Weight loss as a goal getting lost?

(Jen) #28

I hope I’m not coming across as critical in anyway because that’s not my intent. I guess I get concerned about the perception of people feeling that since their biomarkers say they are healthy that excess fat is not a concern. Now obviously it depends on how much excess fat we are talking about. Right now I probably have an extra 50 lbs I could do without, if I was hospitalized would it slow me down and impede my recovery? At my age probably not. But in 20-25 years it’s very possible. Just throwing this out there for discussion.

(back and doublin' down) #29

I didn’t think so ~ and the motivations/reasons/goals vary as much as the variations in how we choose to follow the basic keto plan.

My initial goal was absolutely weight loss. The NSVs have piled up and added to the rewiring of my brain to think of this as a lifestyle and choice, not a restrictive diet that has an expiration date. Our brains CAN CHANGE, and as I’ve adapted (fat and otherwise), my senses respond differently. Now when I see donuts, I see a pile of sugar that would make me feel bad and cause my knees to start hurting again.

And yes, I do think my weight loss is hand in hand with repairing my metabolism, healing my gut, fueling my brain, supporting healthier hair and nails, complexion improvements. Hopefully, by doing all this healing, I’ll avoid hospital stays. But if I do end up there, my body will be better prepared to heal.

(Jen) #30

@Paendora I think that’s pretty much how I feel as well, I started this woe for weight loss and stayed with it because of all the other great benefits

(cheryl) #31

does your body think you are at optimal weight ?

(Bob M) #32

Good question. The answer to that I think is complex. I used to weigh about 165 (US pounds), but was much more muscular than I am now. I now weigh about 200 and that has proven to be quite a barrier.

I find it odd that some people lose weight very quickly and some don’t. Some get to their previous “idea” weight and some don’t. I have a person in my office that lost more weight (low carb) in 6 months than I lost in three years.

I personally believe it has to do with age and how metabolically messed up you are. Ted Naiman (https://burnfatnotsugar.com/About.html) was never fat and was able to get to a well built body. Someone like me, however, I gained well over 100 pounds. I’ve lost a lot of that, but whatever I did to my body causes it to resist getting under a certain weight. Others might gain as much or more weight, yet be less metabolically messed up and can therefore lose weight quicker and get lower. I find it more difficult (as does Jimmy Moore, but he’s really metabolically screwed up).

I’m slowing going in the right direction, but it’s slow. Any any setback for me takes me a while to overcome. For instance, I went on vacation and gained 7 pounds in 1 week, and that was being very good the vast majority of time and “exercising” a lot. (I had some ice cream and pizza.) It will take me a month to lose that. My body wants to gain but does not want to lose.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

Are you talking specifically about weight, as measured by the scale, or about excess fat accumulation? My actual weight has been stable for some time, but I notice fat disappearing, which makes me wonder if I’m not putting on some muscle mass to compensate.

While I appreciate your point, I don’t notice a lot of newcomers to the forums talking about their metabolic state, nearly all the questions are about why they’re not losing weight. (I do try to take a look at all the new threads that get started.)

It is a balance, however. I started this new way of eating primarily to stave off diabetes (I am a sugar addict with lots of metabolic disease in the family), yet I have found the weight loss so entrancing that I occasionally have to remind myself that, even though I am still fat, I am no longer pre-diabetic, and that’s a big thing. It helps, of course, that I have lost enough fat to be able to perform many daily tasks again without difficulty.

There is certainly nothing wrong with eating a ketogenic diet to lose fat. I consider it part of the balance, however, to remember that obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are all caused by insulin resistance, and all are healed by a ketogenic diet. I don’t think that weight loss is getting lost in the shuffle if someone who’s weight loss stalls stops to remember and take comfort in all the other forms of metabolic healing taking place along with the decrease in obesity.

As happy as I am with my completely normal blood work, I would still like to lose another forty or fifty pounds. Of course I also want my hair to start growing in blond and to gain three inches of height, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get everything I want from keto, lol!

#34

I agree with you, @PaulL. I started keto to try and reverse my T2DM, and 8 weeks in, I have cut my daily insulin dose by 2/3’s, and my glipizide dose in 1/2. I’ve also gotten rid of 1 of my BP meds. And I’ve lost 23+ lbs. But the things that matter the most to me are the reduction in BS with the reduction in meds, the reduction in BP with the reduction of meds, and especially the increased energy I now have. Losing weight does help, and certainly long term I want to lose a lot more weight, but reversing my disease process is first and foremost.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #35

I have also seen posts by people concerned that if they start a ketogenic diet for reasons other than weight loss, they might end up underweight, because they have no excess fat to lose. It’s worth bearing in mind that ketosis is about normalizing our weight, not about losing per se. Or course, part of it is that our perception is skewed by the fact that such a high percentage of the population is obese, so we tend to think of normalization and loss as being the same thing.

We’ve also been told so long and so often that obesity causes diabetes, that the idea that they are both symptoms of the same underlying metabolic disregulation can come as a blinding surprise. It was Dr. Attia’s TED talk that did that for me; Dr. Lustig’s lecture on the harmfulness of sugar did the rest. I still find Dr. Lustig’s slide, in which he shows the percentages of the population that are obese but healthy, obese and sick, sick but thin, and thin and healthy, a revelation every time I re-watch the lecture. The idea that you can be obese but metabolically healthy, or thin and metabolically ill, is just so contrary to what we’ve been taught, that I’m still absorbing it on the emotional level.

(Roy D Rushing Jr ) #36

Perhaps it’s just presumed that everyone knows that a ketogenic diet will help you lose weight. It’s reached a level of “market saturation” in that respect that allows that to be a pretty safe bet. That doesn’t do much to dispel the notion that keto is unhealthy though, which is still pretty prevalent if the anecdotal opinions of the people I’ve talked to are any indication. There’s and underlying assumption that since keto does cause weight loss, that can explain it’s popularity even while it is simultaneously an unhealthy diet. It is indeed true that people have historically been more than willing to sacrifice their actual health for the appearance of health. Focusing instead on the fact that it is metabolically beneficial and healthy might be intended to start correcting that mistaken belief.

(Sandra ) #37

I am a diabetic in waiting. My mom had it, 4 of my siblings have T2D. But when I was at my heaviest, 300 lbs, I’m sure I was fully diabetic. But then I discovered low carb high protein diet, and peeled off 80 lbs in a few months. It was already too late to undo the effects of a massive stroke entirely, and I set up for a series of heart attacks. (Did I mention I don’t doctors and medicines and despise hospitals? Seen too many of them.) Then I discovered a keto-ish version of paleo eating, that, along with intermittent fasting, has been nibbling away at any slight increases over the last 2 decades. Do I want/need to lose weight? Yes. It is my primary goal, with side benefits. Yesterday my new doc cut my B/P meds in half . Hopefully I’ll be more alert in coming weeks, move a tiny bit more, and lose another hardwon 2-3 lbs. My mobility is a real concern , and a broken ankle a year ago didn’t help. For me, exercise is out of the question. But I am happy to take it slow and easy, since the direction is aiming for better health.

#38

Weight loss is my only goal and yet I’ve been on keto almost 6 months without losing any weight (lost a few, then gained it back). It’s pretty depressing when I know most of my life I maintained my current weight on a steady diet of cookies, chocolates, and other carbs. So why am I even on keto? Maybe I shouldn’t even be. I guess two reasons: 1) my belief that if and when I eventually lose weight, it will be easier to keep it off, and 2) seems like sugar is bad for you even if you don’t have diabetes. It would probably just be a matter of time before my diet caught up with me.

#39
(Roy D Rushing Jr ) #40

I maintained slightly less than my current weight for about 2 years doing IIFYM style calorie counting, which did allow for some limited access to cookies, chocolates, etc. It got hard though. My weight and my hunger level slowly crept up during that period until finally I knew I was headed for the same place I always end up at the tail end of a fitness streak.

I’ve been obese at least 3 times in my life, with periods of being in great shape in between due to simple exercise and caloric restriction. It never lasts though. Eventually there always comes a time when my willpower fails more than it holds and I just quit counting calories because I feel like I’m starving all the time even while I’m gaining weight. Keto has definitely broken that cycle. I’m not losing any weight, but I’m not hungry and I’m not gaining. I’m even seeing signs of body recomposition as I appear to be gaining muscle while remaining the same weight. If I’m going to end up at my current weight, but solid muscle, that sounds like as good a resolution to me as any.

Anyway, I guess what I’m getting at is that there can be plenty of reasons to pursue this WOE that don’t include the numbers going down on the scale. I mean, I feel like I’m free from a weight rollercoaster I’ve been on for my whole life. That’s worth a ton to me.

#41

Yeah I agree…and also, I think, although I may be fat-adapted, I’m still learning about keto and what works for me. For example I finally figured out recently that I need to eat 3 meals a day instead of literally “whenever I feel like it.” 6 months is a long time to try something that may or may not work for me, but I’m confident it will eventually work. If another 6 months from now, I’m still at the same weight, then I may seriously consider going back to my cookies and chocolate :frowning:

To relate this back to the OP…it may not necessarily be about fixing particular diseases, but fixing the mental things that made us gain weight in the first place. That can take time.

(Lane) #42

My goal is absolutely weight loss, and when I hear about people saying we should throw our scales out or not weight ourselves, it infuriates me a little.

I was diagnosed with fatty liver disease recently. I was originally told I had “a bit of a fatty liver” by a doctor a few years ago who made it sound like no big deal. She didn’t seem worried, so I didn’t worry. Then I stopped seeing her because I realized she was dropping the ball with my care across the board, for all sorts of little things. My gyn sent me for an ultrasound and the results came back as FLD and she sent me to a specialist and I have developed NASH. There is no cure for NASH. The only thing that can help is losing weight.

So you bet your sweet ass I get on the scale every morning and make sure I am headed in the right direction. Also, I have a fitbit scale and I have over five years of my weight data to view, so that’s a super helpful tool that I am taking advantage of.

(Marc Hirsch Md) #43

I feel the same way, totally. I stopped losing weight and just concentrated on ketosis. If I eat every day in a limited few hour window I can maintain my weight. So I have to throw in a few 3day fasts to lower my set weight.

#44

Those of us who say that (and I’m one of them) are not arguing that fat loss isn’t important, just that the scale isn’t a great tool. After reading a year plus of posts on here, I just find that when folks use scale weight as a proxy for health or fat loss, they often get very confused and frustrated. Sometimes fat loss and weight loss track together, but often they don’t.

Tl;dr: fat loss is often very important, and scales aren’t great at measuring fat loss

(Edited for typos…)

(Lane) #45

I’m pretty sure that weight matters, overall. On your joints, on your heart, etc. Whether it’s fat or muscle or you’re carrying a bag of bowling balls, it’s going to have an impact.

We have to have some metric for measuring goals, and I think the scale is an important one.

#46

It’s not that weight doesn’t matter at all; it’s just a relatively poor metric for improvement if your goal is fat loss (especially for women, and especially as we get older).
Dexa scans are great, but measurements - especially if done in many different areas - are a cheap and accurate way to track body changes, and they will fat loss much more accurately than the scale does.

(Jane) #47

I understand your aggravation but nobody ever tells someone happy with their rate of weight loss to “ditch the scales”.

I’ve only seen that said to someone stalled out and wanting to give up.

If taking measurements gives them encouragement and helps keep the eating keto to get over their stall then it is good advice. If it doesn’t apply to you please don’t take it personally!