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This actually makes a ton of sense and is what people on the sidelines of the insulin debate have been screaming since Gary Taubes starting publishing his work

This actually makes a ton of sense and is what people on the sidelines of the insulin debate have been screaming since Gary Taubes starting publishing his work about dietary sugar. Unfortunately it's given people a very non-nuanced view of the science. The problem is not dietary sugar, it is blood sugar levels, which are elevated by many things (including protein and fat), but more than anything by excess calories. The problem is not peak blood sugar levels, it is average blood sugar levels. Edit: to quickly reply to your TLDR edit: > Thus, protein- and fat-rich foods may induce substantial insulin secretion despite producing relatively small bloodglucose responses. This is only true if you completely ignore everything else going on in the body. Gluconeogenesis is a thing, and just because dietary fat or protein doesn't immediately increase blood sugar levels does not mean long term they don't. This stuff can't just be looked at as "input/output" you have to take into consideration the existing state of the person before the input. /edit You can reason about this fairly easily: take a caloric intake of 2000 calories consumed all at once vs in 10 meals over the day. The all at once crowd gets a huge insulin spike. Oh no! Fat storage, right? Sure, but what happens the rest of the day when there is no dietary input? Fat burn! The 10 meals/day crowd probably never gets as high blood sugar levels, but also has much higher throughout the day, and accesses fat stores less. But guess what? Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it's sort of the entire point of fat storage. Where this gets tricky is that high insulin can eventually lead to low blood sugar dips. People without diabetes can simply wait this out, and the body will start burning fat again and raise the blood sugar. But this also makes many people feel hungry, and so they eat more, which raises their average blood sugar levels, and the cycle continues. Some people have a hard time with this, others do not, but it's really important to understand that the insulin is causing people to consume more calories which is causing damage, not the insulin itself.

SilasX 8y ago
Intuitively, you would expect that "drinking from the firehose" is not going to let you capture as much of the water as if you sipped from a trickle, and that same dynamic should apply generally: all customers come at the same time vs an hour, all enemies attack at once vs individually, etc. Unless, of course, the human body historically faced strong selective pressures to efficiently store energy when you have to eat a lot at once.
- wdewind 8y ago
  > Unless, of course, the human body historically faced strong selective pressures to efficiently store energy when you have to eat a lot at once. Right, and the intermittent fasting crowd uses the same tricks as Gary Taubes but in reverse: look what happens when you fast! All these great reparative things happen. But it's all basic science and ignores a long term (even 24 hour) view of consumption. Ultimately there might be small, statistically significant metabolic differences between consuming the same number of calories in 1 meal as spread out over multiple meals (ie: 1 big insulin spike vs multiple smaller ones), but we've had a hell of a time showing them, and and even harder time showing clinically significant differences.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Definitely! Don't get me wrong: no matter how intuitive an idea might be, you still need to validate it with experiment.
  - hodder 8y ago
    Spot on. But one of the main reasons fasting protocols “work” is that people are likely to reduce caloric intake and count macros/calories when they only eat in a tiny time window. It is difficult to eat 2k+ calories in a few hours and if you adhere to an intermittent fasting diet you will be much more likely to alter the nutritional profile and caloric intake of food you consume. It is no shocker people are noticing anecdotal improvements in bodyfat composition. So while the actual intermittent fasting may not make much of a statistical metabolic difference if you hold caloric and macro consumption flat, in reality when people follow a fasting protocol they do not hold consumption flat. Similarly when people follow ketogenic diets, they tend to eat far less calories. These diets tend to “work” mostly due to caloric restriction.
  - dorfsmay 8y ago
    Are you you saying the work of Valter Longo on repairs, increase autophagy, etc... during long fasts (6 to 10 days) is not valid?
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
rocgf 8y ago
Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10 small ones? Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently. For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place.
- bad_user 8y ago
  The answer to your question is yes. I’m doing 18:6 or 20:4 protocols, I eat 2 meals per day usually and I like measurements. My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t.
  - wdewind 8y ago
    > My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. The problem is that there isn't any real data, on an epidemiological level, that says this matters. I don't mean to be offensive, it's just a weird obsession with the Keto community I don't really understand. Same with insulin spikes. They just don't matter. It's averages over a long period of time that matter. If you're eating two large meals, you're still releasing a lot of insulin, you're still doing the same amount of fat storage, you're just timing it differently. If that works for you, great. > I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. This is a semantic construction that is not supported by the science. You are correct that you would not measure nearly as high blood ketone levels, but you are incorrect in the idea that you wouldn't consume essentially the same amount of fat over the same amount of time given the same caloric inputs. Most people also go into ketosis while they are sleeping. > With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This doesn't matter. Given the same energy requirements and the same energy inputs you're going to burn the same amount of fat over a 24 hour period regardless of when those inputs come. Anything else is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. > This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Yes, keto is actually a low protein diet as much as a high fat diet. Most people ignore the first part. > Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t. This is great, and a very real reason for people to try IF/Keto/Other diets. But it does not suggest anything other than a compliance hack that is working well for you.
amanaplanacanal 8y ago
I'm having a hard time with some of the things you are saying here, but my knowledge of how this stuff works is pretty simplistic. I'm curious specifically about the mechanisms for this stuff. How can fat elevate blood sugar levels? If you don't have elevated blood sugar from eating a bunch of carbs, what effect does insulin have? Does it cause blood sugar to go even lower? On gluconeogenesis: I thought this was demand driven rather than supply driven. Insulin apparently is an inhibitor for this. So how does this work?
- wdewind 8y ago
  > How can fat elevate blood sugar levels? Via gluconeogenesis, but it is, for sure, less effective than protein based gluconeogenesis. > If you don't have elevated blood sugar from eating a bunch of carbs, what effect does insulin have? You have elevated blood sugar from having an excess of calories. Dietary sugar is most rapidly converted to blood sugar, but all excess calories are eventually converted via gluconeogenesis. > Does it cause blood sugar to go even lower? Yes, and in extremes can cause death. > On gluconeogenesis: I thought this was demand driven rather than supply driven. Insulin apparently is an inhibitor for this. So how does this work? Gluconeogenesis first causes the breakdown of protein into available glucose. What the body does with it after that has a lot to do with the body's current energy demands. Insulin is an inhibitor for this, but insulin is also only elevated post-prandial, and most gluconeogenesis happens off schedule from eating (or at the very least after the initial insulin response). The major error people make when trying to understand this stuff is to focus on too short of a time frame, in this case the very small period right after a meal is consumed, rather than something longer, like a 24 hour period. As soon as you zoom out to 24 hours a lot of these ideas stop making sense because your body has a large amount of resources dedicated to effectively regulating energy expenditure.
echelon 8y ago
It's far too simplistic to argue that it's the average insulin intake that matters. The complex kinetics depends both on rate as well as average / basal dosages. This is a complex system that behaves differently across individuals with varying metabolisms and diets. Spikes can trigger different biological responses that respond to thresholds and equilibria. It's a differential problem, and the answer isn't easy.
- wdewind 8y ago
  > It's far too simplistic to argue that it's the average insulin intake that matters. I agree, I'm trying to more accurately state what we confidently know based on the available science, rather than what might be true based on our hunches. Insulin spikes being bad are 100% in hunch land. > The complex kinetics depends both on rate as well as average / basal dosages. I agree but, again, very little science that disambiguates effectively. > Spikes can trigger different biological responses that respond to thresholds and equilibria. Right, this is what the basic science has shown, but what we don't know is what difference this makes within a 24 hour window, or epidemiologically over time. > It's a differential problem, and the answer isn't easy. Definitely agree.
keymone 8y ago
Regarding calorie control - has it not been shown that in ketosis your basal metabolic rate and hunger are generally lower? So feeding people static amount of calories isn’t really measuring the same thing to what happens in the wild - eating until satiety?
soulbadguy 8y ago
> But guess what? Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it's sort of the entire point of fat storage. Any resource to validate this claim. This is just a reformulation of the CICO argument. Saying the body "is good at smoothing this out" is tautological at saying that the distribution of the calories across the time domain (the IF crow) or accros the macro domain ( paleo peps) doesn't matter. And as i know we don't know that yet. > that the insulin is consume more calories which is causing damage, not the insulin itself. Again any claim to this ? Most reference i see have this causation relationship reversed....
- wdewind 8y ago
  > Any resource to validate this claim. Most IF studies do not show any metabolic difference, and the ones that do do not control for calories. I'm sorry to shift the burden of proof, but I feel like CICO is the default position and additional nuance requires proof, not the opposite. Also I am lazy. > Again any claim to this ? Most reference i see have this causation relationship reversed.... Yeah totally, so the claim is not that insulin does not cause damage, it is that where we have recorded that damage is directly to cells in labs, but we have not translated this to epidemiological studies. This is sort of like the Schroedinger's Cat of nutrition: we see these effects in the lab at micro scale, but we don't actually see them translate to real world effects when we look for them at the macro scale. One explanation is that with the same way we see insulin causing damage, we see caloric deficit causing repairs. Maybe these cancel each other out when calories are controlled for? I don't have an explanation, but the key is that we don't observe this stuff on the macro level.
  - soulbadguy 8y ago
    > but I feel like CICO is the default position and additional nuance requires proof Is there really a need to default position ? CICO and the fact that distribution (both in time and macro) of the calorie in matter can both be true. The assumption i do not agree with in CICO is CI is an independent and infinitely controllable variable. Now it's possible that the causal link between a certain macro distribution (let say high carb diet) and weight gain is mediated by CI, but from there it doesnt follow that CI control is an effective way of weight control. > but we have not translated this to epidemiological studies. Depends on what you call epidemiological study, but using the diabetic population, the causal link between insulin and weigth gain is pretty strong. The book "obesity code" make of good case for that.
ebg13 8y ago
> But guess what? Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it's sort of the entire point of fat storage. So why can't I eat a month's worth of calories in one go and then fast for the rest of the month with water and multivitamins?
- tapland 8y ago
  You can't fill yourself with that much and if you managed to it won't be absorbed before coming out the other end.
- wdewind 8y ago
  Yeah, this is actually a great question imo. So the main problem would be nutrient absorption, and there would be a number of problems that would impact it, from literal surface area of your digestive system, to current bacterial populations etc. etc. These problems matter less in a 24 hour window when you are far less likely to hit the same thresholds eating a reasonable amount of food. But basically, you could not effectively break down and absorb all the nutrients quickly enough, and you would have pretty nasty shits/vomiting. But, let's say somehow you could, and somehow your body ended up storing a bunch of fat. In general, the second half of your statement is totally doable because the human body absolutely kicks ass at energy storage and expenditure. https://www.sciencealert.com/the-true-story-of-a-man-who-survived-without-any-food-for-382-days https://www.sciencealert.com/the-true-story-of-a-man-who-sur...
avinium 8y ago
I'm experimenting with IF/keto at the moment, mainly to see if it helps put on lean muscle. For context, I've also been eating relatively clean (low carb, high protein/fibre) for years now. I take all the internet commentary about low insulin levels (etc) with a grain of salt. I just don't know enough about endocrinology or the current state of research. That being said, higher carbohydrate intake causes a noticeable spike in how hungry I feel. If I have a moderately carb-heavy dinner (50-100g), I'm ravenous when I wake up, and mentally I'm a lot fuzzier. Then, like clockwork, they both disappear around 3pm, which I assume coincides with the switch over from metabolizing glycogen to fatty acids. If I keep carbs under 20g, I'm fine from the moment I wake up. I have mild sensations of hunger later in the day, but nothing like the pangs I get on the higher carb diet. This seems to be well documented, and most people on the keto diet report similar experiences. Do you think this hormonal response has no impact on weight loss (or, for that matter, muscle gain)?
- wdewind 8y ago
  > Do you think this hormonal response has no impact on weight loss (or, for that matter, muscle gain)? That's way too broad a statement for me to blanket agree or disagree with. Short answer: no I definitely don't think that. Long answer: basically everything else I said in this thread.
- fierro 8y ago
  as a data point, keto helped me put on a ton of muscle. I do lift weights 6 days per week, but I attribute it to increased testosterone. I've been fairly principled in my approach to experimenting with keto, including doing regular bloodwork. Prior to keto my T was around 450. Post keto (~2 months in), it was close to 800. I was/am eating a ton of fat. I don't measure it (I eat intuitively based on hunger) but I would estimate my fat intake to be around 200g fat/day or more. Just my personal anecdote. We'll see how long I live for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SilasX 8y ago

Intuitively, you would expect that "drinking from the firehose" is not going to let you capture as much of the water as if you sipped from a trickle, and that same dynamic should apply generally: all customers come at the same time vs an hour, all enemies attack at once vs individually, etc. Unless, of course, the human body historically faced strong selective pressures to efficiently store energy when you have to eat a lot at once.

wdewind 8y ago
> Unless, of course, the human body historically faced strong selective pressures to efficiently store energy when you have to eat a lot at once. Right, and the intermittent fasting crowd uses the same tricks as Gary Taubes but in reverse: look what happens when you fast! All these great reparative things happen. But it's all basic science and ignores a long term (even 24 hour) view of consumption. Ultimately there might be small, statistically significant metabolic differences between consuming the same number of calories in 1 meal as spread out over multiple meals (ie: 1 big insulin spike vs multiple smaller ones), but we've had a hell of a time showing them, and and even harder time showing clinically significant differences.
- SilasX 8y ago
  Definitely! Don't get me wrong: no matter how intuitive an idea might be, you still need to validate it with experiment.
- hodder 8y ago
  Spot on. But one of the main reasons fasting protocols “work” is that people are likely to reduce caloric intake and count macros/calories when they only eat in a tiny time window. It is difficult to eat 2k+ calories in a few hours and if you adhere to an intermittent fasting diet you will be much more likely to alter the nutritional profile and caloric intake of food you consume. It is no shocker people are noticing anecdotal improvements in bodyfat composition. So while the actual intermittent fasting may not make much of a statistical metabolic difference if you hold caloric and macro consumption flat, in reality when people follow a fasting protocol they do not hold consumption flat. Similarly when people follow ketogenic diets, they tend to eat far less calories. These diets tend to “work” mostly due to caloric restriction.
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  Are you you saying the work of Valter Longo on repairs, increase autophagy, etc... during long fasts (6 to 10 days) is not valid?
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

rocgf 8y ago

Sorry for the dumb question, but given the total calories are the same, does this mean that it is generally healthier to eat one big meal per day rather than 10 small ones? Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently. For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place.

bad_user 8y ago
The answer to your question is yes. I’m doing 18:6 or 20:4 protocols, I eat 2 meals per day usually and I like measurements. My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t.
- wdewind 8y ago
  > My blood ketones during my fasting are through the roof, over 1.5 mmol/L after 15 hours of fasting, which indicates deep nutritional ketosis and an indication that lypolisis is efficient. The problem is that there isn't any real data, on an epidemiological level, that says this matters. I don't mean to be offensive, it's just a weird obsession with the Keto community I don't really understand. Same with insulin spikes. They just don't matter. It's averages over a long period of time that matter. If you're eating two large meals, you're still releasing a lot of insulin, you're still doing the same amount of fat storage, you're just timing it differently. If that works for you, great. > I can tell you this would not happen if I ate 6 small meals per day. And I know because I measured myself. But it’s also how the body works ... ketosis happens after the liver’s glycogen stores are depleted, which takes 10-12 hours and the switch to burning fat isn’t very efficient and getting less so with age. Your body needs a break from food in order to mobilize the energy in your adipose tissue. This is a semantic construction that is not supported by the science. You are correct that you would not measure nearly as high blood ketone levels, but you are incorrect in the idea that you wouldn't consume essentially the same amount of fat over the same amount of time given the same caloric inputs. Most people also go into ketosis while they are sleeping. > With 6 small meals what actually happens is constant hunger because you’re interrupting lipolysis every time you eat. This doesn't matter. Given the same energy requirements and the same energy inputs you're going to burn the same amount of fat over a 24 hour period regardless of when those inputs come. Anything else is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. > This happens even with the ketogenic diet, because even meat triggers a hormonal response, small but not insignificant. Yes, keto is actually a low protein diet as much as a high fat diet. Most people ignore the first part. > Also speaking from my own experience, I suffered from hunger at night, which made me binge. Switched to IF, hunger is now gone. Sounds like a paradox but it really isn’t. This is great, and a very real reason for people to try IF/Keto/Other diets. But it does not suggest anything other than a compliance hack that is working well for you.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago

I'm having a hard time with some of the things you are saying here, but my knowledge of how this stuff works is pretty simplistic. I'm curious specifically about the mechanisms for this stuff. How can fat elevate blood sugar levels? If you don't have elevated blood sugar from eating a bunch of carbs, what effect does insulin have? Does it cause blood sugar to go even lower? On gluconeogenesis: I thought this was demand driven rather than supply driven. Insulin apparently is an inhibitor for this. So how does this work?

wdewind 8y ago
> How can fat elevate blood sugar levels? Via gluconeogenesis, but it is, for sure, less effective than protein based gluconeogenesis. > If you don't have elevated blood sugar from eating a bunch of carbs, what effect does insulin have? You have elevated blood sugar from having an excess of calories. Dietary sugar is most rapidly converted to blood sugar, but all excess calories are eventually converted via gluconeogenesis. > Does it cause blood sugar to go even lower? Yes, and in extremes can cause death. > On gluconeogenesis: I thought this was demand driven rather than supply driven. Insulin apparently is an inhibitor for this. So how does this work? Gluconeogenesis first causes the breakdown of protein into available glucose. What the body does with it after that has a lot to do with the body's current energy demands. Insulin is an inhibitor for this, but insulin is also only elevated post-prandial, and most gluconeogenesis happens off schedule from eating (or at the very least after the initial insulin response). The major error people make when trying to understand this stuff is to focus on too short of a time frame, in this case the very small period right after a meal is consumed, rather than something longer, like a 24 hour period. As soon as you zoom out to 24 hours a lot of these ideas stop making sense because your body has a large amount of resources dedicated to effectively regulating energy expenditure.

echelon 8y ago

It's far too simplistic to argue that it's the average insulin intake that matters. The complex kinetics depends both on rate as well as average / basal dosages. This is a complex system that behaves differently across individuals with varying metabolisms and diets. Spikes can trigger different biological responses that respond to thresholds and equilibria. It's a differential problem, and the answer isn't easy.

wdewind 8y ago
> It's far too simplistic to argue that it's the average insulin intake that matters. I agree, I'm trying to more accurately state what we confidently know based on the available science, rather than what might be true based on our hunches. Insulin spikes being bad are 100% in hunch land. > The complex kinetics depends both on rate as well as average / basal dosages. I agree but, again, very little science that disambiguates effectively. > Spikes can trigger different biological responses that respond to thresholds and equilibria. Right, this is what the basic science has shown, but what we don't know is what difference this makes within a 24 hour window, or epidemiologically over time. > It's a differential problem, and the answer isn't easy. Definitely agree.

keymone 8y ago

Regarding calorie control - has it not been shown that in ketosis your basal metabolic rate and hunger are generally lower? So feeding people static amount of calories isn’t really measuring the same thing to what happens in the wild - eating until satiety?

soulbadguy 8y ago

> But guess what? Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it's sort of the entire point of fat storage. Any resource to validate this claim. This is just a reformulation of the CICO argument. Saying the body "is good at smoothing this out" is tautological at saying that the distribution of the calories across the time domain (the IF crow) or accros the macro domain ( paleo peps) doesn't matter. And as i know we don't know that yet. > that the insulin is consume more calories which is causing damage, not the insulin itself. Again any claim to this ? Most reference i see have this causation relationship reversed....

wdewind 8y ago
> Any resource to validate this claim. Most IF studies do not show any metabolic difference, and the ones that do do not control for calories. I'm sorry to shift the burden of proof, but I feel like CICO is the default position and additional nuance requires proof, not the opposite. Also I am lazy. > Again any claim to this ? Most reference i see have this causation relationship reversed.... Yeah totally, so the claim is not that insulin does not cause damage, it is that where we have recorded that damage is directly to cells in labs, but we have not translated this to epidemiological studies. This is sort of like the Schroedinger's Cat of nutrition: we see these effects in the lab at micro scale, but we don't actually see them translate to real world effects when we look for them at the macro scale. One explanation is that with the same way we see insulin causing damage, we see caloric deficit causing repairs. Maybe these cancel each other out when calories are controlled for? I don't have an explanation, but the key is that we don't observe this stuff on the macro level.
- soulbadguy 8y ago
  > but I feel like CICO is the default position and additional nuance requires proof Is there really a need to default position ? CICO and the fact that distribution (both in time and macro) of the calorie in matter can both be true. The assumption i do not agree with in CICO is CI is an independent and infinitely controllable variable. Now it's possible that the causal link between a certain macro distribution (let say high carb diet) and weight gain is mediated by CI, but from there it doesnt follow that CI control is an effective way of weight control. > but we have not translated this to epidemiological studies. Depends on what you call epidemiological study, but using the diabetic population, the causal link between insulin and weigth gain is pretty strong. The book "obesity code" make of good case for that.

ebg13 8y ago

> But guess what? Net the body is really pretty good at smoothing this stuff out, it's sort of the entire point of fat storage. So why can't I eat a month's worth of calories in one go and then fast for the rest of the month with water and multivitamins?

tapland 8y ago
You can't fill yourself with that much and if you managed to it won't be absorbed before coming out the other end.
wdewind 8y ago
Yeah, this is actually a great question imo. So the main problem would be nutrient absorption, and there would be a number of problems that would impact it, from literal surface area of your digestive system, to current bacterial populations etc. etc. These problems matter less in a 24 hour window when you are far less likely to hit the same thresholds eating a reasonable amount of food. But basically, you could not effectively break down and absorb all the nutrients quickly enough, and you would have pretty nasty shits/vomiting. But, let's say somehow you could, and somehow your body ended up storing a bunch of fat. In general, the second half of your statement is totally doable because the human body absolutely kicks ass at energy storage and expenditure. https://www.sciencealert.com/the-true-story-of-a-man-who-survived-without-any-food-for-382-days https://www.sciencealert.com/the-true-story-of-a-man-who-sur...

avinium 8y ago

I'm experimenting with IF/keto at the moment, mainly to see if it helps put on lean muscle. For context, I've also been eating relatively clean (low carb, high protein/fibre) for years now. I take all the internet commentary about low insulin levels (etc) with a grain of salt. I just don't know enough about endocrinology or the current state of research. That being said, higher carbohydrate intake causes a noticeable spike in how hungry I feel. If I have a moderately carb-heavy dinner (50-100g), I'm ravenous when I wake up, and mentally I'm a lot fuzzier. Then, like clockwork, they both disappear around 3pm, which I assume coincides with the switch over from metabolizing glycogen to fatty acids. If I keep carbs under 20g, I'm fine from the moment I wake up. I have mild sensations of hunger later in the day, but nothing like the pangs I get on the higher carb diet. This seems to be well documented, and most people on the keto diet report similar experiences. Do you think this hormonal response has no impact on weight loss (or, for that matter, muscle gain)?

wdewind 8y ago
> Do you think this hormonal response has no impact on weight loss (or, for that matter, muscle gain)? That's way too broad a statement for me to blanket agree or disagree with. Short answer: no I definitely don't think that. Long answer: basically everything else I said in this thread.
fierro 8y ago
as a data point, keto helped me put on a ton of muscle. I do lift weights 6 days per week, but I attribute it to increased testosterone. I've been fairly principled in my approach to experimenting with keto, including doing regular bloodwork. Prior to keto my T was around 450. Post keto (~2 months in), it was close to 800. I was/am eating a ton of fat. I don't measure it (I eat intuitively based on hunger) but I would estimate my fat intake to be around 200g fat/day or more. Just my personal anecdote. We'll see how long I live for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯