Not my progress, but this guy lost 190 pounds using Virta health

(Bob M) #1

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Very impressive!

I’m always amazed at this amount of weight loss.

(Geoffrey) #2

That’s fantastic. I’m glad to see that more medical professionals are starting to see the light.

(Edith) #3

“The state[Alabama] makes it easy and free, and even encourages annual wellness screenings to identify those who might benefit from the program.”

I think it is awesome that the state of Alabama is onboard with providing Virta’s services free of charge to its employees. That shows that the low carb approach really is becoming more accepted.

It is sad that more people don’t participate.

“One possibility is that widespread suspicion of the low-carb diet contributes to the hesitation. More people might participate if more doctors, dietitians, and public health institutions encouraged this approach.”

It’s possible this is an important reason but I really think the real reason is people truly don’t want to give up what they love to eat.

(Robin) #4

I agree. So many people are interested in keto, but when I describe it, they simply can’t imagine life without bread or pasta or sweets, whatever.
I used to feel that way too. Then I experienced life without all that!

(Bob M) #5

It could definitely be that. Which is weird, because there was a time I ate pasta every single day – for years. Yet, I can’t remember the last time I had pasta.

But if you tell people this, they would find it hard to believe.

On the other hand, I had a meal from an Asian restaurant last night, a beef dish. We happened to have a small amount of cauliflower “rice”, and I added that. It definitely helped with getting some of the sauce. It’s something I miss every once in a while.

I also think that some people still perceive keto as being unhealthy. I still see memes about bacon or burgers with bacon and cheese causing heart attacks. Some still believe this.

But hopefully, as Virta and similar companies show people that they can lose weight and go off medications because of keto, things will change.

(KCKO, KCFO) #6

Hopefully his wife got on board too. Fantastic results for sure. Happy news abut Dr. Phinney’s group’s work. .

#7

He actually dropped 265lbs. Very impressive. Keep in mind he also had a coach made him accountable every day and a doctor who supervised his progress. Oddly enough he also found that only one cherry tomato raised his blood sugar.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

There was an executive at Du Pont who was the same. His was one of the cases reported by Dr. Alfred Pennington, the company physician, who prescribed a low-carb, high-fat diet for obese employees. This particular guy was so insulin-resistant that a single extra apple would cause him to put on weight.

(Bob M) #9

Paul, do you think there’s a relationship between the amount of insulin resistance (assuming this could be quantified) and amount of weight loss or perhaps how quickly weight is lost on a keto diet? I’ve often wondered why some people can lose a ton of weight, but others lose a lot, but still remain somewhat heavy.

I haven’t figured this out.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

There doesn’t seem to be, from what I can tell. The factors seem to be that people with a lot of fat can lose quite a bit in a hurry, but those last 20 lbs./10 kg come off much more slowly than the first 200/100 for everyone, including the fast losers.

Then there’s the question of hormones, so women often have trouble getting started with fat loss, needing a month or two for their hormones to re-regulate themselves. Insulin interferes with the conversion of cholesterol into testosterone (and a cholesterol-lowering diet only hinders the process even more), and the conversion of testostrone into progesterone. The latter is why PCOS is one of the main symptoms of insulin-resistance in women, and why women tend to grow unwanted hair when they have PCOS. The former is why the equivalent sign of instulin-resistance in men is impotence. In fact, Bikman says that impotence is an early-warning sign of the development of metabolic syndrome. And remember also that Bikman calls “insulin-resistance” synonymous with “hyperinsulinaemia.” He says they are the same condition.

Another factor, which can appear sex-related, is quantity of food in the diet. Women seem to be more indoctrinated than men about counting calories and the “calories in, calories out” mindset. They tend to have more trouble eating enough and trouble with watching the scale. I notice that some of our women newbies are so focussed on the scale that they ignore the fact that they are losing fat, even while the scale is not budging or even going up. Men, on the whole, don’t seem to fall prey to that nearly as much, though I recall a couple of new men who were caught up in that thinking. But quite a few members have testified to the fact that their fat loss didn’t start until they started eating an adequate amount of food.

Dr. Phinney also sometimes mentions a reasearch subject who only lost half the weight that the other participants had and was furious about it. Dr. Phinney was able to get her a DEXA scan, and it turned out that she had lost just as much fat as the other women, but she she had also put on enough lean mass on a well-formulated ketogenic diet eaten to satiety, that is was enough to make her think she’d lost half the amount of fat that she had actually lost. So much for paying too much attention to the scale! Dr. Phinney’s impression was that before the experiment, the woman had been stinting on food, so her body took advantage of the abundant diet to put on some muscle and make her bones denser.

The only factor where I can see the degree of insulin-resistance causing a problem with fat loss comes when someone who is severly resistant doesn’t get into ketosis at 20 g of carbs a day. But I suspect that when that person finds the carb limit that allows insulin to drop sufficiently, then the rate of fat loss is whatever it would have been if that person weren’t so resistant to insulin.

Visceral fat might be a factor, since it is the first fat to be dealt with, once insulin drops. Lustig et al. showed that liver fat can be cleared quite quickly, simply by removing sucrose and fructose from the diet (this works in children; an adult who drinks would probably have to cut back on or eliminate the drinking, as well). I suspect that someone with a lot of visceral fat might appear to be losing faster than someone with less visceral fat.

Sorry to ramble like this. Remember not to get me started, next time, lol! The tl:dr is no, I can’t discern much of a connexion between insulin-resistance and the rate of fat loss, apart from some of the thoughts above, which I don’t believe are that important.