For me, Keto is not a weight control method. It is for a healthy body

(Richard I Houghton) #1

So if you are starting a Ketogenic WOE (way of eating) to lose weight, you would be better off not thinking like that. You will very likely lose weight but it is not a weight control thing.

By limiting net carbs to 20 or 30 grams per day, you are removing most sugar and things that your body turns into sugar. With no “easy” fuel around means that your body will have to process fats into substances called ketones that are also fuel for your body. Your body can utilize only two base fuels: Sugars and Ketones.

Changing your body chemistry to process fats into ketones takes a few days to a week or more. When your body starts processing fats into ketones, they can be detected using urine test strips. Making ketones is not the same as utilizing them for fuel. At first, the ketones will be detected in the urine but as your body chemistry becomes more used to burning them the amount of ketones in your blood and urine will decrease because they are being consumed as fuel much more efficiently than when you first started eliminating sugars and other carbs. Don’t get hung up on the test strips as an accurate way to determine if you are “in ketosis”.

Going Keto is not the easiest change you can make. You need to read every label before you buy it to check the Carbohydrate listing. If it has more than a couple of grams of carbs per serving, pass it up. You will quickly find that 99% of everything in the store has too many carbs. This means that you will have to prepare foods yourself and resign yourself that there are foods that you will never be able to eat like most bakery items, pasta, popular cereals, etc.

The good news is that you can eat all the fatty things that you have avoided your whole life. You will find that if you follow the very simple idea of removing sugars and things that your body turns into sugars, you will begin to burn fats and the cravings for sugar, cake, bread, etc. will vanish.

I have no will power so it is a pleasant surprise that I do not want to eat as often or as much as I did before Keto. I have my “Bullet-Proof” coffee and I am not hungry until two or three in the afternoon. There is no will-power involved when you are simply not hungry. I did lose weight, going from 278 to 225 and waist size from 44 to 34. Anyone can do this but change is not easy and old habits are hard to eliminate but anyone can do it but it is a commitment. You cannot do this part-time. It is a lifestyle change and not a temporary thing that you can go on and off again.

(Scott) #2

Well said!

(hottie turned hag) #3

Nice summation :purple_heart: Thanks for taking the time to compose it.

^^^ finding out how many carbs are in some veg was my biggest :neutral_face: I don’t mean potatoes or squash, I mean even red bell peppers and cabbage in the quantities I was consuming them.

(Carl Keller) #4

I started LCHF to lose weight but I discovered so much more. For the first time in my life, I understand how my hormones are supposed to work and I understand my relationship with food. It just seems insane to me to return to eating things that were poisoning me.

#5

I was hoping based on your thread title that you weren’t going to discourage and shame people who want to lose weight. But it went quickly from “For me…” to “you…” It’s great that you didn’t need or want to lose weight and that you met your goals!

However, very low carb diets were invented for people to lose weight–Banting, Atkins, Protein Power, etc. If people want to lose weight, going low carb/keto is a perfect thing to do, and virtually everyone will be very successful with it. It is absolutely a “weight control thing.” (It’s only the medically ketogenic diet for epilepsy that was designed for a medical condition, but what most of us call keto isn’t a medically ketogenic diet.) Along the way, people may also discover (just as researchers and doctors did) that a very low carb diet is helpful for a lot of medical issues, as well, from T2D to neurological conditions. What a great bonus that is on top of meeting weight loss goals.

Of course, there’s also no reason not to do keto to address these other conditions that it has more recently been found it to be helpful for without wanting or needing to lose weight!

For those people who started keto to lose weight (especially newbies who might be reading this): Don’t be discouraged by posts implying that you might not lose weight or that your goals are wrong. I’m sorry that people are shaming you for your goals. Don’t be embarrassed that your goal is to lose weight and not some other, “morally superior,” health goal. Your goals are just fine!

#7

I also came for the fat loss, stayed for the health benefits. Although, the ultimate push to lose weight was when I couldn’t lose weight by conventional means any more, so I bought a glucose meter and freaked out when I was consistantly over 100. That was my desperation moment.

(Lazy, Dirty Keto 😝) #8

Same here, Carl :grin: I struggled a lot with IBS pre-Keto, and I always thought it was fatty foods and dairy that was causing my digestive issues. I started Keto to lose weight, but I quickly discovered that it was doing so much more for me. I absolutely love how I feel and I have no plans to go back to eating SAD :grin:

(Daisy) #9

I have not lost sustained weight on keto, in fact, I’m currently up 15 lbs, (which I’m not thrilled about), but it’s all my own fault. Well, technically I lost 15 lbs and gained it back, so I’m at starting weight. I have self control issues and over indulge on things. Then when I try to get strict again, it just doesn’t work as well. But I stay keto because I like not having constant stomach pain and hypoglycemia. I like being able to go all day without eating if I want to.
I keep tweaking my plan to try to lose weight. I’ll lose a couple lbs, then gain it back. It’s frustrating, but I’m mostly frustrated with myself. I have to be super strict to lose weight and I don’t enjoy being super strict. I’m currently trying omad this week. I’m trying to heal my obsession with food.

(Myra Dwyer) #10

Good points! I love food! Thank goodness I had rather eat green beans, a salad or other vegetable than something sweet. I like some sweets but it has not been difficult to cut out sweets. I made a dish with honey which I found out later is high in carbs! So I will need to not use honey.

#11

Great post!

A healthy body is a nutrient-dense ancestral body. :sparkles: It has dense bones and abundant muscle mass (as opposed to the dietary roots of osteoporosis & sarcopenia starting to show from age 35-40 onwards), a healthy microbiome (meaning, 6 pounds of good bacteria thriving in the gut, rather than only 1-2 pounds of them). It is agile, and, at some point of the hormonal healing journey (for most, but not all who are IR), easily fasts when needed or desired.

On keto, one can “gain weight” that is not fat at all! It’s critical body mass that has long been malnourished via processed foods and high carb culture. Meanwhile on keto, one loses the unseen, life-threatening visceral fat along with obvious subcutaneous excess.

So, for non-obese folks - your weight may not change, or it may go up to reflect restored healthy body mass.

And that likely means you’re saving your life from the aged ills of a compromised/weak musculoskeletal system and its easily injured joints and broken bones considered common to folks 50 and older (in industrial cutlure, everybody who can (many don’t even have the option) is getting life-risking knee replacements, hip replacements, heart transplants, etc ) and/or microbiome (and its gut distress, stress, and weakened immune system). Immunity and quality of life is being restored, along with functional health. Meanwhile, you look smaller and have less fat though you may weigh the same, or more!

This calls into question notions of weight-as-bad, and it also questions the identity of being lightweight, emaciated, and nutrient deficient that industrial culture pushes as “ideal” as opposed to being substantial in lean mass due to nutrient density. Being a woman or man of healthy substance and gravitas is what we should be aiming for - not some number on a scale that doesn’t reflect true health. Nutrient density and personal culture is a complex realm: some technically “obese” folks are very healthy & strong on the inside, some featherweight folks are very sick on the inside, etc.

I enjoy the ancestral health perspective myself - an approach that looks to pre-industrial, intact land-based cultures (instead of the many displaced and famished ancestors that many of us have on one side of our family or the other or both). What is it to be nourished by real, nutrient-dense foods? Some of us haven’t known the answer to that for several generations in our family lineages, but LCHF/keto (especially one based in real/traditional foods) makes it possible to find out.

This article co-written by a New Zealand PhD and MD is a really good one on notions of weight vs. ancestral health:

(Paul H) #12

I am lucky I have T2D …err scratch that… Well it helped me forget the weight and work on the chemistry first… It’s a education…a truth…most cheap foods suck…even over priced foods…lol It’s a lifestyle change. Well said Richard!!

(Sexy) #13

Sugar in Cabbage but better then refine sugar

#14

This. ^^

Cultural “norms” that aren’t normal, peer pressure to look a certain way, discrimination whether conscious or not, holding up Photoshopped models as the ideal body type. All the see things have screwed with our minds. For me, it was trying to look perfect that started a roller-coaster ride of yo-yo dieting, each cycle fatter and sicker than the last. Now I let the scale collect dust. I don’t fret about manipulated clothing sizes. But I’m old enough not to have the insane exposure to peer pressure that a young woman faces.

#15

Yes indeed!

After almost two years on keto I finally got a scale to weigh myself and it had a much higher number than I initially expected (because I have dropped two clothing sizes and lost impressive inches of fat, for starters). I’m apparently a substantial 5’10 at 185 pounds - and I’m celebrating - because obviously this means my bone density is restored and my muscles are well nourished/trained, unlike many of my peers (esp those who, like me, were vegetarian for decades, or other folks who’ve relied on ultra processed/fast foods for years, etc). At age 53, it’s very reassuring.

The concept & worldview of gaining healthy/lifesaving weight as a non-obese person, and having a healthy higher “BMI” has yet to get through to industrial culture’s non-obese for the most part, esp females. I think it’s yet another public health disaster actually!

It’s literally sickening to have emaciated models/actors (with or w/o boob implants) as well as the falsely bulked/muscled (due to steroids and low intake cutting diets etc). There is a strong bias in much of commercial TV/film/advertising (esp in the US) towards model-actors who are predominantly white, emaciated (often reconstructed w/ plastic surgery, particularly females) and young. There’s a huge range of non-obese people-of-substance, including champion athletes like Ms. Serena Williams, who should be the norm.

(Jeff S) #16

Newbie here. And this is pretty much my reason. I don’t have a weight problem - maybe 5 or 10 extra pounds. But what brought me to keto is A) lab results - yet another report with LDL and Triglycerides a little out of normal, and B) recognition that I had a carb addiction.

I am not really a fan of meat. Never have been. Was a vegetarian for 10 years, mainly because most meat just grosses me out. I am a fan of vegetables, beans, rice, tofu, pasta, olive oil - and sweets.

So while I am impressed with the weight loss results (and A1c and other health improvements) people report on keto, I’m still hesitant about consuming so much meat and fat and so few vegetables and fruit. Are the long term impacts of that known?

(Susan) #17

I am in for the losing weight and being healthy, both! I have tons to lose, but plan on being Keto for life, this is how I eat now. =)

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

It’s the diet on which the human race evolved, needed because leaves and vegetables are not enough to feed our brains. A gorilla’s belly is so large because it needs enormous intestines in order to process all those leaves into edible food (bacteria do most of the work). If the gorilla brain were as proportionately large as the human brain, gorillas would not be able to eat enough food to support the energy drain.

There is some debate whether it was the growth of our brain that required the switch to eating meat, or the switch to eating meat that facilitated the growth of our brain, but the fact remains that we could not support such a large brain without eating energy-dense food—in other words, meat. Given that cholesterol is essential to the structure of all cell walls and that fat and cholesterol are essential to nerve impulses, it is no wonder that the brain contains something like 25% of all cholesterol in the body and is something like 50% fat. It also uses around a quarter of our total energy expenditure.

There are also a number of researchers beginning to speculate that feeding a low-fat diet to our children may be responsible for the growing tide of neurological problems we see in people. Schizophrenia, autism, ADD/HD, anorexia nervosa, body and gender dysmorphia, and many more conditions were practically unknown before the U.S. dietary guidelines were promulgated and people began to fear fat. And of course, several prominent researchers studying Alzheimer’s disease have now taken to calling it Type III diabetes, in order to explicitly make the connection with metabolic disease and insulin resistance.

Furthermore, there is plenty of archaeological evidence to show that the switch from hunting to agriculture stunted growth and caused tooth and bone problems, plus other signs of metabolic disease. Dr. Michael Eades has a fascinating lecture (several versions of it are available on YouTube) about the effect eating wheat had on the ancient Egyptians.

#19

Now that you mention it… I just read this article today in which the WHO recommendations on saturated fat in particular are slammed for causing more harm than good.

Cutting back on fatty foods might be bad for you - mea culpa

(Libby) #20

That is so well-written! Thanks!