OK, back to calories not all being created equal.
The Eades are a married physician couple who have written extensively on diet and weight. They advocate a low-carbohydrate, high protein/fat diet to lose fat and stay healthy, and note that our great- great- cestors hunted and didn't have much to eat except meat and fat. They also noted that humans crave sweet, salt, and fat, and these things may not be as bad as we've always heard. I don't have personal experience with their work but they probably wouldn't keep putting out the diet books if they didn't have a following, so will assume they're effective. Gary Taubes is another low-carb author about whom my mom raves, and apparently there are others as well.
My sister had a baby two years ago, and was discouraged about her weight gain until she tried the high-protein/low-carb regime. Now every time I talk to her on the phone she tells me about how wonderful she feels and how the diet has really worked for her. My Mom has also taken up the cause, although she's not losing weight as she wishes. (Too many carbs? Too much wine? Or it doesn't always work?) Who knows.
I've never been fat, but I've noticed these past few years that I'm no longer "slender" i.e. I moved to 10-12 size range two years ago. This trend is NOT good, so I've been doing some research on my own about losing weight.
Unlike my family, the first thing I decided was that I did not want to eat only meat and butter for the rest of my life. An interesting book I found that was related to low-carb was Diane Kress' The Metabolism Miracle, which offered an alternative and more detailed explanation for what may be going on to cause people to gain weight. Basically, if your fat cells have a too-vigorous response to insulin, they will snarf up the available blood sugar and grow, ignoring the needs of the other cells. She postulates that this is a genetic type of metabolism (Metabolism Type B). It could be. It also could be simply that as the person ages and/or undergoes life stress, this response becomes more likely. It's not essential for understanding her diet though.
Kress postulates that one simply has to retrain the body's response to insulin. Instead of the fat cells dominating, slower responses by all the cells can be trained.
Her diet has 3 stages:
Stage One: virtually no carbs. This in essence pushes the "reset" button on insulin metabolism in the body. No carbs equals no insulin equals a resting of the pancreas (that produces insulin) and the liver (that coordinates metabolism).
Stage Two: gradual, regular ingestion of relatively low levels of carbs to help the body adjust to modest insulin responses.
Stage Three: maintenance: higher, regular carb ingestion that will keep the body's metabolic functions working well without causing fat gain.
Stage One is for 8 weeks, Stage Two for 8 or more weeks until you're happy with where you are, and Stage Three for "the rest of your life." (It's not difficult, by the way). I've now been on Stage One for three weeks and have lost 8 pounds. I haven't been hungry or felt bad, although have to admit that I'm eager to move back to some carbs. Kress has excellent recipes in her two books, but really, I'm a bit tired of cottage cheese, eggs, broccoli, cheese and peanut butter. The artificial sweeteners have a nasty aftertaste (although Dickinson's sugar-free Cherry Preserves are AMAZING!).
I prefer the idea of "Metabolism Miracle" diet better than the simple low-carb-forever plans. If it works, this method allows you to eat anything, even frosted brownies, as long as you space carbs and don't overload your system.
Although after reading William Davis' Wheat Belly, I'm not as eager to use flour as I used to be. I've been baking with almond and flax flours with pretty good results. We'll see.
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