Got this from Reddit Keto Forums, it’s a great read, something to send your family and friends so they can grasp the basic concepts of the Keto and LCHF lifestyles.
Great write up by Dr. Jason Fung
ggv
(Ross)
#2
Love it! So, counting calories is meaningless / pointless and counting net carbs is also off-base. I wonder how easy it would be to count glycemic load index points rather than net carbs?
I think this all points to some wisdom behind the Banting method which more or less groups foods on color coded lists by glycemic load.
4dml
#3
Calorie counting may not matter in that our bodies don’t operate in terms of calories, but volume of food does matter. Calorie counting is a useful tool for tracking this. This isn’t to say that a better tool couldn’t be developed, for example, assigning an insulinogenic value to every food which then allows a summation of an insulinogenic load for a meal. To my knowledge, no such tool is readily available. Until then, tracking calories and macro nutrients is the best (though not perfect) standard.
ggv
(Ross)
#5
I’m not so sure a greater volume of food matters all that much in the absence of an insulin response.
marklifestyle
(Mark Rhodes)
#7
Calories may count if not adjusting for frequency… An keto OMAD of 2500 will affect your hormones differently than the same food spread out over 18 hrs. Timing may be more critical than the macro nutrients.
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#8
Yup, as long as the umbilicus is attached I’ve got great bandwidth. https://optimisingnutrition.com/
OldDoug
(Doug)
#9
I love Dr. Fung and have benefitted greatly from his writings. Yet I would not say that calories don’t count - rather that there is much more than just how many go into the body; there is the matter of whether the body burns them, stores or excretes them.
The hormone and enzyme secretion and our sensitivity or resistance to them plays a huge part here. Being predominantly in “fat storage mode” due to insulin resistance affects the burning of calories and the amount of them that go into the body’s fat deposits. Over time, that can make all the difference in the world.
Dr. Fung has mentioned the frequency of eating a lot - and no doubt - how often we eat is important. One of Fung’s examples is people in other cultures who eat a very high-carbohydrate diet, yet remain metabolically healthy and relatively lean. They often eat one big meal a day, and are not at all “constant grazers,” eating often or continuously through the day. Their average insulin levels are lower from this, and insulin resistance much less of a problem, or no problem at all.
4dml
#10
All foods will illicit an insulin response, it’s a matter of degree. Volume absolutely positively matters in almost all cases, though some folks have greater flexibility than others. A 65 year old woman’s body doesn’t have the same energy requirements as a 20 year old male, and can’t eat the same volume of food.
If you doubt what I’m saying, try it for yourself. Determine your TDEE, if you eat sufficiently above it (regardless of macros) long enough, you’ll gain weight.
ggv
(Ross)
#12
I did try that and lost about 20 pounds while in clear caloric surplus (5000-6000 calories a day). I wasn’t going out of my way to limit the amount of meat I ate either.
I do Banting, so in that theory, protein is self limiting and the idea is the hypothalamus, once simple carbs are removed from the diet & allowed to recalibrate, will (and is in fact the only means to) regulate macro intakes correctly.
SlowBurnMary
#13
Indeed that’s a great write up, thank you!
The displacement of calories and the value of LCHF for metabolic function and healing is something complementary/integrative with the eastern medicine sciences ((Ayurveda, Chinese medicine) - which go back thousands of years in documentation within a non-industrial foods context - all about that we are HOW we eat as much as - or even more than - WHAT we eat.
If you’ve got tons of enzymes and neurological/gut health fed by good fats and salt and spices - you’ve got a metabolic capacity that is differentiated from lower levels of enzymes and GI/microbiome vitality, etc.
In this paradigm, the body is microcosm of the entire macrocosm of the earth and cosmos - it’s all connected, etc. Which has made sense to me for a long time… and which enabled me to be a longtime low-sugar vegetarian in good health with plenty of good fats and spices - until I hit middle age and really needed to address metabolic slowdown with serious carb limits and better protein.
In traditional eastern medicine (as well as various aboriginal/indigenous healing traditions) the connection between digestion & immunity, the powers of spices and rejuvenative foods - has been understood long before the very recent western science named the ‘microbiome’ as pivotal for health.
If the digestion is strong, one is supposed to be able to digest most any balanced meal (meaning, a meal which involves visual diversity of colors and elementally diverse tastes - the six tastes in fact: salty, sweet, sour, pungent, bitter, astringent. This is achieved by utilizing condiments, appetizers, post-meal digestives like chewing fennel seeds, etc). And if one doesn’t have access to the six tastes in one meal, one can seek to balance it out over the course of days or weeks. For example, there are seasonal usages of bitter taste, for cleansing purposes - and sweet and non-pungent tastes for invalid recovery and for children.
In the context of low-processed foods, good fats like ghee or pig lard, and harmonizing those foods and ourselves with spices - food becomes medicine. The digestive system in the non-industrial eastern sciences is viewed as the gateway of health - and it’s “fire” (digestive agni) is supposed to be strong & hearty & efficient It’s supposed to be stronger than what passes through it - otherwise, toxicities/backups/imbalances/inflammations (ama) that soon create weakness and disease.
In fact, in sanskrit (which predates modern Hinduism and is based in oral traditions of the ancients rishis), there a few different kinds of metabolic fires/agnis, which stem from entertaining cultural stories related to the mythic King/God of the Fire element, Agni!
The transformation of food into human vitality & virtues, is no small thing in other words… And pre-industrial cultures considered eating a community event, a sacred action - nothing to do with burgers-while-driving, or TV dinners, etc. It’s fascinating how “mindful” eating actually affects enzymes.
Harvard Health and others are now amplifying the important neuroscience of the “physiology of gratitude” upon our digestive metabolisms and stress levels, etc.
4dml
#14
You are apparently very metabolically flexible. I’m sooo jealous 
. But seriously, almost anyone who eats significantly above their TDEE for a long enough period of time, will gain weight. For some of us that might mean 110% above our TDEE for a couple of days. Others might be able to eat 200% above for a a few weeks. But eventually, weight gain will happen.
If there were a WOE that would allow unlimited calories with no ill consequences, we’d all be on it. A HFLC diet comes pretty close. So does a raw diet. Both depend on satiation occurring before over consumption, and for many people that will be the case. But for folks who don’t have a lot of metabolic flexibility, more care must be taken.
I agree that nutrient content determines how the body will process food. We hold these truths to be self evident: all calories are not created equal. But they’re still a useful and necessary tool for some HFLC adherents.
FatMan
(Richard Hanson)
#15
Also from Dr. Fung … paraphrasing … “If you don’t eat your are going to loose weight.” Fasting.
If calories don’t count, they don’t count when you eat them and they don’t count when you don’t eat them. So … how do you loose weight when you fast if calories don’t count?
Clearly, the story is not as simple as just CICO, a calorie is a calorie, but just as that is a gross simplification, so also are statements that calories just don’t count. I think this article is just stupid. I will refrain from emphasizing “stupid” with a Dr. Fung f**bomb.
Keto for Life!
Regards,
Richard
OldDoug
(Doug)
#16
Richard, agreed - I think the most common oversimplification is not realizing that “calories out” means the combination of burning for fuel, storage as fat (or glycogen), and excretion.
Instead of “calories,” we could say “grams,” as in grams of fat, protein, or carbohydrates, and there won’t be much argument that those grams don’t matter. Dr. Fung sometimes shoots from the hip, so to speak, and overgeneralizes - I agree with the main thrust of his topics, but several times have felt he should qualify some things at least a bit more, to be accurate.
ggv
(Ross)
#18
But as we’ve seen in multiple recent threads, it is very possible to lose body fat while in what appears to be a significant keto adapted caloric surplus. From that I think we can draw that calories are a flawed tool for understanding weight loss and on their own matter not.
Weight loss from fasting may have little or nothing to do with being in caloric deficit.
IIRC from Fung’s book, one of the main benefits of fasting is adjusting down the body set-weight (getting past that plateau). People tend to lose weight and drop back to that set weight once they get off the carbs & go into ketosis, right? Can we even say that fasting produces a significant greater rate of sustainable weight loss than eating a high calorie ketogenic diet?
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#20
That’s a great question. It seems that for many people that could be true. If you factor in the post-fast regain, it might ultimately be better for them. Other people it might not work as well for, but I think it should be tried first, with fasting used intermittently.
It probably depends on what you are trying to measure. Most people are trying to measure how fattening or slimming a particular food is, but that’s almost impossible to measure in isolation because you also have to take the volume of food and what else you are are eating at the same time and how long until your next meal. As far as I’m concerned, measuring the energy content of any food is basically pointless for the reasons most people care about.
The next step might be something like you are suggesting, but even that is only part of the story since different people will experience different consequences. Still, it’s a better measure than calories.