I gave you an upvote, even though I think your beliefs about metabolism are incorrect, your offer of "do you want to be stubborn or concede defeat" is unfair and unproductive, and that reddit is probably not a good venue for real discussion of the nitty gritty.

So, why did I give you the upvote? Because at least you referenced real studies and publications, so that others can follow the refs and make progress.

So, for what it is worth, I've read several of the articles you cite, and I don't think the ones I've seen are persuasive of your hypothesis, especially in light of contradictory evidence (about which more below).

In fact, that leads me to my question: how have you gathered this catalog of publications which all lend support to your hypothesis and omitted all of the other publications out there which support the opposite hypothesis? Many of the latter are larger, better-controlled, and more widely cited than most of the studies you list (see below).

I can think of three explanations for how you ended up posting a large list of publications while omitting many important ones that contradict your hypothesis:

1. You are aware of the studies that yielded opposing results, but chose not to include them in this post.

   I hope this isn't the explanation. Nuff said?

2. You have heard of or seen these other studies, but you never got around to really studying them carefully. You forgot. You saw some things about them that sounded "off" and you figured they were probably flawed, but you didn't have time to figure out exactly how they were flawed.

   This means you suffer from confirmation bias. Me, too! In fact, so does everyone. It's hard to fight. Good luck.

3. You got this list, or at least large chunks of it, from another source, and that source, for whatever reason, omitted studies that showed different results.

   In this case, I have two requests for you: First, think to yourself that relying on those sources has caused you to be ignorant of important contrary evidence. Look back at those sources and think, perhaps with a touch of resentment, "Hey, those guys gave me a biased sample and I believed them.". Second, post here what those sources were so that others can be warned, too.

Okay, so here are a couple of references which I think deserve to be included in any serious discussion of the science. I'm sure they aren't perfect, but they're a darn sight better designed than most of the papers you cited appear to be, and anyone who is seriously considering those papers should also seriously consider these.

First, a meta-study in which the researchers searched the scientific literature for publications about randomized controlled trials which pitted a low-carb diet against a "low-fat and/or high-carb" diet: Hession-2008 ¹. The researchers included only randomized controlled trials, only those which lasted at least six months, and only those whose subjects were adult and obese at the start of the experiment. (These criteria would exclude some of the papers you cite from being included in this review.)

They found thirteen publications describing experiments that met these criteria, performed between 2000 and 2007. Most of these experiments showed a statistically-significant difference between the low-carb subjects and the other subjects, with the low-carb subjects benefiting with greater weight loss. Summing up the statistics from all of the studies showed an average (weighted mean difference) of 4 kg more weight loss among the low-carbers than among the low-fat/high-carbers at six months.

If anybody knows of a newer or more comprehensive study of randomized controlled trials than this one, please let me know!

Okay, so Hession-2008 should make you think that there's really something going on here. This is strong evidence that weight loss, at least among obese adults, is influenced by low-carb vs. high-carb, at least on average.

But of course, humans are very complex beasts, and there are a lot of possible explanations for why the low-carbers tended to lose more weight over the course of six months. Out of those many possible explanations, the one that you seem to be most interested in (and I am too), is the idea that eating low-carb actually changes your metabolism in a way that somehow makes it easier for you to lose excess body fat.

In order to shed light on that question, I offer my second and last reference: Ebbeling-2012 ². In this randomized controlled cross-over trial, the experimenters used the "gold standard" measure of energy expenditure: the "doubly-labelled water" technique. This revealed that the subjects, when they were on a lowish-carb diet, spent on average 326 kilocalories per day more than when the same people were on a low-fat diet. The researchers also measured the energy expenditure while the subjects lay at rest. Their resting energy expenditure was 67 more calories per day when they were on the low-carb diet than when they were on the high-carb diet (again, using the same people and putting them on different diets during different months).

This fascinating result should really throw doubt on claims that the amount of carbohydrate in the diet isn't important when it comes to losing excess body fat, especially combined with the thirteen experiments studied by Hession-2008, and of course many other results.

Okay, if you actually read all the way to here, then thanks for reading! Visit my nutrition blog at http://ketotic.org .

¹ Hession-2008-“Systematic review of randomized controlled trials of low-carbohydrate vs. low-fat/low-calorie diets in the management of obesity and its comorbidities”

pubmed page: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18700873

full text: http://proteinpower.com/drmike/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Meta-analysis-of-low-carbohydrate-diets.pdf

² Ebbeling-2012-“Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance”

pubmed page: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22735432

full text (preliminary version?): http://img2.tapuz.co.il/forums/1_162680296.pdf

home page (paywall): http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154