70% fat,25% protein ,5% cabs macro rations. is that in grams or calories?

(Allie) #21

I measure nothing, stopped a year ago, but there’s no way the amount of fat I eat is less than what I’m burning - just todays example, half a block of Kerrygold (a block being 250g) on top of thickly sliced Double Gloucester cheese as lunch, fatty coffee (with butter, coconut oil, mct oil & heavy cream - none measured) first thing this morning and then sat at a desk all day…

(Mike W.) #22

I guess we also need to use the same definition of caloric deficit. I’m defining it as fewer calories than your body needs to continue doing what it’s doing at the same rate it’s doing it, not what a calculator tells you your body needs…

(Terence Dean) #23

No what I meant was, is the amount of fat that you eat less than the amount recommended for your height and current weight?

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #24

TELL ME YOUR SECRET! :slight_smile:

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #25

I don’t think it’s physically possible to be losing body fat while consuming more calories than you’re burning. Would love to be proven wrong – perhaps your body simply doesn’t process some of those calories you’re consuming. But what you are saying sounds fantastical, and Occam’s Razor would have it that you’re probably just consuming less than your basal metabolic rate, and underestimating your own BMR.

EDIT: Please note, if it’s not obvious, that I’m not saying “diet and exercise.” I’m just saying CICO is technically accurate, even for fat burners like us.

(Allie) #26

Very much doubt it, but based on what calculation? The butter alone is about 110g and on top of that is the cheese and whatever amount was in my coffee - and I’m only 5’ 3" and 118lbs

(David) #27

I think it a gram, not percent. It’s max 20g of net carbs, protein is calculated by your body lean mass (1-1,5g per kg), just enough to build muscles. And then fat until you aren’t hungry.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #28

We fight against the calories-in-calories-out model of weight loss, which is also expressed as “eat less, move more” or “a calorie is a calorie,” because it is not nuanced enough to describe what the body actually does. But even the carbohydrate-insulin or hormonal model of food partitioning has to take the First Law of Thermodynamics into account. It’s just that the stridency required to get through to diehard CICO folks often leads us to forget that part.

The reason the situation is more complex is that the body partitions the fuel we give it differently depending on the type of fuel. We do not gain or lose weight depending on our gross caloric intake or our total energy expenditure, but rather in accordance with how much fat, carbohydrate, and protein we are eating.

Too much carbohydrate stimulates the secretion of insulin, which drives the glucose in the carbohydrate into the muscles for burning and into the fat tissue for storage in the form of fatty acids. Too much insulin blocks the hormonal signaling that tells the brain that we don’t need to eat for a while, which is why we feel constantly hungry on a high-carb diet. A minimal amount of carbohyrate has the reverse effect; it allows fat to leave the fat tissue to be burned by the muscles and allows our satiety signaling to work properly again, reducing our appetite while also reducing our excess fat.

Restricting calories is counter-productive, as well, because the body responds to famine by lowering its basal metabolic rate, putting a hold on non-essential processes, and grimly hanging onto its fat stores. In times of abundance, however, the body ramps up the BMR and even finds ways to waste energy, it starts growing hair and encouraging reproduction again, and even lets the fat cells and the muscles metabolize excess stored fat.

All this means that weight loss is not about eating less but about eating right. And it also means that weight gain is not about eating too much, it’s about having eaten the wrong things. The problem with the CICO logic is that it assumes that eating too much is what causes weight gain, whereas the reality is that eating wrong causes weight gain and thus causes us to need a higher caloric intake in order to supply the extra calories needed for storage.

If you can boil all that down into a pithy slogan that we can chant in reply to “a calorie is a calorie,” everyone here will bless your name for ever.

Advice for 2018 newbies with a lot to lose - keep it simple
#29

Thanks Paul. Good summary.

(Terence Dean) #30

@Shortstuff I put your details into the Cronometer, assuming no activity, no exercise, and maintaining current weight.

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(Terence Dean) #32

Ah yes but if that satiety signaling is not working properly and I think this is one of the reasons why some people don’t know when to stop eating fat. They don’t feel satiated, so eating to satiety for that person is not going to help them lose weight, they will most likely keep eating more fat than they need to. Richard said that some people don’t have that signaling and for them counting calories with a modest deficit is what he thinks they should do. The assumption is that we will all get that satiety signal, what if you never do?

As I tried to point out in the last two sentences, Phinney says:

Weight loss and the rate of weight loss tend to be a bit different for everyone, which sometimes means rapid weight loss for quite a while, followed by periods of weight stability. While this may be normal for your body, there are small dietary changes you could consider, which may help push past a true weight plateau.

If your carbohydrates are below your personal tolerance, the next consideration could be your dietary protein intake. Testing your blood ketones may help to identify the need for possible dietary changes.

Additionally, consider the amount of dietary fat consumed. When weight loss is a goal, dietary fat intake may lead to weight stability if the amount of calories consumed matches daily energy needs. Try slowly reducing dietary fat to see if you can do so without increasing hunger. This may be the solution to help you resume weight loss.

The key here in my opinion is reducing dietary fat without increasing hunger which is what I’m doing. Believe me if I feel hungry I’ll be increasing my fat intake, I’m a monster if I get hungry.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

Actually, type II diabetics do a lot better on as little carbohydrate as possible. Remember that the daily minimum required intake of carbohydrate is 0 (zero) grams. Even the American Diabetes Association now admits this. Plenty of traditional societies ate nothing but protein and fat and had no diabetes, obesity, or heart disease to speak of (read George Mann’s work on African tribal societies in the 1960’s, for example, or Stefansson’s book on his experiences living among the Inuit in the early 20th century).

It is well-documented that when a tribal society starts Westernizing its diet, particularly by consuming white flour and refined sugar, that the trouble starts: first dental caries and gout, then obesity, then diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all the other diseases comprised in metabolic syndrome. For an account of this progression, see The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz, and The Case Against Sugar, by Gary Taubes. They are well-written and extremely well documented, if you would like to follow up by looking at the original studies.

(Allie) #36

You keep tagging the wrong person @tdean

Way back when I was tracking, I was consuming a minimum of 1800 calories a day. If I limited to those numbers I would die, I have more fat in my morning coffee than that calculator allows for a whole day :joy: in addition to what I’ve had already today, tonight will be 500g or pork belly which, according to the packaging, is over 1200 calories and around 130g fat. This is just another normal day of eating and there’s no way I’m eating a caloric deficit.

(karen) #37

I feel like the missing link in the whole CICO debate is what precisely happens to dietary fat and body fat during digestion. I mean Precisely. If you’re in deep ketosis and you’re truly eating as many calories in fat as your body requires to function and you’re still losing body fat too, then something else must be happening. Somehow, some way, the body has to be deconstructing fat molecules and getting rid of the broken down bits in a process that goes beyond using fat as fuel.

Or, if you’re saying your body fat percentage is decreasing but your weight is stable, then that the body is taking those broken down bits and using them for something else (to build muscle, maybe?)

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #38

Well, if fiber works for you and your patients, fine. But the science, so far as I understand it, is that fiber is as unnecessary as any other carbohydrate—though I am willing to be enlightened on this point. My own experience is that my digestion is much better with as little carbohydrate as I can manage. (I have to fight cravings and don’t always win.)

There is also a substantial Zero Carb/Carnivore community here on these forums who will no doubt be happy to share their experience. @amber? Care to weigh in?

(LeeAnn Brooks) #39

Read the Obesity Code. You do NOT need to restrict calories to lose weight. In fact, it fails 95% of the time, statistically.

(LeeAnn Brooks) #41

Jason Fung makes a pretty strong argument for fiber.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #42

We are all restricting calories to lose weight. We’re just not consciously doing so.

I keep hearing people saying that they’re eating a calorie surplus and losing fat. I don’t think that’s possible. More likely, their basal metabolic rate is a lot higher than they think, or something else is going on in metabolism that I don’t understand – but their bodies just cannot be violating the first law of thermodynamics.

One of the hypotheses for why LCHF diets cause weight loss, even (or even usually) ad libitum, is that fat is more satiating, and therefore the gap between calories burned and calories consumed is being made up for in body fat being burned. This is why @richard refers to the “Krispy Kreme you ate a decade ago.”

Perhaps there’s more to it, but again, I don’t think anybody serious is saying that the first law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply.

I am honestly confused as to why there’s so much confusion on these forums. There seems to be an element of magical thinking amongst many folks about LCHF and keto. It’s not magic, it’s science. Keto can’t make calories consumed disappear without a trace.

(LeeAnn Brooks) #43

There are plenty of examples both here on the forum and in the Obesity Code where people actually increased calories and still lost weight.

One example from the OC was a man who increased calories to over 5000 per day for a month from a 2000 ish per day. He did this experiment twice. The first time with low carb. In the end he did gain but just over 2 pounds in 30 days of extrem calorie increases. The gain was incidental.
The second time he did it with low fat. He gained as expected.

It unrealistic to believe anyone can exercise off that much of an calorie increase daily.

(LeeAnn Brooks) #44

Because Obesity isn’t a calorie disfunction. It’s a hormonal disfunction. Insulin makes us fat, not calories. The laws of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to the human body and CI and CO are not independent of each other. When you decrease CI, your body automatically decreases CO.