Why eating more is your key to weighing less


(Running from stupidity) #1

TL;DR You need to teach your body to burn a good amount of good food, so eat as much as you should, not to a daily deficit. Then create that deficit on an irregular basis via fasting (i.e. 1MAD, 0MAD, or more.)

This is from a blog post I’ve been writing, and also NOT writing (ADHD brain sucks, mostly), so a question from @TamaRan triggered me into effectively finish it, so thank you. I’m posting it here to get feedback from others on the forum who know a lot more about this than me.

I’ll credit Jason Fung/Megan Ramos (among others) for most of my understanding of this, but any errors involved are mine alone, and I’m mixing in the fat-adaptation bit to explain the early processes of this system. Jason/Megan look at it from the POV of fasting, and the question I’m trying to answer was regarding 1MAD, but as that is fasting, I think it’ll make sense. If not, well, that’s why I put it up here.

This post also assumes that you’re not able to eat the amount of energy you need in one meal. I could do this SO EASILY as a carbage eater, but eating keto? Zero chance. I struggle to get enough in at 2MAD, let alone 1MAD. (We are not discussing maintenance here, that’s a different kettle of oily, oily fish).

Your body looks at the amount of energy you feed it, and diligently works to use that amount. It obviously doesn’t want to burn more than it’s got available, or you’ll die, or less, because why would it not use the fuel available to it? (This is called homeostasis, where the body (brilliantly) balances all the competing demands and supplies to keep things just as they are.)

So you want to teach your body that you’re going to feed it a good amount of food that it can comfortably utilise. It uses it to run your brain, heat your body, do things to food, build proteins-bone-muscles-etc, let you exercise, :poop:, etc.

In the initial stages of keto (adaptation phase), your body wants carbs/glucose. after all, that’s what it’s been using for decades, and it’s the easiest fuel it can use. You are teaching it to not use this, but to use fat as the main fuel source instead. So the last thing you want to do is restrict that fuel. Teach it that there’s an abundant supply, make it realise that it’s all good, it just has to make the switch.

So you keep throwing fat/protein into your (formerly pie, now probably meat) hole until your brain gets the message and your body switches over, at which point, for most people, you’ll discover that your appetite decreases, sometimes dramatically. It took me (and my wife) about eight weeks for this to occur, but it can take a lot longer. Bodies are all different. Principles aren’t.

It’s at this juncture - once fat adaptation has occurred, and your body is used to its new fat fuel and a good amount of it - that 24-36 hour fasts come back (I told you I’d get back to 1MAD stuff). Your body is happy burning its baseline fuel amount that you’ve been feeding it, and so when you 1MAD it, or 0MAD it, it burns that amount of fuel anyway.

Where does it get that extra energy from that it is now used to, and that you didn’t give it today? Body fat. It doesn’t much care where the energy comes from, as long as it gets it. You’ve taught it to work at a particular rate, and it sees no reason to stop, so it continues doing what it’s been taught to do. Then you feed it the usual amount again, and this reassures it that this is normality, then you take it away, then you give it back.

As Megan said in a talk I listened to the other day, "mix it up."

The reason for this is that the body does NOT run on the super-simple Calories In-Calories Out (CICO, which I find to be an incredibly appropriate-sounding acronym) principle that we’ve been taught for years. Basic principles of thermodynamics be damned - that would be fine if everything had hormones controlling things like we do, but obviously they don’t, so it’s a very flawed model/analogy. So we run into the problem that the input affects the output which also affects the input, which is a major confounding factor. (Example – if you do a large amount of work (energy expenditure), you will get really hungry, which obviously affects the energy intake, showing they’re not discrete variables that you can independently control as CICO insists.)

Your body is smart, it adapts. Therefore, if you regularly feed your body a small amount of energy each day, it will learn to run on that small amount of energy because it is diligently working to keep you alive, that being its #1 goal. It doesn’t give a damn if your goal is to lose weight, its goal is that you to stay alive. OTOH, if you feed it a good amount of (good quality) energy each day, it will happily use that to optimally run your body. Then you fast it, and it burns that energy amount anyway, using your body fat to make up the deficit you have deliberately engineered.

[1] Note that this doesn’t really get into the “insulin is a hormone, keto is basically a hormone control diet” aspect of it, which I’ve deliberately not gone into here. The above is radical enough as is, without complicating it further.

[2] Sorry this got out to over 900 words…


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Too much protein - need ideas
(Running from stupidity) #2

Irony - I had to stop writing/editing this because I NEED to go and eat a steak for breakfast. Also because without the deadline of the steak I’d never put this out, I’d keep tweaking it to death and never posting. So I’m positive there’s stuff there that needs fixing, but at least I’ve posted the [spoiler]damned[/spoiler] thing for peer review! :wink:

Have at it.


#3

Great post. Steak and eggs are my favorite breakfast!


(Running from stupidity) #4

I didn’t do eggs as I want to be able to eat lunch at a reasonable hour, because I don’t want to skip dinner as per last night because my schedule gets all screwed up. And it’s already 10am because I was writing the above. Will probably have them with lunch, though :slight_smile:


(Running from stupidity) #5

With the TWO steaks that are still in the sous vide. I screwed up yesterday’s eating SO BADLY I now have to eat three steaks in two meals. Oh well, Ce la Vie.


#6

What will you do with so many delicious things to eat?!? I think you have the makings of a most excellent feast day!


(Running from stupidity) #7

Exactly the (current) plan. Then maybe fast for the next day or two. OTOH, I probably should quit planning for the next week or so :slight_smile:


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

On the whole, this is a very good presentation. I think you pretty much covered the bases.

But I just learned from a new video by Dr. Phinney that one of the reasons fat-adaptation takes time is that it involves mitochondrial healing. You might want to see if that would fit in somewhere. Or maybe you don’t need it? Anyway, there’s the suggestion, for what it’s worth.


(Running from stupidity) #9

Thanks for taking the time to review it, much appreciated.

Do you have a link to the one you watched? I’m interested, and might slip a few extra words in there, although it’s already long enough…


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #10

You might not want to get into it, but the details are fascinating. Here is the Phinney article (not video) I was remembering. And apparently, mitochondrial adaptation is by no means the whole story of fat-adaptation (although I remember it as being more prominent in the article, for some reason—guess I had mitochondrial functionin on the brain that day!). Anyway, here is the article: https://blog.virtahealth.com/keto-adapted/


(Running from stupidity) #11

Good article, thanks for that. Probably a bit more in-depth than I was aiming for above, though :grin:


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

Yeah. I remembered it as being less complicated. Till I re-read it. :smile:


(Running from stupidity) #13

We often remember dot points :slight_smile:


(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #14

Paul do you have a url for that Dr. Phinney talk about mitochondrial healing. Thanks


(Running from stupidity) #15

#16

Juice: Thank you for the above. And I did listen to Ramos’ POD cast as well. Now I’d like to hear about Keto being a hormone control diet. Or maybe there’s a POD cast that covers this?
PS: You’re awesome for helping us to understand Keto better! Thank you


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

The idea is basically that our blood insulin level is what determines whether we are storing fat or metabolizing it. A high insulin level causes the carbohydrate we eat to be stored as fat, and prevents fat from leaving our fat tissue. High levels of Insulin also block the effects of several other hormones that our body produces and needs for proper functioning. Almost every chronic disease currently afflicting modern civilization seems to be caused by excessive insulin levels.

A low insulin level, therefore, not only allows our hormonal system to re-regulate itself, it also permits our stored fat to leave the fat cells and be metabolized. It is the amount of carbohydrate we eat that primarily controls our insulin level, though dietary protein has a reduced effect and dietary fat a minimal effect. Hence, by eating a minimal amount of carbohydrate, enough protein to stay healthy (protein is essential to our diet), and getting enough calories by eating a sufficient amount of fat, we can control our insulin level and hence preserve or restore our metabolic health.


(Running from stupidity) #18

Weirdly, about 10 or so hours after writing the above I was out for a walk and listened to 2017-03-19 (Megan Ramos is excellent on fasting, possibly not surprisingly) and 2017-04-09 (Richard’s explanation of
metabolic rate is really good). (I tend to skip through episodes, and don’t usually listen to ones where they have no guest or the guest isn’t an expert.)

Paul has covered it off while I was sleeping. Nice work :slight_smile:


(Wendy) #19

If you like to read, Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes is a good book on the hormone basis of metabolism and also Jason Fung covers this extensively on his videos and his books Obesity Code and Diabetes Code.


(Running from stupidity) #20

I read the Taubes book (it’s weirdly written, but good) a while back and am currently in The Obesity Code (which is REALLY well written), and then I’ll get to The Diabetes Code after a couple of others. We’re off interstate for the next few days to stay with friends, and the Kindle is loaded up.