic: you have to do some really terrible things to yourself. For some people (and remember we're talking only 10% of SW members), just not doing those things may be enough to fix the problem.
Well thank you for looking into this in so much detail for me. What you are saying does mean sense but then I think of Rosemary Conley and her fat free diets. So many people swear by this high carbohydrate approach and have lost/kept off lots of weight. I am very confused. Isn't it just best to have a varied, healthy diet which limits treats to the weekend ?
As regards SW success: you're much more likely to hear about the successes than about the failures. People who fail just skulk quietly away and grumble. People who are successful are heavily promoted by SW and make a lot of noise on facebook - same as people who succeed with any challenge.
The technical term is "survival bias". If you look up the actual failure statistics, it's 80% at the 2-year mark, as noted earlier.
The statistics for all fat-free, calorie-controlled diets are pretty clear: somewhere north of 95% of the people who try them give up after 3 years, and return to their original weight (or get fatter). So SW is better than most. But it's still pretty unimpressive.
The important point here is that a lot of people going into SW are eating the worst possible diet that humans can possibly eat - loads of processed stuff, chips, cakes, cookies, soft drinks etc. SW works (in some cases) because almost anything is better than that. The low-fat rule is irrelevant, but SW does make people aware of the existence of junk food in the diet and tells them to eliminate it. That single intervention can make a big difference.
As for "varied, healthy diets" ... well, that's LCHF Nothing is forbidden. It works because you simply don't want to cram down loads of carbs. You don't want "treats at weekends". Your appetite starts working properly. This seems preposterous to many people, particularly people who have been fat from childhood, because they've never had a functioning appetite. They don't even realise such a thing is possible. So it sounds like fantasy to them.
Well, I'm finding this very interesting and informative and what you are saying makes perfect sense. The thought that my appetite could be satisfied with normal foods without any desire for sugary treats at the weekend is certainly appealing to me. I will make a start today by working out a daily plan based on the types posted on here.
I'm not sure I could eat vegetables for breakfast to be honest but I'm sure I will find other alternatives.
Thank you again for the time taken to help me, I really appreciate it.
Just out of interest, what will you eat today ? I'm curious about your typical meal plan.
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). There's been an upsurge in posts concerning low-carb (LCHF) recently, so if you're thinking of giving this a go after your holiday indulgences, herewith a short FAQ ... and a bit of mythbusting.
Diet Doctor - LCHF
Cutting carbs and weightloss 
LCHF
Thought provoking blog about keto diets..... 
