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

(bulkbiker) #573

So you are claiming that various overfeeding experiments that have not led to weight gain and even had some weight loss were falsified or what…?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #574

Folks, let’s not rehash this tired old argument for—what is this, the 83rd time? Or is it the 84th? I’ve lost count.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #575

I can think of a situation where what and how much of it you eat does not matter. Hyperthyroidism.

My dad was afflicted with hyperthyroidism in his mid-late 20s and early 30s. After WWII he was a healthy young man. Within 5 years he was an emaciated husk. No matter what or how much he ate, he continued to lose weight. Even ethanol couldn’t add enough incoming energy to balance what his thyroid was blowing away. I’ve seen photos of my dad so emaciated his eyeballs were bulging out his head.

He was a highly trained and experienced Air Force pilot, so the Air Force tried to protect its investment by nuking his thyroid. Apparently, that was the ‘standard treatment’ of the day. It worked, too! From then until almost the end of his life, he gained weight no matter what or how little of it he ate. The last couple of years before he died he reduced carbs significantly - not keto, just much lower carbs - and for the first time in his life since the mid-1950s he actually lost weight.

My dad was an extreme example of something that may be more common than we realize. I’m not claiming the laws of thermodynamics did not apply to him. For what must have been for him a miserable decade of life, he could not eat enough to keep up with the energy expenditure imposed by a runaway thyroid. Then, for most of the rest of his life, he could not consume little enough energy to prevent it being stored as fat. Even all the years that ‘excess’ energy balance was small to minuscule, it never stopped.

So ‘calories in’ and ‘calories out’ didn’t matter much to my dad, either when he was hyperthyroid or when he was nonthyroid. His thyroid - and ultimately his lack of a thyroid - controlled his energy balance. It was only when he dropped carb consumption in his last couple of years that some semblance of metabolic normality started to take shape.

I suspect that I inherited my dad’s over active thyroid - before it went hyper - and it has helped me survive a lifetime of SAD without serious metabolic issues. And I’m very grateful for it. I suspect there may be a lot more folks like me out there. But I suspect there are likely a lot more folks out there with an under active thyroid who have a hell of a time keeping energy input lower than output no matter how much they ‘eat less and move more’ trying to.

Just my 2¢.

(Polly) #576

I think Mark makes a very valid point.

It has been clearly demonstrated that you can overeat enormously and not gain weight so long as you don’t eat carbohydrates which I have always interpreted as meaning that metabolic factors outweigh caloric factors every time. For those who prefer to watch rather than read, Sam Feltham talks about his 5,000 Calories per day experiment in this short video.

#577

Just to be clear, are you suggesting provided a single macro, being carbohydrate, is absent from your diet, it is physically impossible to overeat to gain adipose tissue?

Another way to look at it, what if an obese person embarked on a hypercaloric KD. What would happen to that person’s fat mass? Or my own current condition, I’m strict KD, weight training, cardio, very active. Pretty decent condition but, from previous experience, 25lbs off from good abdominal definition. How should I lose 25lbs? I can’t cut carbs more than about 20g, activity levels already high. It’s a rhetorical question of course. I obviously need to reduce my energy consumption. And I speak from experience, as I have done this many times, even on zero carb. Without restrictions, you can only get so lean.

(Polly) #578

An interesting question.

Here is an hypothesis:

If an obese subject cuts out or cuts back carbohydrate (ie 0g to 20g per day range) and eats ad libitum of protein and fat from animal sources will they find that their appetite declines such that they gradually shed excess adipose tissue? I think it is probable that this will be the case.

Some people have problems with a malfunctioning hypothalamus and have lost the ability to feel sated. For the rest of us I don’t believe that we are able to overeat fatty meat.

Aren’t we all familiar with the “that’s it, I’m done” sensation when eating a good rib-eye steak. Those who don’t follow this way of eating will always find room for a pudding (you may call it dessert).

Of course, I only really know what it is like to be me and have some sense of what it is like to be any of the members here who talk about how it works for them.

I have heard that some people gain weight when embarking on a zero carb animal based diet. But if they persist it seems to normalise within the first year. There is no suggestion that these weight gains are adipose tissue.

There is a suggestion that industrial seed oils contribute to the laying down of excess adipose tissue even without the action of carbohydrates.

#579

I think you have digressed. The question is whether hypercaloric KD diets can cause the formation of adipose tissue.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #580

Dr. Phinney says his research suggests this is a combination of appetite hormones no longer being blocked by insulin, plus a faster rate of metabolism. Certainly there have been documented cases of people eating large amounts of calories and still losing fat. Obviously, they were metabolising more than they took in, but equally obviously, the caloric content of their food was far from the whole story. As you say, metabolic factors outweigh caloric factors.

I suspect the problem comes when people want to manipulate their bodies past the point where the body wants to be manipulated. We all know that forcing the issue by cutting calories works for a time, but the studies all show that, over time, the body tends to rebel and compensates for the reduced intake by reducing expenditure.

I was never able to lose weight by counting calories, and the effort of counting used to drive me berserk. I am glad that a ketogenic diet caused me to effortlessly lose enough fat to be functional again, even though I could certainly afford to do away with still more. I also suspect that talking about losing “weight” as opposed to losing "fat” doesn’t help the discussion. As you also point out, people can simultaneously add lean mass and shed fat mass. But we are so fixated on the scale reading that if it doesn’t move, we assume we are failing.

#581

This is interesting as, while there is some debatable research showing hypocaloric KD subjects have a higher RER compared to their high carb counterparts, research by Alessandro Ferretti appears to show the opposite, i.e. over time, the RER of people on a KD drops, most likely due to energy efficiency. Luis Villasenor claims he experienced this phenomenon, in that his BMR dropped around 200kcals.

(Doing a Mediterranean Keto) #582

Maybe I will be a discordant voice here, but I think that it is true that one has to eat at a deficit to lose weight, either in keto or not.

For me, the idea of eating “to satiety” does not work. I do not have the limits that “normal” people have in relation to satiety.

For this reason, weighting the amounts (150g of fish/meat/… per meal, and 200g of vegetables per meal) is very useful, and calming.

And I am not hungry, especially when I eat protein powder as a “complement”.

I envy people that can eat to satiety, and lose weight.

#584

Very interesting discussion. Kudos to the man for even trying the experiment.

(Robin) #585

It took me a while to realize that I needed to eat more, in Order to lose weight. I kept thinking I’ll do Keto AND starve myself! So many years of messages about food and weight loss need to be erased from our brains. Crazy. Crazy good!