@NickTunes We get caught between two paradigms of weight loss: the first is that the only thing that matters is your caloric intake, that all calories are the same. The second takes into account the hormonal effects of different types of food, and a whole complex of mechanisms by which the human body regulates itself.
The science behind a well-formulated ketogenic diet is based on the second model. Since insulin is the fat-storage hormone, the purpose of the diet is to lower insulin levels enough to give the body acess to its fat stores. Since carbohydrate is long chains of glucose molecules, and glucose in the bloodstream is what raises insulin levels, we advise keeping eating as little carbohydrate as possible.
Protein is protein, and the weight we want to lose is fat weight, not muscle, bone, or organ weight, so we keep our protein intake at a level that will preserve our lean tissue. Usually we can just continue eating it at the same level as before. Protein has an effect on insulin, about half that of carbohydrate, but we have to have it, so the insulin effect is a wash (we need some insulin anyway, or we will starve to death).
So where are all the calories that we need going to come from, now that we have eliminated all the carbohydrate calories we used to eat? Well, from fat, of course! Fat stimulates insulin at a negligible rate, so it is a safe source of calories.
But in the context of low carbohydrate, the next consideration is caloric intake. The body responds to the amount of calories we give it by either increasing the metabolic rate (in times of abundant food), decreasing the metabolic rate (in times of famine), or switching from dietary intake to the fat and protein reserves and leaving metabolic rate alone (in times of fasting, say when the mastodon meat has run out and it’s time to go hunt down another meat source).
So if you don’t give yourself enough calories, your body is going to start conserving your fat store, to make it through the famine. This is why we tell people who want to lose weight to eat fat. But what we tell them to do is to eat fat to satiety. Satiety does not mean the old, sugar-burning, “fill the stomach till it’s about to explode” amount of food, it’s the amount of fat that satisfies hunger. In my view, eating to satiety is the only way to be sure we’re not stinting ourselves on calories, because we are letting our body signal how much is enough, not dictating to it. By eating to satiety, we allow the body to set our appetite at a level which allows it to take from its excess stored fat, as well as from the food we eat. The only other choice, where weight loss is concerned, is to eat nothing, so that energy expenditure comes entirely from the bodily reserves. Merely eating less triggers the famine “reflex.”
So if you have been eating fat past the point of satiety (which I hope no one here ever told you to do), you definitely should cut back. If you have been eating to satiety and stopping, you can continue doing that, letting your body decide how much you should eat. Or you can do what most of us feel compelled to do, and try to out-think 2,000,000 years of evolution by manipulating input in order to influence output.
But it seems to me that if we influence quality of intake to eat the kinds of foods our ancestors evolved to eat, and influence quantity in accordance with the bodily mechanisms that were designed to regulate how much we eat, then we can’t fail to be healthy and fit.
You are obviously doing something right! KCKO