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

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #101

I think in your eagerness to use the word “deficit,” you are forgetting the principal difference between the two approaches: eating to satiety (in a low carbohydrate context, of course) allows the entire metabolic need of the body to be met, whether from food intake or from excess stored fat. On the other hand, eating to an intentional caloric deficit causes the body to reduce expenditure to meet intake, without using any stored fat. (And this is true even on a low-carb intake.)

If your goal is to reduce the amount of stored fat you have on hand, which approach appears to be more desirable?

(mole person) #102

This is something that is oft repeated and there is no evidence for especially on a ketogenic diet. What @PaulL said is entirely accurate. If you have plenty of fat on your body and are fat adapted then your body is just fine fueling its needs from your body fat.

The only caveat is a finding from Jason Fung’s IDM clinic. They have found that weight loss is best when eating/fasting is changed up. So it’s fine to fast, and fine to have days with only a single small meal, but these should be alternated with days of higher food abundance. This keeps your body from ‘concluding’ that it’s in a period of starvation and that it needs to start slowing metabolism to preserve energy for the long haul.

(Erin Macfarland ) #103

@MarkGossage I wasn’t trying to assert exercise is the holy grail, or that it’s necessary to lose weight- only that it has many benefits that have nothing to do with “burning calories.” If you’re doing well without it, that’s of course what is working for you, but movement is usually helpful for people’s over mental and physical health :blush:

(Scott) #104

I seem to remember in one of the 2KD podcast where a guest was talking about a study that involved tracking members of a running club over several years. They were at less risk of heart disease than non runners but I can’t remember if they were low carb. Being that it was on a 2KD podcast I assume carbs must have been involved.

(Failed) #105

I’m not being confrontational, but this type of statement is what I’m talking about…either you listen to your body or you don’t. Force feeding myself because I’m “supposed to” need a certain amount of food in a day is contradictory.

For now, until it proves to be misleading me, I’m listening to my body.

#106

Exercise (Keto WOE or otherwise), has always had the opposite effect on me - if I was willing to put in the effort, no way would I mess it up by eating the wrong things and making it all for nothing! I can see how some people though might put in the effort and then feel entitled to go off the rails.

(Mame) #107

good for you. I for one find it pretty hard to hear my body although I am getting better at it.

i think one of the things that is confusing is that our minds love routines and habits. So it’s easy for us to listen to our minds and do omad everyday or skip breakfast everyday, because we get comfortable with the habit. (this is probably no issue if you want to maintain your weight)

It is (for me) much more challenging to listen to my physical body, because in that realm it makes more sense that I don’t have the same needs or desires every day. It takes time and awareness and attention. in order to lose weight it can be really helpful to not do the same thing week after week, month after month.

My solution (for me) is to change things up when I stop losing weight for a few weeks. Try something different. More meat/less veg. A longer fast. Throw in a breakfast if I feel hungry for one. start drinking fatty coffees again…

(bulkbiker) #108

What I did for the 20 or so years I had a gym membership…

(mole person) #109

Don’t worry about it. I don’t mind a little confrontation. The thing is that you are actually doing exactly what I was saying.

This is changing it up. It’s also exactly how I lost all of my weight. I ate one meal a day (dinner) most days except if I found myself very hungry before lunch in which case I had a second full meal. That happened 1-3 times a week generally. I loss weight for a long time very effortlessly doing this, and it sounds like your approach is similar.

The danger, as @cervyn said, is in getting too regimented about caloric restriction. If you are naturally good at listening to your body’s cues and following them (which will naturally have you eating more some days and less others) then you are already ahead of the curve.

Not everyone is good at this though and so they create a structure to their fasting and feasting that they can follow and also have success.

(Parker the crazy crone lady) #110

I broke down and bought a scale, and weigh myself every Sunday, though occasionally other days. I have been seeing a weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds after days of eating a proportionally higher amount of food, as in the range of easily 1000 calories more than normal.
I’m starting to believe that artificial calorie limitation isn’t the way to go, based on this. It did take effort to break past the barrier of thinking I didn’t need to eat much (mental state telling me I wasn’t hungry, ignoring signs that I actually was).

#111

So, Chronometer was wrong about your estimated energy needs and following their advice dropped your intake so low that your body put the brakes on to hold on to some of its reserves. But your energy intake must be at a deficit for you to be tapping into your reserves and using them up now. Or do you think that you are taking in more energy than you use every day and also managing to use energy from your reserves so that you’re burning it off?

I think maybe you misunderstand what people mean when they say that you need to be at a deficit to lose weight. We simply are saying you need to be at a deficit. Period. You are adding on the idea that you get to that deficit through an arbitrary and extremely low number of calories.

I’m also struggling to understand your suggestion that a psychological measure (“satiety”) makes a difference in whether one is eating at a deficit or not. On a given day if I need X amount of energy, I eat to that point and stop because of a psychological signal. Or I eat to that point because I use an calculated estimate rather than an unreliable psychological measure. In both cases I needed the same amount of energy that day and got it. But in one case it’s a deficit and the other it’s not? That’s some seriously fuzzy math, right there.

(Family, Honor, Freedom) #112

Interesting statement. Personally, I find that completely reversed. I can eat a lean steak and still not be satisfied. Make it a ribeye of the same size? I’m good. I find that to be true of other fats and proteins also.

They say protein satisfies more than carbs - and maybe that’s true, for me, a little. But my big satisfier, no question, is fat.

(Failed) #113

I am! :heart::tulip:

(Polly) #114

I agree. Lean meat leaves me looking for more food, fatty meat fills me up and lasts for hours. I think this may mean that in my case protein in the presence of fat works for me.

(mole person) #115

This is exactly what I found too. And the more fatty the meat the better.

(Doug) #116

:slightly_smiling_face: I was thinking this today - the deficit has to come from somewhere. Consuming our stored fat makes up the deficit, regardless of what else we might say about it.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #117

I was never suggesting filling up on really lean protein without fat. I did however find some science that supports what I said. Little busy now so I will post something later. :cowboy_hat_face:

(CharleyD) #118

Oh my!

(PSackmann) #119

For me, satiety signals aren’t psychological at all, but physical. The pleasure of what I’m eating is psychological, but that switch that tells me I’ve had enough…or that I need to eat more than normal, is purely physical. By allowing myself to experience hunger as I became fat-adapted, I slowly learned to listen to my physical cues as to when and how much to eat. I’m still learning, and probably always will be.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #120

Calories for specific food items are generally calculated these days by the so-called Atwater indirect system:

The calorie content of a doughnut, about 450 Kcal is found to be close to that of a stick of dynamite. The difference of course is that the energy from the dynamite is released instantly when ignited, while the doughnut releases its energy content in the body more slowly. So you don’t blow up from a doughnut. Not literally anyway.

It occurred to me that a ‘calorie is not just a calorie’ in part because the complete combustion that occurs in the lab is not duplicated in the body. The metabolism does not and can not utilize the energy contained in a some food item to 100% efficiency. This is in addition to the differential utilization of energy and nutrients contained in the macros by the different metabolic pathways through which they are processed. In the case of fat, for example, Atkins first proposed the ‘wasting hypothesis’ to account for the loss of energy due to inefficiencies. Bikman picked up on this here and expanded it to include the so-called ‘wasted ketones’ that get excreted in urine and breath. These not only reduce the efficiency of fat burn, but actually result in fat being literally peed and breathed out of the body! So if you wonder where the fat went, in ketosis we know where some of it went.