Have we got it wrong about ratios of fat for weight loss?

(Terence Dean) #21

Yes, and I’ve lost 55lbs in 18 weeks so what? I’m talking to people who have tried to get themselves off a stall besides you admit to doing extended fasts every week, why isn’t that considered a deficit? Its even larger than what I do. You are also implying that I am eating below my protein and carb macros, wrong! and not for the first time. The ONLY deficit I use is a dietary FAT deficit - my body taps into its own fat reserves if it needs to - you, on the other hand, are restricting all three macros.

(Kenneth) #22

Do you track your Glucose/Ketone Index with a Keto Mojo or Precision?

I was having the same problem, then i started checking my ketones & BG first thing in the AM and at 8:30pm to see what my GKI was. The GKI tells you what range of Ketosis you are in. If you find yourself in the higher ranges, you might just be stuck in a maintenance mode. I broke out of it, by making my main meal breakfast, small lunch & dinner, however I added a healthy dose of MCT oil to a shake midday and not eating anything after 5:30pm. When I do this my Ketones go High, BG drops and I was back in business!

This is what worked for me, hope it works for you.

07%20AM

#23

Hello @kjgeraci
I use a precision monitor to measure ketones and glucose, but I cannot get anywhere near your numbers!!
I track morning, afternoon and evening and the best I get is about ketones of 1 - 1.5 with glucose of 4.3 in the morning (about 78 in your measurements).
My glucose is pretty consistently under 5.4, and drops pretty well within 2 hours back to baseline after eating.
HbA1c is now 4.9

Where did you find the graph for calculating GKI?
It looks interesting, although I am not sure I can get much lower carb than I currently do (about 15 gm/day).
thanks

#24

Thankyou @Sillyme
I hope this might be the answer.
I know we are all little unique snowdrops, etc, etc, but this seems to be a pretty common theme in the forum - particularly among us older women.
Maybe I am a bit thick and slow to understand the nuances, but this graphic really flicked a switch for me.
I hope it works!!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #25

This is supposed to be an illustration of how eating fat to satiety works. The idea is that this fictitious woman (you know she’s fictitious because her fat loss occurs in almost a straight line, lol!) is eating fat to satiety at every stage, and at first her fat consumption is low, because her body has excess fat it wants to burn, and once she reaches maintenance, her fat consumption has increased to make her total calorie intake match her expenditure, because she is continuing to eat fat to satiety.

If you have lots of fat to lose and are “eating at the right hand side of the graph,” then you are eating fat well past the point of satiety, as Dr. Phinney and I understand it. The reason this made-up woman is eating 820 kcal of fat in the beginning is not because someone told her to; she stopped at that level because her meals satisfied her—because her body’s leptin signaling was working. The reason she is eating 1400 kcal of fat in maintenance is not because she figured out that’s how much she needs, but that she is still eating fat to satiety, and her body is still telling her how much to eat.

If eating to satiation doesn’t work like this for you, then something is not as it is supposed to be. You are most likely not “doing it wrong,” it’s just that for whatever reason, your satiety signaling is not working in the expected manner.

The first possibility is that your body is perfectly happy as it is. Your satiety signaling could be working just fine, but you’re not losing weight because it wants to be that weight. That’s one problem, and there is plenty of advice on these forums about how to work with your body to get it to do what you want.

The other possible problem is damage to the satiety system. High insulin levels block leptin from reaching the appropriate centers in the brain; these receptors may have been permanently down-regulated. The cells in your intestine that secrete peptide YY may not be functional, thus preventing another satiety signal from reaching the brain. Damage to the hypothalamus and/or the vagus nerve can have the same effect.

Once you know that your satiety signaling is not working correctly, you can take steps to deal with that. Unfortunately, I suspect that all of those steps will mean having to deal with permanent hunger. But I would strongly advise not reverse-engineering this graph to obtain guidance. As I mentioned, the woman is fictitious, and her experience is made up, so it is not likely to work well for you, whatever the problem is that you are trying to solve.

(Kenneth) #26

I just use Microsoft Excel (or any spreadsheet) I’ll put the formula below. Then I manually color code each day, because I am a geek. :wink:

I have to be very specific with what I eat and, more importantly, when i stop eating. My standard breakfast is around 8am - 2tbls of Ghee butter, two eggs, 4oz of pork sausage, 1 whole avocado, & 50gr of sauteed spinach all mixed up into a scrambled goodness. Lunch (1pm’ish) I have a kale shake, 50gr of spinach/50gr of Kale, 2tbls MCT oil, 4oz of water, 4oz of half&half, and a 1/2 package of pruvit ketones for flavor. (if i snack it is on macadamia nuts or wasabi almonds during the day). Dinner (5:30) whatever protein that is served on a small amount of lettuce, with other veggies, some raspberries or strawberries with whip-cream (homemade heavy cream, vanilla extract and Erythritol) for desert. Sometimes I will make a berry smoothie with the MCT oil instead. BUT NO EATING AFTER 6pm, then check ketones and BG around 8:30pm.

(For me) … I think part of the key is to have a dinner with a low glycemic load, that will keep insulin from spiking and allowing the body to go back to fat burning. I think a large part of it is also the MCT Oil and the 1hour of walking I do during the midday. My walks are mid intensity, so my post workout heart rate is fat burning zone … so I do not know how that plays into it. But at the end of the day this is all N=1 guess work.

Hope this helps.

Excel formatting:
56%20PM

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #27

Exactly mate! This idea that you can just demolish as much fat as you want and that caloric deficit is irrelevant – it’s nonsense. And you’ve hit the nail on the head – the people who spruik this silliness are into extended fasting. Not eating for several days is a caloric deficit, no matter what buzzwords you throw around (“autophagy”).

I’m not saying fasting is bad. I think IF is almost certainly healthy, up to about 24 hours, per even Phinney who’s not a big fan of this fad. (And it is a fad.)

But you can’t include fasting for days at a time in your lifestyle and then tell us that caloric deficit doesn’t matter!

(Edith) #28

I think that is an excellent point.

(Ken) #29

No surprises here. Loads of fat is fine initially, but once a couple of weeks of major adaptation the 60-35-5 percent macro works well for sustained fat loss. Eat that macro to satiety, rather than eating fat alone. I’ve been doing it for nearly two decades, and all the people who I’ve recommended it to have been successful, with no major stalls. Eating only fat to satiety and fairly low protein is fine initially, but to do it in perpetuity is, IMO, Nutty Keto Dogma.

Eat all the fat you want, but a high macro certainly can stall body fat loss.

(Raj Seth) #30

These ^^^^ +100
Don’t try to create a deficit CICO method. Let your body’s signals emerge, and they will, and eat only to satiety, not beyond…
It works. Rather, it’s working for me and many others on this forum :+1:

(shane ) #31

People who excuse energy balance as being part of the equation for weight loss do so at their own determent.

I for the life of me can’t figure out why calories get such a bad rap in this forum.

I do see some here standing up for them though.

If you are not losing weight for an extended period of time, take a look at HOW MUCH you are eating.

How you can tell people who are leptin resistant to eat to satiation and all will be fine is crazy if you ask me.

Crazy.

(Doug) #32

I tend to agree, but don’t see it as a large and evil conspiracy, I just think it’s an oversimplification. Long-term, calorie restriction tends to work very badly. Yet keeping an eye on calories can have benefits, and you made a good point about leptin resistance and satiation, Shane.

In the shorter term, I think that often, just getting the extremely ‘low carb’ deal correct is the main thing. That way we should be making progress on the hormonal front. Losing weight isn’t guaranteed there, and if we’re not, then perhaps we need to look at how much fat and protein we’re eating.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #33

^^^^ Both of these comments!

Sure it works – but not for everyone. So first: you need to examine if you’re eating past satiety. Second, for some people, “it” doesn’t work. My trainer at the gym is vegan and I wish I was as lean and ripped as him.

Nobody has all the answers. I still view LCHF as pretty much bulletproof – but the exact ratios of fat and low-GI carb, as well as the types of fats, and various other variables, are pretty much unknown quantities.

(Raj Seth) #34

Agree that eventually, energy balance is required. However, most come to keto with excess insulin (hyperinsulinemia) resulting in deranged metabolisms and years of yo yo dieting, calorie restriction etc.
First, we must repair our body’s metabolism and restore the normal satiety signaling.
After a while on keto, satiety signaling can be restored, metabolism can be steadily repaired as lipolysis commences. One needs to feed the body sufficiently during that period to allow the body to heal itself.

At that point, our bodies will be able to signal how much it needs to ingest. There are no obese wild things - the only obese creatures are us humans, and domesticated animals we feed.

For a small fraction of the population, the signaling may be broken. For most, the powerful satiety signals that we have will suffice to restore the body to its normal target fat content.

IF you are not losing excess fat after becoming fully fat adapted (6-8 wks or more), and sticking to LCHF, then further examination is warranted.

(shane ) #35

I agree that long term calorie restriction ONLY can definitely lead to issues.

People also tend to confuse and lump together the caloric recalculation needed for weight loss as metabolic slow down, which is where most of the “issue” I see with calorie counting. A person weighing less obviously needs less food to maintain that weight.

Hormonal front is a hard thing to adjust after you already have your carbs set. The easiest thing to adjust is the amount of food you put in your mouth.

This can be done using a ketocalorie calculator, or macros, or even a calorie. At the end of the day that food going in your mouth is energy. Call it what you want.

(Wendy) #36

It’s funny because I am that woman too but for me I haven’t purposely cut my fat, I still try to make sure I’m getting enough, or my calories.
Fortunatly I have lost significant weight (just shy of 60 lbs today ~7 months) so what are we doing differently? Maybe nothing. I do do IF and usually eat once or twice a day. I don’t really do many keto snack type foods though I’ve been indulging in dark chocolate several days a week. I did notice I was stalling when I ate lower fat but maybe it was coincidental? I also don’t drink any coffee so obviously don’t drink fat coffee. I don’t know?

(Raj Seth) #37

You have a Happyheart - thats what’s what :grin:

(Wendy) #38

:sunglasses::sweat_smile:

(Garry (Canada)) #39

I think the source of failure comes from the “Eat to Satiety” moto.

People in general(myself included) will eat until they just about explode if allowed. That’s why most of society are fat. For simplification… We eat until we can’t eat any more.

Now let’s introduce our extremely calorie dense “Keto method of eating” with the same type of mental attitude and thus we likely have the cause of each failure.
The OP admits that they don’t track their food/caloric intake. Is he/she eating 350g of fat per day? If they don’t know…how can anyone here possibly make an educated guess.

(Raj Seth) #40

See - I think that is where I differ. I believe we are fat because what we eat is so different than what was evolutionarily available. Not the last 5-10,000 years, but for the last 3-4 millions of years. Our bodies have evolved with, IIRC 5 separate pathways to signal satiety w.r.t. protein and fat. However, with respect to sugar and refined carbs - we have NONE. Once we eliminate these foods that can bypass our satiety signals, we (most, not all) are able to eat to satiety without overeating. Our body knows how much it needs. Think of the example Jason Fung uses in “Obesity Code”. When full at the AYCE buffet, the thought of eating one more pork chop might be nauseating - but we can still grab that soft-serve swirl with M&M topping on the way out!

Give the body a chance - it will triumph. Millions of years of evolution at work. Can’t out think it.