Found this interesting study while looking for something else. It turns out that one of the best observations that can predict weight loss success is RQ, if it’s below 0.72 (ie: you are a fat burner) then you are statistically more likely to keep the weight off than if it’s above 0.75. For reference an RQ of 1.0 indicates you are burning glucose, and an RQ of 0.85 indicates you are burning protein.
So my first thought was “That’s tautological - Fat burners burn fat”.
But most people eating a mixed diet switch from fat burning to glucose burning, and as they become more deranged they end up burning more glucose and storing fat. The observation in non keto dieters could just be a reverse causation, that is people who eat a mixed diet who have a low RQ are by definition more metabolically flexible. So they may just be observing that people who are not metabolically deranged are more likely to keep the weight off.
But the other thing that occurred to me is that a ketogenic diet is a bully that forces us to occupy that lower RQ range. Even those with a metabolic derangement that pushes them inexorably towards an RQ of 1.0, appear to be protected on a ketogenic diet.
So even if you aren’t burning body fat at this particular moment, the fact that you are burning fat is a good thing for your metabolism.
The first 5-6 months I lost weight steadily and easily doing keto and a bit of IF. Then I hit the buffers. Lots of cream, nuts, keto treats etc. But… I did not gain weight. I wandered within a range of a few pounds.
More snacking means more time at the top of the range, less snacking means more time at the bottom of the range. Less snacking and more diligent IF’ing plus cream-and-nuts moderation means the range inches downwards.
OK, I haven’t gone all out to try it… but it does seem to be really really difficult to gain body fat while eating keto. Even when eating too much keto.
It’s quite difficult to make people put on more than 25% of their body weight unless you give insulin resistant people sugar or starch and then you can get them to gain 30-40-50% of their body weight.
One of the famous overfeeding experimenters Ethan Sims’ first human experiment in the 60s was to feed 4 lean University of Vermont students to cause them to gain 25% of their body weight. The experiment failed as they were unable to gain more than 12%. And they were eating up to 6000 kCal/day.
His next human experiment was to force feed prisoners and one guy they were feeding over 10,000 kCal/day and he was unable to get over 18%.
Eventually Sims would say that it was his considered opinion that gaining weight was a task that required full time dedication.
The fact that you lose your hunger when you get too much food, and you seem to be able to stay around that weight indicates that you may be at the weight that your body chooses for maximum survival when it’s not being deranged by sugar or starch.
Funny, isn’t it? I never wanted to gain weight. I certainly never tried to gain weight. I was just unable to stop myself eating sugary and starchy foods.
I do hope that’s not true, because I would like to shift a lot more. However… if it is, it is.
One can speculate about what my settled weight would have been if I’d found keto nearly 40 years ago when I first started dieting. I was a mere 190lb then, compared to my current 225 and all-time high of 308.
The longer we produce lower levels of insulin, the more insulin sensitive we can become, and the less we produce.
We are also fighting a natural decrease in insulin sensitivity that happens as we age.
So it’s hard to predict where on this continuum any of us will land. I’m still overweight, but I’m happy with where I landed as that extra body fat gives me more flexibilty to fast longer, and performance endurance exercise.
Yep. Most universities that study human movement will usually have a setup that can be booked commercially. I have yet to find a lab that I can use to find my ACTUAL RQ, but I suspect it’s down around 0.7 based on what I give my body to burn.
This (Peter Attia’s test rig) is what I want to get my own body tested on to find out my actual fitness level through VO2 Max (as well as my RQ)
