This super helps, thank you so much! The thing about vegetables is really interesting and may be the case for me! I LOVE vegetables and always feel like having another serving. I limit cheese for the same reason (also because of the blockage situation.) I also agree about snacking - I have a hard and fast rule now about eating a larger meal so I don’t feel the need to snack. Also, I’m trying to make meals with only two or three ingredients so that The variety of tastes and flavors doesn’t trigger me either. Desserts are fine for me, I can eat one small piece of dark chocolate and feel like that “ends the meal” for me. Sometimes I drink unsweetened almond milk and it doesn’t the same thing.
I just posted in another thread with a question (regarding burning a large number of calories during endurance cycling, and how that affects how much you eat) - maybe you can help with that, I’ll tag you!
Yup but protein can cause an increase in demand for glucose production in multiple ways. 2 amino acids produced in the digestion of protein are direct secretagogues for insulin which will clear glucose triggering more release from liver stores which increases supply. In people who produce a lot of insulin that protein stimulated insulin secretion can last 5-6 hours.
See for example this experiment I did with 25g of whey protein, I was clearing glucose faster than I could make it for 6 hours.
That’s not how it works. You don’t eat some magical food and miracle weight loss happens, nor do you starve yourself into an ideal body.
Eat to satiety and keep insulin low (by eating as few carbs as you can, and keeping protein to your minimum projected needs for body maintenance) and your body will shed body fat excess to it’s projected requirements for survival.
Unless you have a LOT of body fat and low basal insulin (which is a highly unlikely combination) you will have a caloric requirement. Calories from fat have the lowest effect on insulin. So if you are hungry, eat … because that is your fuel signal. But get most of your calories from fat.
The ketogenic diet is an “Ad Libitum” diet which effectively means there is no macro for fat. Fat is our fuel. Hunger and satiation are the fuel signal.
The problem with trying to calculate a glide path for weight loss, is that we are complex systems and fat accumulation is not a factor of energy in minus energy out.
Dr Phinney did this experiment in the 80s where he put 12 overweight women in a metabolic ward for 4-5 weeks and gave them a slightly hypocaloric sufficient protein diet. And all of them slowed their metabolic rate by 10% as well as started to use body fat for energy - as you should expect.
So then he had half of them run up to 2 hours a day on a treadmill and the other half just sat on the couch. You would think those who used more energy would have lost more body fat at the end of the experiment … but in fact the couch potatoes lost a non significant amount more.
The reason was, the people who exercised more lost a further 17% of their metabolic rate so for the 22 hours of the day they were NOT on the treadmill they were conserving energy.
This shows that our metabolic rate is directed by a homeostasis that factors in 1000s of signals and not just the 2 that we think of. Namely how much food appears to be available, and how hard we appear to have to work to get it.
Our bodies also factor in mulitple hormonal signals determining how much access we have to stored energy, how well vascularized our adipose tissue is, how much adipose tissue we have (which affects the maximal rate of delivery), how much energy our immune system requires on based on the current infection rate, what temperature to run our bodies, how much energy to put into hair follicle growth, recycling of protein in bone, muscle, organs, and 1000s of energetic processes optional to immediate survival that I can only speculate at.
Researcher Ethan Sims once force fed prisoners in Vermont to try to get them to increase their body fat by one quarter. One guy he was unable to get to increase his body fat by more than 18% despite feeding him 10,000 kCal/day. That is not to say that all of us need to eat 10 MCal, but that guy had a prodigious ability to find uses for energy to prevent his energy homeostasis from throwing up it’s hands and saying “Ah screw it - put it in storage”
The idea that - you need to restrict calories to lose weight - is simplistic. To reduce body fat you need your body to have the appropriate signals to reduce storage, which appears to be overwhelmingly signaled by lower insulin.
Reading these sort of threads makes me realise how difficult it can be to explain and/or understand something that’s essentially simple.
An immediate, “yes, but…” response is natural because often we bring some established piece of foundation “knowledge” which makes us think two essentially compatible ideas are incompatible.
One bit of foundation knowledge for me was that in a diet we control what we eat. We have to do, don’t we? That seems to me to be what the OP is saying when he eats fat to his macros. He is trying to control fat, carb and protein consumption. I used to wonder the same thing. I knew the limit of carbs and protein, and surely there had to be one for fat. What did satiety even mean?
For me, the lightbulb came on when I realised that in the keto diet, fat, carbs and protein ARE controlled. My mind controls the carbs, and the protein that I eat, and my body controls the fat (I just give it as much as it wants).
I know I have all sorts of other lightbulbs ready to be lit. I feel I still struggle with many of the ideas involved in healthy eating and lifestyle. My one hope is that we can all be prepared to let go of some of our received wisdom because in the long run it will do us all good.
I didn’t say beyond a macro calculation, that’s not what I meant. I’m saying that the recommendation that, in order to overcome a stall, one must eat more fat is not something I’ve heard or read anywhere else. I’m not saying it’s not true either, but i’m gong to need more to go on given this is not supported as far as i can see.
It’s possible. But who knows for sure? That’s the problem I have; a lot of uncertainty and conflicting information - doubtless provided by people with honest intentions. I’m not calling anyone a liar, and who am I to judge? I’m not a biologist. So yes, it’s possible.
I don’t know if my hormones are out of whack. It’s also entirely possible. All I know is that if when Iget hungry, I get hungry. Sometimes some water can ameliorate the feeling, sometimes I have to eat. Or at least that’s how it feels. We all haveto eat sometimes! I also eat to satiety, but I eat a lot of protein which is the most sating nutrient. I don’t eat a meal comprising solely one nutrient either so it’s impossible to tell if the meal has too much of one and too little of the other (except carbs obviously).
I generally eat 115g fat, 120-130g protein and about 10g net carbs (probably less in fact). I find anything less in terms of protein leaves me hungry. As for adding fat to compensate, it’s difficult finding fat that’s not also got protein or carbs. Unfortunately all the good healthy foods, like nuts or avocados, are extremely expensive here and I find keto to be very expensive. Meat is not cheap, unlike the processed rubbish that is unhealthy.
I’ve no idea if I’m eating too much protein or not. That’s another minefield subject; people say ‘too much’ causes problems but can never articulate whether that’s true or, if it is, how much is too much.
@jellybelly you have to realize that there may not be science available to explain everything the ketogenic diet can do. With the popularity exploding they are scrambling to keep/catch up. This is so contrary to the standard that a lot of this is new. We are literally learning on a daily basis! Have just a little bit of faith that we who have been doing this as a personal experiment for multiple years know a little about it. We are not all scientists or doctors.
No. I’m not tapping bodyfat, but that’s the reason people give for reducing fat intake on keto. That advice isn’t based on starving yourself, just not eating so much that your body doesn’t need to use its own fat for fuel.
This is where I am confused. If I’m sated after a meal that has, roughly, 40g fat and 40g protein (like my breakfast usually does, afaict - for the sake of argument anyway), how can i tell if i’m sated for the wrong reasons only to not feel properly full? Eating fat to satiety is difficult to coimprehend because I’m not just eating fat.
So maybe it’s my hormones or maybe i’m not eating the right amount of nutrients, but by all indicators I have seen, specifically macros, it seems i’m eating enough fat. If I’m not, how do I practically add more?
I don’t think anyone is saying CICO is simple, clearly there’s more to it than that, but even Dr Phinney’s first stage of his well fromulated diet advocates a smaller percentage of the daily fat intake to come from diet than the full amount in order to lose weight. Since I’m not losing weight, I assume that i’m eating too much fat. If that isn’t the case then I don’t really know what else to do.
What he said in Sydney last year is that a well formulated ketogenic diet is “ad libitum”, that satiety is the key, and to not leave the table hungry. Further when you get people onto a well formulated ketogenic diet people SPONTANEOUSLY reduce their energy needs from the diet (and on a ketogenic diet that is fat) as they are getting energy from their body fat.
Then as their body fat begins to reduce the amount of energy it contributes to their daily requirements, they develop fat hunger and SPONTANEOUSLY add more fat to their diet.
He doesn’t suggest to eat any specific amount of fat. When asked how much fat he ate, he said he really has no idea, he eats to satiety and his body looks after the details.
Yeah it’s a difficult subject because as you say we don’t just eat fat, or protein in isolation.
The way Dr Phinney handled it at the dinner last year was he got some Salmon from the bufffet, and then asked the waiter to bring out a bowl of melted butter, and he spooned about 150g of butter over the fish and ate that until he was full and pushed his plate away once he was full. There was a little fish left on his plate, I assume that he was somewhere within his protein requirements and was just using satiation to tell him when he had adequate energy.
The way I do it is I have french sauces with my meat, Bearnaise, Hollandaise, Mayonnaise which when you think about it is not that much different from a butter sauce.
The other way I do it is I don’t have set meal times. I don’t have the next meal until I am hungry again. If I overeat one meal, it could be a while until I feel hungry again. That is another way of fueling fat to satiety.
Unless your metabolism is somehow unusual (entirely possible - I’m not a doctor) then I suspect you are making plenty of insulin. And that is preventing your adipose from releasing energy and your cells from using lipids for energy. Fasting lowers insulin. Carbs raise insulin. Protein raises it by roughly 50% of the amount that carbs do, but you have a minimum requirement for protein (and none of carbohydrates) … so that is the most hard core version of the ketogenic diet, no carbs, minimum protein, fat to satiety and let your lower insulin levels allow your body fat to contribute to the satiation side of the ledger.
Yeah, you know what? I get a bit tired of people saying that Phinney tells you to cut fat when you want to lose weight. I have never heard him say that. I have always heard him eschew counting calories too and hence specific macro levels too (except carbs and protein). He discusses calories but as an end result way NOT a way to decide what to eat. He also ALWAYS says n=1 and that he does not have an exact rule book to follow. It is laughable really how misquoted this man is.
Ok, so assuming my body isn’t processing hunger correctly - how do I deal with that? If I’m to eat when hungry, and I get hungry, what do I do? Why am I stalled?
I suspect you are stalled because you are not able to get energy from body fat.
Insulin will do that. It’s not the only thing, but it is the 800 lb gorilla.
Strategies to lower insulin;
Don’t eat carbs
Keep protein to close to the minimum you need for maintenance
restrict dairy protein especially whey
fast longer - so eat a later breakfast
get better sleep
Build up muscle with weight bearing exercise
Deplete them of glucose regularly to sink insulin (HIITs are good for that)
Consider pharmaceuticals such as Metformin, Berberine
And even then, some people can’t lower their insulin much further. We are all different. Some of us will have to accept that while we can cure our diabetes with a ketogenic diet, and get our markers of heat disease into the lowest risk group for heart disease, yet remain overweight. Once you disassociate obesity with the diseases that travels with it like Diabetes and Heart disease, then being overweight is IMO no longer a disease condition, just an aesthetic one.
Thanks Fiorella. What a wonderful post. Like you, I have to avoid pretty much everything except meats. I can handle eggs just fine, and cream in my coffee. A little cheese once in a while, but not often. Anything sweet brings out the demons.
I get carb cravings when I steer too far from meat only. I love some vegetables, like fresh asparagus out of my garden right now. I can eat a few spears without inducing cravings, so I’m grateful for that.
It was comforting to read your post, as I don’t feel so odd, and I greatly appreciate your wonderful savory recipes. Sometimes this n=1 experimenting feels like an uphill climb. Your words, and those of so many others on this forum have been so encouraging to me.
Whoa! That’s really helpful! I think I may have had a small revelation just now! @jellybelly maybe this is the case for you too… here goes.
For as long as I can remember, I have tried to eat as little as possible to get full so that my calorie intake would remain low. Even now, doing keto, I serve myself a small amount of food (or whatever amount I think I “should” be eating, in the hopes that amount will make me full. If it doesn’t, I feel ashamed that when I serve myself a second helping. I’m always budgeting subconsciously, thinking things like, “it’s 2pm now, I know I’ll eat dinner tonight and if I eat any more than this amount, I won’t be able to eat as much dinner later and then if I do, it will be too much…” BUT, if I actually allowed myself to eat what I wanted in a single meal (even if that means some ridiculous amount of dietary fat like 100-150g in one sitting), maybe I wouldn’t WANT to eat dinner. Ok, this becomes a little more difficult because to get enough protein, you kind of have to plan for that - but the point I’m making is, if we stop trying to control everything, our bodies might actually take the lead.
Also, I think everything @Richard and everyone else is saying about protein is right. We “think” we need tons of protein because it’s been drilled into us for long. How about experimenting with yourself to see if that helps? I used to eat 130g or 140g or so of protein a day, now im eating 50-75g and I’m noticing strength gains at the gym, so I’m seeing that protein myth busted in real life!
Lastly - I don’t know how much weight you have to lose…but I’m about 25.5% with roughly 35-37 lbs of fat (getting a DEXA to find out for sure soon). My body is really happy is this range; I’m heathy and active and it can do all the things it wants to do. I, however, I am not happy with it - but it’s purely aesthetics. We need to remember that our bodies are not designed for bikini season. They’re designed for survival. And - genes play a big part in that as well! If I’m going to get the results I want, I’m going to have to get IT what it wants. (I feel like it a compromise in a relationship…“ok, you can watch your TV program now but I get to pick the music in the car later.”
So, be kind to your body. Try experimenting. This community is great if you come in with an attitude of openness and genuine desire to find solutions and answers.
