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To echo other replies, ketogenic and other diets diets with specific protocols (IF) do work, but primarily for behavioral reasons. That is, you’re just not that

To echo other replies, ketogenic and other diets diets with specific protocols (IF) do work, but primarily for behavioral reasons. That is, you’re just not that hungry. Or if you eliminate an entire meal (IF), you ”save” a ton of calories. Yes there are subtleties around actual macronutrient composition and gut flora, but the effect appears to be minimal. Find a keto person eating 5000 calories of bacon per day and I guarantee they’re not losing weight. For what it’s worth: I’m a big fan of keto for cuts.

calvinmorrison 7y ago
Keto works well in my opinion because of the way humans self negotiate. It's far easier to have a list of yes/no items. No fries, bread, burgers versus calorie counting every food (even in simplified systems like weight watchers). Sure eat all the bacon you want, but it works to limit eating out and limits unhealthy fried foods and take out. Personal anecdote: my bread tolerance dropped dramatically on a 6 month keto stint. Sandwiches were gross there's just Soo much bread! Yuck! Then I got used to it again but now I stick with mostly rice/beans and have maintained my weight loss which is great
- tzs 7y ago
  You may be on to something there. I lowered carbs to well below the typical American diet, but nowhere near were the popular low carb diets go. I aimed for at most 40% of calories from carbs, and actually came in at 30-35%. It's perhaps not as easy as a yes/no list, but 40% is very easy to figure out from the nutrition label: max_carbs = calories x 1 g carbs / 10 calories For example, a Sausage McMuffin w/Egg at McD is 480 calories, so as long as it has no more than 48 g of carbs, it's OK. (It has 28 g). Make every item on your meal satisfy the 40% criteria, and the meal as a whole will. Slightly up the effort scale, you can keep a running total of how much you are over or under for the day. Say you are going to get the Sausage McMuffin w/Egg for breakfast. That puts you 20 g of carb ahead. How about adding some McD Donut Sticks to the meal? 280 calories, 33 g of carb. That's 5 g too many carbs for the item to be 40%. But the McMuffin is putting you 20 g ahead, so losing 5 g won't mess up your overall meal. Go ahead and have those Donut Sticks if you like them.
adamgluck 7y ago
This actually isn’t entirely true. You’re operating under the “energy in-energy out” theory of weight loss, but human regulation of body fat is more complicated than that. Specifically, we store energy in adipose tissue in the form of body fat after a meal (think of it like storing data on disk) and then when we are low on energy we burn that fat (load that data “in-memory”). However, a lot regulates when we burn fat. Blood sugar and insulin levels signal to the body not to burn fat and those come directly from carbohydrates. Additionally, carbohydrates are the initial energy source that is turned to fat. So with no carbs all your body knows how to do is burn fat for energy, and no additional intake of carbs means that there is no excess energy to store as fat to begin with. So, actually, even with a 5000 calorie diet you might see some weight loss... because your body has literally nothing (no carbs) to store as fat. However, keto and low carb diets do have the benefit of the fact that they are entirely sustainable (unless you’re really addicted to bread) so I agree in that way they are behavioral :P
- superpermutat0r 7y ago
  How can the body, given 5000 kcal in fat not store any of that fat in the adipose tissue?
  - adamgluck 7y ago
    Your body responds to the intake of carbohydrates by creating insulin which regulates the storage of carbohydrates as “body fat” (see: glycogen). Overall, your body is 70% fat (cell membranes, for example). In other words, dietary fat != body fat and there is no reason that your body would store it as such (in adipose tissue), it actually, mechanistically, as far as I know, cannot.
    - superpermutat0r 7y ago
      But glycogen is not fat in the adipose tissue. Glycogen goes into muscles and is a ready fuel, fuel ready for fast metabolic burn. The metabolism to turn carbohydrates and protein into fat is insanely inefficient compared to just storing fat as fat. And fat is the first thing to get stored when there's an insulin spike, not to mention the carbs+fat combination is the thing that creates insulin resistance exactly because of the fat messing everything up. So I'm thinking, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you are just repeating some keto "truth" that does not really make sense. Because when I googled that, the only sources were pretty much some keto promoting pages.
rapind 7y ago
I remember reading about a guy who did just this (eat bacon every day and only bacon) and lost a bunch of weight. I can't vouch for the truth, safety, or context of this though. Googling turns it up, fwiw.
benibela 7y ago
>That is, you’re just not that hungry. Or if you eliminate an entire meal (IF), you ”save” a ton of calories. Or you replace high calorie food with food that does not have much calories. Like lettuce salad, which has like 17kcal. Then you would need to eat over 10kg lettuce salad to get the required 2000 kcal. That is hard to do and hard to overeat

calvinmorrison 7y ago

Keto works well in my opinion because of the way humans self negotiate. It's far easier to have a list of yes/no items. No fries, bread, burgers versus calorie counting every food (even in simplified systems like weight watchers). Sure eat all the bacon you want, but it works to limit eating out and limits unhealthy fried foods and take out. Personal anecdote: my bread tolerance dropped dramatically on a 6 month keto stint. Sandwiches were gross there's just Soo much bread! Yuck! Then I got used to it again but now I stick with mostly rice/beans and have maintained my weight loss which is great

tzs 7y ago
You may be on to something there. I lowered carbs to well below the typical American diet, but nowhere near were the popular low carb diets go. I aimed for at most 40% of calories from carbs, and actually came in at 30-35%. It's perhaps not as easy as a yes/no list, but 40% is very easy to figure out from the nutrition label: max_carbs = calories x 1 g carbs / 10 calories For example, a Sausage McMuffin w/Egg at McD is 480 calories, so as long as it has no more than 48 g of carbs, it's OK. (It has 28 g). Make every item on your meal satisfy the 40% criteria, and the meal as a whole will. Slightly up the effort scale, you can keep a running total of how much you are over or under for the day. Say you are going to get the Sausage McMuffin w/Egg for breakfast. That puts you 20 g of carb ahead. How about adding some McD Donut Sticks to the meal? 280 calories, 33 g of carb. That's 5 g too many carbs for the item to be 40%. But the McMuffin is putting you 20 g ahead, so losing 5 g won't mess up your overall meal. Go ahead and have those Donut Sticks if you like them.

adamgluck 7y ago

This actually isn’t entirely true. You’re operating under the “energy in-energy out” theory of weight loss, but human regulation of body fat is more complicated than that. Specifically, we store energy in adipose tissue in the form of body fat after a meal (think of it like storing data on disk) and then when we are low on energy we burn that fat (load that data “in-memory”). However, a lot regulates when we burn fat. Blood sugar and insulin levels signal to the body not to burn fat and those come directly from carbohydrates. Additionally, carbohydrates are the initial energy source that is turned to fat. So with no carbs all your body knows how to do is burn fat for energy, and no additional intake of carbs means that there is no excess energy to store as fat to begin with. So, actually, even with a 5000 calorie diet you might see some weight loss... because your body has literally nothing (no carbs) to store as fat. However, keto and low carb diets do have the benefit of the fact that they are entirely sustainable (unless you’re really addicted to bread) so I agree in that way they are behavioral :P

superpermutat0r 7y ago
How can the body, given 5000 kcal in fat not store any of that fat in the adipose tissue?
- adamgluck 7y ago
  Your body responds to the intake of carbohydrates by creating insulin which regulates the storage of carbohydrates as “body fat” (see: glycogen). Overall, your body is 70% fat (cell membranes, for example). In other words, dietary fat != body fat and there is no reason that your body would store it as such (in adipose tissue), it actually, mechanistically, as far as I know, cannot.
  - superpermutat0r 7y ago
    But glycogen is not fat in the adipose tissue. Glycogen goes into muscles and is a ready fuel, fuel ready for fast metabolic burn. The metabolism to turn carbohydrates and protein into fat is insanely inefficient compared to just storing fat as fat. And fat is the first thing to get stored when there's an insulin spike, not to mention the carbs+fat combination is the thing that creates insulin resistance exactly because of the fat messing everything up. So I'm thinking, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you are just repeating some keto "truth" that does not really make sense. Because when I googled that, the only sources were pretty much some keto promoting pages.

rapind 7y ago

I remember reading about a guy who did just this (eat bacon every day and only bacon) and lost a bunch of weight. I can't vouch for the truth, safety, or context of this though. Googling turns it up, fwiw.

benibela 7y ago

>That is, you’re just not that hungry. Or if you eliminate an entire meal (IF), you ”save” a ton of calories. Or you replace high calorie food with food that does not have much calories. Like lettuce salad, which has like 17kcal. Then you would need to eat over 10kg lettuce salad to get the required 2000 kcal. That is hard to do and hard to overeat