I experimented with reducing my daily fat intake to 40% ish and increased my daily protein intake to 60% ish, oposite of what I used to do when getting fat-adapted.
Result:
Rapid weight loss of body fat as in extremely more leanness and drastically reduced appetite.
I will stick with this ratio going further and eat fat when wanting more energy or gain more body fat.
This is not expected.
Any thoughts? I might have been overdoing fat as in calories because now I am not hungry anymore.
I think you might be correct. For me, protein is filling, but fat is not. For instance, after eating some lean pork chops, I get to the point where I physically cannot eat anymore. But I could easily add a dollop of butter or mayo or a fat bomb with no problems. (This assumes some minimum calories, as I can still be hungry eating more protein if I don’t eat enough calories.)
When you say you are eating fat/protein in a 40/60 ratio, are you talking about percentages by weight or by calories?
Since fat has more than double the calories as protein, weight loss is not surprising. Your caloric intake has gone down, hence the need to burn more body fat. The added satiety that more protein is giving you certainly helps.
I’m just now listen to 2ketodudes podcast episode 74, with Dr Jeffry Gerber. He said that, once, fat adapted, this can be a formula that works for weightloss. I believe he was referring to another researcher or doctor who formulated a low carb/low fat diet once the individual was fat adapted. In this way, rather than starvation, the individual burns their own fat stores. I believe I’m retelling it fairly accurately, though probably better to take a listen yourself.
Of course the high fat keto doctrine applies only until you’re adapted. It’s not even necessary initially, 60% fat works fine. Lower fat afterwards is good, as long as around the 50% level and carbs are kept very low.
I love it when gurus discover things that have been known for decades.
For most people that research Keto, they will understand that when you become fat adapted, you are SUPPOSED to reduce the amount of dietary fat, to let the fuel come from your body fat. I actually really struggle to understand why people do not know this.
What is the point of training our body to eat it’s body fat, if we continue to eat high fat?
Mindboggling.
It’s not really all that clear tbh. And it’s not really intuitive if one is coming from an eat less, move more background. And the phrase, “eat to satiety” doesn’t imply any active reducing of fat. It wasn’t until I came to this forum and started to listen to 2kd that this started coming into focus. And it wasn’t until I recently crossed the fat adaptation threshold that I’m really starting to understand how it works. Everyone starts somewhere and the concept of switching to fat burning is new for most. Even with research, it’s a lot to take in and manage until you experience it.
My experience is that “eat to satiety” makes the whole process automatic. In the context of a low-carbohydrate diet, if I eat to satiety, my body tells me automatically how many calories to consume. When I have excess fat to metabolize, my appetite goes away sooner; if I need to get all my energy needs from my food, my hunger lasts a bit longer.
I find that the best way to manipulate my body is through my food choices, not by giving or withholding calories. The problem with the energy-expenditure hypothesis is that if you give your body too much, it can’t explain why it all goes to fat, and not to muscle or bone, and if you don’t give your body enough, why the difference is made up from fat rather than from muscle and bone. The hormonal hypothesis does a much better job of explaining fuel-partitioning and why weight loss happens—or doesn’t, as the case may be—in my book.
My satiety meter was/is broken. So before keto, I didn’t often eat much because I didn’t really much feel hungry, but would sometimes have binge cycles because I didn’t eat much. Bingeing is ostensibly not paying attention to satiety signals.
Eating to satiety is, of course, great if you know what that means or feels like. I kept reading “eat to satiety” and don’t count calories. That didn’t mean anything to me. And throw in the week before menses, it really doesn’t mean much. When I started keto, I was seriously undereating and was feeling terrible (electrolytes addressed) because I was following eat when hungry. I wasn’t hungry, but getting weaker because I hadn’t yet begun to be fat adapted ( I came to understand). For me, it’s practice to understand hunger and satiety. But being new to keto, and given past appetite disregulation, it’s taken some time. Maybe it’s just me. But then again, I do tend to be wired differently in many ways.
I’ll give you that. It’s intensive research to get to the point of understanding.
When our fat cells start to get full, they secrete a hormone, called leptin, that signals the hypothalamus in our brain that we don’t need to eat for a while, because we have enough energy in storage. When a high carbohydrate intake has elevated our insulin level, however, the insulin blocks the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus, and we can no longer experience satiety. Fortunately, lowering insulin helps the hypothalamus to regain its sensitivity to leptin, and our satiety signaling starts working again.
For me, this happened in the middle of a meal during my third or fourth week of eating keto. I was halfway through lunch, when suddenly I stopped being interested in food. For someone on the “see-food” diet, this was very weird. I mean, I still had food on my plate! Nevertheless I had to put it in the fridge for later, because I certainly wasn’t going to be eating any more for a while.
My satiety signaling has only gotten stronger in the year and a half since then.
100% agree. I also came into keto with the instruction to keep fat higher than protein. Which i did. Although initially it resulted in weight drop and better feeling, in a few days i started feeling worse and it was clear that i am piling on pounds. Why?
Two reasons: too much fat and too much sodium.
I always lose weight when i decrese salt to minimum and eliminate sugar/starches. It is always painful transition from eating freely. On keto the transition was not painful at all. It is really so much easier to drop carbs by upping fat. But whenever in the past i would up fat, i would start gaining weight. Period.
I do not believe in unlimited protein, unlimited veggies, unlimited fat. Everything must be limited. Keto helps to train how to limit consumption because it delivers satiety. When satiety is re-introduced, we feel less stressed and that helps tremendously. Plus inflammation is gone, so we feel great almost immediately. However now i know: it is time to limit fat consumption and salt intake. Otherwise i will become the size of the house