HAHAHA!!!
Good one!
Three weeks in, weight gain, and energy left again
Lc14503
(Laura)
#22
I just reread this whole reply which is so helpful. But about this one quote, are people finding that their bodies are adding some muscle mass on keto even without lifting weights? I have read that muscle mass correlated to longevity. If keto alone causes some of that that effect, that’s another significant benefit!
PaulL
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?)
#23
Apparently it has to do with how elevated insulin on a high-carb diet can trap fat in our fat tissue. Even if we cut calories, that fat is pretty much not accessible for energy, and the body can consume some of its lean mass, under certain circumstances. A well-formulated ketogenic diet reverses a lot of that, because it lowers insulin, allowing stored fat to supply the body’s energy needs, and eating to satiety provides enough protein to restore lean mass.
I had my own experience with this. After I lost my weight (around 80 lbs./36.4 kg), I got a pair of trousers for Christmas. They were a bit too small to wear, but I tried them twelve months later, and they fit fine. Over that twelve-month period, my weight had remained stable, and I did no exercise. So obviously, I must have put on some lean mass while losing enough fat to go down a clothing size.
It’s a frequent enough experience that we often need to advise women to use the fit of their clothing as an indicator of progress, in addition to (or even instead of) the number on their scale. My impression is that there are a number of social factors at work that make women more vulnerable to obsessing about their scale weight than men generally do. The fact that we use “weight” as a euphemism for “fat” doesn’t help, either.