I agree it can be frustrating to ask a question and not receive a direct answer but replies aren’t limited and the thread/question doesn’t get closed after a certain number have been posted. Any one reply (regardless of whether it answers the original question or not) doesn’t exclude others from adding their opinion into the pot.
We all learn from other people’s answers too!
At the point where you can go several hours between meals without getting hungry, and can work out while fasting. In other words, listen to your body. As Dr. Fung explains, the body reacts to restricted calories by adjusting its energy expenditure to match. Give it an abundance of energy, and it will find ways of speeding up the metabolism to compensate. Funnily enough, the body doesn’t cut its expenditure when we fast, it just starts drawing from its reserves. So the thing to avoid is calorie-restriction.
I read the title as being about whether or not to count calories, and my answer to that question would be not to, just eat to satiety. But the actual post talks about restricting calories, and we know from experience that intentional caloric restriction tends to cause more problems than it solves. So the answer to “how many?” is really “Let your body tell you,” but for some reason, a lot of people have a problem with that answer, even though the body tends to set the appetite to a lesser level if it has stored energy to use up.
But if I am understanding the experts correctly, the idea of a ketogenic diet is really to eat in a way that lets the body take care of these issues all by itself. To me, it makes no sense to try to outthink 2,000,000 years of evolution. As Dr. Westman is fond of saying, “Calories do matter—but we shouldn’t count them.” And Dr. Fung’s explanation of how the body responds to varying levels of intake makes a lot of sense.
And I think it is an answer to the orignal post to go into all this. After all, if people don’t understand how the human body works, how can they possibly make good choices about what to eat?
He actually is a moderator. A lot of us are. Or did you mean “admin,” which is an even higher level?
Pretty funny coming from a male point of view… which cannot relate to our complicated hormonal balance.
I eat HALF the calories of my husband and we expend about the same amount of exercise in a day. I weigh within 10 lbs of him. I should weigh many lbs less per CICO but I don’t. I know my metabolism is much less than his but I don’t know how to raise it to his level.
You’re absolutely right. Some women seem to have a very tough time with weight. Not sure I’d have the will power to stay the course, with what some of you have to go through.
This is the problem, that some of us have.
You (as always) are absolutely right. I have no issue with what you said.
However, there are some here (like me) who don’t want to ‘change the way we eat, long term’, we’re just here to lose weight. So, weight lose is my goal, not any medical repair, or any other reason we can think of.
So, for a period of time, we will do what it takes to lose weight. I know from experience that, even on the keto diet, I will not lose weight if I eat too many calories. If I control my calories, I start losing weight instantly. So you see, I don’t have to ask the question about calorie restriction, I KNOW that restricting calories works for some.
Pt 2 coming next!
Here’s another issue.
People constantly saying that calorie restriction slows the metabolism, and implying that you won’t lose weight.
This is one of those things whereby, there is a bit of truth in there, but doesn’t mean what they are implying.
I PROMISE all of you out there, that if you eat 400 calories a day (an arbitrary figure) for a few months YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT … … … … … FAST. And just before we go any further, I am not suggesting you do that! It’s just for example. Making people believe that reducing calorie intake won’t affect their weight lose is very counter productive, and simply wrong in most cases.
Pt 3 coming next!
I haven’t heard people say that. I’ve heard them say that you WILL lose weight, but only until your body works out what its new energy input level is, and adapts to the new lower level. Then you’re jammed.
Hi Mic,
You’re right. But look at what your saying… … … … you won’t lose weight after a certain point of time.
Newbies will look at this and some will think ‘I can’t lose weight this way’. This is very misleading.
Take Joe Bloggs. He’s an average man who is 100lbs over weight at 17stone. If he starts eating 400 calories a day, he will lose weight very fast. until he eventually evens out (or dies of malnutrition). Here’s the thing, when he ‘evens out’, he will be closer to 8st than 12st (because his intake is so low). When he reaches his goal weight of say, 10 or 11 stone, he can start the maintenance phase, by upping his intake, until he doesn’t lose or gain weight.
So you see, there is some truth in there but, what people are implying is just wrong for most people.
EDIT – No, I’m not suggesting this as a way of losing weight. This was for example purposes only!
Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen at all. It assumes that the body won’t realise it’s getting fed only a tiny amount of energy and thus won’t compensate for it. But it will, and it will be shutting things down left, right and centre in order to burn as little energy as possible. It won’t just go - “Well, I’ve got all this fat here, I’ll just burn that until it’s gone, and THEN worry about the future.”
And when Joe decides to stop his 400cal daily intake - if he’s still alive, as you say - then he’s going to have a vastly reduced BMR, so he’s going to be having a massive oversupply of energy. And getting the BMR back up isn’t easy.
Oh, I thought you were about to start selling this plan on late night TV infomercials.
There are millions of people around the world who have died from too little food intake. How many of them do you think, were over weight when they died? NONE of them, is my guess.
The idea that an average body can magically stop losing weight long term, because we don’t eat enough, is simply wrong. It can temporarily stop the loss, but not for long.
Cutting calories WILL lead to weight loss. No matter what diet you’re on. A large part of the reason that keto is so successful as a weight loss method is that, it allows for a very different type of food intake. This has 2 REALLY huge benefits (among others)
1 We can eat some foods which we might really like
2 Our appetite is naturally suppressed.
It is not successful, because we can eat more calories than we need.
I think people takes things out of context and read more into it because of their natural biases and personal experiences.
When people say they don’t count calories it doesn’t mean they don’t matter. It just means they are eating in such as way as to lose weight and not HAVE to count them to do so. They can count macros and it works until it doesn’t. Then they may move to fasting which is form of calorie restriction of course but more effective because of the timing of eating and insulin response.
As to your example above… the body has some very strong coping mechanisms to fend off starvation and the grhelin hormone is just one of them. People really starving have no access to food. People trying to starve themselves on 400 cal/day while surrounded constantly by food generally break down long before they are thin.
To me the biggest advantages of LCHF is the appetite suppression that allows me to IF and EF and the higher fat which I hope will eventually raise my metabolism but if not has been a fountain of youth for my skin.
With IF and EF I may very well be eating the same number of calories as I did on a Weight Watcher program but instead was hungry all the time and not losing much weight because I snacked all day within my program limits to stave off hunger and kept my insulin response high. Same calories but different results.
And again, I will point out that on a ketogenic diet caloric restriction is automatic if one listens to one’s body and has excess fat to metabolize. But intentional caloric restriction can have undesirable effects, as Dr. Fung and Dr. Westman explain. A follow-up study of the “Biggest Loser” contestants seemed to indicate that many of them had permanently damaged their metabolisms from severe caloric restriction.
There is no question that significantly reduced food intake over the long term results in weight loss. However, consider that those of use trying to lose weight are more concerned with fat loss without concomitant loss of muscle and bone, and for the purposes of improved health, not starvation.
Most people want to be able to eat a reasonable amount of food and maintain a stable, healthy weight. So the trick is - how to reduce food intake in such a way that we lose primarily fat tissue, retain muscle tissue, and don’t trigger a significant reduction in metabolism which confounds the weight loss goal?
I think in an otherwise metabolically healthy person who is not significantly above their optimal weight, a simple change in the calorie equation (such as - reducing intake by 250 calories per day and increasing output by 250 calories per day) would let them lose a pound a week or so without having to make any other real changes. That 250 calories is about 2 ounces of carbs or proteins, or about 1 oz of fat, so it’s easy to miss that target unless you are very careful about weighing and tracking everything.
Back to the original question - if I were to eat a low carb, moderate protein, high fat diet, and get all of my body’s energy needs from my food intake, there would be no reason for my body to burn any stored fat. I am going to have to create a food-intake deficit to get my body to look for energy elsewhere - in the form of existing storage. So assuming I don’t vary the carb or protein significantly, then yes, I have to cut back on fat intake since that is the only macro that I am varying.
