Helping a (slightly) smug SAD-o!

(Rob) #1

I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in many years recently and after catching up on the past decade or so, we got to nutrition (as ALL my conversations do these days :smile:)

I discussed keto and although I’ve come a long way, he hadn’t seen me at my 80lbs heavier state and since I’m still obese, me spewing keto wisdom seemed a little hollow. I let him know my progress, hit him with a ton of science, testimony, evidence etc. and he seemed a little intrigued.

However, he is a very successful, highly respected person pulling down high-6 figures a year so I guess he has every right to be cocky. He is not overweight, though not skinny and seems outwardly healthy. He regaled me with his patented personal diet success story. He ate ‘what he wanted’, had an awesome routine where he ‘only’ spent 1hr 45 mins exercising every day and did alternate day fasting where he ate about 2000 cal on the ‘feast’ day and 1000 on the fast day. He’s lost about 28 lbs net in a couple of years and he no longer worries about his ability to manage his weight.

He asked me to have a look at his diet, I think partially to get an honest opinion since I do seem to know what I’m talking about but I also think he wants some validation for his ‘success’.

Anyway, he sent me some data that shows his weight loss over a couple of years but also his average diet plan between the 2 days (feast/fast) and his regular exercise schedule. I put the food into a nutrition logging app (estimating for some vague statements like ‘full English Breakfast’) and did some checking to validate (or not) his optimistic view on exercise calories burned (mostly cross-trainer cardio).

I put the food data into Excel and crunched the numbers with some super-fun pivot-tables to get net carbs and then macro distributions and breakdowns for his 2 days and the feast/fast average with some pretty color chart :thinking:. It was a relatively strange but mainstream ‘healthy’ mix of foods, from regular salads, bacon/eggs/baked beans, nuts and fruit all the way to scheduled candy/popsicles. Crunching the numbers however showed the diet’s true colors.

  1. Over 200g of NET carbs on average per day (almost the same on fast as on feast) - 65% of calories from carbs, 15 from fat, 20 from protein - IT’S SAD!!
  2. Very heavy on the sugar, esp. fructose (56% sugar, 27% starch, 17% fiber) - likely liver stressing
  3. Calorie restriction - 1500/day average
  4. At least 500-750 cal exercise burn (down from the 1200 he estimated) which extends the calorie deficit to ‘starvation’ levels (you can’t outrun a bad diet)
  5. No chance of fat adaptation or ketosis (unless very temporarily from HIIT)
  6. He’s achieved fairly consistent weight loss on the regime, but whenever he stops e.g. takes a multi-week vacation, he gains weight significantly suggesting he’s already crashed his BMR.
  7. Thus his net loss isn’t huge but it’s within a 20lb range over several years

From all this I concluded that he should probably get key tests - HOMA-IR inputs, CAC/CAS, blood lipid panel, NAFLD ultrasound to see whether he should be as happy with his health as he seems to be.

I am slightly conflicted about my response to this.

  1. The nice friend part of me doesn’t want to burst his bubble - he is very pleased with his personal plan
  2. The good friend part of me wants to make sure he isn’t TOFI since his diet makes me think he could be.
  3. The brave ketonian part of me wants to TRASH this SAD-mimicking diet :grin:

What I am doing is writing an analytical, data-driven write-up of his diet/plan showing where it is good (not much :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) but pointing out the potential weaknesses and suggesting some next steps (tests, measuring, moving to Keto, etc.) while linking to supporting resources to back up my statements and conclusions.

Hopefully we will get another into the keto/LC fold, presuming he needs/wants it?

(Michele) #2

He needs to confront how much weight he gains when he’s not on his plan. Imagine him being seriously injured he would gain significantly and then his plan may be ao successful. Sounds like a smallee version of The Biggest Loser. If his plan ‘worked’ then he shouldn’t gain when he eats ‘normally’ so to speak. It won’t be sustainable for the long term even if he’s been doing it for quite a long time (that’s what I imagine).

(Rob) #3

Great Minds… :grin: …across the wide Pacific Ocean

This is exactly what I had just written … ‘You are doing a less intense version of The Biggest Loser…’ and asked him to either do a 2000-cal/day no exercise experiment for 3 weeks or go back through his calendar and mark out all breaks from his regime so we can see the correlation with weight gain (which I think is pretty strong).

#4

Hi there! While I’m super impressed at your data driven approach, I would only suggest perhaps pointing your friend to someone else’s data and opinions. This would let you keep both the friendship and the observationist viewpoint.
For example, there is good reasoning and data behind the idea of “chronic cardio” or “chronic exercise” at sites like Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark Sisson has become an advocate of Keto and so does not conflict with your approach. I’m sure there are several other sites and proponents, MDA is just the first one I think of this morning.
And KetoKnitterNZ makes an excellent point on injury in my opinion. If your friend is increasing his inflammation through his diet/exercise choices it may be that he is increasing his chances of debilitating injury, the type that in my experiences (both observation and personal mistakes) makes it practically impossible for a person to stave off “standard medical advice” and all of the problems that can come with that - like drugs and SAD.

(Karen) #5

He sounds a bit competitive, and people are so sensitive about their nutrition beliefs. I hope you can keep him as a friend while helping him as a good friend.

K

(Andrew) #6

Just buy him The Obesity Code and be done with it. Make Dr Fung the bad guy