I haven’t tried OA yet, but I have known several members over the years and have been wondering essentially the same as you.
My own experience is that satiety doesn’t eliminate sugar/carbohydrate cravings for me, though it does make them easier to manage. I also notice that, the times I have yielded and eaten something sweet, I didn’t end up bingeing on it, the way I used to before keto. This is reassuring on the one hand, but on the other hand means I have to be very careful not to become complacent. Interestingly, I am finding that as my insulin resistance heals, my satiety signaling is growing far stronger.
Dr. Georgia Ede, the psychiatrist, suggests from her clinical experience, that a ketogenic diet has positive mental effects, and is a useful part of treatment for anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Many people on these forums have noted that they no longer need their anti-depressant drugs after time on a ketogenic diet. While this is probably not the case for everyone, given the high rate of individual variability and our still-limited understanding of the causes of mental problems, there nevertheless have been studies showing that a well-formulated ketogenic diet can often help with the regulation of serotonin in the brain. Furthermore, Dr. Chris Palmer, another psychiatrist, has successfully used a ketogenic diet to treat patients with schizophrenia.
So I would say that the odds are high that a well-formulated ketogenic diet might be very helpful to your OA program. If you feel you can risk it, try eating to satiety, instead of to a pre-determined caloric intake. I have no data for this, of course, but it really seems to me that eating disorders were vanishingly rare before the introduction of the dietary guidelines, and not simply because they weren’t being diagnosed, either.
