15 ms·

I don't think we're even close to really understanding how the body works here. I'm not obese, but I gain weight from eating a little more, very easily. Last s

I don't think we're even close to really understanding how the body works here. I'm not obese, but I gain weight from eating a little more, very easily. Last summer, I followed a Keto ("ultra low carb, high fat, medium protein") diet for about 4 months. After the first week of feeling terrible, a well-known side effect, I felt perfectly fine. It felt like I was binge eating, I limited what I could eat and just went mad eating it. Any time I was remotely hungry, grab an approved snack. A big plate of bacon and eggs for breakfast, Chipotle for lunch, and a hefty meal for dinner. I never went hungry, and as someone who likes food, it felt more like a treat than a diet. Colleagues thought I was trying to gain weight, and my girlfriend thought I'd gone mad with hunger. But the fat melted off. I didn't walk into a gym in those 3 months, and dropped 2-3lbs a week (starting ~250 at 6"3'), every single week. I'm not saying it's perfect, or even viable for everybody -- it's not cheap, it's awkward to eat with friends, and the first week or two can be hell. Despite what people have been told, fat won't make you fat, and Keto has been shown over and over to reduce the risk factors for heart disease, 'cure' diabetics, and provide huge body transformations. For anyone interested, /r/keto is a reasonably mature community, and can provide a lot more information.

fulmato 13y ago
On top of /r/keto Dr. Peter Attia has a great blog on this topic http://eatingacademy.com/ http://eatingacademy.com/ It's a great resource for a more scientific explanation of what happens to the metabolism when keto-adapted and on the effects of carbohydrates and more importantly insulin.
sn0v 13y ago
Did you notice any long term (lasting) effects after those four months? Also, any particular reason you stopped? Thanks.
- stickydink 13y ago
  After I stopped, and started eating regularly again, I found nothing different at all. One of the side effects, is that you're really susceptible to alcohol. One beer, and I'd be really feeling it. Whereas before, I could drink 3 without really noticing. After I stopped, my tolerance was still pretty low, though it's fine now. I don't know if the low tolerance afterwards could be the diet specifically, or just whether I'd not really drank in 4 months. I stopped because it was just too awkward. Living with my girlfriend, it was annoying that we had to cook separately (she only believes in low calorie, zombie cardio 5 days a week). We could only go out to dinner at certain places, which got a bit tedious. And to be honest, I'd done pretty well, and was back to the sort of weight I wanted to be at. The toss up between the cost/awkwardness, and the amount of weight I still had to lose, it wasn't worth the hassle. Though, if I ever need to lose weight again (hopefully never), I wouldn't even dream of anything else.
  - s_husso 13y ago
    > One of the side effects, is that you're really susceptible to alcohol. One beer, and I'd be really feeling it. Whereas before, I could drink 3 without really noticing. After I stopped, my tolerance was still pretty low, though it's fine now. I don't know if the low tolerance afterwards could be the diet specifically, or just whether I'd not really drank in 4 months. After going Keto/IF my alcohol tolerance has gone through the roofs to a point that I really don't want to get wasted anymore (not that I did it that often). Around 10 beers used to get me in a great buzz, but now after a 0.7 litre bottle of whisky I could still easily get into a bar and continue drinking. But luckily there is something going in the back of your head, that "maybe this is way too much already, lets call it a day". And top of that, the day after, I seem to have no hangover at all. Now a days, if I go out with friends I usually take one or two servings of some good quality whisky and leave it at that. For the background I'm currently standing at 115kg
- AltanS 13y ago
  Maybe I can answer this question, been on a ketogenic diet for over a year now. As mentioned above there is an adaptation period to the diet that can take up to 4 weeks. During that time symptoms can be flu like, this is caused by an initial hormonal change due to low blood glucose levels and in return a low and stable insulin level. Because of this the kidney excretes more sodium, potassium and water, leading to low blood pressure. This can be prevented by supplementing broth, or adding more salt to servings, for as long as the symptoms occur. Once this phase is over you get to experience the real benefits of a ketogenic diet, constant energy levels throughout the day, controllable hunger, better sleep, elevated HGH and more. It really sounds too good to be true I guess, which is why a lot of people dismiss it right away. I'd encourage anyone to give it a try, at least 4 weeks however to ensure adaptation.
  - notdrunkatall 13y ago
    HGH? Human Growth Hormone? Just curious, what benefit does this provide?
    - AltanS 13y ago
      From the wikipedia page: "In addition to increasing height in children and adolescents, growth hormone has many other effects on the body: - Increases calcium retention, and strengthens and increases the mineralization of bone - Increases muscle mass through sarcomere hypertrophy - Promotes lipolysis - Increases protein synthesis - Stimulates the growth of all internal organs excluding the brain - Plays a role in homeostasis - Reduces liver uptake of glucose - Promotes gluconeogenesis in the liver - Contributes to the maintenance and function of pancreatic islets - Stimulates the immune system"
  - ovi256 13y ago
    This is pretty much the "reset fast" that is advocated by the "Engineering the Alpha" book.
- dharmach 13y ago
  The book "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" mentioned about the group not able to eat carbohydrate for months. They had only animal products available to survive. They complained about lack of stamina and each physical tasks taking a lot longer to complete.
  - Robin_Message 13y ago
    They were stuck on an Antarctic ice floe for 497 days, and you think it was the lack of carbs that reduced their stamina? What about the debilitating cold, the crushing expectation of a lonely death, or the general ice-induced boredom?
ehsanu1 13y ago
fulmato, you were hellbanned after your first comment saying "this is bs". Not a great comment, but hellbanning for a single comment is quite extreme. Posting your useful comment here: On top of /r/keto Dr. Peter Attia has a great blog on this topic http://eatingacademy.com/ http://eatingacademy.com/ It's a great resource for a more scientific explanation of what happens to the metabolism when keto-adapted and on the effects of carbohydrates and more importantly insulin.
- jimeuxx 13y ago
  People like Attia live in a parallel universe where there are healthy populations on Earth that eat no carbs and East Asia doesn't exist. My Japanese is good enough now to explain to my wife's active octogenarian grandparents why rice is going to give them heart disease and diabetes. In all seriousness, the world of online nutrition is a nasty and insane place. There's a lot of dogma and cognitive dissonance in something that borders on religion among the followers of gurus like Attia. If you're simply looking for an objective explanation of science rather than an ideology, look elsewhere.
  - AltanS 13y ago
    There's a lot of scientific evidence supporting a ketogenic lifestyle, distinguishing this movement from fad diets and Attia from a Guru status. If you're interested I would recommend the following book: http://amzn.com/0983490708 http://amzn.com/0983490708
    - dhimes 13y ago
      Better would be peer-reviewed journal articles. A lot of books have a tendency to promote the views of the author over providing a balance of information.
      - AltanS 13y ago
        Here is a short list of both author's peer-reviewed research papers on the topic. http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/research/ http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/research/
theorique 13y ago
Chipotle for lunch How did you do Chipotle? I'm guessing you just went with beans / meat / vegetables and skipped the rice and tortilla?
- stickydink 13y ago
  They have a pretty decent nutritional guide[1] on their website, my usual was the salad bowl (big lettuce), no salad dressing, no rice, no beans, fajita veggies, double meat steak + barbacoa, the green salsa (has the fewest net carbs), sour cream, cheese, guac. That leaves you with this: http://imgur.com/WZBEczv http://imgur.com/WZBEczv, 14g net carbs (net carbs = carbs - fiber). My target was <30g per day. Breakfast gave almost 0, dinner would be 10-15g. [1] http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutrition_calculator.aspx http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutr...
bobowzki 13y ago
I'm a physician. While it's good to lose weight (at least if you are overweight), keep in mind that losing weight is not the only interesting outcome. Any diet might have long term side effects. Such as an increased risk of cancer, arteriosclerosis etc. Also remember that weight loss is not the only benefit of exercise. That said, congrats on losing weight. Now start exercising :-)
- tokenizer 13y ago
  Regarding the diet above, which limits your sugar intake to 20 grams a day, what are some potential consequences of starving your body of sugars? Sounds good in theory (sugar is bad), but it sounds stressful (body starts producing ketones due to suck a lack of sugar, flu like symptoms for a week).
  - nkuttler 13y ago
    Producing ketones is perfectly normal. The flu-like symptoms can usually be avoided by easing into a low-carb/keto diet and/or ingesting sodium, chicken broth is normally recommended at the early stages. Potential consequences of reduced carb intake are weight loss. It can be used to treat type 2 diabetes, epilepsy, a wide range of neurological disorders, some cancers (yeah, really), and much more. I'm not aware of any scientic data that found adverse consequences. You get a lot of resistace from health professionals because for the last decades what you eat on a ketogenic diet has been blamed for heart diseases or high cholesterol, but there never was scientific evidence to back up those claims.
    - lambda 13y ago
      Here's a study that shows that while low-carb diets achieved effects faster (involved more weight loss in the first 6 months), after a year the difference in weight was negligible. Low carb diets led to higher levels of LDL cholesterol, which is generally considered to be bad, though were also correlated with better levels of HDL cholesterol, which are considered to be good. http://www.ceb-institute.org/fileadmin/upload/refman/arch_intern_med_2006_166_285_nordmann.pdf http://www.ceb-institute.org/fileadmin/upload/refman/arch_in... Here is a a long term study that shows that low carbohydrate, high protein diets were correlated with higher mortality rates. It's an observational, not a controlled study, so the usual caveats apply, but it's definitely some evidence that there's no automatic win for low-carb, high protein diets: http://folk.ntnu.no/lyngbakk/artikler/trichopoulou.pdf http://folk.ntnu.no/lyngbakk/artikler/trichopoulou.pdf I'm pretty sure I've seen another study that linked long-term use of low-carb, high protein diets with increased incidence of cancer, but I can't find that study at the moment.
maxerickson 13y ago
What's a big plate of bacon? 5 or 6 slices of bacon and 3 eggs is in the ballpark of 500 calories, which is a fairly light meal for someone at 200 pounds.
- hessenwolf 13y ago
  Waxy fat though. Gotta watch those arteries. Damn tasty pork.
  - eswat 13y ago
    There’s a growing amount of evidence and debunking of past research showing that fat - predominantly the saturated fat found in stuff like bacon - doesn’t clog arteries.
    - logfromblammo 13y ago
      And even if it did, you don't have dangerous atherosclerosis until those clogs start to calcify. The interactions between calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, collagen, silicon, and boron also somehow affect this process, but the exact mechanisms are not yet fully understood by scientifically sound research. I do not know of any human studies planned or underway on the hypercalcemia hypothesis for heart disease. The pop-science gurus claim that obstructive heart disease is primarily caused by consuming calcium in excess without attending to the other related dietary factors, and this causes the excess dietary calcium to harden arterial plaques rather than bones and teeth. They are usually pushing magnesium supplements or organic butter oil or some other purchasable product.
alexc05 13y ago
I too swear by keto. 65 lbs in ~4 months while never feeling hungry and having massive amounts of energy (hormonal changes crank up your testosterone levels) Nothing else I've tried was as easy as keto... And as a guy with >65lbs to lose I've tried a lot of diets. I don't know if it is for everyone, but my body responds really well to it.

fulmato 13y ago

On top of /r/keto Dr. Peter Attia has a great blog on this topic http://eatingacademy.com/ http://eatingacademy.com/ It's a great resource for a more scientific explanation of what happens to the metabolism when keto-adapted and on the effects of carbohydrates and more importantly insulin.

sn0v 13y ago

Did you notice any long term (lasting) effects after those four months? Also, any particular reason you stopped? Thanks.

stickydink 13y ago
After I stopped, and started eating regularly again, I found nothing different at all. One of the side effects, is that you're really susceptible to alcohol. One beer, and I'd be really feeling it. Whereas before, I could drink 3 without really noticing. After I stopped, my tolerance was still pretty low, though it's fine now. I don't know if the low tolerance afterwards could be the diet specifically, or just whether I'd not really drank in 4 months. I stopped because it was just too awkward. Living with my girlfriend, it was annoying that we had to cook separately (she only believes in low calorie, zombie cardio 5 days a week). We could only go out to dinner at certain places, which got a bit tedious. And to be honest, I'd done pretty well, and was back to the sort of weight I wanted to be at. The toss up between the cost/awkwardness, and the amount of weight I still had to lose, it wasn't worth the hassle. Though, if I ever need to lose weight again (hopefully never), I wouldn't even dream of anything else.
- s_husso 13y ago
  > One of the side effects, is that you're really susceptible to alcohol. One beer, and I'd be really feeling it. Whereas before, I could drink 3 without really noticing. After I stopped, my tolerance was still pretty low, though it's fine now. I don't know if the low tolerance afterwards could be the diet specifically, or just whether I'd not really drank in 4 months. After going Keto/IF my alcohol tolerance has gone through the roofs to a point that I really don't want to get wasted anymore (not that I did it that often). Around 10 beers used to get me in a great buzz, but now after a 0.7 litre bottle of whisky I could still easily get into a bar and continue drinking. But luckily there is something going in the back of your head, that "maybe this is way too much already, lets call it a day". And top of that, the day after, I seem to have no hangover at all. Now a days, if I go out with friends I usually take one or two servings of some good quality whisky and leave it at that. For the background I'm currently standing at 115kg
AltanS 13y ago
Maybe I can answer this question, been on a ketogenic diet for over a year now. As mentioned above there is an adaptation period to the diet that can take up to 4 weeks. During that time symptoms can be flu like, this is caused by an initial hormonal change due to low blood glucose levels and in return a low and stable insulin level. Because of this the kidney excretes more sodium, potassium and water, leading to low blood pressure. This can be prevented by supplementing broth, or adding more salt to servings, for as long as the symptoms occur. Once this phase is over you get to experience the real benefits of a ketogenic diet, constant energy levels throughout the day, controllable hunger, better sleep, elevated HGH and more. It really sounds too good to be true I guess, which is why a lot of people dismiss it right away. I'd encourage anyone to give it a try, at least 4 weeks however to ensure adaptation.
- notdrunkatall 13y ago
  HGH? Human Growth Hormone? Just curious, what benefit does this provide?
  - AltanS 13y ago
    From the wikipedia page: "In addition to increasing height in children and adolescents, growth hormone has many other effects on the body: - Increases calcium retention, and strengthens and increases the mineralization of bone - Increases muscle mass through sarcomere hypertrophy - Promotes lipolysis - Increases protein synthesis - Stimulates the growth of all internal organs excluding the brain - Plays a role in homeostasis - Reduces liver uptake of glucose - Promotes gluconeogenesis in the liver - Contributes to the maintenance and function of pancreatic islets - Stimulates the immune system"
- ovi256 13y ago
  This is pretty much the "reset fast" that is advocated by the "Engineering the Alpha" book.
dharmach 13y ago
The book "The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" mentioned about the group not able to eat carbohydrate for months. They had only animal products available to survive. They complained about lack of stamina and each physical tasks taking a lot longer to complete.
- Robin_Message 13y ago
  They were stuck on an Antarctic ice floe for 497 days, and you think it was the lack of carbs that reduced their stamina? What about the debilitating cold, the crushing expectation of a lonely death, or the general ice-induced boredom?

ehsanu1 13y ago

fulmato, you were hellbanned after your first comment saying "this is bs". Not a great comment, but hellbanning for a single comment is quite extreme. Posting your useful comment here: On top of /r/keto Dr. Peter Attia has a great blog on this topic http://eatingacademy.com/ http://eatingacademy.com/ It's a great resource for a more scientific explanation of what happens to the metabolism when keto-adapted and on the effects of carbohydrates and more importantly insulin.

jimeuxx 13y ago
People like Attia live in a parallel universe where there are healthy populations on Earth that eat no carbs and East Asia doesn't exist. My Japanese is good enough now to explain to my wife's active octogenarian grandparents why rice is going to give them heart disease and diabetes. In all seriousness, the world of online nutrition is a nasty and insane place. There's a lot of dogma and cognitive dissonance in something that borders on religion among the followers of gurus like Attia. If you're simply looking for an objective explanation of science rather than an ideology, look elsewhere.
- AltanS 13y ago
  There's a lot of scientific evidence supporting a ketogenic lifestyle, distinguishing this movement from fad diets and Attia from a Guru status. If you're interested I would recommend the following book: http://amzn.com/0983490708 http://amzn.com/0983490708
  - dhimes 13y ago
    Better would be peer-reviewed journal articles. A lot of books have a tendency to promote the views of the author over providing a balance of information.
    - AltanS 13y ago
      Here is a short list of both author's peer-reviewed research papers on the topic. http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/research/ http://www.artandscienceoflowcarb.com/research/

theorique 13y ago

Chipotle for lunch How did you do Chipotle? I'm guessing you just went with beans / meat / vegetables and skipped the rice and tortilla?

stickydink 13y ago
They have a pretty decent nutritional guide[1] on their website, my usual was the salad bowl (big lettuce), no salad dressing, no rice, no beans, fajita veggies, double meat steak + barbacoa, the green salsa (has the fewest net carbs), sour cream, cheese, guac. That leaves you with this: http://imgur.com/WZBEczv http://imgur.com/WZBEczv, 14g net carbs (net carbs = carbs - fiber). My target was <30g per day. Breakfast gave almost 0, dinner would be 10-15g. [1] http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutrition_calculator.aspx http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutr...

bobowzki 13y ago

I'm a physician. While it's good to lose weight (at least if you are overweight), keep in mind that losing weight is not the only interesting outcome. Any diet might have long term side effects. Such as an increased risk of cancer, arteriosclerosis etc. Also remember that weight loss is not the only benefit of exercise. That said, congrats on losing weight. Now start exercising :-)

tokenizer 13y ago
Regarding the diet above, which limits your sugar intake to 20 grams a day, what are some potential consequences of starving your body of sugars? Sounds good in theory (sugar is bad), but it sounds stressful (body starts producing ketones due to suck a lack of sugar, flu like symptoms for a week).
- nkuttler 13y ago
  Producing ketones is perfectly normal. The flu-like symptoms can usually be avoided by easing into a low-carb/keto diet and/or ingesting sodium, chicken broth is normally recommended at the early stages. Potential consequences of reduced carb intake are weight loss. It can be used to treat type 2 diabetes, epilepsy, a wide range of neurological disorders, some cancers (yeah, really), and much more. I'm not aware of any scientic data that found adverse consequences. You get a lot of resistace from health professionals because for the last decades what you eat on a ketogenic diet has been blamed for heart diseases or high cholesterol, but there never was scientific evidence to back up those claims.
  - lambda 13y ago
    Here's a study that shows that while low-carb diets achieved effects faster (involved more weight loss in the first 6 months), after a year the difference in weight was negligible. Low carb diets led to higher levels of LDL cholesterol, which is generally considered to be bad, though were also correlated with better levels of HDL cholesterol, which are considered to be good. http://www.ceb-institute.org/fileadmin/upload/refman/arch_intern_med_2006_166_285_nordmann.pdf http://www.ceb-institute.org/fileadmin/upload/refman/arch_in... Here is a a long term study that shows that low carbohydrate, high protein diets were correlated with higher mortality rates. It's an observational, not a controlled study, so the usual caveats apply, but it's definitely some evidence that there's no automatic win for low-carb, high protein diets: http://folk.ntnu.no/lyngbakk/artikler/trichopoulou.pdf http://folk.ntnu.no/lyngbakk/artikler/trichopoulou.pdf I'm pretty sure I've seen another study that linked long-term use of low-carb, high protein diets with increased incidence of cancer, but I can't find that study at the moment.

maxerickson 13y ago

What's a big plate of bacon? 5 or 6 slices of bacon and 3 eggs is in the ballpark of 500 calories, which is a fairly light meal for someone at 200 pounds.

hessenwolf 13y ago
Waxy fat though. Gotta watch those arteries. Damn tasty pork.
- eswat 13y ago
  There’s a growing amount of evidence and debunking of past research showing that fat - predominantly the saturated fat found in stuff like bacon - doesn’t clog arteries.
  - logfromblammo 13y ago
    And even if it did, you don't have dangerous atherosclerosis until those clogs start to calcify. The interactions between calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K, collagen, silicon, and boron also somehow affect this process, but the exact mechanisms are not yet fully understood by scientifically sound research. I do not know of any human studies planned or underway on the hypercalcemia hypothesis for heart disease. The pop-science gurus claim that obstructive heart disease is primarily caused by consuming calcium in excess without attending to the other related dietary factors, and this causes the excess dietary calcium to harden arterial plaques rather than bones and teeth. They are usually pushing magnesium supplements or organic butter oil or some other purchasable product.

alexc05 13y ago

I too swear by keto. 65 lbs in ~4 months while never feeling hungry and having massive amounts of energy (hormonal changes crank up your testosterone levels) Nothing else I've tried was as easy as keto... And as a guy with >65lbs to lose I've tried a lot of diets. I don't know if it is for everyone, but my body responds really well to it.