Not Eating Enough Bad for "Regular Dieting", but What About on Keto?

(Jeb Bower) #1

I dropped about 60-lb pretty quickly/steadily within the first 5 months or so of starting keto. A bit more came off the next couple months at a slower rate. The last few months…nothing. My work schedule has me working some odd hours lately so there are days that I’ll have lunch, but by the time I get home, it’s late enough that I’ll have a handful of almonds but that’s about it.

I know one of the tips when “dieting” is to not eat too little because your body thinks you’re starving and holds on to every calorie it can. Does the same hold true with keto?

(Allie) #2

Constant calorie restriction results in metabolic slowdown regardless of the WOE. Always best to change things up with the occasional higher calorie day, and some lower calorie or fasting too. If you are only doing this here and there I wouldn’t worry, but not something to be advised regularly.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #4

Not eating enough, even on keto, causes the body to react to the famine by slowing down its expenditures of energy and hanging on to its reserve of fat. The pattern of feasting alternating with fasting, however, doesn’t trigger this famine reflex, because it’s the normal pattern for our hunter ancestors. The evolutionary logic is that you bring down a mammoth, everyone eats their fill until the meat is gone, and then the hunters go out looking for another kill. To hunt successfully, they can’t afford a drop in metabolism; but even the leanest hunter still has an abundant reserve of fat to use for fueling the hunt.

So the key is when eating, to feast, so that fasting doesn’t trigger the famine reflex. In the absence of carbohydrate, the body stores fat when we eat, then releases it as fuel between meals. The true normal pattern is a constant flow of energy in and out of the fat cells. Too much carbohydrate in the diet interrupts this pattern, because the resulting high level of insulin permits/forces energy into the fat cells and then prevents it from leaving. This is why Dr. Berry has started recommending that we stop referring to “keto” or “LCHF” and simply refer to our way of eating as “the proper human diet.”

#5

For me, the difference with Keto is that I can restrict calories without feeling deprived. Ideally, hunger should be determining how many calories we eat. When carbs and insulin are no longer artificially driving hunger, we should be able to settle on a more natural caloric intake. Our bodies just haven’t evolved to handle the onslaught of sugars that we have been forcing it to process.

On any other diet, I could only restrict calories by using appetite suppressants. Ones that are now banned by the FDA. But I still felt deprived.

I don’t know how many times I see someone on a keto diet complaining that they are full and won’t reach their macros for the day. But proteins are the only one that should be met. Carbs and fats are upper limits.

Basically, if you’re not hungry, there’s probably no reason to be eating something.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #6

I work full time at Walmart and the shifts are 100% obscene! My shift start times and length vary daily; no week is the same as the previous or the next. Even off days change every week. I can have as little as a single off day in a week or as many as 3 consecutive. For instance today and tomorrow are off days, following shifts on 9 of the preceding 10 days. This, of course, has wreaked total havoc on my eating schedule.

So what I’ve done is adapt as well as I could. I like starting the day with my big Bubba mug of cold brewed keto coffee, which takes about half an hour to prepare and requires my blender. On the mornings when I have to start too early to do that, I have a ‘7/11 mix’ of whipping cream and Coffee Booster Collagen I can just pour into my ‘away mug’ of 7/11 coffee and stir. Since this mix contains far fewer calories than my normal keto coffee, I usually add a couple of low carb pepperoni sticks (McSeeney’s, 1g carb per 40g stick).

I like to have my primary meal around noonish but on days when I’m at work during that time I have a couple of ‘away meals’ that require zero prep. The main one is simply a mix of walnuts and bacon bits, the secondary one consists of less walnuts/bacon and 2 or 3 McSeeney’s pepperoni sticks. I also usually take a ‘keto milk’ mix consisting of whipping cream and Coffee Booster Collagen and just add water at work. Or if my shift ends at 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon, I’ll take my ‘7/11 mix’ and buy a coffee at the instore McDonald’s.

If the shift is such that I get home early enough, I’ll have my primary meal around 6-7 pm.

My daily calorie target is 2800 and often times when I work a late shift and get home after 9 or 10pm, and sometimes not until midnight!, if I’m more than a couple hundred short of my daily target I’ll eat something before going to bed. This will generally be a mix of whipping cream and casein or bone broth. I do this because if I don’t eat my daily target for a few days in a row I lose weight and I do not want to lose weight since I’m already quite thin with a fat% of 14%-15%.

Surprisingly enough, my body doesn’t seem to object very much to all this variation in eating times and amounts. Although I have to admit I am really tired after several days of it!

(Susan) #7

Yessss I was fasting more then I was eating, and only eating a few hundred calories a day on my Feasting days, and it made my body slow right down, and I didn’t lose any weight for 2 months, so don’t do this! Make sure you eat enough.

Now on my eating days I do 20:4 (eat lunch at 1pm and supper at 4:45) not eating from 5pm-1pm. I need to make sure I get enough proteins and fats each of the two meals, and no more then the 20 carbs and this should break your stall too =).