Hi Natalie,
I can understand your confusion. I think part of the reason for the differences in approach is down to when the two books were published, and their target audiences, and the confusion is added to by the range of aims of people who have picked up the BSD book and through that joined this forum.
So DrMM’s book came out first and the book promotes lowish carb (without setting any targets) for 8 weeks to kick start a diet and then go on to a slower weight loss. – I would guess that it was written within the context of the NHS being pro -diabetics eating carbs.
Dr Fung runs a clinic in Canada focusing on diabetics. Most of his recommendations are based on case histories of people within his clinic. I saw a podcast by him in which he responded to criticism of promoting fasting over low carb by describing his average patient – :- Severely obese, not physically active, living on a very limited budget, and many are from an ethnic origin where carbs are traditionally a major ingredient in a diet. – For these people replacing their current diet with grass fed beef and fresh vegetables simply isn’t an option. – But not eating is free, and means they can stretch their budget to better food on the days they do eat.
There are other academics out there. For example Dr Bikman who focuses on publishing research. – Then there are the researchers focusing on low carb for sports people, and the fasting mimicking diet idea for autophagy. – What we have been doing on this forum is posting links to interesting articles, podcasts etc from a range of different sources on a thread called Take a Look at This. – You may find it helpful if you want to delve deeper.
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So why do people on this forum talk about setting targets for carbs, and even fasting when that is not in the BSD book? I think its because at any one time there are mixture of people on the forum. – There are those who are just a little overweight for whom one cycle of 8 weeks and not being strict on the number of carbs is enough to make a major dent in their fat stores. Through to people who have a lot of weight to loose, who are insulin resistant and people trying to reverse T2.
There are no official moderators taking part on this forum, but there is a band of people who have lost a lot of weight and have been around on this forum for months or years who stay around to offer a helping hand to new comers just as “maintainers” offered us a helping hand when we started. There are some places on the internet, Dr Fungs facebook group springs to mind, where there are moderators prowling to prevent anyone making a suggestion of looking at the work published by any other expert. This forum isn’t like that.
Since Dr MM’s book was published there has been a lot of research published in Insulin, Insulin resistance, ketosis and the optimum levels of carbs to maximise fat burning. If you want to read more about the science then I would suggest looking at a podcast by Dr Bikman that I posted a link to on the Take a look at this thread back at the beginning of the year. Basically, insulin is the gate keeper which decides if your body can access body fat as a fuel source or just the food eaten. – So keeping insulin levels low speeds up weight loss and in the long run your thyroid system doesn’t decide you are in starvation mode and reduce your metabolic rate if your body can freely access your body fat stores to make up any calorie short fall.
From that, and the experience of members of the forum, comes the advice to build on Dr MMs work by setting the target for carbs of between 20 and 50gs a day depending on how insulin resistant you are.
There are people on the forum who lost a lot of weight or have a lot of weight to loose, which raises the issue of loose skin, which leads on to discussions about autophagy and fasting. There are people interested in reversing insulin resistance who share discussions on time restricted eating.
Hope that helps explain the diversity of discussions on the forum.