Shawn BakerMD · orthopedic surgeon and strength athlete
The carbohydrate restriction itself
What it rests onHis model is that removing carbohydrate lowers insulin, moves the body to fat and ketone metabolism, and removes plant compounds a subset of people react to. He also tells users not to count calories, on the grounds that appetite regulates itself well on this diet.
Source: carnivore.diet ↗
Giles YeoPhD, MBE, FMedSci · Professor of Molecular Neuroendocrinology, MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, University of Cambridge
The protein, and the deficit it produces
What it rests onCaloric availability: protein delivers about 70 per cent of its printed calories against 98 per cent for fat, because the nitrogen has to be stripped and excreted as urea before the remainder can be used. Combined with higher satiety, that produces a spontaneous calorie deficit, which he holds is the necessary condition for any diet to work.
Source: sciencefocus.com ↗
Baker is addressing people who have not succeeded on conventional advice and often arrive with autoimmune or metabolic symptoms; Yeo is addressing a general reader choosing among diets. The population difference is real and it does not dissolve the disagreement, because the mechanism claim is population-independent.
Larger than the argument suggests. Both agree carnivore and keto produce weight loss for many people. Both agree satiety is what makes a diet sustainable. Both are sceptical of counting calories every day, for different reasons. Neither claims one diet suits everyone.
An isocaloric, protein-matched comparison of low-carbohydrate against higher-carbohydrate diets. Both sides invoke this shape of study and read the existing versions differently, so the honest statement is that better-controlled feeding studies would move it, and that Yeo's position is the one currently better supported by them.
You do, and your call is dated, kept, and yours to change. Follow the people you already trust and what they publish turns into a short daily practice.
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