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

[Regina]

Anecdotal, but when I stopped eating endless slices of cheese and drinking glasses of HWC, I lost (as of today) five more pounds. Now it may be harder to gain weight on Keto than the SAD (though several forum members seem to be having a weight gain issue) but I don’t believe for a minute that gorging on dairy, oil and nuts wouldn’t cause me to gain weight. Though this is sounding like an interesting experiment🤔

[lfod14]

Nowhere in the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model is there a suggestion, as far as I know, that fat-burners don’t need to be in caloric deficit to lose fat.

Actually, I’m pretty sure most of us that did calorie restriction for YEARS while getting fatter, then switching to diets like Atkins and Keto that had our calorie limits in many cases HIGHER than they were while we were getting bigger and saw the majority of our losses that way, would make exactly that argument.

Only time I’ve seen people credit LCHF’s weight loss to caloric restriction is the sugar burners that try to discredit insulin being the biggest contributing factor. Not saying calories don’t matter at all, because they do, but NOT to the point where I’ll give CICO credit by any means. Calories IN is easy to track and control, Calories OUT… not even close!

[Callisto]

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.

See, I agree with this statement, Gabe, but you go on to say that calories are ultimately lowered by fat being more satiating, implying not a metabolic difference but ultimately a calorie difference. (And I suspect there’s so much about metabolism we don’t know or understand yet.) There is so much evidence that fat metabolism is different, and not just about satiety.

It’s not magic, it’s science. Keto can’t make calories consumed disappear without a trace.

They don’t disappear without a trace, they show up in breath and urine as fuel wasted out of our bodies and not going into storage. This is only one example of a mechanism, I suspect there are others that make fat metabolism more flexible calorie-wise.

Edit: another mechanism I just thought of, Dr. Bikman has demonstrated that in a ketotic state, fat tissue itself becomes metabolically active, with white fat behaving more like brown fat and actually burning itself for heat.

Just my two cents. Honestly, I think anytime in the first 40 years of my life, when the calorie model seemed to work so well for me, I would have had a very difficult time buying the hormonal theory, because the calorie theory matched my personal experience. I can understand why we have such differing opinions because it’s hard for us to reconcile what we know to be true for ourselves with some theory that doesn’t work for us, and we’re all different.

[PaulL]

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

Forgive me, LeeAnn, for pointing out that doesn’t mean they aren’t still eating at a deficit. As Gabe points out, the First Law of Thermodynamics can’t be violated. Yes, it is possible for some people to eat an enormous caloric load and still lose weight, but as Gabe points out, there has to be something going on, of which we are not aware, to increase their energy expenditure to an even higher level than their intake.

Actually, after reading the further posts, I suspect that there is an underlying agreement that is disguised by vocabulary. LeeAnn says that people often eat more on keto than before and still lose weight. This is very true. Gabe says that they still have to be eating at a caloric deficit, and this also is very true. I think Callisto’s point about metabolism is another piece to the puzzle. So if people are eating more than ever and are nevertheless losing weight, they have to be eating a caloric deficit, but how? The answer has to lie in how the body manages its food intake.

For example, how do we know that their basal metabolic rate hasn’t increased to compensate for at least some of the extra intake? For example, it is possible that their adipose tissue has started behaving more like brown fat and is “wasting” energy. And Callisto’s example of metabolites’ being excreted in breath and urine is also relevant here.

Dr. Phinney’s research indicates that by eating fat to satiety, people unconsciously peg their caloric intake to a level that allows both dietary fat and body fat to be metabolized. He says that a lot of people spontaneously limit themselves to around 1500 calories’ worth of food when they first start a ketogenic diet and have excess body fat to lose. But as they lose that fat, their appetite increases to compensate, so that they are getting an increasingly higher percentage of their energy from diet, until they have metabolized all their excess fat and need to get all their daily energy from their diet.

I suspect further, from experience, that our sense of what is a large quantity of food shifts as we do keto, I just had a handful of nuts, which in my sugar-burning days would have been nothing, but now I’m so not hungry that I am actually feeling a little sick at the thought of eating anything more. Do you think this may be part of why people are thinking they are eating so much?

Lastly, as Gary Taubes points out, there is the question of the direction of causality. CICO claims that it is the level of intake or the level of expenditure that determines whether we gain or lose weight. The hormonal model insists that causality runs in the other direction: we eat more or less, because our hormones are making us gain or lose. And there, I think, lies the key.

That’s my argument, and I’m sticking to it. Now go ahead and demolish it. If you can!

[gabe]

The laws of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to the human body

I think, with all due respect, this is a deeply misguided statement.

[lfod14]

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.

Couple issues with that.

1. Who said the almighty laws of thermodynamics should have ever been applied to the human metabolism to begin with? How many people go to a physicist for nutrition advise in any other situation?

2. Those “laws” which are actually findings by man, which are fallible, as all mans finding are. Let’s think of all of Ancel Key’s “proof” that fat was bad for us!

Go to the beginning, the calorie. We assigned calories originally by sticking food in a bomb calorimiter and torching it, too bad that was a MACHINE which did the exact same thing every single time to the food, our metabolisms don’t do that. They not only vary greatly from person to person but they change for each specific person due to almost anything. Healthy, sick, pissed off, in pain, stressed out. Now put in a con-founder like insulin. Imagine if the calorimiter came up with different results based on the kind of mood the operator was in, or the elevation of the lab using it. I believe Atwater is the current method and that’s supposedly even less accurate. We’re not all calibrated the same, some of us are so far off we simply can’t use the same math to guess on stuff. We have so many variables it’s stupid. If CICO worked then we wouldn’t have the obesity epidemic we have, plain and simple. Calories matter, but not the way we want them too.

[Jess1]

I am on about 30/40g net carbs and still get a result on a ketostick and am losing. Maybe this is because I have 30lb to lose so am burning carbs because of being overweight?

[tdean]

You keep tagging the wrong person @tdean

Roger that! Well you’ve certainly answered my question. Please don’t get me started on Pork Belly, I’ve already proved that I can eat 1 kg of pork belly in one meal without blinking an eyelid. So I need to restrict out of necessity.

I’m a big eater and have been all my life, when I was younger I played a lot of sport, and worked in jobs that expended a lot of energy so weight was not an issue for me ever. Weight became a problem as soon as I stopped being so active, and changed profession (sitting down a lot). I didn’t and wouldn’t modify my eating habits so its not that surprising for me to see the weight stack on.

[Callisto]

Nice job tying it together, Paul! Well said! My experience does correlate with your suspicion that calorie intake sometimes automatically decreases after fat adaptation due to excess fuel stored in the form of body fat. As I mentioned, for me I think it happened and may have contributed after a while to my stall. That doesn’t mean I’ll go out of my way to binge on fat well beyond satiety for a long time, though, that would make no sense either. I think it’s the variation that’s helping me. It’ll be interesting to see how things go over time.

[Anniegirl9]

Then Dr. Jason Fung is deeply misguided as well.

Direct quote from The Obesity Code
“But thermodynamics, a law of physics, has minimal relevance to human biology for the simple reason that the human body is not an isolated system.”

[brownfat]

I don’t think it’s physically possible to be losing body fat while consuming more calories than you’re burning.

Then I doubt you’ve ever gone swimming with a school of pirhanas.

[tdean]

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.

I read that too but the argument (in my head) was, yeah but he didn’t lose weight by eating more fat. That’s what I’m talking about.

[Anniegirl9]

the First Law of Thermodynamics can’t be violated.

The problem with CICO is it assumes the two are independent of each other. This is not the case. When calories go down, say 30%, the body will compensate by also lowering calorie expenditure by a similar amount. Studies show people on CICO diets have lower body temperatures than those on non calorie restricted diets. At the same time, the body also produces more hunger causing hormones. The body attempts to return to a state of stasis.

There’s a reason 95% of the people who attempt a CICO diet fail.

[Anniegirl9]

He did lose an inch off his waist line though.

[Callisto]

I read that too but the argument (in my head) was, yeah but he didn’t lose weight by eating more fat. That’s what I’m talking about.

LOL that’s your physics brain at work. This is why I love biology, rules can’t be taken to extremes and we’re always guessing!

[tdean]

He did lose an inch off his waist line though.

Doesn’t count. He was probably breathing in when he took the measurement.

On weigh in day for JC I used to wear a light track suit, and take my shoes off before I got on the scales. I thought it was worth the effort to lose a few extra pounds, until I realised that I’d need to strip off more each time to “lose” if I cheated that week… I don’t think they would have appreciated me stripping to my shorts. (ah the crazy stuff we do to lose weight).

[Anniegirl9]

And upon rereadinv the example, it was over 5700 calories daily for 21 days. I was a little off in my recollection.

I think it still makes the point that CICO is not a formula that can be derived through math. If so, the weight gain would have been the same with both experiments.

[tdean]

If so, the weight gain would have been the same with both experiments.

You’re reaching @Anniegirl9, come on admit it, I win this round.

[Anniegirl9]

And the 15.3 pounds and 3.6 he gained doing the exact same experiment with a SAD of the same calories? How would thermodynamics account for such wide discrepancies using the same calories and adhering to the same physical activity?

[Anniegirl9]

How is that reaching?
Have you read the Obesity Code? If I’m reaching, then Dr Fung is, and if like a better scientific explanation that debunks every thing in his book before I toss out his very well detailed explanation.

Will someone lose on CICO. Yes. All diets work in the short term. But you don’t NEED CICO to lose and it won’t work in the long term. I’ve dedicated 20+ years to proving that from personal experience.