Simple diagram that demonstrates weight loss


#21

I think we might be talking about different diagrams. I mentioned the “fat is a lever” diagram and I think Simon was referring to that. I could be wrong.


(Simon Saunders) #22

I do endorse fasting and keto it also works very well, hence why I document it as an approach as it’s the most powerful hammer in a variety of disease states, and has work wonders for my wife’s PCOS, hyperinsulimea and resolving food intolerance. The main point I want to highlight it the other approach does also work well but I think many don’t put it in context and also the people promoting the fat as a leaver are naturally thin people which doesn’t help this tool in the tool box. Many I know are looking for an all an app in one solution but it’s not as clear cut as that (back to the everyone is different approach)

I liked fasting but personally I don’t like longer than 4 days as some of my chronic health conditions return, but hey that’s me.

In the end it’s all the fun of a personalised approach, I seen pros and cons personally on my family and I’m a fan of both approaches.


#23

The diagram has “weight loss journey”. Which reinforces @Daisy 's point.


#24

I wonder whoever said that! LOL. Thanks for straightening me out


#25

It’s a great diagram @Fiorella - I love it. In fact I described it the other day when discussing fasting with a friend. Her husband is talking about jumping straight into 5 day fasts as a carb burner and a T1D to boot! I am trying to a) get him in a place where fasting will not be so painful (i.e. keto!) and then building up not going straight in, especially when you are in a fragile place to start with - T1, heart problems, etc. What can you do? Some people get an idea in their heads and are determined that it is the answer. Worries me.


(Richard Morris) #26

I don’t have it to hand. But the theory goes something like this - if we fix carbs at a minimum, and protein at an adequate supply, then the only caloric source to change to lower body fat is dietary fat, So reduce that and you must lose weight.

It’s a simplistic model, which is why it is favored by personal trainers, dietitians and GPs.

It’s just a restatement of Energy stored = Calories in minus Calories out using ketogenic macros.

Firstly it’s a furphy that we have conscious control over all calories in, and doubly so that we control all calories out, and it assumes that we can draw down an unlimited amount of body fat.

Calories in

Plenty of things conspire to make it impossible to accurately account for how many calories you are taking in.

  • We all have a limit of how much of any nutrient we can get across our gut walls into circulation
  • Fat especially so - if you have ever had floating stools it’s a good chance they were full of fat you ate and couldn’t digest
  • Nutrient panels are not always accurate
  • food batches are not always consistent
  • not everyone measures every food portion to the level that @DaveKeto does (the gold standard)
  • Different cooking processes reproduce different nutrient bio-availability

Calories out

Plenty of things conspire to make it impossible to accurately account for how many calories you are expending

  • Most of the energy you use today will be moving Na ions out of cells and K ions in - nothing to do with treadmills
  • You will use more energy on cold days and less on warm days - also not treadmill related
  • Energy used for processes optional to immediate survival (like warming or hair growth, or 1000s of other processes) will be budgeted based on energy availability - which is REDUCED when you hop on a treadmill
  • If you work out for about 30 mins you’ll burn around 300 kCal, but it could bve 400 or 200 depending on factors beyond your ability to measure,
  • Your body will likely burn through 10x that today if you just sit on a couch all day

None of these are really inputs into the equation (except the decision to hop on a treadmill for 30 mins instead of riding the couch), they are mostly outputs of a homeostatic equation that is driven by anticipated energy availability - and that is a factor of how much energy we are eating plus the amount we can draw from storage minus the amount we MUST use to stay alive

The formula would be better represented as

Energy Available = Energy intake + Storage Draw Down - Obligate Consumption

Stored Energy

We’ve spoken before about body fat being a Massive savings account of 10s of thousands of kCal, even on lean people … but you can’t draw that all out at once. There is a limit of 31.5 kCal/day for each lb of body fat. So if you have 10 lbs of body fat, you can draw down only 315 kCals per day, even though in theory you have 35,000 kCal of energy stored in that 10lbs of body fat (yes I know it’s not exactly 3,500 kCal/lb … but for the same of this demo that’s what I’m going with).

And that assumes there is no OTHER reason why you have limited access to energy from body fat. If you produce more than about 13 mIU/ml (around 100 pmol/L) of insulin then healthy fat cells will prevent you accessing stored energy. If your fasted insulin is over 13 mIU/ml then you won’t be further drawing down body fat at a fast rate.

Law of thermodynamics

So if you reduce calories in your diet, and do a little more exercise then the law of thermodynamics can only be satisfied if you lose weight, right?

Not exactly.

Look at this study done by Dr Stephen Phinney

http://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/0026-0495(88)90011-X/abstract

He locked 12 overweight (moderatly high basal insulin secreting) patients in a Metabolic ward for 4-5 weeks, where every single calorie they ate and expended could be measured. The participants were fed 720 kCal/day with enough protein to maintain muscle mass.

  • The control group were completely sedentary for the entire time
  • The intervention group performed 27 hours of supervised Cardio

Common sense would tell you that the intervention group burned more Calories and ate the same amount so they should have lost more weight. Right?

Results
Controversially, both groups lost a similar amount of weight in 4 weeks, 6.5kg for the exercisers, 6.9kg for the couch potatoes.

What actually happened is the exercisers who worked out for up to 2 hours on a treadmill, ended up using LESS energy for the remaining 22 hours of the day. Their metabolic rate was 17% lower than the control group.


Weight Loss = Calories in - Calories out + Magic

What actually happens is if you have low secretion of insulin (either because of your diet, or you are insulin sensitive) then you will supplement the differential from stored energy up to the theoretical maximum (31.5 kCal/lb/day).

But if you have high basal insulin (or have unwisely chosen a diet that provokes a high bolus insulin) so access to stored energy is blockaded, or you have demanded more energy from body fat that it is able to supply, now your body has a budgetary crisis to deal with.

It will;

  • Reduce your basal metabolic rate by reducing consumption from processes optional to survival, like heating, hair production, etc.
  • Increase hunger signalling
  • Increase lethargy
  • Burn amino acids (ie: draw down lean body mass)

There will always be people who effectively lose weight by restricting calories in, and increasing calories out. As long as they have low basal insulin, keep to a diet that restricts insulin secretion, and stay below the theoretical threshold that body fat can deliver energy … that will always work for them. They may not be aware of those conditions.

Unfortunately they will be convinced that what they did will work for everyone else too.

Dietary fat isn’t a lever, it’s a piece of string attached to a lever that you can pull and the lever will move but if you push against the piece of string nothing will happen until you get a counterweight to drag the lever down – in weight loss that is a low basal insulin.


Nathan's Keto Journey To Race Weight
(Steve) #27

A furphy is Australian slang for an erroneous or improbable story that is claimed to be factual.

Figured I’d post the definition to save non Australians the trouble :smile:


(Polly Bennett) #28

Say what?!? What is a salt water fast???


(Michael Wallace Ellwood) #29

Great explanation Richard. Thank you. If you have a moment, could you please reference when/where that was established? (Sorry, you may well have written about it on the blog, but if you could give some pointers, it sounds like a great piece of science to be able to quote to doubters.
(I’m not querying the precise number by the way, but just want to know:

  1. How it was determined that there was such a limit
  2. and:

How one would go about determining what that limit is.

Thank you in advance.

Yeah…skinny bastards too, probably. I’ve met people like that …


(Tom) #30

I believe he means a fast in which a person makes sure they’re drinking enough water and getting enough electrolytes.


(Richard Morris) #31

They just used data from Ancel Keyes … LOL.

It was his extended starvation studies performed on conscience objectors after World War II. They were mostly young Mennonite and Quakers men fed varying amounts of their regular food - which was likely high carbohydrate if low calorie. Fascinating study, worth reading. One guy hated the deprivation so much that he cut half his hand off with an axe.

Alpert took that data, and then used calculus to come up with a formula that described the limit of fats ability to supply energy, in terms of variables that he was able to plug in values for.

It’s probably only accurate for young men who eat a lot of carbs - but I think the most important thing is it shows that there is a limit to how much energy human fat can release in a day and it’s in the range of 1% of the body fats total energy.


#32

I was wondering. Thanks!


(Karen Mangiacotti) #33

My fingers are always cold, I had no idea that is what it means.


(Dave) #34

May I just add that while I’m flattered to be considered a gold standard in food tracking by @richard , I speculate that I myself have at least a 10-15% error rate with my macros and I don’t actually track all my _micro_nutrients (yet) given the variety of foods I eat that aren’t tracked on chronometer.

My best advice on tracking is to find a degree you can be consistent about and stick with that. Consistency is more important than short burnout stretches that make the diet unfun for you. :smiley:


(Michael Wallace Ellwood) #35

Thank you for the very quick response Richard.

( Ancel Keys? who he? ( just joking, of course…) :slight_smile: )


(Jennifer) #36

@Richard - do you have that in a published doc (on your blog) somewhere? If not do you mind if I copy it out to send to my husband. He is low tech and works best with email… :wink:


(Richard Morris) #37

Sure you can easily share content in KetoChat by clicking on the link icon at the bottom of the post and copying the URL. You can also share it on FaceBook by clicking the FB icon.


(Jessica) #38

This could work animated.
Sisyphus pushing up the rock all day without eating. And then sitting down, leaning against the rock so it doesn’t roll back, taking a break whilst chewing on some bacon. And so on.


(Jennifer) #39

Looks like those are notes from your last podcast. :wink: I just made him listen to it. lol…


#40

re: the Phinney study, both groups were already at a severe deficit. It’d be interesting to see the difference that exercise would make given a more modest deficit. Having more than one variable in a single study seems to make any potential conclusion less reliable.

re: the revised equation, I agree in the inclusion of magic as a yet-to-be-understood variable, but I think in trying to get away from the ‘fat as lever’ blanket recommendation, we run the risk of going too far the other way, and instead of your slightly revised equation, we’ve got people thinking “IF diet = keto THEN weight_loss = magic”. The scorn directed towards ‘eat from your body fat’ is misplaced.