# Calories, Carbs, or Quality? What Matters Most for Body Weight



## Eddy Edson (Feb 8, 2021)

Kevin Hall of the US National Institutes of Health summarises his research over the years on weight loss:






Leads one of the best groups in the world in this field; worth a watch.


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## Eddy Edson (Feb 11, 2021)

The person who put this together intended it as satire on the Internet-dominant belief that dietary guidelines in the UK, US etc have been responsible for the rise in obesity. In fact, they haven't: people in general don't follow the guiudelines, as a moutnain of research demonstrates.  On the other hand, the Internet-dominant myth that "calories don't matter, only carbs do" for weight loss has had a significant impact on eating habits. As this chart illustrates, you could make a stronger case that *this* is responsible for the obestiy epidemic.

Although I think no serious researcher would actually make that case, Hall's research does pretty much destroy the rationale for the "carbs not calories" story.  Go very low carb and you'll quickly lose a bunch of weight thru reduction in body water etc. But that's pretty meaningless, health-wise, and over the medium term there's no reason to think that it's better for weight loss than any other eating pattern with the same calorie intake. In fact, Hall's research demonstrates that you may well end up eating more calories than on a low-fat diet, and doing worse with respect to weight loss. 

The general message: do what you need to do with carbs to manage BG; for weight loss, watch calories.


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