18 ms·

Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

• artellectual 10y ago
  Actually, I've tried the ketogenic diet. It's great, however it does have negative side effects. That is the lack of fiber. This can lead to hemorrhoids. Which can be extremely painful. Everything was great, I burned a lot of baby fat, but it was painful in the toilet, there was bleeding involved. You need to supplement yourself with fiber if you want to try the ketogenic diet.
  • kirykl 10y ago
    Also important is to supplement with potassium or magnesium citrate. The ketosis diet will push down urine PH, which can cause uric acid kidney stones
    • VLM 10y ago
      Magnesium does double duty helping with leg cramps.
  • nadezhda18 10y ago
    thanks for sharing the experience! How long did you stay on this diet? I am on high protein diet (proteins in grams ~= my weight in pounds) and I take a fiber supplement to make sure I am Ok on the bathroom side of the things. I noticed I need to take more fiber (27-30 grams, which is above recommended 25 grams) comparing to the days when I do not eat a lot of proteins. I wonder how much fiber one needs to take when on ketogenic diet.
    • artellectual 10y ago
      I did it twice, the first time was 3 months long, the second time was only 4 weeks (I couldn't deal with the pain)
  • nefitty 10y ago
    I've heard some people also suffer from ammonia breath from ketosis. Maybe you have experienced that?
    • rhinoceraptor 10y ago
      It's acetone breath, it is a temporary side effect of keto-adaptation. Other ones include excessive thirst, light headedness and headaches. Most people never heavily use ketones, so it takes the body some time to re-build the machinery to do so.
      • spdionis 10y ago
        I confirm I did have all of the above. Possibly the light-headedness was also cause by not having eaten enough, but it was too strong for that to be the only factor.
      • goldfeld 10y ago
        Yeah, the symptoms sound like detoxication, those generally having foul smells and needing extra water to wash away our old fears.
    • cobbzilla 10y ago
      as mentioned in the article-- It's acetone, not ammonia. Acetone is one of the byproducts of keto metabolism, and, unlike other byproducts which are expelled in the urine, acetone is breathed out, resulting in the slightly-sweet-smelling "keto breath".
  • cthalupa 10y ago
    When I did keto for a while, I actually got a LOT of fiber, since any carbs bound up to fiber don't get processed and kick you out of ketosis. I was always on the look out for 'em, to help with food variety.
  • vixen99 10y ago
    There are many options for avoiding your problem. Vegetable fiber using vegetables with minimal or zero reserve carbohydrate should do it. Cabbage for instance also offers additional benefits from its phytochemicals. See for instance http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806000483 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806...
    • CuriouslyC 10y ago
      You can even go one step further and eat Sauerkraut. A lot of the (limited) carbohydrates in the cabbage are fermented into lactate, which has some health benefits, and if you make it yourself it is a good probiotic.
      • rjsamson 10y ago
        Yup - and it's got a lot of potassium too! Definitely a keto staple for me.
    • VLM 10y ago
      Consider stir fries containing broccoli and cabbage. Its a good strategy. Just stay away from traditional corn syrup sauces.
  • mixmastamyk 10y ago
    Flax seeds and meal are low carb and high fiber. I put them in my smoothie every morning and am an olympic-class pooper.
    • DigitalJack 10y ago
      I would recommend ground flax seeds. They pretty much go straight through otherwise. Edit: sorry, just saw you mentioned meal too.
  • bitL 10y ago
    I am often doing a variation of this meal: - take 2 salmon fillets, crush whole garlic and spread over the top; put for 10 minutes into air fryer. Put a few drops of olive oil on top of garlic texture - take frozen vegetables (it's up to you what you like), put them for 3 minutes to air fryer - take frozen "frutti di mare" and frozen spinach, put them for 10 minutes to air fryer This should be a balanced ketogenic meal, very tasty with lots of fiber as well and added benefit of garlic compounds fighting imbalances caused by sugar-based diets (fungus, candida etc). I lost 20 pounds in the past three months (took a lot of sports as well) giving me a nice sixpack. I used those urine strips to monitor if I indeed had ketones in my blood or not.
    • cylinder 10y ago
      Why do you air fry if you need high fat intake with keto?
      • bitL 10y ago
        I feel sick when eating food fried with oil; for example eating french fries with oil sits in my stomach for ages and I feel really bad; with air fryer it just passes through with no bad effects I can notice.
  • epalmer 10y ago
    You can take fiber pills or powder and mix it with water. The carbs in the fiber do not contribute to blood sugar at least not very much.
    • redwards510 10y ago
      Actually, there is the idea of "net carbs" on keto. This means if the package says: Carbs: 4g Fiber: 3g Your net carbs is 1g. You always subtract out the fiber from the carbs. There's a long explanation for why you do this, I'll leave it to you to find.
      • epalmer 10y ago
        Yup. That is what I should have said.
  • hx87 10y ago
    You can eat practically unlimited amounts of green leafy vegetables (and hence fiber) on a ketogenic diet. Perhaps that wasn't a major part of you diet before you went keto?
  • rebelidealist 10y ago
    "I burned a lot of baby fat, but it was painful in the toilet, there was bleeding involved" Best comment i've read on HN.
  • rockdiesel 10y ago
    There's ample opportunity to get enough fiber on a ketogenic diet. This seems more like a negative side effect of your version of the ketogenic diet, not a negative side effect of the ketogenic diet itself. However, if you feel you were still taking in enough fiber, perhaps you weren't taking in enough water? Not drinking enough water while eating/supplementing high fiber will result in some constipation as well.
• CuriouslyC 10y ago
  While I don't think a ketogenic diet is an optimal diet in terms of longevity or overall health (as all blue-zone diets are carb rich), it does appear to confer some benefits in the short term which are fairly compelling. The vast majority of humans are adapted to seasonal eating, with high carbohydrate diets during spring, summer and fall, and very low carbohydrate diets during winter (or during the wet/dry seasons). I suspect that our bodies have evolved around short periods of keto-adaptation as part of a natural rejuvenation cycle. Given our modern non-seasonal eating habits, that would mean we're missing out on a natural bodily process that is important to health.
  • whiskers08xmt 10y ago
    Out of curiosity, are there any areas with a fat rich diet, which has good access to quality health care? It seems most cultures, which aren't based around hunting and gathering, have a carb based diet, as it's simply the most feasible for supporting a large population.
    • CuriouslyC 10y ago
      Not all blue zones have access to stellar health care. I'd argue that the health care of Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica isn't much better than what keto-adapted people of Alaska or Greenland have access to, but the life expectancy difference is pretty large.
    • merpnderp 10y ago
      Maybe France?
• tzaman 10y ago
  I do keto once a year for about 3 months, and truth be told I feel like a superman. I feel more energetic, loose a ton of fat (ironically with increased fat intake), get more stuff done and overall feel better. The only reason is stop doing it is because I'm a sucker for sweets :) I started all this by asking a friend of mine who's a personal trainer what's the best way of loosing 15 kilos (because I was fat) and he prescribed me a keto diet. Lost all 15 in three months and no, haven't gotten them back. EDIT: on the flip side, my wife's menstrual cycles got completely messed up and her periods started to hurt a whole lot more, so she stopped it.
  • ukdm 10y ago
    I've been on a low carb diet for 5 years now. The key I found to "sucker for sweets" desire is you take one day a week off. I find sugar is like salt now... if you give it up for a while and go back it's really really sweet and after a day of enjoying sugar I'm ready to stop eating it again for 6 days. If you haven't tried the one day a week off I recommend it next time you do your 3 months.
  • akgoel 10y ago
    I did keto for 4 months at the beginning of this year, and I did lose 40 pounds, and generally felt great. But then I started getting more active and picked up tennis. I found that after 30 minutes, I was completely out of energy. It wasn't that I was tired, it was that I literally felt like I was out of fuel. Taking a swig of Gatorade immediately picked up my game, and so I had to introduce carbs back into my diet just to stay active.
    • tzaman 10y ago
      That's quite the contrary to my experience. I combined the diet with a daily 5km morning run, and I had no problems with it, not only was I not exhausted, I was powered up. But maybe that's just placebo :)
    • ekanes 10y ago
      I expect you were missing electrolytes, not carbs. That's what the Gatorade helped with.
• rpazyaquian 10y ago
  The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it's actually quite difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet. I tried it for a while, and since I couldn't have carbs OR too much protein, I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work for a good subset of people, but it's not the kind of diet that's easy to keep up over time or is all that economically feasible for some. Keto diets are actually more restrictive than vegan or kosher or halal, and it's not a surprise that they're mostly prescribed for epilepsy - it definitely feels like a "sick person diet". I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto. Since muscles use glycogen to work, and the keto diet is intentionally low in glycogen, does that make weight training and cardio harder? Especially the former, since you're limited in how much protein you can eat, and strength training benefits from having ~150g of protein per day.
  • davio 10y ago
    You should listen to the Tim Ferris podcast with Dominic D’Agostino. It's pretty fascinating what Dominic does with keto diet as a researcher.
    • ethanbond 10y ago
      Could you provide a synopsis or a bit more info regarding the relevance to the topic at least?
      • rpazyaquian 10y ago
        I would like more info or a small review as well, too. Mostly cause I'm at work and I'll forget by the time I get home...
      • davio 10y ago
        Dominic is a PhD researcher in this area. He has a lot of DOD type work where the Navy Seals want "Ketogenic Diet in a Pill" because subjects under ketosis are more resistant to oxygen toxicity when diving at depth. http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2015/Oxygen-Toxicity-Navy-Divers.aspx http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2015/Oxy... Dominic is also a super-strong guy and deadlifts like 600+ pounds while in ketosis. It's a fascinating 2 hour podcast. I don't think you'll be able to listen to it without wanting to be in ketosis.
• jlturner 10y ago
  I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of us report much better hair, skin, daily energy levels, ability to think more clearly and focus better, and massive weight loss. The first month my first time doing keto I lost 30 lbs without trying to, ended up being a total weight loss of about 70lbs and I became very lean and muscular. Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power.
  • ethanbond 10y ago
    One great feature of keto in my experience is that if you're truly rocking ketosis, cheating oftentimes feels absolutely awful. It's just the first few weeks that's somewhat hard really.
    • cschmidt 10y ago
      Yes, the automatic negative reinforcement of feeling gross is helpful
  • hinkley 10y ago
    I appear to be one of those weirdos who reacts to something in bread but not celiac. I was watching that Michael Pollan series and he was talking about his theory that industrial bread was the problem and everyone would be fine if we went back to sourdough. Well this feels like one of those things that sounds good but has no substance, but clearly at this point I'm willing to try anything. There's a little bakery on my way home and they're open late. I've had half a loaf of sourdough bread in two and a half days and other than burping more, I feel no worse than I did last week. What I wonder every time someone posts about ketosis is just how bad are sugars and starches for us, and how did we get this far without figuring it out?
• trendia 10y ago
  Genetics plays a very large factor in fat and cholesterol metabolism, and one that I think explains the variance in success with the ketogenic diet. e.g. FTO, PPARG, APOA5, FABP2, and APOE. Essentially, not everyone processes fat the same way, and for some, especially those with APOE4/4, a high fat diet may actually be deleterious to health. People with the right genes will have great success with ketogenic diets... but convincing their friends to join in might not have the outcome they expect.
  • alakin 10y ago
    This is key. Apoe status appears to control the absorption rates of LDL cholesterol (tiny balls of fat). Individuals with apoe4, appear to have really low LDL cholesterol absorption rates between cells, and high blood-LDL cholesterol concentrations. Having done a bit of research on optimal dieting, its pretty inconclusive. This study shows negative consequences resulting from high fat diets for apoe4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136
• mrob 10y ago
  If we're sharing anecdotes here, I've also tried a ketogenic diet for about 2 months. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was just curious what it was like. The only change I noticed was I became slightly weaker, lifting only about 90% of my previous weights. But this might have been placebo, because I had already heard that it could happen. I stopped the diet because it made cooking and eating difficult for no obvious gain.
  • jlturner 10y ago
    The first time I did keto I lost a lot of weight until I started lifting, and while the scale stopped changing entirely I continued becoming much more lean as a result. Definitely have more power lifting with carbs though. Also it's possible that your carbs weren't low enough (the diet is extremely restrictive, generally you want less than 10-20g carbs which is most / all from leafy vegetables) and you may have been stuck in glycolysis/ ketosis transition which makes you feel weak.
    • mrob 10y ago
      I followed the restrictions carefully and confirmed ketosis with urine testing strips. And I didn't feel weak, I just couldn't lift as much. I doubt I'd have noticed any difference at all if I wasn't lifting.
  • seekingcharlie 10y ago
    You still need to be eating at some kind of deficit if you were expecting weight loss. The reason keto works so well is that it completely suppresses your appetite and you end up eating at a deficit naturally.
  • johnward 10y ago
    In my experience I am actually stronger and have more stamina. I will actually blackout during workouts if I am eating carbs. On keto I have not had one incident.
• tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
  what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly will help you feel better. It does feel that we as a species, being omnivore, can do just fine on all sorts of different diets, and maybe the reason these testimonials come up for all sorts of different diets, is that it's the staying away from sugar / processed food, the working out, caloric restriction, weight loss and consequent improvement in quality of sleep that cause the improvements, as opposed to the food specifics. Going from eating fast food, not working out and sleeping badly, to eating less caloric whole foods, working out and sleeping well would make anybody feel so much better and lose weight, regardless of what type of whole foods they pick. If this is the case, then it opens the opportunity to pick your diet more based on say environmental impact or ethical reasons, as opposed to say feeling that your veggie diet is not as good as your friends' paleo diet because you have been veggie for 10 years and your friend just went paleo and so they are in the "omg I feel so much better" phase. Wish it was possible to do a double blind study on diet and its effects but unfortunately for obvious reasons that's not possible. On the other hand it is quite possible to quantify your diet's environmental impact / footprint, which makes minimizing it reasonably feasible.
  • wpietri 10y ago
    I definitely get this concern. I personally can't do blinded studies, or even controlled ones, but I've been very happy trying different things. That is, I try not to see a change as a permanent change, just something to try for a while. E.g., lately I've been doing the paleo-ish thing Whole30, but alternating a month or two of that with time eating whatever. My take currently is that there is, as you suspect, benefit just in the experimental process. Novelty and change compel attention, which causes subtle improvements. But I think I also experience food-specific effects. I have no idea if those foods work the same way for others, but I could also believe that the profusion of diets that work is partly due to as-yet unrecognized differences between people.
  • 10y ago
• tew28 10y ago
  Something to watch out for - the first time I tried a ketogenic diet, I developed a terrible rash on my torso after three weeks. After a few fruitless trips to the dermatologist, I found that it was very possibly something called prurigo pigmentosa, a rash that tends to occur in people fasting or in ketosis. Someone even set up a website about it - www.theketorash.com. It's unfortunate, as I had been successfully losing weight. No one really knows how to treat it, except for, well, eating more carbs.
• wpietri 10y ago
  No comment on the main topic, but the "unnatural or advantageous" binary in the title is a confusion that I really dislike. "Natural" and "good" are independent axes. No relationship should be assumed. Tuberculosis is natural, but not good. Brushing your teeth is unnatural, but I'm happy to call it good. This can seem obvious, but the error crops up all the time in serious ways. E.g. women voting and joining the workforce was seen as unnatural, therefore wrong. People market all sorts of quack remedies as natural, and therefore good. It goes the other way, too. Slavery was seen as right, and people decided it was therefore natural. (See the various declarations of secession of the US states for examples.) Violence is seen as wrong, so people decide it must be unnatural, ignoring our long history as predators, the amount of education we give children about not hitting, and our societal structures for limiting violence. Is and ought: two entirely separate things.
  • Periodic 10y ago
    Thank you for pointing this out! I glossed over it in the title, but it is bears special attention to avoid falling into any traps of rhetoric. There definitely seems to be a trend in diet right now to search for the "natural" cure to all our ills. The Paleolitic Diet is probably the best example of this because it is explicitly named as being based on the past. There is an unfounded belief that primitive people were healthier, stronger and better in many ways. However, I don't know of any evidence to support those claims and most of the arguments don't hold together if you don't assume the correlation of natural and good. I'm really curious what causes such as fixation in our modern culture on the "natural" as being healthy and good. There's also an odd opposite assumption that anything that is "unnatural" is probably "bad". GMOs are a good example of this. Anything derived through selective breeding is good, but as soon as you directly modify the genes it's bad, despite more rigorous testing.
    • drewrv 10y ago
      I agree with you that a "natural" diet is not necessarily better. And I think we could engineer better food for us than the stuff we used to eat. There's some of that going on with golden rice for example. But the vast majority of food "innovations" in wealthy countries like the US are not engineered to improve health. Mostly the goal is to save money or improve taste, and these goals can make a diet less healthy.
• auggierose 10y ago
  Maybe both.
• rotwoof 10y ago
  I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi-daily walks. There are downsides though. It's not cheap, it's restrictive and it requires you to build a fairly sizeable knowledge base in order to successfully maintain the diet and your own health. For instance your body consumes more water in order to burn fat stores which leads to the body burning through electrolytes more rapidly. It is very common to supplement electrolytes every day. It is common to drink broth while on Keto in order to cover the daily salt intake requirements of Keto, ~5000-7000mg every day on top of normal dietary salt intake. Failure to cover the daily electrolyte requirement will lead to muscle cramps and more severe symptoms brought on by electrolyte deficiency in the body. Prior to supplementing magnesium I experienced leg cramps and quickly realized what was going on. However there are significant health benefits. Weight loss, improved mental clarity and better energy levels throughout the day, as well as less need for frequent meals are positive effects that a lot of people experience on Keto. It is also a useful tool for reversing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes type 2 and pre-diabetes. When it comes to the stuff you "have to give up" while on Keto it's mostly a case of strict moderation rather than completely cutting things out. The things you do try to cut out though like bread, sugar, potatoes, pasta, corn-syrup etc have good alternatives available in most grocery stores. You can bake bread out of almond flour, make pasta out of almond flour (or have someone make it for you), replace potatoes with sweet potatoes and so on. If you're thinking that keto sounds like it's too much hassle please leave me a reply and I'll gladly talk about whatever you're unsure about.
  • abandonliberty 10y ago
    Do you have some resources you'd recommend to get started?
    • rotwoof 10y ago
      I first started learning about keto on reddit - reddit.com/r/keto (although I initinally learned about it elsewhere) In the sidebar on the right there are two very useful sections labeled "useful links" and "related subs". I personally recommend the ketoscience, ketogains and ketorecipes subreddits depending on your goals. I guess I can't leave out ketoxx either if you're a girl. In addition to that I recommend reading anything written by Dom D'Agostino who is widely considered the #1 authority on the ketogenic diet. Also read Mark Sisson's books. And finally I recommend Joe Rogan Podcast Ep. 752 - Mark Sisson. Rogan can be somewhat of a pothead/hippie but if you can look past that his guests are often very informative.
• fnsa 10y ago
  I did a keto diet for a few months 3 years back and one of the things that I noticed very quickly was the reduced need for sleep. I slept at least an hour less every night and I felt great. Apparently it's due to a reduced production of melatonin.
• epx 10y ago
  Works very well for me. By far the brain works better.
• shanusmagnus 10y ago
  This has been scattered around the existing comments, but I'd be really interested to hear people who are keto comment explicitly on its perceived cognitive effects. I know a number of pretty successful scientists who have told me they feel that being keto provides them a significant performance advantage. I'm really interested in how it affects perceived energy, clarity of thinking, fatigue, and creativity. I'm gearing up for keto induction myself in the next month (the social things are the hardest for me to deal with, so require a lot of planning to make it feasible), but I'd love to hear (or be pointed to) stories on this topic, especially for knowledge workers / intellectual-types.
  • serg_chernata 10y ago
    I went through about 2 months of pure keto earlier this year. Small disclaimer, I generally follow a "warrior" diet and intermittent fasting. I think keto gave me a similar "sharp" awareness and energy. For whatever reason, not eating, while difficult at first, provided me with even more energy and clarity in the same way keto did. Even though I continued doing fairly intense workouts 3 days a week.
    • rudolf0 10y ago
      I also get a lot of mental clarity and alertness after extended periods of not eating, followed by tiredness and fogginess after a meal. This might be one reason why I'm underweight. Unfortunately, a keto diet isn't really an option for me (vegetarian, and allergic to many vegetarian protein sources). I wonder what the underlying science behind it is.
      • serg_chernata 10y ago
        Science behind keto? This article explains it pretty well.
        • rudolf0 10y ago
          No, the science behind feeling mental clarity after extended fasting. Unfortunately, everything I could think to Google just returned a bunch of grandiose pseudoscience.
• seangrogg 10y ago
  I see a few ad hoc source recommendations, but is there a solid resource (or list of resources) surrounding this? Particularly who would benefit from this diet, good foods, what to expect from your first few weeks/long term, should it be something you do in phases, etc?
• serg_chernata 10y ago
  Since we're discussing this, I wanted to ask a question in regard to electrolytes. First time I tried keto everything was fantastic except I missed the electrolyte requirement and ended up with heart palpitations along with muscle cramps and overall crappy feeling once enough time passed and I unwittingly ignored the electrolytes. Talking to doctors proved to be worthless because most of them haven't even heard of keto nor understand why anyone would do that. Does anyone have advice or reading materials in regard to this aspect of keto? PS I am a completely healthy male of 27 years old and active lifestyle. I'm pretty positive there's nothing wrong with me physiologically.
  • cschmidt 10y ago
    They talk about electrolytes all the time on reddit.com/r/keto. Go check out the FAQ for specifics.
  • rjsamson 10y ago
    There are some great resources on the keto subreddit (reddit.com/r/keto). I personally had similar issues when I first started keto - several times a week i found i had to be conscious of my electrolyte intake and would supplement with broth and often almond milk (potassium). However 6 months in I've found it's less of an issue, even at lower electrolyte intake, but I'm not sure why. I never found the need to hit the super high recommendations on /r/keto though - I found that 4,000 - 5,000 mg per day was more than enough, and I'd get heart palpitations and muscle cramps generally under 2,500 / day. You'll see a lot of people on /r/keto saying you _have_ to hit 7k+ a day, and people who drink salted water all day - personally, I think that's overkill.
    • serg_chernata 10y ago
      That's what I'm worried about. Taking in too much and simply the hassle of having to mix salted water every single day.
      • johnward 10y ago
        I take ZMA and potassium daily. I will drink electrolyte water too. When I get home from the gym and feel drained I will drink 8oz of chicken broth for the salt. I had some severe cramps before starting this.
• eth0up 10y ago
  If certain crazed bureaucracies have their way, it may become burdensome to benefit from ketosis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark When I experimented with keto, two products were essential to my ability to do so; coconut oil and butter. It infuriates me that some in positions of influence and power (but not of productivity!) would dare usurp people's dietary choices based on the careless assumption that saturated fat is bad. Although such propositions have so far been unsuccessful, I doubt the mischief has ended. Where is the Charlton Heston of fat!?
  • jsprogrammer 10y ago
    The 'assumption' about saturated fat is not careless. Increasing saturated fat intake increases total plasma and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations.
    • eth0up 10y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700 I support any form of ethical research, but not the hasty imposition of its ostensible results onto the masses. At least not in the case of personal decision in regard to diet. As noted in the above link, ghee has been used for thousands of years. Health advantages have been attributed to it. There is controversy and that is fine. Let people make their own decisions. Certainly groups of people having nothing to do with the production, distribution and consumption of ghee have little claim to profit, although they may freely wail to their content about how much they resent it.
      • jsprogrammer 10y ago
        People should make their own decisions. Here are the USDA's macronutrients dietary reference intake guidelines, with notes on adverse effects of excessive consumption: https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uploads/macronutrients.pdf https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uplo...
• zizzles 10y ago
  Nutritional information is laughably conflicting. Example: Eat meat, it's essential! Don't eat meat, it will sky rocket your cholesterol! Buy organic, it is much healthier! Organic is over-priced and isn't proven to be healthier, don't buy into it! Fruit is so healthy, you should eat plenty of it! Fructose is bad for you, don't eat too much fruit! Every piece of information you end up reading, there is another piece of information somewhere out there that completely conflicts it. What even is FACT anymore?
  • white-flame 10y ago
    There's also the fact that bodies are different, and have developed differently and gotten used to processing things in different quantities and different ways. All these studies looking at people overall to figure out the effect of some food on "the average person" is IMO misguided. We need to study links between foods and an individual's body state, be it their gut ecosystem, ethnic/genetic indicators, in combination with the rest of their diet, and such things.
  • alecco 10y ago
    Of course the internet people and journalists are in the right.
• coldtea 10y ago
  For those talking about ketogenic diets in general, try Atkins 2.0. I'm not for fads, and I don't even believe claims that "caloric intake doesn't matter" if you only eat protein/fat etc. That said, I've found that their Atkins 2.0 four-stage plan makes sense, and incorporates most of what modern studies say. It's also not the caricature "steak and eggs" diet that some people believe Atkins or ketogenic diets are. They have some strict whitelist of food for the stage 1 (2 weeks, which you can extend to lose weight faster), but the other 3 stages gradually add back carbs into your diet, and you are even encouraged to add them "at your own personal balance", so you end up with a final balanced diet you can keep following forever that's not about ketosis anymore but health and sustaining your weight. They do promote some of their own branded snacks etc, but you can ignore those, and they have tons of information on their site to do the diet on your own. As I wrote in another comment, following it for 3 weeks, immediately after trying a couple of others for the last months to no effect. Not only I lost 10 pounds and counting, but am less sleepy and lethargic during afternoons at work, can wake up better, and have more energy. Those could also mean that I was gluten intorelant (never bothered to check, but I did ate tons of breads) and staying off bread made me better. Or maybe it's that I cut sugar completely which is also part of stage 1 (except for fruits and sweeteners). I also don't care to eat anymore -- before I looked forward to every meal of the day (or snacked like crazy between).
• bill343 10y ago
  If you checkout the foundmyfitness podcast with I believe Dr. Satchin Panda, ketosis is discussed and the doctor indicates that you can eat sweet potatoes, or even ice cream once in awhile and not be taken out of ketosis. And even if it does you can get back into ketosis easily.
• iand 10y ago
  Anyone here got tips for a lactose intolerant vegetarian? (and I don't mean "eat meat" tips)
  • miguelrochefort 10y ago
    http://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo http://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo
• mattbgates 10y ago
  I have been living in ketosis for the past 2 years, very rarely breaking the lifestyle diet. Although the majority of my weight loss started off with calorie restriction and a high-protein/moderate-fat/low-to-moderate carb diet, I eventually hit a plateau for 6 months, until I finally learned about and tried ketosis, switching to a high-fat/moderatere-protein/low-carb diet which allowed me to lose 30 more pounds, for a total of 85 pounds, or 260 to 175 pounds. I have logged almost everything I have eaten with https://LoseIt.com https://LoseIt.com so I have the data to show everything including before and after photos of myself, along with my complete understanding of my experience with ketosis. You can read my article here: https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit-diet https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit-diet
• mtreis86 10y ago
  Anecdotes: I started keto over a year ago after struggling with weight my whole life. I have always been heavy for my height. Anyways, two years ago I was in a motorcycle accident and the doctors told me that having plaque in my arteries significantly increased the damage (I had internal bleeding requiring surgery). So I decided to fix my shit. Started working out a couple times a week, but the weight didn't go down for six months, when I found keto. I won't get into the benefits, unless anyone has specific questions. I just came here to say this: Once in ketosis, I started learning to enjoy hunger. Enjoying hunger made weight loss work without much conscious effort. I have lost 50 pounds in a year, then maintained the lower weight for another year.
• johnward 10y ago
  "Emerging evidence from animal models and clinical trials suggest keto may be therapeutically used in many other neurological disorders, including head ache, neurodegenerative diseases, sleep disorders, bipolar disorder, autism and brain cancer. With no apparent side effects. " I suffer from bi-polar disorder and have been swinging back and forth between a "traditional" (IE eat too much of everything) and a keto diet. My wife has made comments that she can tell when I am on keto by my mental stability but I've never read anything to back that up until now. My only problem with keto is cheating. If I cheat once then I crave anything with carbs in it. I don't usually have those cravings after about the first week of ketosis.
• eevilspock 10y ago
  So keto is all or nothing? I won't experience any benefit by just increasing fat calories and decreasing carbs?
  • miguelrochefort 10y ago
    You're correct.
• caub 10y ago
  I think the body can generate fat from any type of food, even sugars, the thing is just to learn to use that stored fat, instead of overconsuming
• hackermailman 10y ago
  I do the opposite diet, the Fuhrman "End of Dieting" so called nutrarian diet of mainly veg and beans with meat once a week, sometimes less. Saved a ton of money on food, lost weight back to my early 20s levels and have stamina to do 2 jobs, one very physical(climbing stairs all day) and one mentally taxing that I do 5 hours a day before my physical job. I also have energy to get in a research paper after both jobs where before I wanted to crash and burn after eating a heavy meat meal. Complete anecdote but if anybody doesn't want to eat a lot of meat and keep a low weight read that book.
• miguelrochefort 10y ago
  Whenever I'm keto adapted, I can fast for 23 hours out of every day without any effort. I eat once, between 6PM and 7PM. Recently, I've been following the zero carb movement, which advocates only eating animal products (meat, fish, fat, cheese, cream, egg) and drinking water. I'm looking forward to exclusively eat beef and drink water for an entire month.