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Once upon a time I did the ketogenic diet which bases the bulk of your daily calories from healthy natural fat. No carbs allowed except for carbs from fiber.

by thesis 11y ago

Once upon a time I did the ketogenic diet which bases the bulk of your daily calories from healthy natural fat. No carbs allowed except for carbs from fiber. I, along many other people who have did this diet have lost a lot of weight. It's simply not true that you can't lose weight by eating primarily fatty foods.

alextgordon 11y ago
Most Americans could not sustain a ketogenic diet for any amount of time, so it is pointless for the purposes of a national health body.
- mason240 11y ago
  >Most Americans could not sustain a ketogenic diet for any amount of time Why not?
  - LanceH 11y ago
    Because they grew up with a ton of grains on the bottom of the officially government sponsored food pyramid.
    - Spivak 11y ago
      That isn't the real reason, it's that the bottom of that food pyramid is cheap, they're used everywhere as fillers, and they make that cheap food more palatable. It can't be national policy because there's a huge portion of the population that couldn't afford that diet.
  - acconrad 11y ago
    Because most people of any culture can't stick to restrictive diets [1]. Restricting calories is ultimately the goal - how you do it is largely irrelevant, outside of eating mostly whole, unprocessed foods. When you apply further restrictions, people (up to 66% of them) rebound and gain the weight back (or more). [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17469900 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17469900
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  A national health body is pointless in the context of the US health care system. Nobody here is going to fix that problem. But we can still self-experiment based on dietary hypotheses. An anecdote is not data, but it can be a counterexample! When someone says, "You can't lose weight by eating mostly fat," and someone else says, "I lost X weight on a diet that was 60% fat," that casts strong doubt upon the validity of the hypothesis. Even so, this is yet another rehash of the "food energy hypothesis" poster versus "body chemistry hypothesis" poster. We have seen it before, both on HN and in other places. I have never observed this particular debate to yield useful results, anywhere. I am, personally, a "body chemistry hypothesis" person. I don't think humans are glorified bomb calorimeters. And I don't think that the "food energy hypothesis" folks provide useful guidance to people who are currently overweight. So what; who cares? That's just, like, my opinion, man. Hypotheses are judged by the experiments that support or refute them, not by the number of people who believe they may be true. So don't be like the national health bodies. Let the science speak for itself. Nobody should be touting any sort of dietary maxims when the available evidence is still inconclusive, especially when they have no meaningful accountability if they get it wrong.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Our energy metabolism isn't that mysterious. Like, we know how various macro nutrients are broken down into constituents and the pathways that are then used to convert them into energy that is available to cells. The problem with the food energy hypothesis as a path to weight loss is that it is a lot of work to accurately count and limit calories, and that it is difficult to accurately estimate calorie consumption (a good way is to count calories for a long time and calculate consumption based on the corresponding change in weight). Once there is an accurate estimate of consumption, sustaining intake below that level will result in weight loss.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      As far as I am aware, the only useful application of the food energy hypothesis to practical obesity management are the recommendations that people increase their daily physical activity, do resistance training to build muscle mass (thereby raising resting metabolic rate), and eat specific foods that may increase resting metabolic rate. Notable examples would be caffeinated black coffee and unsweetened tea, which provide nearly zero food energy while the caffeine temporarily boosts metabolism. Compounds found in Capsicum peppers are suspected of temporarily increasing metabolic rate (though the effect diminishes as the body acquires tolerance). The resveratrol in berries and grapes is also suspected of causing white adipose cells to temporarily become "beige", where they mimic brown adipose cells. That third recommendation is, in essence, to take [non-caloric, herbal] drugs to boost metabolism. As you suggested, the element that makes it useless for practical adiposity management is the fact that human bodies adjust resting metabolic rates, psychological impulses to consume food, and psychological impulses to adjust physical activity levels in response to dietary intake. One person drinks a sweetened beverage and starts bouncing off the walls for the next two hours, burning off that extra energy. Another drinks an identical portion, then becomes lethargic and turns every last sugar molecule into stored lipids. We don't [yet] have a model that can predict a structured diet for a specific person that can reliably produce the desired effect. The labels on food packages and the calorie counting websites get their numbers from nutritional assays, rather than in vivo measurements in actual humans. The latter would be prohibitively expensive, would produce results that are far less precise, and offer foods suppliers no competitive advantage. This is why diet plans that don't require calorie counting are relatively popular. People just want to follow a diet where they can consistently lose excess adipose tissue without either literally working their asses off for hours a day, or constantly suppressing the psychological impulse to eat more than is allowed by the plan. Whatever other mechanisms may be in play, some diets work best for some people for just one reason: they can feel satiated and stop eating at a caloric intake level consistent with fat loss, without having to constantly do math during their day.

by thesis 11y ago

alextgordon 11y ago

Most Americans could not sustain a ketogenic diet for any amount of time, so it is pointless for the purposes of a national health body.

mason240 11y ago
>Most Americans could not sustain a ketogenic diet for any amount of time Why not?
- LanceH 11y ago
  Because they grew up with a ton of grains on the bottom of the officially government sponsored food pyramid.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    That isn't the real reason, it's that the bottom of that food pyramid is cheap, they're used everywhere as fillers, and they make that cheap food more palatable. It can't be national policy because there's a huge portion of the population that couldn't afford that diet.
- acconrad 11y ago
  Because most people of any culture can't stick to restrictive diets [1]. Restricting calories is ultimately the goal - how you do it is largely irrelevant, outside of eating mostly whole, unprocessed foods. When you apply further restrictions, people (up to 66% of them) rebound and gain the weight back (or more). [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17469900 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17469900
logfromblammo 11y ago
A national health body is pointless in the context of the US health care system. Nobody here is going to fix that problem. But we can still self-experiment based on dietary hypotheses. An anecdote is not data, but it can be a counterexample! When someone says, "You can't lose weight by eating mostly fat," and someone else says, "I lost X weight on a diet that was 60% fat," that casts strong doubt upon the validity of the hypothesis. Even so, this is yet another rehash of the "food energy hypothesis" poster versus "body chemistry hypothesis" poster. We have seen it before, both on HN and in other places. I have never observed this particular debate to yield useful results, anywhere. I am, personally, a "body chemistry hypothesis" person. I don't think humans are glorified bomb calorimeters. And I don't think that the "food energy hypothesis" folks provide useful guidance to people who are currently overweight. So what; who cares? That's just, like, my opinion, man. Hypotheses are judged by the experiments that support or refute them, not by the number of people who believe they may be true. So don't be like the national health bodies. Let the science speak for itself. Nobody should be touting any sort of dietary maxims when the available evidence is still inconclusive, especially when they have no meaningful accountability if they get it wrong.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Our energy metabolism isn't that mysterious. Like, we know how various macro nutrients are broken down into constituents and the pathways that are then used to convert them into energy that is available to cells. The problem with the food energy hypothesis as a path to weight loss is that it is a lot of work to accurately count and limit calories, and that it is difficult to accurately estimate calorie consumption (a good way is to count calories for a long time and calculate consumption based on the corresponding change in weight). Once there is an accurate estimate of consumption, sustaining intake below that level will result in weight loss.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    As far as I am aware, the only useful application of the food energy hypothesis to practical obesity management are the recommendations that people increase their daily physical activity, do resistance training to build muscle mass (thereby raising resting metabolic rate), and eat specific foods that may increase resting metabolic rate. Notable examples would be caffeinated black coffee and unsweetened tea, which provide nearly zero food energy while the caffeine temporarily boosts metabolism. Compounds found in Capsicum peppers are suspected of temporarily increasing metabolic rate (though the effect diminishes as the body acquires tolerance). The resveratrol in berries and grapes is also suspected of causing white adipose cells to temporarily become "beige", where they mimic brown adipose cells. That third recommendation is, in essence, to take [non-caloric, herbal] drugs to boost metabolism. As you suggested, the element that makes it useless for practical adiposity management is the fact that human bodies adjust resting metabolic rates, psychological impulses to consume food, and psychological impulses to adjust physical activity levels in response to dietary intake. One person drinks a sweetened beverage and starts bouncing off the walls for the next two hours, burning off that extra energy. Another drinks an identical portion, then becomes lethargic and turns every last sugar molecule into stored lipids. We don't [yet] have a model that can predict a structured diet for a specific person that can reliably produce the desired effect. The labels on food packages and the calorie counting websites get their numbers from nutritional assays, rather than in vivo measurements in actual humans. The latter would be prohibitively expensive, would produce results that are far less precise, and offer foods suppliers no competitive advantage. This is why diet plans that don't require calorie counting are relatively popular. People just want to follow a diet where they can consistently lose excess adipose tissue without either literally working their asses off for hours a day, or constantly suppressing the psychological impulse to eat more than is allowed by the plan. Whatever other mechanisms may be in play, some diets work best for some people for just one reason: they can feel satiated and stop eating at a caloric intake level consistent with fat loss, without having to constantly do math during their day.