Can we please stop repeating the “You have to eat at a deficit to lose weight on KETO” lie?

[David_Stilley]

@FrankoBear I don’t even need to pull that link up because from the preview I can tell it’s anti keto . That article is from about 7 years ago, and a doctor’s degree doesn’t mean you aren’t a total idiot, from my experience and how ignorant doctors made me ill and botch surgeries. If you truly believe this drivel why are your eating a ketogenic diet? Starve on brother!

[ellenor2000]

It’s not a lie. It’s just irrelevant because your body will “create the deficit” by ramping up the metabolism if your insulinemia is brought under control in an energy-abundant state (such as while being obese and on a ketogenic diet).

[ellenor2000]

Here’s what I think is going on at the macro level.

Your body’s metabolic system is an advanced hybrid fuel cell, not a stove.

If there’s no fuel coming in, it will slow down operations to conserve the onboard stores, but keep them fast enough that you can still hunt.

If there’s fuel coming in, but not enough, and it’s low-fat instead of high-fat, it will also slow down operations, even more so than if there was just no fuel coming in (because if there’s not enough fuel coming in, and it’s mostly protein and/or carbs, that’s going to put the system in “store up for a rainy day” mode WHILE the rainy day is happening). It could also waste down muscle, because it doesn’t want to burn a lot of energy while in a fuel crisis.

If there’s fuel coming in, but not enough, and it’s high-fat, and you have fat on you, the low insulin that eating not enough but mostly fat causes will cause you to fill out the remainder of the fat with body fat, because high-fat is, evolutionarily, interpreted as not a famine, and so this energy stuck to us is now completely spare and we can burn it.

[David_Stilley]

@barns The reason my calculated caloric amount is what it is has to do with me. Amputee, sedentary for medical reasons, I don’t do physical work, I am 60 years old. I put my data in Cronometer and it calculated my BMR estimate from that data and my weight, maintenance was 1800 calories. A 20% deficit was recommended for moderate weight loss. 1500ish. When I got rid of the deficit and started eating more I started losing weight again at an accelerated rate. Who best knows what my BMR is and caloric needs are on a day to day basis? I have no idea actually. But following a recommendation for a deficit wasn’t helpful, and I was maintaining and felt good, just really slow weight loss eating whole keto foods. And most people who’ve been around the block with KETO accept that the CICO model is a lie. And you won’t be convincing me otherwise either. I’m sure I will continue to learn, and my eating habits will evolve as I continue.

So how do you estimate you need so many calories? Just by how you feel? And maybe you are way bigger than I am. And you mention how hard you work being a factor. So you need more food on work days or your day off after a physical day. Understandable. And when you cut is it across the board or do you just cut fat? I definitely agree on the dial back fat concept to burn fat. Could you be eating excess and when you decide to lose cutting back to what you should be eating?Might that be your deficit?

Looking at calories as a generic term for food is very inaccurate. A calorie isn’t just a calorie, you might need or crave more protein sometimes and not find it as attractive other days. Or you might crave fats another day. Maybe the same caloric amount for each but metabolised by different pathways and utilised in different ways, wasting energy from one and less from another. Extra fat, higher breath ketones wasting fuel instead of “burning” it. Too many factors for us to waste time counting a useless unit of heat crom physics and trying to apply that information in a useful way with a biological life form is human arrogance, something from a false model pushed down our throats for decades. A miss understanding of how biology works.

It’s like I put this gas in the tank and I can go 400 miles because a mileage calculator says I can, ignoring factors like terrain, wind, road conditions, traffic and countless other things to bung up those estimates.

[ellenor2000]

Since you say you’re an amputee, is it appropriate to say “I apologise for your loss”?

[FrankoBear]

It is not anti-keto. It doesn’t read as pro-keto, either. It is presented as a moderate point of view (except for the allusion to keto being akin to #fakenews in its, keto WOE, proponents’ abdication of the status quo). It is purportedly factual keto using a scientific meta analysis of randomised control trials examining the ketogenic diet. It is an eye wash for people who might be deep in ketosis. A check point to see what is floating down the mainstream.

David, as one seeking to disabuse a creeping keto norm of engulfing and incorporating the calorie in and calories out theory of nutritional energy metabolism*, possibly seeking to encourage thinking outside of the norm, I have trouble in hiding my disappointment in that you would not even give a listen to the two main stream doctors and their facts about this keto diet trend.

The scientific paper is from 2019. But I see it already has a thread in the forums here: The Ketogenic Diet for Obesity and Diabetes—Enthusiasm Outpaces Evidence

It just wiggled it’s way into Australian media a month later.

*As Professor Ben Bikman proposes in this discussion ( yes, I understand I am using an appeal to authority argument again): http://2ketodudes.com/show.aspx?episode=160

[FrankoBear]

Thanks for going through it Michael.

[Polly1]

If there’s fuel coming in, but not enough, and it’s high-fat, and you have fat on you, the low insulin that eating not enough but mostly fat causes will cause you to fill out the remainder of the fat with body fat, because high-fat is, evolutionarily, interpreted as not a famine, and so this energy stuck to us is now completely spare and we can burn it.

I like the way you put that. Good explanation, well expressed.

[Rclause]

The CICO and every diet works only because of deficit folks always fall back to this because it fits their world as they want it to be. “The keto diet works because it places you in deficit. You can place yourself in deficit with any diet so keto is unnecessary.” They then cut and paste that chart of “why diets work” with every diet using deficit. I have lost weight on both however caloric restriction was brutal. Lots of exercise, always hungry and logging every calorie eaten. I have laugh at myself now as I was scanning the barcode of healthy carb loaded snack bars. And hen a funny thing happened after I lost 53 pounds, I started gaining. Little by little I put 30 pounds back on. I knew exactly how much to eat but I was gaining weight. I switched to keto and without logging, counting, measuring or restricting I lost the weight and maintain within a two pound range effortlessly. Why?
I realize there are folks that fall off keto but I feel there are many here who don’t. So I ask, why does the model of caloric deficit have such a dismal track record? The failure rate I observe and that is documented is very close to 100%. I can’t think of a single person that I know that lost a significant amount of weight and maintained at their new weight.
With keto I keep seeing people successfully lose weight and/or maintain. If the only way keto works is because of caloric deficit which is the same as well, caloric deficit, why do the outcomes seem to be different? The unsustainable deficit allegedly created by keto WOE appears to do just fine long term and caloric restriction diet appears to do poorly long term. The answer lies in keto and not restricting calories. You keto calorie counters are free to carry on but if you play around with it you may find that it is optional. I am tempted to see what my daily calorie count is but then say “nah, that calorie counting is unsustainable”. Time for my low cal breakfast: bacon, sausage (leave the grease in the pan) add a tablespoon of butter (because I can), two eggs w/ heavy whipping cream, add cheddar cheese (lots of it) and eat the same way I do every day which is…wait for it UNSUSTAINABLE.

[Mary_Folse]

You aren’t kidding. My waist is shrinking and I ate 2500 calories the other day.

[David_Stilley]

Since you say you’re an amputee, is it appropriate to say “I apologise for your loss”?

Twenty year amputee, and I love amputee jokes, gotta laugh life off! Besides there’s always a two for one sale on socks for us amputees, so it’s not a total loss!

[SomeGuy]

As a personal trainer I have to battle the commonly accepted misconception that exercise makes us lose weight because it means we’re “burning calories.” And yes we do use additional energy when we are physically active- however, exercise does produce changes in significant physiological processes that lead to lowered basal insulin levels and better clearance of glucose. (This is a generalization for simplicity’s sake!) And endurance/cardiovascular exercise can have different effects than more glycolytic/power exercise. But both are beneficial in regards to making favorable hormonal changes. Exercise also tends to improve stress levels, sleep…which also lead to reductions in hunger levels. So, it can be a great tool in recalibrating how our body utilizes fuel

@Emacfarland I appreciate this important clarification about the role of exercise in the context of metabolism, weight management, and general health.

Sometimes it also helps to step back and ask those big “why” questions. In this case… WHY do we want to improve our health? Seems like a silly question until you really peel back the layers and get to the core. For me, I would reply: So we can enjoy more of what life has to offer with our loved ones for many more years ahead.

In this context, the whole point of improving our fitness and general health is so that we can use our bodies as vehicles to do the things in life we want to do while we’re still around. Staring in the mirror and admiring our reflections can’t possibly be the ultimate goal, right?! Of course not …

With fitness and good health, we get the chance to savor so much more of what an active and full life has to offer. Exercise of various sorts is a key ingredient to that healthy life - not for the sake of exercise itself, but so that our bodies are able to more fully engage with the world in all the countless ways we find rewarding and meaningful. Putting diet and weight management issues aside, without actually using our bodies (viz. exercise), we’d be missing one of the key components of a life well-lived.

[David_Stilley]

I really don’t think of KETO as a weight loss diet. It’s a healing diet that fixes your metabolism and if you need to lose weight it should happen. I have a 25 year old autistic son who we switched to eating KETO back in February of this year. So he was extremely underweight coming from a modified Paleo diet for a couple of years. He wasn’t gaining weight and it wasn’t helping him function better in a significant way. After 7 months eating KETO he’s put on some weight. He still has an extremely low body fat %. Somewhere around
8-10% I would guess. But this way of eating has brought a healthy increase for him.

I believe eating this way pushes you towards your ideal body composition. I saw my nephrologist yesterday and he is so impressed with what this has done for me. In 2015 a couple years before I started KETO I was about 250 lbs. I managed to lose over a two year period of restricting food to lose about 75 lbs to help make a kidney transplant easier on myself and the surgeons. I ate poached eggs and fish everyday for 6 months along with carbs. I was hungry. I was eating muffins and toasted white bread and rice. Trying to stay as close to the renal diet as possible. The renal diet might be the most unhealthy diet you could imagine. Lots of processed grain carbs (bran bad!) and low fat, lean protein (not too much!). The one bit of healthy advice I got was eat 4 eggs everyday. As soon as I got my transplant and was allowed potatoes, bananas (big renal no no’s) and things like cheese I put back another 30 lbs in six months and turned diabetic from steroids I have to take forever. I am in constant battle with steroids now always battling the raised BG and insulin levels I must live with. However I have now reversed that diabetic condition and I am slowly winning that battle against steroids. But I will turn diabetic again if I leave KETO behind and even attempt adding stuff of a higher carb level for any significant amount of time. I just realized that KETO gave me the final push in that weight loss battle and I am down over 100 lbs from 2015. And I am maintaining that loss and still continuing to use body fat as fuel and my skin is shrinking too. It is bringing my body back to an optimal state for my age and correcting most of the reversible damages from disease. I will have to live with the permanent scars from my bad trip down to Carblandia forever. I am reversing atherosclerosis damages, diabetes, and probably lots of other things that I don’t know related to inflammation from seed oils and processed foods. So it isn’t just about losing weight for me but that’s a big part of recovering your health, and KETO is going to help sustain those improvements. With all the big stuff beaten down I am able to focus on improving the smaller health issues that I face, I’m trying to sort out parathyroid issues now as it’s become more important with the big stuff tackled. Before it was just accepted as a common side effect of being a renal patient. Now the focus is on reducing serum calcium levels and not weight loss and controlling blooming diabetes. At this low a weight I am functioning much better as an amputee so weight loss was a big issue, and recently I have really started to see improvements in mobility and function with the continued fat loss.

A little off the topic but the NSVs continue with weight loss for me and my health is my primary focus, weight loss being a portion of that but not my only goal. That’s the magic of KETO, losing weight or gaining weight, bringing your body back to as optimal of a state as possible. Weight loss is part of that picture.

I believe if we interfere with those processes your body knows best how to accomplish by manipulating and restricting food amounts we can muck up KETO too and see less results as a reward for our efforts to manipulate things too much and not trusting the process that is happening.

It’s much more about what we choose eat than caloric numbers we try to estimate and stick to. I am trying to let my body guide those processes without interfering with those processes other than food choices and keeping my diet clean..

Time for a fatty protein heavy breakfast. I hope everyone enjoys KETO eating and reaping those benefits as much as I do!

Today is my one year Ketoversary!

[Ilana_Rose]

Today is my one year Ketoversary!

Wooo hoo! Happy Ketoversary!!!

[OldDoug]

@MarkGossage @BeStill

Have to laugh - after two days, I realize the discussion was about working out and then feeling entitled to eat more bad stuff, or not.

At first glance, Mark, I thought you were saying that over all those years of gym membership, what you did was “be still.”

[Emacfarland]

@SomeGuy you make an excellent point, in fact, I started keto over 5 years ago and subsequently became a trainer after I watched many family members develop diabetes- they were sedentary, overweight, and their quality of life was really affected by those things. I want to be able to go out and be active with my kids, run a race if I want, or go on a long bike ride…that is why fitness and maintaining overall good health is important. I don’t care how I look or if I’m the fastest or any of that. I want to live a full life. So I really appreciate you bringing that up!

[PaulL]

Well, the word satiety also carries with it the sense of being satisfied. It’s not just about fullness, which I would agree is a physical feeling.

The feeling of fullness is mediated by peptide YY, which is secreted by the stomach when it begins to stretch. But the sensation that comes from leptin is not merely an absence of hunger, but an active lack of interest in food, if that makes any sense. For me, it seems that signal arrives when my stomach is about half-full. There is plenty of room for more food, but I really, really don’t want more. It’s a physical sensation, as far as I can tell.

[PaulL]

I hear you. For me, it started about three weeks into keto, when I was eating my usual-sized lunch (i.e., an oversized plate), got halfway through, and suddenly I was done. That’s what my body actually said: “Okay, you’re done. Stop eating.” So I did. Weird, huh? Interestingly, two years later the message has become "STOP EATING NOW!!" and is accompanied by a strong almost-queasy feeling.

[NatalieMatured]

I am curious though. Do you have a calorie counter that you keep on your wrist that tells you how many calories you burned? I wear mine to monitor my heart because I had a heart attack due to thyroid storm, but I was just wondering if you have one that you use at all.

[MarkGossage]

Thats more like what I do now since I stopped the craziness!