8 ms·

Low Carb vs. Low Fat Diets

33 points by woodandsteel 9y ago

simonebrunozzi 9y ago
I still haven't found a simple, straightforward, proven explanation of how to do a "ketonic" diet. Any help?
- Greenisus 9y ago
  Eat no sugars, no grains, and lots of fat. Also as far as veggies go, avoid potatoes and corn. Avoiding alcohol is best, but if you must drink, go for no-carb options like hard liquor. That's about the shortest version of it I can come up with :)
woodandsteel 9y ago
Seems there was little difference between low fat and low carbs. However, both groups were urged to eat a healthy diet: “Everyone was supposed to have vegetables all day long as much as they could, have a salad every day, and no added sugar and as little refined flour as you could get,” Also, at the end it talks about the idea of satiation. Eat as much as you want to feel full, as long as it is healthy. That has been my philosophy, and it has worked very well.
- juice_bus 9y ago
  I've 'recently' (May 2017) started simply counting the calories i consume and not avoiding one thing or another, keeping it below my TDEE. Some days are very high in Fat, others carbs, sometimes protein. I've lost 32lbs/14.5kg since then (and another 30 to go). I guess i will see in the long term if it is healthy, but i do feel great now.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I think you are on the right track. A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much and generally eat quality food.
    - fintler 9y ago
      > A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much I think my personal problem was that I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE.
      - kbutler 9y ago
        "I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE." Winning quote right there.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        That's a big problem, especially in the US. Portion sizes for everything (including coffee) are over the top so people have no idea how little food they actually need.
  - fintler 9y ago
    After a few (many?) failed attempts at keto and other diets (I would always stall out after around 15lbs of weight loss), simply counting calories is by far the only thing that has worked for me well. Currently, I target 1,400 kcal a day (8-16 intermittent fasting with 2 meals of 700 calories each) with a calculated TDEE of around 2,500 kcal. I've lost around 60lbs/27.2kg since January 2017 (240lbs/108.9kg to a bit less than 180lbs/81.6kg). I eat whatever I feel like (usually meat, veggies, and a starch in each meal) and just limit calories. I don't use anything like MyFitnessPal to track calories counted. Keeping things to "eat only 700 calories per meal" is simple enough where you can do a quick Google search before eating to make sure you're on track. Something interesting is that my error with calorie counting (and possibly metabolism) is about 10-15%, given that the hacker diet calculations (trendweight.com hooked up to my withings scale) calculates my TDEE (based on my actual weight changes) at 2,200 kcal instead of the calculated 2,500 kcal. Also, I just bought a medium t-shirt last weekend for the first time since I was in high school! :)
    - Terr_ 9y ago
      IMO it helps to treat calorie-counting as something that is fundamentally inaccurate, but still "good enough" as long as the errors are consistent. Meanwhile, the moving-average of your weight is closer to some kind of ground truth, and can be used to recalibrate the calorie budget.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    Yeah, the passable diet you will actually follow always trumps the theoretically-excellent process which you can't stick with :) 4-5 years ago I started a trek from 215 down to 155, which took a year using basic calorie-tracking. The best thing about it was that it let me start doing this little comparisons of "which choice will I enjoy more" between different quantities of different substances with the same calorie-budget. While I backslid a bit over the next few years (170) I still think it went pretty well and it encourages me that I can probably do it again, even as a sedentary computer-guy.
- defined 9y ago
  Thing is, vegetables have varying amounts of carbs that can set back your low-carb diet. For example, celery, broccoli and lettuce are very fibrous and humans don't really digest the carbs, so they have little impact. Probably only ruminants can extract significant nutrition. On the other hand, in roughly increasing order of carb content, tomato (technically a fruit), onion, carrots, potatoes, corn, wheat products, and rice will reduce the effectiveness of a low carb diet, especially if dieters are told it's ok to eat vegetables all day long without specific guidance on what to avoid. I agree that ultimately it comes down to the rate at which we put energy into our bodies vs the rate at which our bodies use the energy and don't store it as fat. Unfortunately, there are confounding factors that make this a simplistic heuristic. Things like underactive thyroids, insulin response to blood glucose fluctuations, our basal metabolic rate, and similar things, many of which are often genetically determined. I believe that a really important reason to do a low-carb diet with moderate protein and enough fat for satiation is that it is much easier to sustain as a permanent lifestyle change than a low-fat diet, which in my experience leaves one often feeling hungry and unsatisfied. And the permanent change is what is needed for long-term success.
WillPostForFood 9y ago
In the end, “low-carb” meant about 30 percent carbs and 45 percent fat, while “low-fat” was about 29 percent fat and 48 percent carbs. Despite not being required to cut calories, participants were eating an average of 500 calories less, and what they were eating was high quality. The low-fat group was encouraged to choose whole grains, a variety of beans and lentils, seasonal organic fruit, organic low-fat milk and lean meats. The low-carb group was pointed toward high-quality oils and fats, organic avocados, hard cheeses, nut butters, grass-fed meat and pasture-raised eggs. “Everyone was supposed to have vegetables all day long as much as they could, have a salad every day, and no added sugar and as little refined flour as you could get,” Gardner said. They designed two diets that were very similar to each other, and unsurprisingly got similar results.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  Almost everyone I know (including myself) would not consider a diet that was 45% fat as low carb. The fat should be much higher and the carbs much lower.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    Totally agree - the proposed diets were very middle of the road, non-controversial, and similar.
- pesfandiar 9y ago
  > Despite not being required to cut calories, participants were eating an average of 500 calories less, and what they were eating was high quality. This could also be simply attributed to being watched. That to me is a huge confounding factor that needs to be carefully isolated in all diet studies. The huge success of personal fitness trackers suggests people tend to have healthier lifestyles when they measure their actions, even if it's for their own personal record (let alone for sharing on social media or being studied).
Havoc 9y ago
Firmly in the low carb camp. There is another aspect to it though: With a low-fat mentality you can eat anything you like since everything is "low-fat" these days. Low carb on the other hand requires conscious strategic thinking & planning - the average processed product isn't geared towards it. I wonder whether some of the health benefit comes from that: The second I'm tracking & analysing things I automatically eat healthier and better as a result regardless of what exactly I'm tracking.
- jorgec 9y ago
  I agree. And its hard, really hard to follow a low carb diet. Practically all diet products are rich in carbs. Many products for the breakfast are rich in carbs. Practically all products in small stores (such as newsstand) are rich in carbs.
  - chrisseaton 9y ago
    > And its hard, really hard to follow a low carb diet. Really? I do very low-carb precisely because it's so very easy. I have heaps of vegetables and lean-meat and that fills me up and gives me all the energy I need. I almost can't see where I'd fit carbs in now. (I do eat more carbs when I'm doing something particularly arduous though). > Many products for the breakfast are rich in carbs. Well you can eat whatever you want for breakfast. You don't need 'breakfast food' in particular. I often have steamed fish for breakfast. > Practically all products in small stores (such as newsstand) Well yes, things are going to wrong if you are planning a diet around shopping at a newsstand. I'd say obviously you shouldn't do that no matter what your diet, but I suppose people have different lives to fit diets around - I work from home so it's probably easier for me.
    - komali2 9y ago
      >lean-meats Well, it's not easy to do it "cheap," in most people's mind of what "cheap" food is - the little muffins at star bucks, or mcdonalds, the free cereal at work (when there are no high-protein, low-carb options). So it's not "easy" because you're no longer even capable of eating what 80% of the people you know are. If you had even half of one of the muffins at work, you'd be thrown out of ketosis and you'd need half the week getting your diet back on track. That being said, if you already have a strong habit of cooking and eating the majority of your meals instead of eating out or eating the free food at work, a low carb diet is a remarkably "easy" way to lose weight, because it doesn't come with that shitty feeling of grumpy hunger that (I at least) one gets from low-calorie dieting.
kbutler 9y ago
"In the end, “low-carb” meant about 30 percent carbs and 45 percent fat, while “low-fat” was about 29 percent fat and 48 percent carbs." Does anyone who advocates a low carb diet consider 30% of calories from carbohydrates "low carb?" In a 1600 calorie diet (likely calorie restricted), that would be 120g of carbs.
- 5_minutes 9y ago
  Low carb generally would be <50 grams/day. Though most enthousiasts on keto aim for <20 grams/day. So you're right, 120g is still very high. And can basically be accomplished with just not stuffing yourself with bread, pizza or fries.
  - Cshelton 9y ago
    Yeah, I read the 30% amount and the study now makes sense as to why the participants had the same results. I wish they had the low carb group do < 20g carbs/day. I think they would have seen a difference. I've done the keto target at less than 5g, 10g, 15g, 20g (depending what stage you're at) carbs a day. Even increasing that number to 100g carbs a day kind of ruins that diet. The under 10g carbs a day has worked very well for me. Just remember, stay hydrated! =p
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      The problem with grams is that everyone has different needs. So It only works as a guide. It is easier to calibrate a keto diet with a real ketone sensor. (Available at any pharmacy, used by diabetics.) Specifically increase carbs until ketosis stops then drop say 20% for margin. There's your value. Check every now and then.
- projektfu 9y ago
  The point was that these were the diets that people could tolerate. A 50g carbs per day diet is not something these people would continue. Both diets were still about 25-30% protein, which is quite a lot.
- 9y ago
cies 9y ago
I think the real interesting diet at the moment is Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB). It is a low-fat, high-carb, fully plant based diet, that does not prescribe going "raw only". Many have great results on this diet without counting any macros.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  Does this basically mean no processed foods?
  - cies 9y ago
    Kinda. And then the plant-based section of it. It is in line with what mankind supposedly really mostly ate for 100000s years. The docu "What the Health" also discusses this diet and some other stuff.
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  Is beer on that diet?
  - cies 9y ago
    Found this somewhere: --- In The Forks Over Knives Plan, there’s a section “What About Alcohol?” “It’s been reported in the media and many people think that drinking some alcohol is protective against heart attacks and strokes. There does seem to be a beneficial association between some study populations who moderately drink and their risk of heart disease. However, this relationship is not clearly causal in nature. Furthermore, it turns out that only in the unhealthiest populations does the possibility of such a benefit even exist. An interesting study looked at “healthy” people and found that there were no longer any cardioprotective effects of alcohol in that population. We are putting “healthy” in quotation marks because we don’t know whether this study’s definition of healthy was adequate: it was composed of exercising moderately or vigorously a minimum of three hours a week and not smoking, but the published results referenced eating an unspecified amount of fruits and vegetables each day. (It is unclear in the study whether eating as little as a single serving of one or the other each day may have qualified as sufficient.) Yet these habits alone were healthy enough to cancel out any possible benefits of alcohol. The diet recommended in this book is at least as healthy as the diet component in this study. Furthermore, a plant-based diet protects your heart and blood vessels, likely negating any potential positive effect of the alcohol and leaving only the harmful effects. Alcohol seems to increase the risk of many other problems, including getting cancer (even with very light drinking), cancer recurrence, weight gain, liver damage, and heart arrhythmias. And the more overweight you are, the more likely you are to succumb to liver cancer because obesity and alcohol synergistically increase the risk of incident liver cancer. In short, there is nothing health-promoting about alcohol. If you do not presently drink alcohol, we urge you not to begin. That being said, the most important thing you can do for your health is to change your diet over to whole, plant-based foods. So focus on what’s easiest for you to change right now. However, if you feel ready to push further toward optimum health, then by all means cut out the alcohol.” (p.126) So… maybe a single drink every now and then.
jorgec 9y ago
Using a low carb diet, i lowered from 90kg (198lbs) to 68kg (149lbs) in 6 months. And im still in 67-69kgs. ps: i do zero exercise, just because i can't.
dchuk 9y ago
My wife and I have been doing Keto since May 1st. I'm down 17lbs now (started at 221, right around 204-205 now, goal is 195). She started at 135 (she's 5'8" so not much for her to lose) and is down around 129 now. Weight loss is great, but the energy gains from the diet are incredible. I never crash anymore. I have steady energy all day, and way less lethargy in general. Also, in general my stomach is not tempermental anymore. I used to get stomach aches after dinner, no more. It does make eating out trickier, but oh well. Now, I don't necessarily think it's just keto that is responsible. I think it's these 3 things (in this order): 1) Way less beer drinking (and when I do, it's Miller Lite or something comparably light on carbs) 2) In general just paying attention to what we eat 3) The science of Keto itself On the second point especially, it's kinda insane to pay attention to the carb counts in some meals. Especially fast foods/Mexican/Italian foods, you're looking at _hundreds_ of grams of carbs in a single meal...sorta nutty. I recommend everyone try it if not just for the experiment/self control test. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I hit my goal in terms of lightening up on things or not, but I'm happy so far.
- Cshelton 9y ago
  Your energy gains are more from being more healthy and not weighing as much. Not so much the particular diet you're on. Now that you are down 17lbs, go grab 17lbs worth of weights and strap them to your body somehow and walk around the house for a bit like that. It's pretty incredible how much 17lbs will feel like. Now think of how much harder your body had to work to carry that extra 17lbs everywhere. (This is assuming that the 17lbs lost was not comprised of muscle =p)
  - dchuk 9y ago
    Good point!
    - Cshelton 9y ago
      The best thing you could probably do now is some weight training. By adding more muscle and increasing your resting metabolism, you're more likely to keep that weight off and feel even more healthy/stronger. Not to mention looking a TON better too.
pconnelly15 9y ago
This is an interesting discussion about a topic we know doesn't work. Every piece of reliable data shows that diets don't work. 95% of people who diet gain that weight back and more within 1-5 years. Nutrition philosophies based on deprivation are doomed to fail. A better question might be is what healthy lifestyle components lead to a healthier experience?
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  Keto is interesting because doing it successfully (ie, meeting the requirement of temporary deprivation) necessitates learning a bit about how the body works, how nutrients are processed, and the role of insulin and carbohydrates in how we as animals take in energy. The vigilance it requires in order to be successful, too, is fairly rigid. I think that just doing keto for a few months can change the way you think about eating, or even change your relationship to food overall. That more mindful approach to nutrition might last longer than the temporary deprivation. It would explain some of the longer-term benefits that people who've [successfully] done keto tend to talk about.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  > 95% of people who diet gain that weight back and more within 1-5 years. This keeps being touted again and again as if it's some grand criticism of diets. Obviously if you stop following a diet, its results will stop applying to you. If you follow a diet that restricts your calories and causes you to lose weight, and you then stop following the diet and eat whatever you ate earlier, of course you will gain back your weight. Healthy eating is a lifestyle decision and a lifestyle change. You have to understand what your diet was trying to achieve, and then try to apply similar concepts to your general everyday life.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Most "dieters" follow it on a whim. For those that really get into keto and educates themselves on nutrition, read forums, etc I would bet money are far more successful than 5% in keeping it off. It's far easier to be disciplined following a low carb diet because you simply can't cheat with sweets, cheating = you're not on keto any more, makes it psychologically easier (for me anyways). And, once you adopt it as a lifestyle, you really watch what you eat even after the intensive diet - I eat whatever I want, I just don't find myself wanting sugary foods because I know what they do to you, and I have zero problem staying at my desired weight.
patrickg_zill 9y ago
an aside, for those on either diet: lacto-fermented foods like Kombucha, sauerkraut etc. seem to do me a lot of good. Perhaps it is just the B-vitamins in the Kombucha but I find that being on keto and having Kombucha once a day is a good combination.
tzs 9y ago
> Despite not being required to cut calories, participants were eating an average of 500 calories less, and what they were eating was high quality. That's what happened to me. I tried to lower carbs to 40% of calories, not to lose weight but rather to see what affect it would have on blood sugar levels. My A1c had crept up to 8.1, and that was while on two different diabetes medicines. I made no attempt to limit calories...just to make sure that 40% or less came from carbs. In fact, to reach that I started increasing the size of some meals. For example, if I got a sandwich which would normally be 50% carbs, I would order that sandwich with double meat and/or with full mayonnaise instead of light mayo or no mayo, because meat and mayo are calories without carbs, and so lower the carb ratio. I found that this made the food more satisfying, and I ended up eating less kind of automatically. Over the next 18 months I lost 140 pounds that way. A1c is down to 5.0 now, and that is after three months with no diabetes medicine. Long term, I'm eating about 30-35% carbs, and about 45% fat.
robotpony 9y ago
I'd like to see the actual distributions of foods (and micro/macros) in these studies along with the human stats (ages, activity levels). I suspect that the factors are for more multi-modal than the buckets of "low carb" and "high fat". Open source data here would allow for alternative views on the data, and likely better learning overall.
GuB-42 9y ago
Low carb, low fat, low anything are essentially just low calorie diets, which result in weight loss through basic thermodynamic principles. The more I follow trends in diets, the more it seems to boil down to : don't eat too much or too little and have a varied diet. The first point is obvious, the second one is more subtle. There is actually no need for a varied diet. It is just that it is the easiest way for us to make sure we get all the nutrients we need while limiting toxicity. By toxicity, I mean that everything we eat is a bit poisonous, but fortunately, our body is well equipped to deal with it. But eat too much of one poison and it won't keep up. So it is possible to have an unbalanced diet and still be healthy (ex: vegans) but it may take some bookkeeping. Note that research seem to point that the more we eat something, the less we get pleasure from it, as if we are wired to prefer a varied diet. Remember, we are omnivores, and the whole point of being omnivores is that anything goes.
- blackflame7000 9y ago
  Treating all calories the same ignores the fact that the body does different things with Carbs, Fats, and Proteins. Proteins help build muscle which raises a person's resting metabolic rate. A diet that is deficient in proteins will result in muscle loss and will lower metabolic rate. The scale only tells half the story. 200 lbs of lean muscle burns much more calories than 200 lbs of fat. What you eat directly contributes to this composition and therefore impacts your ability to burn calories.
blackflame7000 9y ago
The diet that truly works is high protein. Carbs and Fats cannot convert to muscle like proteins can and as a result they can not raise your resting metabolic rate like proteins can. Furthermore proteins have a filling effect that satiates hunger and they are not easily stored as fat. If you focus on filling your daily allotment of proteins first, you will often find you are too full to fill the remaining Fats/Carbs requirement. This advice from a personal trainer helped me lose 60 lbs over a year.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Come on, getting those 60g of protein or so is trivial on any diet. (Including complete protein, unless you're vegan and have major legume intolerance.) High protein diets do work indeed, but most of them end up ketogenic by accident as well. Mostly because sugary or starchy foods have little protein.
LyndsySimon 9y ago
> Gardner asked the 609 participants to aim for 20 percent carbs or fat 20% carbs is not a "low-carb" diet. I've been doing keto since January and have lost over 50 pounds. I never get more than 20g of net carbs per day, which is less than 5% of my overall caloric intake.

33 points by woodandsteel 9y ago

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

I still haven't found a simple, straightforward, proven explanation of how to do a "ketonic" diet. Any help?

Greenisus 9y ago
Eat no sugars, no grains, and lots of fat. Also as far as veggies go, avoid potatoes and corn. Avoiding alcohol is best, but if you must drink, go for no-carb options like hard liquor. That's about the shortest version of it I can come up with :)

woodandsteel 9y ago

Seems there was little difference between low fat and low carbs. However, both groups were urged to eat a healthy diet: “Everyone was supposed to have vegetables all day long as much as they could, have a salad every day, and no added sugar and as little refined flour as you could get,” Also, at the end it talks about the idea of satiation. Eat as much as you want to feel full, as long as it is healthy. That has been my philosophy, and it has worked very well.

juice_bus 9y ago
I've 'recently' (May 2017) started simply counting the calories i consume and not avoiding one thing or another, keeping it below my TDEE. Some days are very high in Fat, others carbs, sometimes protein. I've lost 32lbs/14.5kg since then (and another 30 to go). I guess i will see in the long term if it is healthy, but i do feel great now.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I think you are on the right track. A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much and generally eat quality food.
  - fintler 9y ago
    > A lot of diets work if you don't eat too much I think my personal problem was that I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE.
    - kbutler 9y ago
      "I didn't know what "too much" was until I actually started counting and comparing that to my TDEE." Winning quote right there.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      That's a big problem, especially in the US. Portion sizes for everything (including coffee) are over the top so people have no idea how little food they actually need.
- fintler 9y ago
  After a few (many?) failed attempts at keto and other diets (I would always stall out after around 15lbs of weight loss), simply counting calories is by far the only thing that has worked for me well. Currently, I target 1,400 kcal a day (8-16 intermittent fasting with 2 meals of 700 calories each) with a calculated TDEE of around 2,500 kcal. I've lost around 60lbs/27.2kg since January 2017 (240lbs/108.9kg to a bit less than 180lbs/81.6kg). I eat whatever I feel like (usually meat, veggies, and a starch in each meal) and just limit calories. I don't use anything like MyFitnessPal to track calories counted. Keeping things to "eat only 700 calories per meal" is simple enough where you can do a quick Google search before eating to make sure you're on track. Something interesting is that my error with calorie counting (and possibly metabolism) is about 10-15%, given that the hacker diet calculations (trendweight.com hooked up to my withings scale) calculates my TDEE (based on my actual weight changes) at 2,200 kcal instead of the calculated 2,500 kcal. Also, I just bought a medium t-shirt last weekend for the first time since I was in high school! :)
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    IMO it helps to treat calorie-counting as something that is fundamentally inaccurate, but still "good enough" as long as the errors are consistent. Meanwhile, the moving-average of your weight is closer to some kind of ground truth, and can be used to recalibrate the calorie budget.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Yeah, the passable diet you will actually follow always trumps the theoretically-excellent process which you can't stick with :) 4-5 years ago I started a trek from 215 down to 155, which took a year using basic calorie-tracking. The best thing about it was that it let me start doing this little comparisons of "which choice will I enjoy more" between different quantities of different substances with the same calorie-budget. While I backslid a bit over the next few years (170) I still think it went pretty well and it encourages me that I can probably do it again, even as a sedentary computer-guy.
defined 9y ago
Thing is, vegetables have varying amounts of carbs that can set back your low-carb diet. For example, celery, broccoli and lettuce are very fibrous and humans don't really digest the carbs, so they have little impact. Probably only ruminants can extract significant nutrition. On the other hand, in roughly increasing order of carb content, tomato (technically a fruit), onion, carrots, potatoes, corn, wheat products, and rice will reduce the effectiveness of a low carb diet, especially if dieters are told it's ok to eat vegetables all day long without specific guidance on what to avoid. I agree that ultimately it comes down to the rate at which we put energy into our bodies vs the rate at which our bodies use the energy and don't store it as fat. Unfortunately, there are confounding factors that make this a simplistic heuristic. Things like underactive thyroids, insulin response to blood glucose fluctuations, our basal metabolic rate, and similar things, many of which are often genetically determined. I believe that a really important reason to do a low-carb diet with moderate protein and enough fat for satiation is that it is much easier to sustain as a permanent lifestyle change than a low-fat diet, which in my experience leaves one often feeling hungry and unsatisfied. And the permanent change is what is needed for long-term success.

WillPostForFood 9y ago

In the end, “low-carb” meant about 30 percent carbs and 45 percent fat, while “low-fat” was about 29 percent fat and 48 percent carbs. Despite not being required to cut calories, participants were eating an average of 500 calories less, and what they were eating was high quality. The low-fat group was encouraged to choose whole grains, a variety of beans and lentils, seasonal organic fruit, organic low-fat milk and lean meats. The low-carb group was pointed toward high-quality oils and fats, organic avocados, hard cheeses, nut butters, grass-fed meat and pasture-raised eggs. “Everyone was supposed to have vegetables all day long as much as they could, have a salad every day, and no added sugar and as little refined flour as you could get,” Gardner said. They designed two diets that were very similar to each other, and unsurprisingly got similar results.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Almost everyone I know (including myself) would not consider a diet that was 45% fat as low carb. The fat should be much higher and the carbs much lower.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Totally agree - the proposed diets were very middle of the road, non-controversial, and similar.
pesfandiar 9y ago
> Despite not being required to cut calories, participants were eating an average of 500 calories less, and what they were eating was high quality. This could also be simply attributed to being watched. That to me is a huge confounding factor that needs to be carefully isolated in all diet studies. The huge success of personal fitness trackers suggests people tend to have healthier lifestyles when they measure their actions, even if it's for their own personal record (let alone for sharing on social media or being studied).

Havoc 9y ago

Firmly in the low carb camp. There is another aspect to it though: With a low-fat mentality you can eat anything you like since everything is "low-fat" these days. Low carb on the other hand requires conscious strategic thinking & planning - the average processed product isn't geared towards it. I wonder whether some of the health benefit comes from that: The second I'm tracking & analysing things I automatically eat healthier and better as a result regardless of what exactly I'm tracking.

jorgec 9y ago
I agree. And its hard, really hard to follow a low carb diet. Practically all diet products are rich in carbs. Many products for the breakfast are rich in carbs. Practically all products in small stores (such as newsstand) are rich in carbs.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  > And its hard, really hard to follow a low carb diet. Really? I do very low-carb precisely because it's so very easy. I have heaps of vegetables and lean-meat and that fills me up and gives me all the energy I need. I almost can't see where I'd fit carbs in now. (I do eat more carbs when I'm doing something particularly arduous though). > Many products for the breakfast are rich in carbs. Well you can eat whatever you want for breakfast. You don't need 'breakfast food' in particular. I often have steamed fish for breakfast. > Practically all products in small stores (such as newsstand) Well yes, things are going to wrong if you are planning a diet around shopping at a newsstand. I'd say obviously you shouldn't do that no matter what your diet, but I suppose people have different lives to fit diets around - I work from home so it's probably easier for me.
  - komali2 9y ago
    >lean-meats Well, it's not easy to do it "cheap," in most people's mind of what "cheap" food is - the little muffins at star bucks, or mcdonalds, the free cereal at work (when there are no high-protein, low-carb options). So it's not "easy" because you're no longer even capable of eating what 80% of the people you know are. If you had even half of one of the muffins at work, you'd be thrown out of ketosis and you'd need half the week getting your diet back on track. That being said, if you already have a strong habit of cooking and eating the majority of your meals instead of eating out or eating the free food at work, a low carb diet is a remarkably "easy" way to lose weight, because it doesn't come with that shitty feeling of grumpy hunger that (I at least) one gets from low-calorie dieting.

kbutler 9y ago

"In the end, “low-carb” meant about 30 percent carbs and 45 percent fat, while “low-fat” was about 29 percent fat and 48 percent carbs." Does anyone who advocates a low carb diet consider 30% of calories from carbohydrates "low carb?" In a 1600 calorie diet (likely calorie restricted), that would be 120g of carbs.

5_minutes 9y ago
Low carb generally would be <50 grams/day. Though most enthousiasts on keto aim for <20 grams/day. So you're right, 120g is still very high. And can basically be accomplished with just not stuffing yourself with bread, pizza or fries.
- Cshelton 9y ago
  Yeah, I read the 30% amount and the study now makes sense as to why the participants had the same results. I wish they had the low carb group do < 20g carbs/day. I think they would have seen a difference. I've done the keto target at less than 5g, 10g, 15g, 20g (depending what stage you're at) carbs a day. Even increasing that number to 100g carbs a day kind of ruins that diet. The under 10g carbs a day has worked very well for me. Just remember, stay hydrated! =p
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    The problem with grams is that everyone has different needs. So It only works as a guide. It is easier to calibrate a keto diet with a real ketone sensor. (Available at any pharmacy, used by diabetics.) Specifically increase carbs until ketosis stops then drop say 20% for margin. There's your value. Check every now and then.
projektfu 9y ago
The point was that these were the diets that people could tolerate. A 50g carbs per day diet is not something these people would continue. Both diets were still about 25-30% protein, which is quite a lot.
9y ago

cies 9y ago

I think the real interesting diet at the moment is Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB). It is a low-fat, high-carb, fully plant based diet, that does not prescribe going "raw only". Many have great results on this diet without counting any macros.

bluejekyll 9y ago
Does this basically mean no processed foods?
- cies 9y ago
  Kinda. And then the plant-based section of it. It is in line with what mankind supposedly really mostly ate for 100000s years. The docu "What the Health" also discusses this diet and some other stuff.
WaxProlix 9y ago
Is beer on that diet?
- cies 9y ago
  Found this somewhere: --- In The Forks Over Knives Plan, there’s a section “What About Alcohol?” “It’s been reported in the media and many people think that drinking some alcohol is protective against heart attacks and strokes. There does seem to be a beneficial association between some study populations who moderately drink and their risk of heart disease. However, this relationship is not clearly causal in nature. Furthermore, it turns out that only in the unhealthiest populations does the possibility of such a benefit even exist. An interesting study looked at “healthy” people and found that there were no longer any cardioprotective effects of alcohol in that population. We are putting “healthy” in quotation marks because we don’t know whether this study’s definition of healthy was adequate: it was composed of exercising moderately or vigorously a minimum of three hours a week and not smoking, but the published results referenced eating an unspecified amount of fruits and vegetables each day. (It is unclear in the study whether eating as little as a single serving of one or the other each day may have qualified as sufficient.) Yet these habits alone were healthy enough to cancel out any possible benefits of alcohol. The diet recommended in this book is at least as healthy as the diet component in this study. Furthermore, a plant-based diet protects your heart and blood vessels, likely negating any potential positive effect of the alcohol and leaving only the harmful effects. Alcohol seems to increase the risk of many other problems, including getting cancer (even with very light drinking), cancer recurrence, weight gain, liver damage, and heart arrhythmias. And the more overweight you are, the more likely you are to succumb to liver cancer because obesity and alcohol synergistically increase the risk of incident liver cancer. In short, there is nothing health-promoting about alcohol. If you do not presently drink alcohol, we urge you not to begin. That being said, the most important thing you can do for your health is to change your diet over to whole, plant-based foods. So focus on what’s easiest for you to change right now. However, if you feel ready to push further toward optimum health, then by all means cut out the alcohol.” (p.126) So… maybe a single drink every now and then.

jorgec 9y ago

Using a low carb diet, i lowered from 90kg (198lbs) to 68kg (149lbs) in 6 months. And im still in 67-69kgs. ps: i do zero exercise, just because i can't.

dchuk 9y ago

My wife and I have been doing Keto since May 1st. I'm down 17lbs now (started at 221, right around 204-205 now, goal is 195). She started at 135 (she's 5'8" so not much for her to lose) and is down around 129 now. Weight loss is great, but the energy gains from the diet are incredible. I never crash anymore. I have steady energy all day, and way less lethargy in general. Also, in general my stomach is not tempermental anymore. I used to get stomach aches after dinner, no more. It does make eating out trickier, but oh well. Now, I don't necessarily think it's just keto that is responsible. I think it's these 3 things (in this order): 1) Way less beer drinking (and when I do, it's Miller Lite or something comparably light on carbs) 2) In general just paying attention to what we eat 3) The science of Keto itself On the second point especially, it's kinda insane to pay attention to the carb counts in some meals. Especially fast foods/Mexican/Italian foods, you're looking at _hundreds_ of grams of carbs in a single meal...sorta nutty. I recommend everyone try it if not just for the experiment/self control test. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I hit my goal in terms of lightening up on things or not, but I'm happy so far.

Cshelton 9y ago
Your energy gains are more from being more healthy and not weighing as much. Not so much the particular diet you're on. Now that you are down 17lbs, go grab 17lbs worth of weights and strap them to your body somehow and walk around the house for a bit like that. It's pretty incredible how much 17lbs will feel like. Now think of how much harder your body had to work to carry that extra 17lbs everywhere. (This is assuming that the 17lbs lost was not comprised of muscle =p)
- dchuk 9y ago
  Good point!
  - Cshelton 9y ago
    The best thing you could probably do now is some weight training. By adding more muscle and increasing your resting metabolism, you're more likely to keep that weight off and feel even more healthy/stronger. Not to mention looking a TON better too.

pconnelly15 9y ago

This is an interesting discussion about a topic we know doesn't work. Every piece of reliable data shows that diets don't work. 95% of people who diet gain that weight back and more within 1-5 years. Nutrition philosophies based on deprivation are doomed to fail. A better question might be is what healthy lifestyle components lead to a healthier experience?

WaxProlix 9y ago
Keto is interesting because doing it successfully (ie, meeting the requirement of temporary deprivation) necessitates learning a bit about how the body works, how nutrients are processed, and the role of insulin and carbohydrates in how we as animals take in energy. The vigilance it requires in order to be successful, too, is fairly rigid. I think that just doing keto for a few months can change the way you think about eating, or even change your relationship to food overall. That more mindful approach to nutrition might last longer than the temporary deprivation. It would explain some of the longer-term benefits that people who've [successfully] done keto tend to talk about.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
> 95% of people who diet gain that weight back and more within 1-5 years. This keeps being touted again and again as if it's some grand criticism of diets. Obviously if you stop following a diet, its results will stop applying to you. If you follow a diet that restricts your calories and causes you to lose weight, and you then stop following the diet and eat whatever you ate earlier, of course you will gain back your weight. Healthy eating is a lifestyle decision and a lifestyle change. You have to understand what your diet was trying to achieve, and then try to apply similar concepts to your general everyday life.
mistermann 9y ago
Most "dieters" follow it on a whim. For those that really get into keto and educates themselves on nutrition, read forums, etc I would bet money are far more successful than 5% in keeping it off. It's far easier to be disciplined following a low carb diet because you simply can't cheat with sweets, cheating = you're not on keto any more, makes it psychologically easier (for me anyways). And, once you adopt it as a lifestyle, you really watch what you eat even after the intensive diet - I eat whatever I want, I just don't find myself wanting sugary foods because I know what they do to you, and I have zero problem staying at my desired weight.

patrickg_zill 9y ago

an aside, for those on either diet: lacto-fermented foods like Kombucha, sauerkraut etc. seem to do me a lot of good. Perhaps it is just the B-vitamins in the Kombucha but I find that being on keto and having Kombucha once a day is a good combination.

tzs 9y ago

> Despite not being required to cut calories, participants were eating an average of 500 calories less, and what they were eating was high quality. That's what happened to me. I tried to lower carbs to 40% of calories, not to lose weight but rather to see what affect it would have on blood sugar levels. My A1c had crept up to 8.1, and that was while on two different diabetes medicines. I made no attempt to limit calories...just to make sure that 40% or less came from carbs. In fact, to reach that I started increasing the size of some meals. For example, if I got a sandwich which would normally be 50% carbs, I would order that sandwich with double meat and/or with full mayonnaise instead of light mayo or no mayo, because meat and mayo are calories without carbs, and so lower the carb ratio. I found that this made the food more satisfying, and I ended up eating less kind of automatically. Over the next 18 months I lost 140 pounds that way. A1c is down to 5.0 now, and that is after three months with no diabetes medicine. Long term, I'm eating about 30-35% carbs, and about 45% fat.

robotpony 9y ago

I'd like to see the actual distributions of foods (and micro/macros) in these studies along with the human stats (ages, activity levels). I suspect that the factors are for more multi-modal than the buckets of "low carb" and "high fat". Open source data here would allow for alternative views on the data, and likely better learning overall.

GuB-42 9y ago

Low carb, low fat, low anything are essentially just low calorie diets, which result in weight loss through basic thermodynamic principles. The more I follow trends in diets, the more it seems to boil down to : don't eat too much or too little and have a varied diet. The first point is obvious, the second one is more subtle. There is actually no need for a varied diet. It is just that it is the easiest way for us to make sure we get all the nutrients we need while limiting toxicity. By toxicity, I mean that everything we eat is a bit poisonous, but fortunately, our body is well equipped to deal with it. But eat too much of one poison and it won't keep up. So it is possible to have an unbalanced diet and still be healthy (ex: vegans) but it may take some bookkeeping. Note that research seem to point that the more we eat something, the less we get pleasure from it, as if we are wired to prefer a varied diet. Remember, we are omnivores, and the whole point of being omnivores is that anything goes.

blackflame7000 9y ago
Treating all calories the same ignores the fact that the body does different things with Carbs, Fats, and Proteins. Proteins help build muscle which raises a person's resting metabolic rate. A diet that is deficient in proteins will result in muscle loss and will lower metabolic rate. The scale only tells half the story. 200 lbs of lean muscle burns much more calories than 200 lbs of fat. What you eat directly contributes to this composition and therefore impacts your ability to burn calories.

blackflame7000 9y ago

The diet that truly works is high protein. Carbs and Fats cannot convert to muscle like proteins can and as a result they can not raise your resting metabolic rate like proteins can. Furthermore proteins have a filling effect that satiates hunger and they are not easily stored as fat. If you focus on filling your daily allotment of proteins first, you will often find you are too full to fill the remaining Fats/Carbs requirement. This advice from a personal trainer helped me lose 60 lbs over a year.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Come on, getting those 60g of protein or so is trivial on any diet. (Including complete protein, unless you're vegan and have major legume intolerance.) High protein diets do work indeed, but most of them end up ketogenic by accident as well. Mostly because sugary or starchy foods have little protein.

LyndsySimon 9y ago

> Gardner asked the 609 participants to aim for 20 percent carbs or fat 20% carbs is not a "low-carb" diet. I've been doing keto since January and have lost over 50 pounds. I never get more than 20g of net carbs per day, which is less than 5% of my overall caloric intake.