Why do some long-term ketoers still have excess body fat?

obesity
fat
weightloss
#61

I think that’s a good question. Something I wonder about myself from time to time, and we’ve gotten a ton of great answers here.

Bottom line for me: More research needed…

(Ernest) #62

@donut One thing to keep in mind too is that ketogenic diet isn’t really for weight loss. It just so happens that one burns and loses a bunch of fat while on it.
You really have to make changes along the way if you really want to make it work for body composition.
I can give an example of folks that look up these keto calculators, get a number and force feed just to meet the daily caloric goal. Common sense should dictate that if you are NOT hungry then don’t eat. BUT what do they do? Choke down a plate full of food to get to the caloric goal for the day. That extra energy has to go somewhere somehow. So there is much more going internally.
Best approach is to keep it simple, eat when hungry.

(Crow T. Robot) #63

Obviously, we need to keep searching for the truth, but this resonates strongest with my experience and what clinicians seem to report. At the very least, it seems to be something that one should be sure to have tried if having difficulty losing. We might overeat in the beginning, but if we are eating the right food, we should start to feel enough satiety that we should be able to naturally reduce the quantity of food we eat.

I know we’re all afraid of “slowing” our metabolism, but if we are fat adapted and are able to keep our insulin low, then we should be able to freely access our body fat stores without slowing metabolism.

#64

How well “eat when hungry” works depends on how appropeiate a person’s satiety level is and other behavioral and emotional issues. For example, I could probably lose a few more pounds if I chose to be hungry all the time. This would come back again when the restriction was over, probably with a few extra pounds. So I’m supposed to be hungry every day for the rest of my life? I don’t see an up side.

I know I feel my best cognitively, emotionally, and physically at the point I’m at. Any further weight loss will happen if it happens, and I don’t expect to weigh what I did in high school given that I’m post-menopausal now.

(Crow T. Robot) #65

I don’t understand, sorry. What happened to “eat when hungry”?

#66

Yes, i do. And I’m fine with my current weight. But some people want to push their weight and/or BF% lower by eating to a specific macro or calorie limit for a desired result. I don’t see that as sustainable in the long run and it would just make me grumpy and tired.

(Jennie) #67

@Daisy - You’ve nailed it. I will echo your sentiment. While the question itself may be valid it quickly derailed into some pretty hurtful comments that irritate me.

Does others’ progress influence your own? Do their paths have any bearing on yours? No. Do your thing and be kind to others.

FFS

(Crow T. Robot) #68

Cool, that’s what I’m trying to encourage. I was just taking it from the other side: don’t eat more than you are hungry for, just to hit an arbitrary macro number. I think if somebody is going to try to enable their ‘satiety signals’, they have to learn to listen to the Stop signal just as much as the Go signal.

#69

Unexplained to whom? And who deserves such an explanation? What boundaries does anyone have to compromise because of judgement of the imperfect audience? What trauma or acute stress has to be paraded out for all to examine and dissect? Jeez already…

#70

Totes. It is why I think it is great to stop tracking once you have got your carbs and protein down pat without measuring - at least for a while. That way you tune into your body’s signals rather than working to totals on your tracking app.

(Dustin Ewers) #71

I’ll chip in a personal story here. I started doing keto over a year ago. I shredded 40 pounds within a few months and dropped several clothing sizes. My progress pretty much plateaued at that point and I’ve been hovering around the same weight ever since. While 40 pounds is nice, I should really repeat that feat about three more times.

I could point to metabolism as a reason that I stalled out. I could point to being metabolically deranged, which is true, but the real reason I’m not 100lb lighter is because I’ve prioritized other things in my life over losing weight. While I’ve stuck with keto, I’ve definitely spent more time in “lazy keto” mode. Eating too much and not spending enough time experimenting to figure out what works for me. Lazy keto gives me the energy and mental clarity I need, but not the weight loss.

I put things like hanging out with my kid, speaking at conferences, and buying a house over losing weight. No regrets on all of those fronts. Weight loss is climbing back to the top of my priority list, but that hasn’t been the case for most of the last year.

Another confounder is stress. People who have high stress tend not to be able to lose weight. Stress cranks up cortisol, which encourages fat storage.

(Ernest) #72

@carolT LOL! You won’t be hungry if you eat. That’s what I’m saying. When hungry…eat.
Don’t eat if you are not hungry. Some folks are just eating to meet their “caloric number” for the day.

#73

The responses here have been very interesting, thanks to everyone for contributing. I’m a bit shocked that some were offended but I’ll do my best to understand that point of view going forward. I think asking why someone who is a foremost expert on keto and fasting is still obese is a fair question, not to criticize that person but the see if there is something we are all overlooking. That was my take anyway.

The more I read these forums the more similarities I see. I think the whole repitition of N=1 is excessive and creates confusion where maybe there shouldn’t be any. Sure we all have little differences that will impact our health differently but for the most part we have a hell of a lot more in common than not.

Since I’m new here I will say from an outside perspective the whole “don’t be judgemental” crowd are coming off as by far the most judgemental ones.

#74

It’s something I’ve seen and heard about several places. I believe he even covered it in “The Salt Fix” which is a great book if you have time. Take a look at this information and then maybe you can go down the rabbit hole and get as scientific as you want. Also, I remember Carl touching on this topic a few episodes back when he was talking about why people do cardio towards the end of a fast.

(Andrew Anderson) #75

N=1 is fair.
The standard American diet says n= 309,000,000
That has proved ineffective. I spent 36 years collecting fat. I started Keto in January and have had great success. I can’t expect that 36 years will be remedied quickly. My sugar is under control and I am getting healthier everyday. I have lost weight, and I have lost fat. I may never be “skinny” but damn it I will be healthier. Social expectations are arbitrary and shallow. My expectations are a longer, healthier, and happy life. Keto helps me meet those expectations. I may always carry fat on my body but I can live with it given my current state of being.

#76

@tdseest omg man, what do you do for a living that so many people are dying around you all the time? Are you part of the cast of gray’s anatomy or something? I would suggest you move every couple of years or so, so you don’t get blamed for the deaths of all them “healthy skinny” folk, you know, just in case :wink:

(Doug) #77

I think this is a great thread - it deals with our real-world experiences and expectations/desires. Yes, we are all individuals, but there will often be commonality in experience and in what goes on inside us. It’s fascinating to me, and a great pleasure to read the words of others who contemplate and enjoy talking about it. One fairly common thread is the need for patience and how patience may develop on its own, while on a ketogenic diet - the benefits other than weight loss can be mighty compelling.

(What The Fast?!) #78

Yes, this. I don’t think the OP is judging, I think they’re asking a fair question…if someone is an expert, but doesn’t embody (pun intended) the desired results, it’s fair to ask not only why and how, but is this going to happen to me?

Now…“desired results” may be a subjective term here. If desired results are good blood results and reversed T2D, and this guy has them, then fantastic! (I have no idea if he does or not, I mainly follow the dudes and Fung, with recent exploration into women-specific keto.) But, I think we can all agree that keto is also known for weight loss. So, if someone has been keto a long time and the weight ends up coming back - just like other diets - one has to wonder…why? It’s not about judging or demonizing a specific person, but more about…wait, if I follow this method as recommended by this expert, will I in turn have similar results? Is this person practicing what he preaches and getting these results? Or, is something else going on? If he’s secretly eating cakes and and cookies and that’s why the weight came back, I think everyone would be relieved…but if the advice I’m following will lead me down the path to weight gain, I want to know.

We often point to people like Biggest Loser contestants, who lost massive amounts of weight but gain it all back - and then we say, whoa whoa - that method is broken, clearly calorie restriction is not the answer. That’s all this conversation is about…will this method eventually fail us, as so many diets have done in the past. There are not many people who have been keto for 10+ years, so these results are some of the few that we can point to for data. And I don’t know about everyone else…but I really like data.

Again, none of this is meant to offend. On the contrary, let’s take the emotion and judgment out of it and look at it from a scientific point of view.

(Richard Morris) #79

I’ve taken metformin since becoming type 2 diabetic in 2013 (after flirting with pre-diabetic levels for almost a decade). I became non-diabetic after 6 months of ketogenic dieting in November of 2014 but I continued to take metformin, Last year I tried going off metformin because to make the case that “I have reversed my Diabetes” I really wanted to show that I could maintain good glucose control while NOT taking any medication (of course ketogenic the whole way).

image.png673×581 15.6 KB

As you can see my glucose control remained ideal, but my insulin went backwards. If you want my analysis of that result, if I was off metformin and remaining ketogenic I could still be a hard loser (insulin > 13 = inhibited access to body fat for energy) and likely after a decade of increasing basal insulin I could become Diabetic again even on a ketogenic diet.

So for me (and also for prof Noakes) metformin helps us bend the needle just a little more towards getting healthier.

I’m 52, I don’t much care about losing weight personally, I care about losing toes.

Once we have disassociated obesity with the diseases that always travel with it (Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, Hypertension) then all that remains is an aesthetic opinion - that person is too fat. You really can’t tell a person’s health from their BF% if their glucose control is good, their Coronary arteries are not accreting calcium, they are normotensive. You can infer that those diagnostic markers must be all fucked up because they usually are in obese people, but would still be a prejudice and likely an incorrect one in ketogenic people.

I don’t think that is actually correct, they would have been fatter in Summer, but even in Winter they would have had to have had adequate body fat. Anatomically modern humans have been through 3 or 4 major ice ages - a paleolithic hunter in an ice age would have had to have had adequate body fat to survive days without food and still hunt. We can use 31.5 kCal/lb/day. A human hunter conserving their energy might use roughly 2,000 kCal/day so that would have required roughly 64lbs of body fat.

Recent paleolithic people (like indiginous Australians - the last of which to have been first contacted happened in the 1980s - so in recent living memory) ate seeds, insects and fruits continuously between hunts - so they were able to be leaner because they had more resources at hand.

But they weren’t as lean as you see them often portrayed in movies

Finally with respect to Jimmy, the men in his family die young of heart failure. He buried his brother Kevin who died at 39 from heart failure (ie: complications from diabetes). He has done a remarkable job to avoid the box his genetics was fitting him up for.

http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/rip-kevin-lee-moore-1967-2008/2814

Most importantly Jimmy was the primary patient voice for many years in this community, and he has personally done a lot of the hard work driving this bus that we are all on now. Hundreds of thousands of people have reversed their type 2 diabetes thanks to his advocacy. I don’t think he personally gives a damn about a few vegan trolls.

I don’t know what his personal health status is, and I wouldn’t care to extrapolate from his apparent appearance. I have heard his public concerns are that his workload is putting stress upon his health. I’m sorry that Jimmy had to pull out of our Ketofest event, but I’m glad that he is making time to focus on his health.

(Cheryl Meyers) #80

That’s the train map for Tokyo! : http://i.imgur.com/Tn94dqg.gif
(I saw a presentation online somewhere that made the same comparison.)