The studies show that eating a diet similar to what our ancestors ate thousands of years ago is what we should do to be our healthiest, most robust.
Are there any studies of ketoers that determine how much food is necessary when eating optimally?
I struggle to eat much, I’m just not hungry. I listen to my body. I eat til I’m done and don’t eat again until my body says it wants more food.
I see people, successful ketoing people, posting enormous (to me) portions of food for 1 meal, and I can’t help but wonder if our ancestors ate that quantity per meal or per day.
@DeeCS Since this is posted in the Show Me The Science section, I will admit that I have no science to back up my response … but here I go…
If trying to describe what the human diet was like while traipsing around in loincloth, then I would imagine we “ate like dogs” in the sense that we had little in the way of food preservation and storage available. As such, it was likely our ancient ancestors ate when the food was available, and went for long periods of (unintentional) fasting.
Our dog will eat pretty much whatever we offer… and finish it all with a sense of urgency. Then stare at us like he’s still starving in hopes of getting more. His weight is stable - and his food is only limited by our good judgement. His metabolism solves the rest.
Lacking scientific studies to support my guess (absent a time machine, it’s hard to imagine how the timing of our paleo forebears’ meals could be confirmed), I would imagine that it was a feast vs famine eating style - the mother of all “intermittent” fasting regimens. As such, my guess is that when the food was available, they would eat as much as they could possible stuff into their faces without tossing the meal back out.
Just my (un)educated guess
PaulL
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?)
#3
Part of the science of low-carb eating is that a high-carb intake causes insulin to rise to a level where it interferes with the reception of the satiety hormone leptin in the brain. Leptin is secreted by our fat tissue in order to signal our brain that we have enough stored energy (fat) to last us for a while, so that we can stop eating. But insulin blocks the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus, so that we stay hungry.
This mechanism makes sense, because high blood sugar can damage the body, so the high insulin keeps fat pent-up in the adipose tissue, so it won’t compete with glucose-burning in the muscles. And any glucose that gets turned into fat is trapped in the adipose until blood glucose drops low enough for the body to need the stored fat for energy again. This is only a problem when we keep eating carbohydrate to assuage our hunger pangs, instead of switching to protein and fat, so that our blood glucose can drop. The way to repair the situation, therefore, is to keep eating in a way that keeps insulin low.
… but here I go…