Right. There is sort of a standard on-ramp for a low-carb ketogenic way of eating that pretty much everyone needs to follow. 20g of carbs per day, get plenty of protein, eat enough fat to not be hungry all the time, and ride it out.
Once you have merged into traffic, so to speak, you have to kind of find your own lane and speed that works for you. To overdo the analogy - We are all driving different vehicles, with different sized motors, fuel tanks, tires, more or less wear and tear, more or less cargo and passengers. We even have different destinations and reasons for making the trip.
So once you get on the road and start driving, you kind of have to figure out how fast and hard you want to drive, whether it’s worth getting off the road to see the world’s biggest ball of twine, whether you are going to go white-knuckle in the fast lane, or a slow drive and enjoy the scenery.
I am doing OK so far with daily eating what I consider moderate amounts of food, chosen from low and no-carb options. If that ever stops working for me, I will probably look at doing something more like 1x or 2x weekly 36-hour fasts, to provide the caloric deficit, while eating at full maintenance intake on the other days, to keep metabolic rate up. Right now, a 1x per month fast seems to be enough to recalibrate my eating habits.
I do understand IF which is why I was asking about daily calorie deficit diets which Fung does not advocate (or at least in all of the videos I have watched of him) which is what I thought this approach was advocating. I am very new to this so I am trying to gain as much understanding as possible.
@ArtMeursault - I understand that we are each different and that you were sharing what works for you, just trying to ride your coattails so-to-speak a bit in gaining understanding and more information.
Agreed, he does not advocate daily calorie restriction. He is about time restricted eating, allowing insulin levels to fall and stay in the “fat using” range for long enough periods to where you burn some stored body fat during those fasting times (whether that is just between meals, overnight, or over several days).
The other ways to avoid or at least minimize a reduction in metabolic rate are to exercise (in particular muscle-building exercise, to increase lean mass that burns more energy at rest), and to lose weight fairly slowly so your body can keep up with the changes.
Here’s a good article that at least explains the components of metabolism pretty well. Essentially:
It takes fewer calories to run a 180 pound body than it does a 300 pound body, so that is unavoidable slowdown
It takes fewer calories to digest less food, so you lose some the thermic effect of food
I don’t know of any magic cures. My plan is that when I get to a stable weight that I can maintain without heroic efforts, I will try to maintain that for a full year to hopefully make it a new set-weight point and that my metabolism will adjust to that weight.
Like I said several times, I EAT NORMAL AMOUNTS OF FOOD when I eat. Just not huge amounts. People tend to overestimate what a portion is until they spend some time measuring and weighing. I tend to eat 2 meals a day, mainly out of convenience. I don’t often snack between meals.
If you have some trick where I can eat my full daily calorie needs and still lose weight, I’m all for it. But I am pretty sure that SOMEHOW you have to create a deficit to get the body to give up those long-term stores that it put aside for a rainy day.
I don’t know either however I (like you) intend to figure it out for my body).
In “The Obesity Code” Dr. Fung talks about an experiment done by Sam Feltham where he ate almost 6,000 calories per day (10% Carbs, 53% fats, 37% protein) and gained a total of only 2.7 pounds but lost more than an inch off his waste. The weight he added was lean mass. Based on the calorie-in concept, he should have gained 16 pounds.
Then he ate the exact same number of calories for the same amount of time but the marcos changed to a “fast food / fake food” diet consisting of 64% carbs, 22% fat and 14% protein and his weight shot up by 15.6 pounds and added 3.6 inches to his waste.
His point is that it is not simply the calories that cause weight, he points out time-and-again that simply reducing calories won’t make you lose weight and talks about someone that reduced their caloric intake to only 500 calories per day and still didn’t lose weight.
I don’t think Dr. Fung advocates reduced caloric intake at all, but rather altered diet. He says over and over again that reducing calories won’t make you lose weight. Fasting (at least how he explains it) does reduce overall caloric intake but that is not the reason you are fasting. His is a direct quote from
“THE CALORIC-REDUCTION THEORY of obesity was as useful as a half-built bridge. Studies repeatedly proved it did not lead to permanent weight loss.”
I don’t understand it all, but I have read his book twice now and keep learning more stuff from it.
Dr. Phinney says that he made up all the numbers to illustrate how eating to satiety works when one is on a ketogenic diet. It is an illustration, not a set of recommendations. The point of the chart is simply that someone with excess stored fat to lose will automatically, by eating to satiety, eat at a level of caloric intake that will permit the body to make up the difference out of that stored fat. He is not instructing newcomers to restrict themselves to 1400 calories a day, he is instructing them to eat to satiety. The caloric intake is automatically set by the body, when people follow that advice.
The remainder of the chart illustrates how, during the various stages of using up excess stored fat, eating to satiety leads to eating increasing amounts of food, in order to make energy intake match energy expenditure. By the final stage, all excess fat having been metabolised, the person is getting all of his or her energy needs from food, since there is no longer any extra body fat to use. The point is that at no point does the person need to count calories; it is all automatic, from listening to the body’s satiety signaling.
Your metabolism is hardly likely to match that of a non-existent 5’2" woman of a certain age, whose numbers have been made up. Follow Dr. Phinney’s advice to eat to satiety, and you will automatically be giving your body enough energy do supply its needs.
There seems to be a rather wide range of recommendations for that very thing, often from well-respected sources, that don’t agree with each other.
I like the Phinney charts myself, but that doesn’t mean they are right.
Also - regarding the whole “eat to satiety and the calories will automatically fall into line” is saying “oh, you are still restricting calories, just not consciously doing so.” The mechanism is the same, just not the method to getting there.
There are some people whose satiety / hunger signaling does not properly line up with metabolic needs, and for whom the “eat to satiety” advice does not work, because it does not create the automatic calorie deficit needed.
Me, for instance - I often find myself prone to eating out of boredom, or habit, or stress, or just for “mouth pleasure” that is not related to genuine hunger. I spent a fair bit of time and effort when I started, focusing on eating cues and having to stop myself each time and ask “Am I really hungry? And if so, do I really need to eat right now, or can I just wait it out?”
That is why I do an intentional 1-2 day fast per month. During that period of not-eating, I get re-acquainted with those eating cues and remind myself that it is OK to be empty or even hungry and to not respond to it. Re-asserting the control of the executive over the limbic system as it were, and also recalibrating those satiety signals back down to where it matches actual metabolic needs.
@MD500_Pilot Regarding the metabolic slowdown issue, which seems to occur with caloric reduction in general: In addition to Dr. Fung’s work, there have been other studies done which indicate that it is a continuous reduction in daily caloric intake that is the culprit for triggering the so-called “famine response.” If you have alternating low and normal food intake periods, the slowdown is reduced or avoided.
Not just short time intermittent fasting, but longer periods, too. There was a study done of two groups of obese men. Group one was put on a daily-calorie-deficit diet for 16 straight weeks. Group two was given the same diet, but with alternating periods of 2 weeks on the low-cal diet, with 2 weeks on their maintenance-level calories, for a total of 30 weeks. The ones on the two-on, two off routine not only lost more weight, but didn’t have any slowdown in RMR during that time.
So just like with alternate-day fasting or other time-restricted calorie reductions, the trick seems to be to not make it a constant, unrelenting reduction, to where your body decides this is the new normal and has to make adjustments.
Also note, in that experiment I mentioned, they did not “feast” during the higher intake weeks - they ate at their maintenance level.
I think I must tend to do this more or less as part of my routine, because I will have periods of lower intake and then start to feel a little off - probably some metabolic slowdown, and then to counter that I have periods where I intentionally focus on eating more for a while. Not off plan, not huge amounts, but making sure I get in some regular, solid, well-balanced meals for a while. So maybe I’ve been following this all along without realizing it.
This makes perfect sense with what I was reading, thank you for sharing! I guess what I am going to try (at least for now) in the 3 or 4 days of fasting (4 starting out, dropping to three when I get to my target goal) and the other 3 or 4 days eating normal calorie load which I think for me is about 2300 based on the this website and on this webite. The are both pretty close so I assume accurate (might be a bad assumption).
Both seem a bit high just to maintain weight, but I guess the added benefit will be the fasting days do bring that overall down somewhat. I just don’t want to get into a “slowdown”!
To me, it’s more re-acquainting my executive system with what the body means by different signals, and then enforcing that learning. As I progress, my brain gets a signal that it interprets as hunger. I go through the process–bored, tired, thirsty, need salt, etc, giving 15 minutes or so between each step. Eventually, the body says “yes, that’s what I needed” and the brain starts to learn the meaning of the signal. Eventually, I hope my brain and body will be speaking the same language. They do communicate well on fat intake, so that’s a good start.
I just had a visual of Helen Keller learning to read, first she had to learn that words had meaning. I wonder if our bodies are feeling the same frustration Anne Sullivan must have felt, while trying to form those connections.
Yes, that is probably a more accurate wording of what I was trying to convey. Basically mindfulness around eating, and breaking automatic habits and patterns and making your eating and eating choices intentional.
As you can see the carb percentage was balanced and lowered by percentage but 600 kcals were added and the fat went up, without an actual lowering of the carbs consumed. Adding an egg actually lowered the protein percentage!
That’s why we generally stick to gram limits for carbs, the other two are goal targets not limits and variation doesn’t make make as much difference other than I would have had to consume more fat which doesn’t necessarily mean more fat burning, especially after the first month or two getting used to burning fat as a fuel.
I do believe there’s a certain amount of mental block to get past eating a higher fat diet for most people coming from a calorie restricted low fat diet mentality.
Ketosis is driven by limiting carbs, weight loss is driven by caloric deficit.
Pushing fat beyond satiety to meet a macro can definitely work against weight loss. It’s possible to be in ketosis and maintain or even gain weight. I’m doing it now with my underweight son. This is why you need to re-evaluate macros as you loose weight and also listen to your body’s hunger signals if you want continued loss and don’t want to level out. This is later stage keto weight loss. Just eating lots of fat generally works at the beginning to get you adapted but eventually levels out if you don’t lower food intake as you go.
I think you might have taken what I posted wrong, and I see some issues with your macro calculations I believe.
Of course the amount of 300 seems arbitrary as to your situation if you’re needing 4000-4500 calories per day. I’m curious how your daily caloric needs were calculated, with an app? 15 pounds of weight loss sounds like a first month thing, water weight. Fat loss is about 1-2 lbs per week in most cases depending on your amount to loose. Beyond that amount you could be loosing more than just fat. Too rapid of fat loss leaves you with sagging skin. You didn’t become overweight or obese in a few months, why would you expect to have your body fix itself properly at such a rate?
First I believe the calculation is supposed to be 1g. per lb of lean body mass, not your total weight. You don’t need protein to maintain fat weight. KETO is a protein sparing diet. That means you don’t loose muscle and bone mass during weight loss. Running at a slight protein deficit encourages autophagy where your skin shrinks along with fat better. Excess protein generally doesn’t cause weight gain but I have found it causes me to level out with weight loss and no skin shrinkage at this stage of the game. Still experimenting at 10 months in.
So if your 300 lb guy needs to loose 100 lbs. to be at his estimated lean fat percentage he should be eating 160-200g. of protein, the equivalent of 740-800 grams of meat.
I just gotta ask WTH do you eat that could “sneak” 4x-5x the amount you should limit yourself to daily, 20 net carbohydrates! You’re 100-120g. of carbs would have nothing to do with a ketogenic diet if this is truly something you need to consider.
This is not a target with keto, it’s a lever. Add fat if you’re not feeling sustained between meals. Cut back on it for weight loss. You can’t cut it down to low fat because body fat will only metabolize at about 35 calories per pound of your body fat per day. Cutting beyond that capacity causes a metabolic slow down to compensate and less weight loss.You don’t need to push dietary fat for the sake of meeting a macro number, your body fat being burned can contribute to that number. This is beyond induction when fat adaptation starts, maybe 6-10 weeks into a ketogenic diet.
Okay this is what really got me posting again. First ketosis is the goal and it’s a very important step going forward. Being in ketosis is fat burning mode as fuel and that my friend is everything.
Being in the adapt stage is very important and weight loss shouldn’t be a driving factor as much as getting your metabolism and hormone functions in line. This happens during ketosis. You are taking my statement about caloric deficit into a CICO way of looking at things. Exercising hard and cutting calories instead of using you metabolism as the main tool for weight loss. It’s important to use the caloric deficit when you become fat adapted, not as a noob who’s just started. First get into strong steady ketosis and be strict with carbs during you 2 month adaptation period, no off plan eating. If you screw that up you could just be starting over and over again never getting into sustained ketosis or becoming fat adapted.
I disagree, ketosis is the first goal on a ketogenic diet and that is followed by caloric restriction once fat adapted. This happens naturally for most of us, we just aren’t as hungry when we become fat adapted and ketosis is absolutely necessary for that to happen.
Not being in ketosis means your diet isn’t ketogenic. If carbs aren’t low enough you can loose weight but not being in ketosis and restricting calories is pretty much every other diet plan under the sun. Being in ketosis is the healthy sustainable method of weight loss.
You can eat 60% carbs and not be in ketosis, restricting calories and loose weight. It’s called Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and 100 different names. You are correct that you don’t need to be in ketosis to loose weight if you’re restricting calories, but that’s not the KETO WAY. How long have you been on KETO? Are you the ex Olympic cyclist?
Let’s not inflate things - ex Olympic class cyclist, not an Olympian.
Keto - 60 days.
The whole argument is based on two premises: ‘keto diet’ and the ‘adapt stage’ - no need to argue what planet were on or if water is wet.
The point has been and is that being in ketosis alone is meaningless for the adapt stage if one is trying to lose weight because it is the caloric deficit while in ketosis that reduces body fat.
