I read this as: "Humans and rodents have different metabolisms".
It's still very good data and very interesting, but it raises more questions then it answers, and effectively points out that we have no clue how these metabolic pathways actually operate outside of specific circumstances.
Edit: I'm in no way condemning this paper, on the contrary, I think it's great. This is good science.
This "pseudo-diabetes" appears to be fairly straightforward:
1. Someone stops consuming carbohydrates
2. This causes them to produce significantly less insulin
3. In order to preserve ~~insulin~~ glucose for the brain, other insulin receptors are downregulated
4. Because of this downregulation, the subject is less tolerant of carbohydrates
This is "pseudo-diabetes" and not "diabetes" because a person on a ketogenic diet isn't producing insulin, whereas a diabetic can't produce (enough) insulin, or is so desensitized to it that glucose stays in the blood steam.
I would expect any organism that uses glucose derived from gluconeogenesis for glycogen instead of the select tissues that absolutely require glucose, would be selected out quite quickly.
Nailed it. This is also the same mechanism of action for almost any addiction.
1) Consume external drug
2) Receptors downregulate (thanks to homeostasis)
3) Need more of said drug or withdrawals kick in (analogous to needing to take external insulin so body can get rid of excess glucose)
4) Rinse & repeat
From a United States perspective: What we have is a duopoly of Big Pharma and Big Ag that gets people hooked on sugar and then uses medicine-as-a-service to hook them on insulin forever. There is no money in preventative medicine.
There are other countries in the world that have already taken steps to get junk foods and sugary drinks out of the hands of children [0]. What excuses does the United States have?
To be fair, the government is complicit in this food pyramid scheme.
People are told time and again that it's healthcare system. Yeah, it's not health / customer focused. But all the more reason to do a decent job at avoiding that system. Instead, the status quo diet + lifestyle persists. (Political) leaders can't risk the push back trying to change the narrative.
The brain runs fine off ketones. Better than on glucose, in many cases. This is why so many of the therapeutic targets of ketogenesis are neurological.
Only red blood cells and a couple other actually need glucose.
I'm not so certain a ketogenic diet is healthy. The Inuit who have been eating an almost entirely ketogenic diet for centuries can't effectively produce ketones. The ability to produce ketones was selected our of their population.
I think nature might know something we don't know.
I do not know what you’re referring to, perhaps some supporting data would help.
The current method of testing for ketones is ketones freely available in blood stream. The ketones are released by the liver when it’s too full of them and thus they spill over to the blood stream. The consequence therefore is that once you’re fully keto adapted, your ketones won’t spike too high as your body can efficiently generate the required amount.
Most people who do a long fast, they’ll have 1+mmol (higher at 3+) ketones, whereas someone who’s adapted maintains sub 1mmol.
Also, if all you’re eating is protein and large fats, youre producing ketones otherwise you’d die as there’s no carbs/glucose. So yeah, Inuit and carnivore diet people couldn’t exist.
live experiments and observations are a thing, and they are happening everywhere if you do a quick search
They have a defective CPT1A enzyme so they're body can't produce ketones very well. It lead to a high infant mortality, but despite that has been selected for in Inuit populations.
The keto diet is one of the most studied diets in the world. It is super healthy (when done right of course like anything else). The “low carb down under” YouTube group has a lot of talk on the latest research.
I've experienced this: after a month of zero carb, I had a couple bananas and an apple and went into a crazy sugar rush that lasted hours. Then I crashed and felt like shit for two days. But my metabolic system is out of whack from years of abuse, so in general I find the lower the amount of carb I consume, the better I feel.
Just an anecdote: keto diets for control of obesity are so effective it feels like a hack.
It’s really interesting to see the diet industry attack this. Calling it a “fad diet” as if eating low carbs is somehow a fad. Other things I’ve seen are essentially “keto diets are for treating epilepsy, not for losing weight!” Etc.
Keto diets don’t require you to buy any products or books or take any courses or anything. Just literally read the nutrition facts and eat 20-50 carbs a day.
If you are struggling with obesity I highly recommend trying a low carb diet.
They're a hack because they're indirectly calorie deficient, as it's incredibly hard to overeat on calories without carbs (unless you're eating a ton of fat). If you did while on a keto diet, you'd still gain weight.
There's also the loss of appetite, as there's one less component to the "Fat+Carb" compulsive eating trigger.
I've had incredible success with keto, but I did yo-yo back, the downside of keto being so easy is that it's hard to get back into it, knowing that you'll almost effortlessly get results eventually, so I'm nutritionally procrastinating.
I've been strict keto now for over five years. Prior to that I was clinically obese for decades. I tried lots of different dieting approaches and most of them "worked" to lose weight to some extent. The issue was I would always regain the weight because I couldn't maintain the diet due to the constant hunger and sense of deprivation. While all diets, including keto, ultimately "work" through calorie reduction. The unique aspect of keto for me was it was the only approach that allowed me to reduce calories without hunger or deprivation.
N=1 and individual metabolisms and preferences are different, so I don't try to extrapolate my results to everyone. All I can say is that after struggling for so long with so many other approaches, keto worked for me so fast, so easily and so well - it does feel almost like a hack.
There is no one in the world that is overweight because they eat too much unsweetened oatmeal with nothing else added for taste.
Pointing out the thermodynamics of weight loss with calories in/out is stupid though because there is a huge dependency in the amount of calories consumed based on the type of food and if the food has been engineered to taste super good.
I've been strict keto for over five years and intend to continue for life due to the weight loss, health, emotional and cognitive benefits I experience. A little while back I did a casual experiment where I intentionally increased caloric intake while remaining strict keto. I did ultimately start to gain weight, of course (because ---> physics).
What was impressive though was how long it took and how slow the gain progressed. Because keto calories tend to be so satiating, it almost felt like I had to work at getting my energy balance to stay meaningfully positive. When I'm full on natural fats, it's hard to keep eating. The other interesting thing was, even though I gained some weight, I maintained most of the non-weight related benefits (cognitive, emotional balance). My guess is this may be due to keto calories being almost all fresh, unprocessed foods.
Fat's the best for satiety, yes. I find it much easier to overeat when I'm mainly eating protein.
I'd guess you kept the mental benefits because you were still in ketosis. While I'm sure being leaner (if you were overweight) contributes to some mental benefits (body image, feeling healthier), perhaps most are simply from running on ketones.
> perhaps most are simply from running on ketones.
Even after so many years in strict keto, I still can't tease out where exactly which benefits come from between calorie reduction, ketosis, gut microbiome, etc. I feel like it's definitely a combination of more than one of the above but teasing it out would require too much experimentation and I'm reluctant to 'mess with success'.
Certainly it's possible to overeat even without carbs and still gain weight. However, there is more to fat storage than just calories. Like many systems in the body, fat storage is controlled by hormones. Hormones are affected by the types of food you eat. Therefore, what you eat can also influence the amount of fat you store.
It is actually not only because Keto is calorie deficient, but also because it encourages ketogenic metabolism, which means that while you are calorie deficient you are more effective at burning fat. Compared with a standard calorie deficient diet, you have more stable energy levels throughout the day, because the body adapts to not getting carbs.
This completely disregards the question of why is it easier to overeat on carbs than it is on protein/fats?
Protein is as calorie dense as carbs, and fat is twice as calorie dense as carbs. So it isn't mere volume of food in the stomach that causes the difference - if it was, it would be easier to overeat on protein/fats than on carbs.
Basically, it sounds like you're treating the human body like some black hole that calories get thrown into, when in reality there is a very complex feedback loop taking place based on what your bodily inputs and outputs are.
As an evolutionary biologist, I suspect that mammals (and likely other animals) are primed to take advantage of sugary, transiently available food (i.e., fruit) by storing it as fat. Fructose in particular bypasses most of the feedback loops that control glucose.
Dr Richard Johnson has researched this extensively and, yes, fructose consumption triggers increased fat storage in almost all humans. He summarized his research findings in a book[1] and has discussed his findings in a number of interviews [2]. I highly recommend the linked podcast if this is a topic that interests you.
there's a table somewhere of all the different fad diets and what food they tell you to avoid
a third column of "how it works" is the same for all rows: "calorie restriction"
I've been doing a half-hearted keto and losing weight because I'm just eating a lot less by skipping pizza and breakfast bagels and honestly just don't have many meals in my cooking repetoire, so it's either protein shake or meat on top of salad.
I've been doing keto and am fairly athletic. I also am doing it because I find it hleps my moods and affect, and I have a stable weight when I am on this diet.
I don't think that you have to be calorie-restricted to benefit from a ketogeneic diet.
The climber Dave MacLeod has a 4-hour long video that seems (to my untrained eye) to have a number of good sources. He also has a masters degree in nutrition and is a professional athlete.
He describes how underfeeding was indeed a problem with his early experiments with this approach to diet, but how it's been quite effective after being careful to eat enough.
“calorie restriction” is far from the only thing in a diet. You won't get anywhere without a mindset. Keto absolutely helps with your appetite. That's every bit as important as CR over the long haul, despite what naysayers say. They like to limit the conversation, so they can preach CICO as if nothing else matters.
> It’s really interesting to see the diet industry attack this. Calling it a “fad diet” as if eating low carbs is somehow a fad. Other things I’ve seen are essentially “keto diets are for treating epilepsy, not for losing weight!” Etc.
> Keto diets don’t require you to buy any products or books or take any courses or anything. Just literally read the nutrition facts and eat 20-50 carbs a day.
But that's the issue, isn't it?
Sometimes I feel like changing my usual snack of apples with some kind of biscuit / cookie. It's next to impossible to find anything below 500 kCals / 100 g at my local grocery store. And when I look at the ingredients, there's always a ton of sugar in there.
The only lower-ish processed food I can easily find is sorbet. But that's impractical to deal with at work (we don't have a freezer).
So most of the time, I end up buying nothing if I don't feel like an apple. Why would "big ag" cheer me in going this route?
I should note I'm not even into Keto or anything, just paying attention to how many calories I eat.
There are plenty of snacks that are keto-friendly: beef jerky (no sugar added), boiled eggs, celery + peanut butter, smoked oysters... the list goes on. Yes, cookies are not included in that list, if that's a deal-breaker for you then it seems like this diet wouldn't work for you I guess.
Cookies are one of those rare foods that most diets can agree you shouldn't eat, so that doesn't really have anything to do with keto. The only space for debate about cookies is whether you should have little or none (other than for high-power people who need to cover an energy deficit, which sounds like it would be a nice problem.)
I've done keto a handful of times and found some really great snacks. Low carb cheesecakes, macaroons, peanut butter cookies, brownies with walnuts. They certainly don't taste as good as the regular version but they'll fill a craving.
Typically you're swapping flour for almond flour and sugar for erythritol.
I used cookies to mean "generic sweets", as opposed to fruit. I don't particularly like "actual cookies".
I'm in France, so the only time I've seen beef jerky in my life was when some dude I used to know brought some from the US. Furthermore, I'm really not sure if we have anything similar over here.
Note, I said I wasn't doing keto (never have) so I don't specifically look for no-carb options. I just realize that those foods are more like "cravings", so they won't make me eat less during the regular meals. If I want to reduce my calorie intake, I need to cut somewhere. So I usually look into cutting the calories of the snacks. While I love almonds and other dried fruits (and their butter), they typically have a lot of calories. IIRC, pistachios have something like 600 kCals and I can easily eat way too many.
One cup almond flour, one quarter cup erythritol, 3 tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon of cinnamon, half a tablespoon of vanilla, bake at 350 for 12 minutes, let cool for a half hour. Keto cookies.
I'll try to find some, but I've never seen that brand around here (France).
I usually tend to buy protein bars from a sporting goods store, which have the benefit of making me feel full after one or two, and make me eat noticeably less at the following meal. But said store is quite out of my way, so I don't always have those on hand, and they do have a bit too much sugar for my taste.
You can try baking your own cookies, biscuits and dry stuff like that. It's one of the really easy things to bake, they're durable, you can make them exactly to your preferences, add fiber etc. And if you want to geek out tuning the recipes and stuff, there is a lot of potential for that.
I don't think you even need to go full keto to get benefit from this idea. I often just eat eggs and some veges for breakfast on weekends (knowing full well I will be hungry for lunch) and this has helped me control my appetite, be satisfied/satiated and not gain weight. (I practice IF as well though during the week)
> Just an anecdote: keto diets for control of obesity are so effective it feels like a hack.
I'm genuinely fascinated that you prefaced this clearly-not-an-anecdote with "just an anecdote". If it had been an anecdote, it would have been fine without the preface. Instead it's a sweeping claim that at best requires several anecdotes to support it.
You made a statement about "keto diets" in the plural, and "for control of obesity" in general. An anecdote would be you relating which of this plurality of keto diets you tried and what results you found with each of them. "Keto diets [...] are effective" is a conclusion one may or may not take away from such anecdotes, but it is not itself an anecdote.
Something I found kind of oddball about the keto diet community is that they aren’t just recommending low carbs. They push people to eat more fat. I’ve seen a friend fail to lose weight on keto and he was eating tons of stuff like cheese and bacon.
The “eat less carbs” message is great IMO but I think a lot of people need to eat less period. Personally I found that intentionally eating high-protein foods was a good way for me to be satiated with less carbs. A protein bar will fill me up, a chunk of cheese with twice as many calories won’t.
But I also acknowledge that people are different. I’m sure there people who are easily satiated by fat and can therefore eat unmetered fatty foods and lose weight.
Keto community generally recommends replacing carbs with fat and keeping protein constant. Protein consumption is almost a constant (with some variability due to workout regimen, etc).
I think of it like a see-saw, with protein level being the axis of rotation (ie., it stays the same). Now you have 2 remaining macro variables: carbs and fat. If you decrease one, you need to increase the other or else caloric intake might be too low.
Keto community generally refers to the diet as Low Carb High Fat because not eating enough fat can cause problems on the diet.
Edit: To be clear, assuming sufficient consumption of protein, if calories are still deficient, keto community recommends making up the deficit with fat rather than protein.
If you cut carbs and just eat more protein instead you can literally die [0]. AIUI you're supposed to be replacing the carbs with fat when doing keto.
I've known a few heavy people over the years who claimed to be eating keto and never seemed to be losing any weight. Whenever we hung out they would use their purported keto diet as a green-light to get extra meat and cheese in whatever we were doing, and inevitably they would also eat carbs. French fries, beers, late night donuts, ice cream, the usual slip-ups.
If a person lacks self-discipline, a keto diet turns into an extremely fattening diet. It does not degrade gracefully at all. You have to either stick to it and stay in ketosis, or reel in your fat consumption something fierce because it'll all get stored as fat when you're running on glucose.
It's kind of a major flaw with ketogenic diets IMHO. The diet inherently gets a person into a habit of consuming rich, fatty foods. But when they slip up, which let's be honest, most people will. It becomes something along the lines of the most fattening diet possible.
Almost all Keto programs include some minerals you might be missing out from limiting your food selection- zinc and potassium come to mind.
While I generally agree with you, I think many people have a strong rebound after a few months, that does not teach adequate portion size for later on, and after some age and some health conditions, it can put stress on kidney / liver
Keto is EASY compared to any other diet I've tried for one key reason: you don't feel hungry.
You can eat as much as you want, whenever you like. Soon enough though the effects kick in, your hunger is supressed, and you have to remind yourself to eat at times.
No matter how enthusiastic you are at the start, hunger quickly erodes willpower. I failed miserably at the typical low-fat diet. Keto was the cheat code.
The second reason why keto is easy is because it produces "results" very quickly. Your scale will drop rapidly in just a few days. You haven't actually lost that amount of fat, you've lost a bunch of water in your cells, but the scale still tells you that the number went down. And the number changing for the better is what can help us keep at it.
This is also a "hack" to get into clothes that are a little too tight way faster. Your body basically shrinks a little.
Yeah. When I first went keto I didn’t know this. Started feeling sick. Google quickly told me that I wasn’t getting salt or potassium, so I ate a salted avocado. All better.
I loved keto when I did it - just step on the scale in the morning, see results, and voila, positive feedback loop.
The only downside that I can think of it was really, really, really, REALLY boring.
so boring in fact that after a while I did not look forward to eating - while normally I am a foodie and just love to eat, when I did keto that wish to eat was gone.
however I still would very much recommend keto if you can find the life setting that supports you doing keto, because I can guarantee you that other members of your family will not want to eat what you eat- once or twice, MAYBE, but not all the time.
At the end of the day any rigid diet the restricts processed sugars is excellent. Keto indirectly ends up addressing this, and the rigidity of it makes it particularly effective.
I find that keto excludes a huge portion of the population that is not willing to give up complex carbs in some capacity. As long as they drop outright sugars and grains, a person should still be able to get the advantage of keto while being on a more follow-able keto-lite.
The diet industry makes their money on the perpetually-overweight. They don't make money off of someone who modified their eating habits and is now physically fit.
Physically fit people don't buy their magic pills and weight loss programs.
>Physically fit people don't buy their magic pills and weight loss programs.
You would be amazed by the amount of supplement pills and powders with which many "fit and healthy" people fill up their cabinets, while paying 1000s of dollars for beach body DVD programs, apps, overpriced kitchen appliances and branded gear. It's just a different industry that is selling you the illusion.
Yeah, it's like 85% fat, 10% protein, 5% carbs. low carb doesn't really go like that, it's basically "just don't have sugar and carbs" but doesn't propose a ratio of perfection for fats vs protein.
Probably the biggest keto advocate/promoter is a guy called Jimmy Moore. Google some photos of him prior to considering whether you want to take his weight loss advice.
Jimmy Moore is a joke. Perhaps Google “low carb down under” instead for much healthier looking researchers (and actual doctors) applying keto diets in their practices :)
I agree that Jimmy Moore is a joke. But he accurately represents a very mainstream interpretation of a keto diet. He’s only as much of a joke at the diet he advocates is.
I went on keto for 3 months and was surprised how great I felt. I understand some might be placebo but beneficial nonetheless.
Pro's:
- Sustained energy all day (no crashes)
- No cravings (didnt feel "hangry")
- Sleep schedule improved (REM sleep)
Con's:
- Frequented the bathroom a lot more
- Couldn't lift as heavy in the gym
- Scheduling meals was a pain
Keto is just like IF in the sense that it’s only as beneficial as the caloric deficit you achieve. All of the benefits you mentioned are what you would receive from simply having a normal balanced diet, and you wouldn’t have to have any of the cons. Which include a surprisingly high level of muscle catabolism, and huge cortisol spikes while your body adapts (which people call “keto flu”). The muscle loss is especially bad because in addition to being something most people don’t want, it also lowers your BMR and makes weight management even more difficult. It’s also very hard to hit all your micros on a keto diet, which is one of several reason that it’s especially unhealthy to do for a extended periods.
If you’re looking for a crash diet (which isn’t a great idea to begin with), there are easier and healthier ones than keto. There are no scenarios where it would be the best choice, and that’s if you’re doing one of the more sensible versions of the diet, opposed to the even more insane unlimited-fat-calories versions.
Nothing you claim is actually supported by evidence. The low carb diet is the most researched diet in history. I recommend the “low carb down under” YouTube channel and especially Paul Mason for facts based on research. I have gained a lot of muscle and have had no “keto flue” on a low carb diet. My cholesterol and blood pressure has improved and I have lost 9cm around my waist. My doctor is telling me to “keep doing what I am doing” because my blood results are “superb”. However if you do low carb wrong/unhealthily (not enough vitamins/electrolytes for example) then you will get keto flue, cramps etc. The same way that any other diet done unhealthily will be bad for you. Low carb or not. You can do Vegan and high carb really badly and end up sick/unhealthy. A bad high carb diet is the reason why we have an explosion in Type 2 diabetics for example. However that is of course not evidence against those diets. Just a confirmation that anything done incorrectly won’t work as intended.
You are right that there are many types of low carb diets. Some are zero carbs others are perhaps 50g or 100g. Some are using a 4:1 fat to protein ratio and the more “mainstream” low carb diets are using a 1:1 ratio. Some are calories restricted, others are not. The one I have chosen to use is the 50g carbs and a 1:1 fat:protein with a 500kcal deficit to loose weight. It works great. Also be aware that there are many high carb diets out there. Most of them are extremely dangerous. Leading to Type 2 diabetics, blindness, amputations, fatty liver, hypoglycaemia, heart problems and (ultimately) an early death. However some high carb diets are fine if done right. So I think we can agree that we need to be very specific when we talk about diets and emphasise what is needed for it to be actually healthy.
if you have an open mind, and care enought about the truth to hear different points of view, then I recommend this short overview talk by Prof. Benjamin Pikman:
https://youtu.be/yKdBdK_OXxI
I have gained muscle on a low carb diet so I suspect you might be doing it wrong. I recommend the “low carb down under” YouTube channel and especially Paul Mason as a good guide to how you do it right. Another good source is Prof. Ben Bikman who is at the learning edge of low carb diet research. He also has a number of good talks on YouTube.
Taking this opportunity to raise awareness about metabolic syndrome [0], a condition that is exacerbated by excessive consumption of carbohydrates. Per the CDC, it is estimated that over 30% of the US population has metabolic syndrome [1].
This was me. Didn’t even look overweight really. My blood told the story despite appearances. Went keto. After a month, all my blood tests came back within normal levels. Additionally, my allergies have been lessened by such a degree I was able to quit taking antihistamines every day, chronic pain in my legs disappeared, my sense of smell increased, my sense of taste increased, mental clarity improved, emotional regulation improved, and I also lost some weight. I find it easier to work out as well, I just have more energy.
Everyday, I worry there is some terrible trade off, but signs of pre-diabetes and pre-non-alcoholic-fatty-liver-syndrome were bad enough in my mind that whatever the trade off is likely won’t kill me faster than either of those.
I've done Keto and for some periods of time I liked it. But I think what really happens is that most people are not eating Real Food (which is an actual term btw) and when they switch to Keto they cut out a ton of processed crap and wheat/corn derivatives and that is actually what makes them feel better.
I lost a ton of weight and have kept it off for a decade by cutting out sweetened drinks, getting rid of refined carbohydrates, and learning to cook my own food from scratch.
I make no effort to count calories or control portions.
Love the anecdote, wish it applied to me!! I constantly drift upwards, even when eating crazy healthy. My "caloric rheostat" is just dialed in a bit high, so I have to accept I need to eat less than I think is correct... so I have to watch my macros religiously.
But, that's what healthy living habits are: Finding what works for you!
I’m a 30 year old male, running a little over my third ‘diaversary’, don’t have any other type 1’s in the family so diagnose was really surprising at first.
Have always thought my Ketogenic diet period, which I ran for about 9 months approx 1.5 years before diagnose, could have had something to do with me ‘developing’ type 1. Did discuss this with my doc, she assured me they found the markers in my blood work indicating auto immune disease etc.
Still intrigued by these kind of papers that seem to relate the different topics.
Started of doing SKD, so strict Keto diet, with about less than 50 grams of carbs a day. Mostly meats, cheeses, eggs, green veggies etc.
After about 4 months added more carbs till about probably 100 a 150 grams, so maybe more considered low carb. Did mix on some MCT every once in a while.
Was olympic lifting during that while period, so twice a week gym routine.
I've been keto on and off for the last year and I've found it incredibly effective for weight loss. I understand the principles for effective weight loss, and while a lot of dieticians hate on keto, there is one thing that it taught me that no other diet did - read the label on packaged products in the store.
Simply because of how strict keto is I began to read the breakdown for every single thing I purchase in the store. This may seem obvious to all but I never did it to the degree I do now. There is sugar in everything and the serving sizes are often completely ridiculous - I saw a protein bar where the serving size was half the bar! Other diets teach you food groups to eat and encourage but don't seem to have this side effect of teaching you just how messed up some packaged foods are.
Feel free to correct me with a source, but I don't think there is scientific consensus that keto is the ideal human diet. Why would anyone care that a famous (infamous?) psychologist (as opposed to a medical doctor, nutritionist, etc...) has asserted its benefits? His view might be more relevant than a world-renowned fish tank cleaner, but I don't think he is the authoritative source people need.
For the record, I'm a fan and have noticed benefits in my own life.
Ahh… diet advice from a psychologist is like cryptography advice from a game developer: it might be right, but you shouldn't bet your future on it without at least getting a second opinion.
Also, "deadliest hormone" is giving me DHMO vibes. Insulin does many things (way more than I realised before writing this comment), you don't want to eliminate it from your body regardless of you diet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin
This is exactly what happened to me as well. I did keto for ~8 months, lost a bunch of weight, and learned that 99% of what's in an american grocery store has a ton of added sugar. Even milk!
Well that article is just flat out wrong. There are significant differences in carbohydrate count in 8 ounce glasses of skim, 2%, whole milk and half & half. At least in the US. I know because I pay close attention to labels.
I use cronometer to track nutrients (macro & micro). It uses data source directly from NCCDB from the University of Minnesota.
They don't add milk in but processing it can add/take away the amount of sugar. Homogenized whole milk of course is what they start with. The processing is quite interesting if you take the time to read up on it. However nowhere do they add more sugar in.
They have somewhat different amounts of sugars by volume since the fat is removed, but they don’t have added sugar. The caloric fraction from sugar will be much higher though, maybe that’s what you’re reading?
I cook almost everything I eat from whole ingredients from the grocery store, so other than bread (I don't use much dairy at all) I don't have to worry about hidden sugar or fats much.
My problem is simply controlling the portion sizes of my delicious food - it's SO easy to eat large portions, and it takes weeks of ignoring your stomach's rumbling to get yourself used to reduced portions.
You could try intermittent fasting instead. I have mostly given up on portion control because I find it very difficult as well. Generally, I only eat one meal a day (dinner), and I think it's a good alternative. I don't (always) pig out, but I don't have to worry about portion control as much if it's all I eat that day.
It's not for everyone though; I've just been doing it for a while.
I found IF much easier to stick to than keto and routinely perform 3-4 day fasts if I’ve been drinking too much craft beer and bourbon and haven’t been biking enough. Hopefully the fasting autophagy mechanisms keeps the cancer at bay!
I did it for ~6 months at some point where I was starting to get various digestive health issues to try and control my intake, having a rather love-hate relationship with food (I inevitably end up bingeing every time I try doing portion control).
I did 16/8, lunch and dinner so I could eat with the rest of the family. Worked quite well, lost a ton of weight without feeling like I had to do anything. The first couple of days I was starving by the end of the 16 hour break, but I got over it much faster than the constant feeling I need to eat something I get with portion control.
As you said, doesn't work well for everyone though. I'd guess that it maybe works for me cause of the ADHD, as I may still get to have those endorphin hits when eating something I like. I should probably try going back to it, now that we're talking about it...
Milk by definition does not have any added sugar. If by milk you mean various food products containing mostly water, emusifiers and sugar then yes they have little or no nutritional value. Stop buying “food products” and only buy real foods- butter, bread, meat, flour, vegetables, fish, rice, plain greek yogurt, beans etc and you won’t have to worry about added sugars.
In most cases, ketogenic diets don’t result in actually reaching and sustaining kerosine. It would be best to measure levels, though even that isn’t extremely precise.
Diets in general also tend toward caloric deficit, resulting in weight loss.
Ketogenic diets are used to treat epileptic seizures but haven’t otherwise been studied in large enough populations to understand the ramifications of long-term glucose deficits in the human body. YMMV just be safe.
But that's every diet, they're all CICO at the end of the day, but different people need different tricks to get there. Being around people doing different diets the difference seems to be how your body in particular signals hunger.
* For my friends that find Keto effective it seem their bodies seem to find fat/protein super satiating.
* For my friends that find volume eating effective it seems like their hunger is more triggered on "stuff in stomach" where I can't stand that feeling.
* For my friends that like IF their hunger seems to be time based. The common element for my IF friends is that they started their journey very overweight and so it's been years since they were actually hungry.
* For me and my other ED friends we all seem to deal with hunger by getting over the initial pang and then just not eating until our bodies give up trying and then just coast on that. Obviously don't do this.
You're 100% correct. Its mostly about finding a system that works for you. As a format fat person I have internalized the fact that my body's hunger signal is broken and that 'eat when you are hungry' leads to weight gain for me. Focusing on the CO part of CICO, especially non exercise expenditure of energy has helped me keep my weight in check.
There is very little research on satiety and practically applying findings into the real world, but this is very slowly changing fortunately. Everyone saying "it's just CICO, duh!" sounds to me like they're telling someone suffering through clinical depression, "it's just your perspective, duh!". They're describing the "how" without supplying the "why", thinking the map is the territory in a shallow analysis. The world is more interesting than that, fortunately.
Those are the things that I learned as well. And some other related aspects like change in taste: sensitivity to unwanted sugar, eating (and enjoying!) chocolate with more than 90% cocoa, unsweetened whipped cream, etc. Control of cravings, and the claimed increase in concentration (but costs creativity as a downside) also occurred and were good experiences.
I still think most people should not follow the diet without breaks, deficiencies simply exist in this one as well. I like my apple and also could not stand the sight of broccoli and cauliflower for a long time after finishing it.
I'm living now according to some kind of relaxed low carb method, combined with occasional interval fasting (also allowing ketosis).
Did keto for half a year last year and lost almost 50lbs. I'm now doing it semi-regularly (hard to stay on when traveling so I just don't). It's been life changing. People that hate on it are the same ones that just say to exercise. Like ya tried that didn't work for me.
I had a similar thing, but without going full Keto. I still have pasta, potatoes and wholemeal bread for instance, but I fast 16 hours so I still have some ketosis going.
I was trying to avoid sugar (i.e. Sucrose + Fructose, except for actual fruit), and replace oils and butter with olive oil. And for breakfast/lunch (because I still want to eat a normal dinner with my family) I eat the best possible versions of those. Porridge, Greek yoghurt, fruit and nuts.
I'm surprised 16 hours was enough. Don't want to knock your diet, whatever works works, but when I did keto and one meal a day I was measuring my being in ketosis with the urinalysis strips. It used to make me a good 2 - 3 weeks of near zero carbs to get into ketosis and if I had a full carb meal like pasta or pizza it would take me as long as 2-3 days to dip back into ketosis. That said, I wasn't working out as much as I could have been so that could make the difference. #broscience
> It used to make me a good 2 - 3 weeks of near zero carbs to get into ketosis
AFAIK this is virtually impossible if done as required by keto (the carbohydrate limit is quite tight, it is violated very quickly without objective bookkeeping) and you also control protein intake. The liver's glycogen store lasts about a day, after which you need to burn fat (maybe some muscle glycogen).
It's amazing how after being on Keto for a while, everything tastes sweet when you go off, almost disgustingly so. The most surprising one: IPAs. I can barely drink heavy IPAs after going off Keto because my palette gets so wreaked from all the sugar. I've also learned to appreciate really dark chocolate; 90% being my go-to.
As someone who went from a standard American-esque diet to a mostly raw vegan diet (the bulk of what I had were salads, fruits, avocados, nuts and giant sweet potatoes [obviously cooked]). I found myself having the same ability to taste things in a very super sensitive way (fresh juicy pineapple was like an out of body experience). Things like fried food, sugary drinks and kids cereals were horrible tasting. My favorite occasional treat is non-sugar 100% cooking chocolate.
I'm interested what people know about 'net' carbs and ketosis. I'm not all that savvy on this stuff. I'm looking at a package of chia seeds, which says it's got 16 grams of carbs per quarter cup include 14 grams of fiber. On the Web, I see 'net carbs' calculated in this case as total carbs in grams minus fiber in grams: 16 - 14 => 2. Curious if ketosis occurs when you keep these 'net' values below 20. Another way of asking this is: Is the idea of 'net' carbs legitimate, when talking ketosis? Can I eat up to 20 grams of net carbs and have a reasonable expectation of ketosis, even if the 'total' carbs were 10 or 15 times the 'net carbs'?
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] threadIt's still very good data and very interesting, but it raises more questions then it answers, and effectively points out that we have no clue how these metabolic pathways actually operate outside of specific circumstances.
Edit: I'm in no way condemning this paper, on the contrary, I think it's great. This is good science.
"Mice-based studies that omit “mice” from title get 31% more media coverage"
https://www.psychnewsdaily.com/mice-based-alzheimers-studies...
1. Someone stops consuming carbohydrates
2. This causes them to produce significantly less insulin
3. In order to preserve ~~insulin~~ glucose for the brain, other insulin receptors are downregulated
4. Because of this downregulation, the subject is less tolerant of carbohydrates
This is "pseudo-diabetes" and not "diabetes" because a person on a ketogenic diet isn't producing insulin, whereas a diabetic can't produce (enough) insulin, or is so desensitized to it that glucose stays in the blood steam.
1) Consume external drug
2) Receptors downregulate (thanks to homeostasis)
3) Need more of said drug or withdrawals kick in (analogous to needing to take external insulin so body can get rid of excess glucose)
4) Rinse & repeat
From a United States perspective: What we have is a duopoly of Big Pharma and Big Ag that gets people hooked on sugar and then uses medicine-as-a-service to hook them on insulin forever. There is no money in preventative medicine.
There are other countries in the world that have already taken steps to get junk foods and sugary drinks out of the hands of children [0]. What excuses does the United States have?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/aug/06/mexico-oaxaca-s...
People are told time and again that it's healthcare system. Yeah, it's not health / customer focused. But all the more reason to do a decent job at avoiding that system. Instead, the status quo diet + lifestyle persists. (Political) leaders can't risk the push back trying to change the narrative.
Only red blood cells and a couple other actually need glucose.
I think nature might know something we don't know.
The current method of testing for ketones is ketones freely available in blood stream. The ketones are released by the liver when it’s too full of them and thus they spill over to the blood stream. The consequence therefore is that once you’re fully keto adapted, your ketones won’t spike too high as your body can efficiently generate the required amount.
Most people who do a long fast, they’ll have 1+mmol (higher at 3+) ketones, whereas someone who’s adapted maintains sub 1mmol.
Also, if all you’re eating is protein and large fats, youre producing ketones otherwise you’d die as there’s no carbs/glucose. So yeah, Inuit and carnivore diet people couldn’t exist.
live experiments and observations are a thing, and they are happening everywhere if you do a quick search
It’s really interesting to see the diet industry attack this. Calling it a “fad diet” as if eating low carbs is somehow a fad. Other things I’ve seen are essentially “keto diets are for treating epilepsy, not for losing weight!” Etc.
Keto diets don’t require you to buy any products or books or take any courses or anything. Just literally read the nutrition facts and eat 20-50 carbs a day.
If you are struggling with obesity I highly recommend trying a low carb diet.
Weight gain = calories in - calories out
I've had incredible success with keto, but I did yo-yo back, the downside of keto being so easy is that it's hard to get back into it, knowing that you'll almost effortlessly get results eventually, so I'm nutritionally procrastinating.
I've been strict keto now for over five years. Prior to that I was clinically obese for decades. I tried lots of different dieting approaches and most of them "worked" to lose weight to some extent. The issue was I would always regain the weight because I couldn't maintain the diet due to the constant hunger and sense of deprivation. While all diets, including keto, ultimately "work" through calorie reduction. The unique aspect of keto for me was it was the only approach that allowed me to reduce calories without hunger or deprivation.
N=1 and individual metabolisms and preferences are different, so I don't try to extrapolate my results to everyone. All I can say is that after struggling for so long with so many other approaches, keto worked for me so fast, so easily and so well - it does feel almost like a hack.
Pointing out the thermodynamics of weight loss with calories in/out is stupid though because there is a huge dependency in the amount of calories consumed based on the type of food and if the food has been engineered to taste super good.
What was impressive though was how long it took and how slow the gain progressed. Because keto calories tend to be so satiating, it almost felt like I had to work at getting my energy balance to stay meaningfully positive. When I'm full on natural fats, it's hard to keep eating. The other interesting thing was, even though I gained some weight, I maintained most of the non-weight related benefits (cognitive, emotional balance). My guess is this may be due to keto calories being almost all fresh, unprocessed foods.
I'd guess you kept the mental benefits because you were still in ketosis. While I'm sure being leaner (if you were overweight) contributes to some mental benefits (body image, feeling healthier), perhaps most are simply from running on ketones.
Even after so many years in strict keto, I still can't tease out where exactly which benefits come from between calorie reduction, ketosis, gut microbiome, etc. I feel like it's definitely a combination of more than one of the above but teasing it out would require too much experimentation and I'm reluctant to 'mess with success'.
Protein is as calorie dense as carbs, and fat is twice as calorie dense as carbs. So it isn't mere volume of food in the stomach that causes the difference - if it was, it would be easier to overeat on protein/fats than on carbs.
Basically, it sounds like you're treating the human body like some black hole that calories get thrown into, when in reality there is a very complex feedback loop taking place based on what your bodily inputs and outputs are.
1 - https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Switch-Richard-J-Johnson-ebook/dp...
2 - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rick-johnson-m-d-metab...
Why exactly do I need to know this equation? My body can do that for me automatically.
a third column of "how it works" is the same for all rows: "calorie restriction"
I've been doing a half-hearted keto and losing weight because I'm just eating a lot less by skipping pizza and breakfast bagels and honestly just don't have many meals in my cooking repetoire, so it's either protein shake or meat on top of salad.
I don't think that you have to be calorie-restricted to benefit from a ketogeneic diet.
The climber Dave MacLeod has a 4-hour long video that seems (to my untrained eye) to have a number of good sources. He also has a masters degree in nutrition and is a professional athlete.
He describes how underfeeding was indeed a problem with his early experiments with this approach to diet, but how it's been quite effective after being careful to eat enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9dtfNZahKw&t=46s
> Keto diets don’t require you to buy any products or books or take any courses or anything. Just literally read the nutrition facts and eat 20-50 carbs a day.
But that's the issue, isn't it?
Sometimes I feel like changing my usual snack of apples with some kind of biscuit / cookie. It's next to impossible to find anything below 500 kCals / 100 g at my local grocery store. And when I look at the ingredients, there's always a ton of sugar in there.
The only lower-ish processed food I can easily find is sorbet. But that's impractical to deal with at work (we don't have a freezer).
So most of the time, I end up buying nothing if I don't feel like an apple. Why would "big ag" cheer me in going this route?
I should note I'm not even into Keto or anything, just paying attention to how many calories I eat.
Typically you're swapping flour for almond flour and sugar for erythritol.
I'm in France, so the only time I've seen beef jerky in my life was when some dude I used to know brought some from the US. Furthermore, I'm really not sure if we have anything similar over here.
Note, I said I wasn't doing keto (never have) so I don't specifically look for no-carb options. I just realize that those foods are more like "cravings", so they won't make me eat less during the regular meals. If I want to reduce my calorie intake, I need to cut somewhere. So I usually look into cutting the calories of the snacks. While I love almonds and other dried fruits (and their butter), they typically have a lot of calories. IIRC, pistachios have something like 600 kCals and I can easily eat way too many.
I usually tend to buy protein bars from a sporting goods store, which have the benefit of making me feel full after one or two, and make me eat noticeably less at the following meal. But said store is quite out of my way, so I don't always have those on hand, and they do have a bit too much sugar for my taste.
I'm genuinely fascinated that you prefaced this clearly-not-an-anecdote with "just an anecdote". If it had been an anecdote, it would have been fine without the preface. Instead it's a sweeping claim that at best requires several anecdotes to support it.
>a short amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person.
>keto is so effect [for me] that it feels like a hack [to me].
This is literally an anecdote.
The “eat less carbs” message is great IMO but I think a lot of people need to eat less period. Personally I found that intentionally eating high-protein foods was a good way for me to be satiated with less carbs. A protein bar will fill me up, a chunk of cheese with twice as many calories won’t.
But I also acknowledge that people are different. I’m sure there people who are easily satiated by fat and can therefore eat unmetered fatty foods and lose weight.
I think of it like a see-saw, with protein level being the axis of rotation (ie., it stays the same). Now you have 2 remaining macro variables: carbs and fat. If you decrease one, you need to increase the other or else caloric intake might be too low.
Keto community generally refers to the diet as Low Carb High Fat because not eating enough fat can cause problems on the diet.
Edit: To be clear, assuming sufficient consumption of protein, if calories are still deficient, keto community recommends making up the deficit with fat rather than protein.
I've known a few heavy people over the years who claimed to be eating keto and never seemed to be losing any weight. Whenever we hung out they would use their purported keto diet as a green-light to get extra meat and cheese in whatever we were doing, and inevitably they would also eat carbs. French fries, beers, late night donuts, ice cream, the usual slip-ups.
If a person lacks self-discipline, a keto diet turns into an extremely fattening diet. It does not degrade gracefully at all. You have to either stick to it and stay in ketosis, or reel in your fat consumption something fierce because it'll all get stored as fat when you're running on glucose.
It's kind of a major flaw with ketogenic diets IMHO. The diet inherently gets a person into a habit of consuming rich, fatty foods. But when they slip up, which let's be honest, most people will. It becomes something along the lines of the most fattening diet possible.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Starvation
While I generally agree with you, I think many people have a strong rebound after a few months, that does not teach adequate portion size for later on, and after some age and some health conditions, it can put stress on kidney / liver
Keto is EASY compared to any other diet I've tried for one key reason: you don't feel hungry.
You can eat as much as you want, whenever you like. Soon enough though the effects kick in, your hunger is supressed, and you have to remind yourself to eat at times.
No matter how enthusiastic you are at the start, hunger quickly erodes willpower. I failed miserably at the typical low-fat diet. Keto was the cheat code.
This is also a "hack" to get into clothes that are a little too tight way faster. Your body basically shrinks a little.
The only downside that I can think of it was really, really, really, REALLY boring.
so boring in fact that after a while I did not look forward to eating - while normally I am a foodie and just love to eat, when I did keto that wish to eat was gone.
however I still would very much recommend keto if you can find the life setting that supports you doing keto, because I can guarantee you that other members of your family will not want to eat what you eat- once or twice, MAYBE, but not all the time.
I find that keto excludes a huge portion of the population that is not willing to give up complex carbs in some capacity. As long as they drop outright sugars and grains, a person should still be able to get the advantage of keto while being on a more follow-able keto-lite.
Physically fit people don't buy their magic pills and weight loss programs.
You would be amazed by the amount of supplement pills and powders with which many "fit and healthy" people fill up their cabinets, while paying 1000s of dollars for beach body DVD programs, apps, overpriced kitchen appliances and branded gear. It's just a different industry that is selling you the illusion.
Con's: - Frequented the bathroom a lot more - Couldn't lift as heavy in the gym - Scheduling meals was a pain
If you’re looking for a crash diet (which isn’t a great idea to begin with), there are easier and healthier ones than keto. There are no scenarios where it would be the best choice, and that’s if you’re doing one of the more sensible versions of the diet, opposed to the even more insane unlimited-fat-calories versions.
A keto diet restricts both carb and protein intake. It’s 80% or more calories from fat. Carbs OR protein in excess of that will suppress ketosis.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_syndrome
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2017/16_0287.htm#:~:text=By%2...
Everyday, I worry there is some terrible trade off, but signs of pre-diabetes and pre-non-alcoholic-fatty-liver-syndrome were bad enough in my mind that whatever the trade off is likely won’t kill me faster than either of those.
I make no effort to count calories or control portions.
But, that's what healthy living habits are: Finding what works for you!
Have always thought my Ketogenic diet period, which I ran for about 9 months approx 1.5 years before diagnose, could have had something to do with me ‘developing’ type 1. Did discuss this with my doc, she assured me they found the markers in my blood work indicating auto immune disease etc.
Still intrigued by these kind of papers that seem to relate the different topics.
Started of doing SKD, so strict Keto diet, with about less than 50 grams of carbs a day. Mostly meats, cheeses, eggs, green veggies etc.
After about 4 months added more carbs till about probably 100 a 150 grams, so maybe more considered low carb. Did mix on some MCT every once in a while.
Was olympic lifting during that while period, so twice a week gym routine.
Simply because of how strict keto is I began to read the breakdown for every single thing I purchase in the store. This may seem obvious to all but I never did it to the degree I do now. There is sugar in everything and the serving sizes are often completely ridiculous - I saw a protein bar where the serving size was half the bar! Other diets teach you food groups to eat and encourage but don't seem to have this side effect of teaching you just how messed up some packaged foods are.
For the record, I'm a fan and have noticed benefits in my own life.
Also, "deadliest hormone" is giving me DHMO vibes. Insulin does many things (way more than I realised before writing this comment), you don't want to eliminate it from your body regardless of you diet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin
Since when did he get into med school?
So diabetics will die without it because?
https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/does-milk-have-sugar#:....
I use cronometer to track nutrients (macro & micro). It uses data source directly from NCCDB from the University of Minnesota.
My problem is simply controlling the portion sizes of my delicious food - it's SO easy to eat large portions, and it takes weeks of ignoring your stomach's rumbling to get yourself used to reduced portions.
It's not for everyone though; I've just been doing it for a while.
I did 16/8, lunch and dinner so I could eat with the rest of the family. Worked quite well, lost a ton of weight without feeling like I had to do anything. The first couple of days I was starving by the end of the 16 hour break, but I got over it much faster than the constant feeling I need to eat something I get with portion control.
As you said, doesn't work well for everyone though. I'd guess that it maybe works for me cause of the ADHD, as I may still get to have those endorphin hits when eating something I like. I should probably try going back to it, now that we're talking about it...
Diets in general also tend toward caloric deficit, resulting in weight loss.
Ketogenic diets are used to treat epileptic seizures but haven’t otherwise been studied in large enough populations to understand the ramifications of long-term glucose deficits in the human body. YMMV just be safe.
How's the "long-term glucose surplus" control group doing?
(Kind of kidding, but it's not obvious why the "less exogenous glucose" condition would be a priori the risky one!)
* For my friends that find Keto effective it seem their bodies seem to find fat/protein super satiating.
* For my friends that find volume eating effective it seems like their hunger is more triggered on "stuff in stomach" where I can't stand that feeling.
* For my friends that like IF their hunger seems to be time based. The common element for my IF friends is that they started their journey very overweight and so it's been years since they were actually hungry.
* For me and my other ED friends we all seem to deal with hunger by getting over the initial pang and then just not eating until our bodies give up trying and then just coast on that. Obviously don't do this.
I still think most people should not follow the diet without breaks, deficiencies simply exist in this one as well. I like my apple and also could not stand the sight of broccoli and cauliflower for a long time after finishing it.
I'm living now according to some kind of relaxed low carb method, combined with occasional interval fasting (also allowing ketosis).
Can you expand on this part? Never heard of this before.
I was trying to avoid sugar (i.e. Sucrose + Fructose, except for actual fruit), and replace oils and butter with olive oil. And for breakfast/lunch (because I still want to eat a normal dinner with my family) I eat the best possible versions of those. Porridge, Greek yoghurt, fruit and nuts.
AFAIK this is virtually impossible if done as required by keto (the carbohydrate limit is quite tight, it is violated very quickly without objective bookkeeping) and you also control protein intake. The liver's glycogen store lasts about a day, after which you need to burn fat (maybe some muscle glycogen).
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